The Daily Lipid

AJCN Publishes New PUFA Study That Should Make Us Long For the Old Days

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:40:00 +0000

I have a new post over at Mother Nature Obeyed:

AJCN Publishes New PUFA Study That Should Make Us Long For the Old Days

This is my response to the new study published in AJCN showing that replacing butter with sunflower oil decreases liver fat, PCSK9, and improves a handful of metabolic markers. I begin with a critical review of the 2010 meta-analysis by Mozaffarian and colleagues claiming that the randomized, controlled trials substituting vegetable oils for saturated fats show that this swap reduces heart disease risk, which was cited by the AJCN authors in justification of their research approach. I then move on to reviewing the animal evidence suggesting that saturated fats increase fatty liver in certain contexts while polyunsaturated fats do so in others. I conclude by reviewing the AJCN study and lamenting its irrelevance. I suppose this is quite long for an analysis of a study I finally conclude is irrelevant, but I hoped we might all learn a few things (especially including myself!) and perhaps score a chuckle or two in the process.

Enjoy!

Glutathione 101, Part 1: Cysteine Misbehaves, But Glutathione Saves

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 16:08:00 +0000

New post over at Mother Nature Obeyed:

Glutathione 101, Part 1: Cysteine Misbehaves, but Glutathione Saves

Enjoy!

With the Wave of a Wand Raw Milk Wipes Away the Wheeze: How Our Good Friend Glutathione Protects Against Asthma

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 19:51:00 +0000

New over at Mother Nature Obeyed:

With the Wave of a Wand Raw Milk Wipes Away the Wheeze: How Our Good Friend Glutathione Protects Against Asthma

Enjoy!

My Interview With "Ask Bryan" Davis on his "Doc Fermento Discovers the World" Podcast is Now Up!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 04:55:00 +0000

Last Friday I recorded a podcast interview with "Ask Bryan" Davis, and it's now available for listening. We talked mostly about cholesterol and fat-soluble vitamins, but also about my experience with vegetarianism, my encounter with T. Colin Campbell, the harms of micromanaging your diet, surviving in an academic environment, and the philosophy of science. Below I've included a table of contents to help you navigate.

My "Cholesterol 101" Q&A Podcast on "Ask the Low-Carb Experts" Is Now Available for Listening

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 21:19:00 +0000

On Thursday evening I appeared live on Jimmy Moore's new "Ask the Low-Carb Experts" series to talk about "all things lipids" for an edition Jimmy has dubbed "Cholesterol 101." There isn't much new material here, but there's a lot of application of the theories I've discussed to listeners' questions and anecdotes. The recording is now available for downloading, and below I briefly discuss what I consider the most interesting case study we talked about and provide a table of contents for easy navigation.

I'll Be Live on "Ask the Low-Carb Experts" With Jimmy Moore Tomorrow, Thursday, February 16, 7PM EST -- Call In With Questions!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:03:00 +0000

My Third Cholesterol Podcast with Chris Kresser Is Now Up: What to Do, If Anything, About High Cholesterol

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:40:00 +0000

My latest podcast interview with Chris Kresser is now up. We discuss therein what I consider the most likely reasons why someone switching to an ancestral diet would develop cholesterol levels outside the range of non-industrialized populations eating traditional diets rich in saturated fat and low in polyunsaturated fat, the upper range of which I consider to be about 220-250 for total cholesterol, with increases being of concern primarily when they are either greatly elevated above this range or when they are more moderate but constituted primarily by an increase of non-HDL-cholesterol so that the total-to-HDL-cholesterol ratio increases substantially.

We discuss these not as causes of heart disease, but as metabolic markers. For that reason, we discuss "good" reasons why this might happen transiently (such as correcting obesity or fatty liver) and "bad" reasons why it might happen more permanently, the latter of which require corrective action. These "bad" reasons mainly include hypothyroidism secondary either to an elevated ratio of plant goitrogens to iodine (which I discussed in great detail in my Thyroid Toxins Special Report) or to excessive carbohydrate restriction.

This is new material, so I recommend listening to the whole show, but if you follow the link you will find a useful table of contents that will help you navigate to the part of the podcast that most interests you if you so choose. There's even a full transcript for those inclined to read rather than listen. I had a little cold when we recorded, so please excuse my voice if it sounds just a little bit nasal. Here it is:

Revolution Health Radio: Chris Masterjohn on Cholesterol and Heart Disease
(Part 3)

Enjoy!

