High protein diet SHRINKS brain - Sorry, Alan

Carbs on the main source of energy for the brain. Protein helps it grow when young, but carbs fuel it. That's why people on Atkins are often out of it until they go off of the diet. Their bodies break down protein into ketones which are an alternative source of carbs for your brain, but aren't something you want flowing through your body.

yep. The brain needs glucose. Of course gluconeogenesis will allow you to survive on a no carb diet, but it doesn't mean it's healthy.

Well you can't exactly say it "shrunk" the brain as they started the diet at 4 weeks of age. A little context: mice wean at 4 weeks and are sexually mature around 7 weeks. So it may be that it retarded development. Secondly, it would be premature to extrapolate to humans from this study. While mice are somewhat of omnivores and will eat anything they can find, their main source of food are grains. As such, they may not have the requisite systems needed to process protein as effectively as humans. Finally, they did not use any control (non-transgenic) mice. We do not know whether this effect is related to the addition of the human alzheimer's associated genes or whether it would occur in all mice.

Guppy wrote:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091020192206.htm

Looks like it's (maybe) Alzheimer's for you!

"Unexpectedly, mice fed a high protein/low carbohydrate diet had brains five percent lighter that all the others, and regions of their hippocampus were less developed."

"Given the previously reported association of high protein diet with aging-related neurotoxicity, one wonders whether particular diets, if ingested at particular ages, might increase susceptibility to incidence or progression of AD," says lead author, Sam Gandy, a professor at The Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City and a neurologist at the James J Peters Veterans Affairs Medical Center in the Bronx NY."

I will add that I agree high protein diets are great for weight loss, just not for overall health.

I corrected the headline for you.

What do you mean by "high protein" diet? A majority of calories from protein, a plurality, or just higher than normal?

I don't think Alan ever advocating getting most of or even a plurality of calories from protein. If you eat 100g a day of protein, that is still only 400 calories. I am assuming any runner training worth a damn eats 3000 calories a day. Even an absurdly high 200g of protein a day would only compose less than a third of the calories in a 3000 calorie a day diet.

You guys pile on Alan without even reading what he is saying. Protein only has 4 calories per gram.

yeah yeah, I know. It says all that explicitly in the article.

I was only being half serious in my original post.

Alan does get ripped far too much on here, usually by people who don't know shit about what they're saying. Again, I think he knows how to make people lose weight, but don't believe a diet of 4 chicken breasts per day and zero grains is an optimal diet for anyone (even the lard asses he works with every day).

Guppy wrote:

I think he knows how to make people lose weight

Like who, exactly.

Brian, ARRRGGGHH!!! I used to think you were a fairly perceptive poster, but lately I am doubting that initial view I had of you. Why do I say that?? Because, once again, for at least the second time recently, you are defending Alan while misrepresenting his past statements. He HAS in the past advocated that one get more calories from protein than from carbs. In fact, he has gone so far as to say that endurance athletes, yes, endurance athletes, could probably do as well or better on a diet with little to no carbs than one with 40% or higher carbs. This was in one of his "think outside the nutrition box" threads. He has flat out said that people DON'T NEED CARBS, because fat from the diet and gluconeogenesis can provide one with all the energy they need. So as far as your ....

Brian wrote:

You guys pile on Alan without even reading what he is saying

...comment, you are wrong about that. YOU are defending him without even reading all his comments. YOU are guilty of what you are accusing others of.

He has made many, many, incorrect statements about nutrition on here. I am not going to go back and list them all. But in a nutshell, he has WAY overstated the potential negative impact of carbohydrates on one's diet, WAY understated the importance of carbs in an endurance athletes diet, and WAY overstated the need to consume high amounts of protein.

"RE: High protein diet SHRINKS brain - Sorry, Alan"

&

those "fed a high protein/low carbohydrate diet had brains five percent lighter that all the others, and regions of their hippocampus were less developed."

Well, this research WOULD go a long way in explaining some of Alan's past crazy posts, wouldn't it?

Sir Lance-alot, I knew we could eventually agree on something. Took a long time, but there it is.

Um What? wrote:

Finally, they did not use any control...... mice.

"These mice were fed either

a regular diet,

a high fat/low carbohydrate custom diet,

a high protein/low carb version or

a high carbohydrate/low fat option."

I'd say option 1 was the "control diet."

( I know what you were trying to get at, and yes I left out your "non-transgenic" comment. But this is the mouse model for what they are trying to study. The regular diet was the control, and the other diets were for comparison. You say we can't necessarily extrapolate from mice to humans, and this is true, but I would think one could extrapolate better from mice models designed for the condition one is studying. )

Sir Lance-alot wrote:

He has made many, many, incorrect statements about nutrition on here. I am not going to go back and list them all. But in a nutshell, he has WAY overstated the potential negative impact of carbohydrates on one's diet, WAY understated the importance of carbs in an endurance athletes diet, and WAY overstated the need to consume high amounts of protein.

Oops, this is the post to which I was referring. Sorry Alan, he slipped another one in there on me and made it sound much meaner than I meant it.

It may be the first thing you found that you agree with me on, but it is the SECOND nice thing you've to me in a month or so (you complimented by post on the "another treadmill thread" for being funny) ! So watch out, or we won't have anything to fight about!

(by the way, I just read your comment on the "GF doesn't want her pics on the web" thread and I agree 100% with you on your statement. I just posted on the thread.....)

what type of macronutrient content were in these high protein/low carbohydrate diets?

There are high protein/low carbohydrate diets that are high in micronutrients....mostly lean meats and lots of low glycemic veggies.

I don't think anyone is advocating a meat only diet.

This study tells us nothing. For one thing it used mice, and for another it started mice on the diet while their brains were still developing. People aren't mice and they don't go on high protein diets at 2.

Yeah, I'm with Brian on this one. I don't recall Alan ever recommending a total protein diet - we all need carbs and he knows that.

f

Yeah, studies on mice never tell us anything about humans. All those stupid scientists who run tests on mice need to have some sense slapped into them by an anonymous letsrun poster, since it's obvious he/she knows far more about this sort of thing than they do.

It is always a poor experimental design when using transgenic mice to not use a wild-type (e.g., non-transgenic) littermate control. Otherwise you cannot conclude anything about the effect of the independent variable on the transgenic mice.

Sir Lance-alot wrote:

Um What? wrote:

Finally, they did not use any control...... mice.

"These mice were fed either

a regular diet,

a high fat/low carbohydrate custom diet,

a high protein/low carb version or

a high carbohydrate/low fat option."

I'd say option 1 was the "control diet."

( I know what you were trying to get at, and yes I left out your "non-transgenic" comment. But this is the mouse model for what they are trying to study. The regular diet was the control, and the other diets were for comparison. You say we can't necessarily extrapolate from mice to humans, and this is true, but I would think one could extrapolate better from mice models designed for the condition one is studying. )

Yay Carbs! wrote:

Their bodies break down protein into ketones which are an alternative source of carbs for your brain, but aren't something you want flowing through your body.

ketones are formed from triglyceride breakdown not fat