BY DR. BAYNE FRENCH MD DC

I work in a sick industry.  Most of my adult life I studied and treated disease.  The other time I spent changing diapers and doing pushups.  But I’m like you, probably, I prefer wellness.  And what I learned about wellness I learned in Chiropractic school, from my mother, or on my own.  Sure, we should work on world peace, and let’s not forget about the ozone, but I’m convinced that if humans are to thrive there must be a dramatic shift in our individual understanding of what it means to be healthy.  This does not involve pharmaceutical research or advancing disease detecting technology, both of which are important.  I’m suggesting a reversion to what made Homo sapiens so successful.  There were several other Homo species, but only we were able to make it.  We all want to “make it”, me included.  Make it to our 80’s, 90’s, beyond, and do it in a happy and functional way.  Independent in our own home, mobile, with a paucity of pain.  Maintaining our mental faculties and not being a burden to others.  That all sounds terrific.  Unfortunately bad things happen to good people.  Things occur that cannot be prevented.  However, the majority of what interferes with the above plan is preventable.  Disease and loss of function occurs commonly from the accumulation of millions of decisions.  Health and vitality are no different.  I tell patients commonly during wellness exams that we are trying to stack the deck in their favor.  Systematically identifying and minimizing risk.  

You may be thinking “I got this”.  You feel good, usually.  Got the exercise thing down.  But why have you developed a protruding belly?  Long pause.  I mean what’s with that thing?  Never used to be there.  “I run marathons for Christ sake!” a patient told me last year, as he grabbed his spare tire.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him it will never go away.  Minimizing, and preventing advancement of said tire is more realistic.  Such is the brains defense of Center of Mass adipose stores.  

I used to be a calorie guy.  I was taught by idiots that weight gain is simple math.  And being an idiot I propagated this flawed construct.  This notion makes unwanted weight gain an act of volition.  This has led to obesity being viewed as a character flaw, a condition of choice, or a behavioral disorder.  Weight bias has damaged society and individuals beyond measure.  A few years ago I decided I needed to figure this thing out.  The advice I was giving was either wrong, or I was dealing continually with lazy, lying gluttons. Although the later was more convenient, I feared it was the former.  Telling patients to eat low fat, high whole grain, avoid everything white, and get to the gym never worked.  Ever.  No patient ever lost a large amount of weight and kept it off indefinitely.  Or ever got off insulin injections.  Or ever experienced resolution of (fill in the blank with hundreds of crappy maladies), caused by human animals consistently eating non-human food.  

The anthropologic record, especially in regards to biology and nutrition fascinate me.  Undoubtedly there will be additional written work about it, but what is “human food”?  These are the foods that we know or think our ancestors ate for hundreds of thousands of years.  Maybe as long as 2.5 million years.  Meat and other animal product, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, eggs, mushrooms.  The healthiest patients I have ever encountered, of all generations, have made a habit of consistently eating human food.  The obese individuals with whom I work that have lost a large amount of weight and kept if off for years did so by performing the cornerstone act of changing their relationship with food, and eating the way our genome evolved.  And evolution is precisely why we’re all so carb sensitive now.  Imagine our genetically identical early humans that happened upon a bush of Salmon berries.  This was a metabolic boon for them and those that were efficient at converting that fructose to fat survived, and less carb sensitive ancestors did not.  Furthermore, the appetite-inducing hormone Ghrelin rebounds greatly after a high carb meal, driving hunger, preoccupation with food, and activating potently parts of our brain involving cravings and spatial learning.  Yep, carb eating begets carb eating.  Sure helped Otzi.  Yet we justify it because we’re active, and will just “burn it off”.  When we’re younger the brain will efficiently defend “set point” weight, both against gain and loss.  With age however set point asymmetry becomes apparent, with a far more vehement defense against loss.  So a slow accumulation of adipose accumulates, insulin directing it to the midsection.  Center of mass.

So insulin must be the enemy.  Bad insulin, naughty!  Sure, it’s anabolic.  We grow bigger with higher insulin levels, which sure helped our ancestors.  When functioning properly insulin doesn’t just open the cell to allow glucose in, but acts on the brain to increase energy expenditure and reduce appetite.  This sounds favorable to me, and is a reason for symmetry of set point when we’re younger.  The problem is the cumulative effect of high insulin levels over time and down-regulation of insulin receptors in the brain and in peripheral tissues like the liver and skeletal muscle.  The result is the American epidemic of insulin resistance.

So what’s the problem with a little extra insulation in the solar plexus region?  How much time do you have?  If I could bestow two healthful attributes on each patient it would be to never smoke, and to remain lean in the midsection.  Visceral or abdominal fat is not like subcutaneous fat (under our skin). We’ve all glared at these cute little globules transiently after a mishap with a paring knife, before it filled with blood and we hit the floor.  Visceral fat is biologically active.  Adipokines are hormones secreted by fat tissue, and belly fat releases over 600!  Of course I have the name and function of all 600 memorized but for the sake of time…they are not favorable.  These myriad metabolic products hit our blood stream and increase inflammation, insulin resistance, blood sugar, distorts our lipid profile and increases heart disease and cancer risk dramatically.  Beer anyone?

Many studies over several years show increased risk for men with abdominal girth >40 inches, or a waist to hip ratio over >0.95.  For women, >35 inches and waist/hip ratio >0.85.  There are different cutoffs for different ethnicities.

Yes, I am a lower carb, higher fat eater.  Don’t follow keto, paleo, Mediterranean, Atkins or really any other system.  They all have many strong points.  I eat primarily human food.  If an individual is relatively lean, especially in the midsection and does not have prediabetes, metabolic syndrome, or diabetes, maybe they can have it both ways.  The wheels won’t fall off with some starch, beans or other non-human food.  This is highly variable but most very active individuals can do really well with 150 grams of carb per day.  The Blue Zones beautifully outlines how diversely humans can eat and thrive.  However, if you are not in this metabolically healthy demographic, “80/20”, “cheat days” or relatively low carb simply will not help that much.  Belly insidiously grows, risk increases.  Such is our carb sensitivity.  Thanks a lot Natural Selection.

Going to your doctor hoping to become healthy is asking them to do something they are not equipped to do.  There are numerous excellent books on ancestral dietary theory and LCHF (low carb, high fat) eating and I encourage people to become educated, and ask yourselves what actually makes sense.  

See Part 2