My Interview With Carl Lanore on Superhuman Radio: The Real Story About Vitamin A

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 02:21:00 +0000

Earlier this afternoon, Carl Lanore interviewed me about vitamin A for his show, Superhuman Radio.

The easiest way to access this show is to right-click on the following link and save it to your computer, though you can also access it in ITunes or listen to it on the front page of Carl's web site. Here's the show:

Superhuman Radio #896: The REAL Story on Vitamin A

My interview is in the second half of the show, beginning about an hour in. To make it easier to navigate through the show and find what you want, I created this table of contents:

New Evidence of Synergy Between Vitamins A and D: Protection Against Autoimmune Diseases

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:31:00 +0000

I have a new post over at Mother Nature Obeyed:

New Evidence of Synergy Between Vitamins A and D: Protection Against Autoimmune Diseases

Enjoy!

Does Green Tea Protect Against Fatty Liver Disease?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 19:24:00 +0000

Nutrition Reviews just published a review that I wrote with my doctoral advisor on the potential of green tea to prevent or reverse nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Nutrition Reviews is a widely cited journal, ranking ninth out of 70 nutrition and dietetics journals. The review is indexed for pubmed here, and if you'd like to read it you're in luck: the journal has decided to make the entire January issue available for free, so you can download the full text here:

Masterjohn C, Bruno RS. Therapeutic potential of green tea in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Nut Rev. 2012;70(1):41-56.

Please note that this is a collaborative effort, and anything I write myself on this blog or elsewhere about fatty liver disease does not necessarily reflect the views of anyone I have collaborated with in this or other papers, my university, or the journals we have published in.

My Interview with Dave Asprey and Armi Legge on The Bulletproof Executive

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 01:39:00 +0000

Dave Asprey and his trusty sidekick Armi Legge (a dynamic duo indeed!) recently interviewed me over at The Bulletproof Executive. You can listen to the interview here:

Podcast #16: Everything You Need to Know About Saturated Fat & Cholesterol With Chris Masterjohn

Here's a table of contents to help you find what you're looking for:

We Really Can Make Glucose From Fatty Acids After All! O Textbook, How Thy Biochemistry Hast Deceived Me!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 01:51:00 +0000

Biochemistry textbooks generally tell us that we can't turn fatty acids into glucose. For example, on page 634 of the 2006 and 2008 editions of Biochemistry by Berg, Tymoczko, and Stryer, we find the following:

Animals Cannot Convert Fatty Acids to Glucose

It is important to note that animals are unable to effect the net synthesis of glucose from fatty acids. Specficially, acetyl CoA cannot be converted into pyruvate or oxaloacetate in animals.

In fact this is so important that it should be written in italics and have its own bold heading! But it's not quite right. Making glucose from fatty acids is low-paying work. It's not the type of alchemy that would allow us to build imperial palaces out of sugar cubes or offer hourly sweet sacrifices upon the altar of the glorious god of glucose (God forbid!). But it can be done, and it'll help pay the bills when times are tight.
Read more »

Merry Birth of the Sun!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 01:29:00 +0000

In 46 BC, Julius Caeser reformed the Roman Calendar, making December 25 the date of the winter solstice. In the northern hemisphere, this day marks the progressive increase in the length of days, and thus marks an annual celebration of light coming into the world.

When Standing At the Brink of the Abyss, Staring Into the Great Unknown, We Randomize

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 03:03:00 +0000

In any experiment, randomization is the central criterion necessary to make an inference about cause and effect. This is true whether we are studying inanimate objects, isolated proteins, cells, animals, or people.

Randomization helps us remove the influence of both known and unknown confounders. The ultimate confounders are choice and the passage of time. People (or animals) who choose one thing may be constitutionally different in myriad known and unknown ways from people (or animals) who choose another thing. As a result, "self-selection" or choice acts as a super-confounder. The passage of time also acts as a super-confounder because of its association with a near infinitude of both known and unknown time-dependent trends that can irrevocably mangle our interpretation of any observation if they aren't somehow accounted for. The principle reason that randomization is such a useful tool is that it can account not just for the known confounders but even for those unknown.

