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Seems like the discovered the effects of low-carb diets sixty years ago? How did you find this paper, out of curiosity? Makes you wonder how many other discove

Seems like the discovered the effects of low-carb diets sixty years ago? How did you find this paper, out of curiosity? Makes you wonder how many other discoveries were made and ignored.

DiabloD3 11y ago
From a doctor I'm friends with who introduced me to Paleo years ago. He thought this was pretty funny that we keep rediscovering the truth and keep ignoring it.
- CuriouslyC 11y ago
  Possibly because the optimal diet is a highly individual thing that depends on someone's activity level, body fat, genetics and gut bacteria? Paleo/keto diets tend to work very well for people who are overweight and sedentary, that doesn't mean everyone should be on that type of diet. Just as a simple example, I'm extremely lean/muscular, and I typically get ~2 hours a day of exercise. I kick ass and take names on a high carb low fat diet, while I get flat and lose strength when I switch to a high fat low carb diet.
abecedarius 11y ago
Not just 60. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Banting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Banting Actually this made me wonder how far back you could go, and a little searching turned up a vaguely-decent match from antiquity: "Obese people and those desiring to lose weight should perform hard work before food . . . Their meals should be of a fatty nature as people get thus satiated with little food. They should, moreover, eat only once a day and take no baths and sleep on a hard bed and walk naked as long as possible. —Hippocrates (Hippocrates on Diet and Hygiene, Zeno, London, 1952)" at http://forum.lowcarber.org/archive/index.php/t-464645.html http://forum.lowcarber.org/archive/index.php/t-464645.html which was ironically hard to find among all the hits for a vegetarian Hippocrates Diet.
- serf 11y ago
  >sleep on a hard bed and walk naked as long as possible That's the problem , huh. I'll have to let my co-workers know that they're in for a few weeks of naked walking around the office.
  - abecedarius 11y ago
    I wonder if the walking naked "as long as possible" is about the seasons? That is, subjecting yourself to colder temperatures -- which is also a modern recommendation (cold showers) in some of the same circles as recommend a high-fat diet with intermittent fasting ("eat only once a day", "hard work before food"). If so, the hard bed's the only part that been dropped.
    - CuriouslyC 11y ago
      Almost definitely not. Vitamin D deficiency is fairly common today, even with good food sources like fortified dairy products and eggs. The ancient Greeks didn't have fortified dairy and the chicken hadn't been domesticated yet, so the only readily available food source of vitamin D was liver. Luckily, the body can produce vitamin D; half an hour of naked sun exposure is more than sufficient to meet your daily requirements.
      - abecedarius 11y ago
        That sounds like a better idea. I've seen a couple claims that higher vitamin-D levels go with lower weight, e.g. https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/releases/2014/04/vitamin-d-effect-on-weight-loss.html https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/releases/2014/04/vitamin-d...
whiddershins 11y ago
The Yellow Emperor's Classic, which is over 2,000 years old and possibly the most important fundamental text in Chinese Medicine, advocates avoiding grains in many situations ... but there is much debate on exactly what was meant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huangdi_Neijing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huangdi_Neijing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigu_(avoiding_grains) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigu_(avoiding_grains)
- douche 11y ago
  Interesting, what kind of debate? Possibly something to keep in mind, but when ancient Chinese authors are talking about grain, they are probably talking about wheat, barley, millet or sorghum, rather than rice. The nucleus of Chinese civilization was in the Yellow river region, in northern China, where rice was not a native plant - as opposed to the Yangtze and Cantonese regions of China, which were colonized later.
scottlocklin 11y ago
Galen mentioned low carb diets as a treatment for epilepsy, and for certain kinds of athletes. It works very well as a treatment of epilepsy, and doctors who have prescribed it have noticed it helps people lose fat as well. Pretty much this was common knowledge until the 80s when people started suggesting pasta and cornflakes diets.

Seems like the discovered the effects of low-carb diets sixty years ago? How did you find this paper, out of curiosity? Makes you wonder how many other discoveries were made and ignored.

DiabloD3 11y ago

From a doctor I'm friends with who introduced me to Paleo years ago. He thought this was pretty funny that we keep rediscovering the truth and keep ignoring it.

CuriouslyC 11y ago
Possibly because the optimal diet is a highly individual thing that depends on someone's activity level, body fat, genetics and gut bacteria? Paleo/keto diets tend to work very well for people who are overweight and sedentary, that doesn't mean everyone should be on that type of diet. Just as a simple example, I'm extremely lean/muscular, and I typically get ~2 hours a day of exercise. I kick ass and take names on a high carb low fat diet, while I get flat and lose strength when I switch to a high fat low carb diet.

abecedarius 11y ago

Not just 60. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Banting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Banting Actually this made me wonder how far back you could go, and a little searching turned up a vaguely-decent match from antiquity: "Obese people and those desiring to lose weight should perform hard work before food . . . Their meals should be of a fatty nature as people get thus satiated with little food. They should, moreover, eat only once a day and take no baths and sleep on a hard bed and walk naked as long as possible. —Hippocrates (Hippocrates on Diet and Hygiene, Zeno, London, 1952)" at http://forum.lowcarber.org/archive/index.php/t-464645.html http://forum.lowcarber.org/archive/index.php/t-464645.html which was ironically hard to find among all the hits for a vegetarian Hippocrates Diet.

serf 11y ago
>sleep on a hard bed and walk naked as long as possible That's the problem , huh. I'll have to let my co-workers know that they're in for a few weeks of naked walking around the office.
- abecedarius 11y ago
  I wonder if the walking naked "as long as possible" is about the seasons? That is, subjecting yourself to colder temperatures -- which is also a modern recommendation (cold showers) in some of the same circles as recommend a high-fat diet with intermittent fasting ("eat only once a day", "hard work before food"). If so, the hard bed's the only part that been dropped.
  - CuriouslyC 11y ago
    Almost definitely not. Vitamin D deficiency is fairly common today, even with good food sources like fortified dairy products and eggs. The ancient Greeks didn't have fortified dairy and the chicken hadn't been domesticated yet, so the only readily available food source of vitamin D was liver. Luckily, the body can produce vitamin D; half an hour of naked sun exposure is more than sufficient to meet your daily requirements.
    - abecedarius 11y ago
      That sounds like a better idea. I've seen a couple claims that higher vitamin-D levels go with lower weight, e.g. https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/releases/2014/04/vitamin-d-effect-on-weight-loss.html https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/releases/2014/04/vitamin-d...

whiddershins 11y ago

The Yellow Emperor's Classic, which is over 2,000 years old and possibly the most important fundamental text in Chinese Medicine, advocates avoiding grains in many situations ... but there is much debate on exactly what was meant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huangdi_Neijing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huangdi_Neijing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigu_(avoiding_grains) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigu_(avoiding_grains)

douche 11y ago
Interesting, what kind of debate? Possibly something to keep in mind, but when ancient Chinese authors are talking about grain, they are probably talking about wheat, barley, millet or sorghum, rather than rice. The nucleus of Chinese civilization was in the Yellow river region, in northern China, where rice was not a native plant - as opposed to the Yangtze and Cantonese regions of China, which were colonized later.

scottlocklin 11y ago

Galen mentioned low carb diets as a treatment for epilepsy, and for certain kinds of athletes. It works very well as a treatment of epilepsy, and doctors who have prescribed it have noticed it helps people lose fat as well. Pretty much this was common knowledge until the 80s when people started suggesting pasta and cornflakes diets.