High protein diet SHRINKS brain - Sorry, Alan

Are you a genetically engineered MOUSE?

ham sam wrote:

ketones are formed from triglyceride breakdown not fat

Am Mouse? wrote:

This study tells us nothing. For one thing it used mice

Which is odd, given that mice and humans respond very differently to low-carbohydrate diets (and diets in general, actually) and this has been known for A LONG TIME.

Odd...unless, of course, the "researchers" have a vested interest in portraying LC diets as dangerous to humans. In fact, of course, the opposite is true, based on research with **actual human beings**...

I think it's more likely that they just don't have the funding to do a massive human study. Mice studies are easy and cheap, but they are of questionable applicability to people. Our genes are not entirely the same. Plenty of "cures" for cancer have been found that work perfectly in genetically engineered mice and not at all in humans.

I agree that there are large problems with comparing humans to mice, a species that is not built to consume large amounts of protein.

ham sam wrote:

ketones are formed from triglyceride breakdown not fat

Triglycerides are fat

gram cracka: just a little advice. If you want to disprove something by posting an article or a link, you can't use wikipedia. Those articles can be written by anyone and in a lot of cases, are untrue. Find something written by a doctor or an exercise physiologist or something out of a textbook. People will laugh at you if you start citing wikipedia.

I have been involved with aging research for close to 9 years now, so naturally this interested me. I followed the links to the article. I held off posting until I read more.

It is open access, so most of you should be able to get it.

http://www.molecularneurodegeneration.com/content/pdf/1750-1326-4-40.pdf

Diet contents:

regular diet - does not list contents

So I found the contents of Harlan Teklad mouse chow:

http://www.harlan.com/download.axd/e576305cf4b54c39ad55cf8e07317569.pdf?d=8626%20Tech%

energy content from ~21% protein, ~10% fat, ~70% CHO

from the article we get:

"(2) high fat/low carbohydrate custom

chow (60 kcal% fat/ 30 kcal% protein/ 10 kcal% carbohydrate);

(3) high protein/low

carbohydrate custom chow (60 kcal% protein/ 30 kcal% fat/ 10 kcal% carbohydrate); or

(4) high

carbohydrate/low fat custom chow (60 kcal% carbohydrate/ 30 kcal% protein/ 10 kcal% fat)."

#2 and #3 are bizarre diets, and not just for mice, but for humans. #4 looks just like the reference diet, if in fact they are using Harlan Teklad. Every single place I've ever been uses Harlan Teklad for standard chow. So, I'm not sure what the point of #4 was. If that is different from the standard diet, they should have listed the contents of the standard diet directly. It could be that what they are calling standard diet is standard for humans, rather than for mice. However, as mentioned by others on this thread, a standard human diet is not standard for mice.

There is no data on control mice (non-transgenic littermates). There are serious problems with this study's applicability to brain mass. Nevertheless, the main purpose of the study was to examine the role of diet in collection of amyloid plaques, a major player in the pathology of AD. There are lessons to be learned in that realm. The brain mass part should not have been reported with any kind of importance without the addition of wild-type mice. As a reviewer, I would have asked for many more experiments. However, I am not familiar with this journal; it is open access after all, so their review process may be lax.

I actually just noticed something else in the results. And this is a serious flaw in experimental design. They give the total contents of their special diets. For the same caloric intake, each diet has a different mass - see Table 1, bottom. The reason this is a problem, is that mice were provide food ad libitum, yet the researchers did not measure how much food, and therefore, the caloric intake of the mice on a daily or weekly basis. If it was done, it is not reported. Further the methods do not report any measures taken to ensure equal calorie intake between groups. There are many designs of metabolic cages out there to determine food and water intake, protein digestion/excretion, fat digestion, etc etc. How any study can presume to be a study on diet and not measure the actual intake of the animals is flawed to the point I would reject this paper. There are so many uncontrolled variables (or at the very least, unreported), that almost no conclusion can be drawn here.

Admittedly, I know Alan in person and have run with him and I am going more by what we have talked about on email and in person that what I have read on here.

I think an athlete should get more than 1g/kg of bodyweight, I think normal recommendations of .6g/kg are too low. But if he really thinks we should be burning protein for fuel, I certainly wouldn't agree with that.