The Great Unknown

There is unfortunately no way to quantify how much we don't know, but humility, wisdom, and scientific caution all require us to assume that the unknown is likely to vastly exceed the known in breadth, depth, and importance. We can imagine that the total pool of truth looks something like this:

Read more »

I'm Thankful for Wise Traditions, Past and Present

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 04:10:00 +0000

Last year around this time, I culled a few pearls of wisdom from folks much wiser than I am to provide a reflection on the holiday of Thanksgiving and the actual practice of giving thanks, for which the holiday is named. I can't top that this year, so if you missed it or you'd like to read it again, I'll just provide you with the link:

Thanksgiving, A Source of Eternal Joy

One thing I can do this year is give my account of something I'm very thankful for: the annual Wise Traditions conference, and all the wonderful people it has brought into my life.

Good Lard, Bad Lard: What Do You Get When You Cross a Pig and a Coconut?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 20:35:00 +0000

New post over on Mother Nature Obeyed:

Good Lard, Bad Lard: What Do You Get When You Cross a Pig and a Coconut?

The post follows up on the revised fatty acid profile for Research Diets D12492, and discusses the effects of grass-guzzling and coconut-gobbling on the fatty acid profile of lard.

At the Intersection of Price and Paleo: My Second Interview with Cary Nosler

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 02:51:00 +0000

Cary Nosler had me back on his show this afternoon to talk about the intersection of Price and Paleo.

If I sound a little nasal and use questionable phrases like "hunter-gathering," it's probably because a run of serial sleep-deprivation in the wake of Wise Traditions 2011 led me to catch a cold, so if you could indulge me and pretend I used proper English I would appreciate your generosity. Nevertheless it should prove interesting!

Here's the link to the recording:

This Just In: The Infamous Lard-Based High-Fat Rodent Diet Is Twice as High in PUFA as Previously Reported

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 21:17:00 +0000

Hi folks!

It's certainly been a while. Up until this past weekend I was preparing for Wise Traditions, and this week I've been playing catch-up after taking a few days off from work for that conference. It was a blast, and I'll write more about it soon.

One of the things I love about measuring glyoxalase activity is that although the assay takes all day, it has a lot of short incubation steps that leave me with a multitude of five-minute breaks. If I'm not feeling too lazy, that can give me time to write a blog post or two, as long as they're short and not too data-heavy.

So here's a short one.

My Interview With Patrick Timpone Is Up

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 02:33:00 +0000

Patrick Timpone recently interviewed me as a guest on his One Radio Network show. The recording, featuring a cameo appearance by Grass-Fed Momma, is now up here:

Chris Masterjohn: Understanding America's Most Demonized Nutrient

We had a casual, first-thing-in-the-morning conversation that covered quite a range of topics, including some twenty or thirty minutes covering material on cholesterol that most readers on this blog are already familiar with. To make it easier for you to navigate, I created a brief table of contents:

2:50    Introduction
3:30    Good morning chit chat
5:15    Bias in research
12:57 Vegetarianism, variation in dietary needs
17:40 Intuitive eating
19:00 Cholesterol, atherosclerosis
40:30 The Maasai (stress, social organization, blood cholesterol,
                                nutrient-density, junk food, exposure to smoke
                                and pathogens, sorcery)
48:20    Refined carbs
53:00    Eggs and cholesterol levels
59:00    Problems interpreting high and low cholesterol
1:00:00 Statins

Enjoy!

Wheat Belly -- The Toll of Hubris on Human Health

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:18:00 +0000

Dr. William Davis, Milwaukee-based "preventive cardiologist" and Medical Director of the Track Your Plaque program, argues in his new book, Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health, that "somewhere along the way during wheat's history, perhaps five thousand years ago but more likely fifty years ago, wheat changed." And not for the better.

William Davis, MD, hosted at The Wheat Belly Blog

According to Dr. Davis, the introduction of mutant, high-yield dwarf wheat in the 1960s and the misguided national crusade against fat and cholesterol that caught steam in the 1980s have conspired together as a disastrous duo to produce an epidemic of obesity and heart disease, leaving not even the contours of our skin or the hairs on our heads untouched. Indeed, Dr. Davis argues, this mutant monster we call wheat is day by day acidifying our bones, crinkling our skin, turning our blood vessels into sugar cubes, turning our faces into bagels, and turning our brains into mush.

Read more »

I'll Be Live on the Patrick Timpone Show Tuesday, October 11, 9am CST -- Call With Questions!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 03:13:00 +0000

I'll be a guest on Patrick Timpone's One Radio Network this Tuesday, October 11, at 9:00 AM CST. The show will be live, and Patrick and the producers encourage people to call in with questions.

You'll be able to listen live here. Here's the broadcast schedule. If you have questions you'd like to call in with, the phone number is 888-663-6386. The listed time is central, so if you live in a different time zone you'll have to make the appropriate adjustment to catch the show. It should be fun. For those of you who miss it, I'll post the recording when it's up!

Denmark Came For Your Sugar and Trans Fats, Now They Are Coming For Your Saturated Fat. When They Come for You, Will There Be Any Macronutrient Left to Object on Your Behalf?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 23:15:00 +0000

O Solid Fat, turn not thy face from thy Lord, for my budget is in trouble.

In "Fructose, Public Policy, and the Low-Fat Reeducation Camp," I made the following prediction:

If they come for our fructose, they will come for our fat next.

It seems that Denmark has provided some evidence for this postulate by enacting what is believed to be the world's first tax on saturated fat. Here is the timeline, according to a CBC News article:

2004 — Tax on trans fats.
2010 — Tax on sugary junk food.
2011 — Tax on all foods containing more than 2.3 percent saturated fat.

This type of legislation raises the question of just what the role of government should be in the determining the foods we eat. Those of us in the ancestral health movement are faced with a strange dilemma: we live in a society wherein we have almost unlimited destructive food and lifestyle choices lying within our immediate grasp, while the preeminent solutions to all of life's problems invariably lie on a spectrum between libertarian individualism and collectivist bureaucracy. Neither the problem nor the popular solutions have solid foundations in our ancestry.
Read more »

Where Do Most AGEs Come From? O Glycation, How Thy Name Hast Deceived Me!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 22:16:00 +0000

I've written a few posts about advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) in the past, which can be found here. These posts include a refutation of the common belief that the "receptor for AGEs" (RAGE) is actually a receptor for AGEs, and a refutation of the implausible and unreliable data suggesting that butter is a major source of dietary AGEs. People have recently been asking me to write more about AGEs (see here and here), especially about the role of high blood sugar in promoting the formation of these compounds and thereby contributing to cellular dysfunction and disease.

There are a lot of misconceptions about AGEs, and one of them is that they are mostly formed from glucose directly glomming on to proteins. The term "glycation," which is clearly derived from "glucose," certainly contributes to this misconception, but the situation is actually much more complex than this. Glucose does indeed have the hots for proteins, but the high school glycation prom has a sexy chaperone named fructosamine 3-kinase who's kicking carbonyls and taking names, and if the two dance too close, F3-K steps in the way.

It is instead the sneaky dicarbonyls (pronounced like "DIE-carb-o-NEELS") that escape the attention of our otherwise striking chaperone. They are on average 20,000 times more reactive than glucose, and they emerge from the broken pieces of glucose, protein, and fat — and not just PUFAs. Nevertheless, they do no harm unless they slip past our good friend glutathione, who polices the streets at night and renders the balance of these creepy would-be criminals as impotent as the mythical sorcerer lurking in the shadows of Maasai-land.

In future posts, I will explain why I believe that AGEs formed within our bodies do indeed contribute to disease but are nevertheless likely to emerge as essential components of cellular communication, and why they add further colors to the portrait being painted in which disease is seen as communication gone wrong. In this post, I will simply attempt to explain what we do and don't know about where the AGEs within our bodies come from.

Read more »

The Trouble With Measuring AGEs -- Butter and More

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 02:11:00 +0000

This post is basically a technical footnote to my next post on advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) and all subsequent posts on AGEs explaining why I will give preference to certain studies that use what I consider reliable methods for measuring these compounds.

Read more »

A Saturday Salad

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Masterjohn) — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 00:30:00 +0000

The difference between a Wednesday salad and a Saturday salad? A little cheese. :)

Ingredients: romaine lettuce, cherry tomatoes, carrots, celery, scallions, strawberries, orange bell peppers, raw sauerkraut, unpasteurized Greek olives from Mt. Athos with Sicilian herbs, barrel-aged feta from Mt. Vikos (not raw, unfortunately), macadamia nut oil, raw coconut vinegar.

But alas, the sun has set in his tomb, and the moon has arisen to mourn her betrothed and proclaim her hope of his arising in the hours yet to come. Shall we honor the moon and call it Sunday, or dwell in the past and continue calling it Saturday?

And thus even my salad ponders the meaning of its identity.

p.s. Don't worry I've also eaten meat and eggs today. ;-)