Were these mice running more than a normal mouse or lifting weigths also?

This experiment seems more to do with a diet, than a supplement. In other words

The mice are given high protein diets, but the necessity is not there; physical work that would have required more than normal protien synthesis.

People who are on the Atkins diet are trying to lose weight. But if you are doing more work, the xtra protien may not get converted as readily and would be used for protien synthesis. Thats why a a balance of carbs and protien are appropriate.

I know nothing about what Im talking about

The mice on the high protein diet ate 60% of their calories as protein...

How in any way does what happened to them apply to runners?

Nobody in their right mind, not even Alan, would advocate eating 60% of their calories as protein. That would be 450g of protein for a runner eating 3000 calories a day. That is 3-4 times the amount of protein I would reccomend for a 130-150 lb runner.

Anyone who actually look at this study with an unbiased eye should be able to see that the finding simply isn't applicable to runners.

you would be surprised as to what would come out of alan's brain and onto this message board.

I've also conveniently noticed that, although he is usually on here posting things 24/7, he hasn't bothered to post a single thing on this thread...

Let me know when you grow a tail, fur, and big ears Mickey.

My brain gets tired of this board. I'm not going to repeat or try and defend myself or my statements...been there, done that...

Alan

Runningart2004 wrote:

Let me know when you grow a tail, fur, and big ears Mickey.

My brain gets tired of this board. I'm not going to repeat or try and defend myself or my statements...been there, done that...

Alan

Yeah, that would be absurd.

the dude abides wrote:

Triglycerides are fat

Partly fat.

Brian, you're wasting your time listening to Lance. He's a troll, taking a few comments and making them my credo...

It is POSSIBLE to sustain yourself on mostly fat and protein. Our ancestors did. I've read about an elite cyclist who PR's during a time trial and the diet in the 2 weeks preceeding was NOTHING but veggies, BCAA's, fat, and whole protein. I think Lance forgets that I don't count veggies in my numbers as I consider those a 'free' food and one which you should have every day with EVERY MEAL.

I don't preach a ZERO carb diet...I preach a LOW carb diet, but I think it's POSSIBLE to sustain yourself or even improvement performance or body composition by reducing carb intake even further for a short time.

I cycle 40-80min or more a day (80-120 miles a week), sometimes going for an hour straight plus lifting hard for an hour 5 days a week and I rarely consume more than 25% of my diet from carbs.

I don't know why Lance and my other 'lovers' keep mentioning Ketosis since you'd have to be likely UNDER 50g a day of ANY carb source, veggies included, to remain in that state all day.

This is my current diet:

6am: pre-breakfast; 10g BCAA, 30g Whey

8:30am: breakfast; 4 eggs, 4oz lean beef, 1 cup veggies

11:00am: 10g BCAA

1:30pm: lunch; 8oz chicken breast, 1 cup veggies

2:00-3:00pm: lift weights; 6 exercises, 5 sets of 8-12, 60-90s rest

3:00pm: 30g BCAA, 40g carb source

5:00pm: .5-1c nuts

6:00pm: cycle 40-80min home.

7:00pm: 8oz lean beef, 1 cup veggies

Total are:

1700-2000 calories

200-225g protein (40-50%)

50-80g carb (15-20%)

60-90g fat (35-45%)

....something like that. Recently had labs done and my blood work was great. Resting BP of 90/50. Triglycerides 35. LDL/HDL ratio under 3.0

Over the last few months I've dropped from 9.5% bodyfat to 5.7% while increasing strength AND muscular endurance. Recently I've squated 265lbs for one rep, 225 for sets of 5 and on the muscular endurance side of things I've done my current BW of 150lbs for 50 reps straight.

Alan

Very interesting thread going on here. Couple of guys I generally disagree with on most other issues talking physiological smack. I like it.

Runningart2004 wrote:

Resting BP of 90/50.

Isn´t that maybe even too low?

Only if there is a sudden fall in blood pressure. Someone walking around at 120/80 and drops to 90/50 and I'd be worried.

Technically, anything under 90/60 is considered low....but previous readings need to be taken into account. In a rested state I've been 90-110/50-60.

https://www.google.com/health/ref/Hypotension

Alan