Last Updated on March 23, 2016 by Patricia Carter

There’s a fellow health researcher that I respect;  his name is Paul Jaminet, creator and blogger over at “The Perfect Health Diet” site.  Jaminet has no hidden agenda.   He had a health problem, and used his science background to research.  What he found is nearly in line with everything that I speak of, which is SCD/GAPS/PALEO/ MEDITERANEAN… and so many other wonderful healing diets:

“When you’re doing things the right way, usually you see results very quickly, so it’s well worth taking a little bit of time to read and think about these things and to do a personal experiment and see how they affect you.“

“When you’re doing it correctly, you should see results and you should feel good.”

To me, Paul is the epitome of: “Here’s what the science and here’s what the research shows, and I hope it will help you.”   Paul has absolutely, no hidden agenda.

I’d be remiss to not mention Paul’s wife, Shou-Ching Shih, a coauthor of the book “Perfect Health Diet.”  This couple is beyond brains:  Paul was an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, became a software entrepreneur during the Internet boom, and now provides strategic advice to entrepreneurial companies while pursuing research in economics.  Shou-Ching is a molecular biologist and cancer researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, and Director of BIDMC’s Multi-Gene Transcriptional Profiling Core. Nuff said.

“Perfect Health Diet”, by Paul Jaminet

Jaminets

I came across a tremendous Paul Jaminet and Jonathan Bailor conversation.

Give it a try!  What do you have to lose?!?

Below are some of the Pearls from the Jaminet/Bailor conversation:

1. Avoid Omega-6s and industrial seed oils:  Generally, these are the bad fats as they are extremely inflammatory to the body. These oils consist of:  canola, safflower, cottonseed, soybean… these are the oils you see listed on processed food ingredient labels.  Processing them involves high heat (which oxidizes the fragile fatty acids) along with bleach and other chemicals (including solvents) to extract the oils;  check out the below YouTube to see how these oils are really made.  Paul thinks that the bad carbohydrates inherent in the Standard American Diet (SAD) along with these excessive inflammatory Omega-6 are what makes disposal of the excess carbohydrates so difficult for our body, and this is the root cause of the obesity epidemic.  Additionally the SAD has way too many inflammatory Omega-6 and way too little anti-inflammatory healthy Omega-3 (nuts and fatty fish [which by the way is getting harder and harder to get without contaminants so perhaps consider salmon oil, or a krill oil supplement]).http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHFDrzqI_L0
2. Reduce consumption of carbohydrates.  SAD eats too many: 40% of calories for SAD are wheat and sugar (which is excessive fructose).  Both of these foods are toxins.  Additionally, when consumed along with excess inflammatory Omega-6, your ability to dispose of excess carbohydrates is impaired.  Paul believes that this is likely truly the root cause behind the obesity epidemic.
3. Instead eat safe starches which are low frucose.  Note that SCD and GAPS permits certain starches but those listed below (potatoes and rice are NOT permitted).  Jaminet’s safe starches would include: white potatoes: they are toxin-free, nutrient dense – contains lots of potassium, is a good source of resistant starch (RS) necessary for colon fermentation health [saturated fatty acids, butyrate…].   White rice: less nutrients than white potatoes, but is toxin free after cooking which can not be said of the other grains.  We almost can say white rice is a pure glucose.  Relative to the Consumer Report arsenic load found in rice, the best preparation to reduce the  arsenic load appears to be rinse first, and then boil with a large water to rice proportion (6 water : 1 rice), as well as use a California based rice such as Lundberg California White Basmati which had  “only” 1.3 to 1.6 ppb arsenic per serving (1/4 cup uncooked) .  See below comments for more details, especially the warning about brown rice and derivatives thereof (brown rice syrup and such) so prevalent in the SAD.  And lastly, eat a few pieces of fruit but this will have a fructose load so watch the quantity and choose those that contain less fructose.  See the slides below for fructose levels which is often consulted for fructose malabsorption conditions:
   

   Slide source: biomeonboardawareness.com

   

   Slide source: biomeonboardawareness.com

    

4. Glucose:  Realize it is an energy source AND a nutrient.  Paul says, “Roughly half the protein in the body is found in extracellular matrix. Collagen alone constitutes 30% of the protein in the body and all of those extracellular matrix proteins are substantially composed of carbohydrates, so the proteins are bonded to carbohydrates. Essentially every protein that is lodged in cellular membranes is glycosylated, so it’s actually a protein-carbohydrate conjugate, and all of the lubricating compounds in the body, like mucus, which protects your digestive tract and sinuses and is a component of tears and saliva, and hyaluron, which lubricates joints – they’re all substantially composed of carbohydrates which are all made from glucose.Glucose is a nutrient for the body needed for your tissues to be well functioning and if people don’t eat any carbohydrates (some people handle that just fine) but it’s definitely a stress on the body. The body has to make the glucose that it needs from other substrates like protein and that can be a challenge for a lot of people. So actually the lowest-stress diet is to eat some glucose and rice is a very convenient source for that and it can be made into a lot of foods that people enjoy and it does make the diet easier to prepare and to eat, and more enjoyable, more convenient, and it can make it more nourishing by providing the glucose that people need.”
5. This is where the calories in calories out wheels begin to fall off.  Thinking it is just about regulating calories is absurd; it is not the complete picture of what is biologic and metabolically going on.  “When you’re doing it correctly, you should see results and you should feel good.”  Sadly we’ve been indoctrinated with this ‘eat less, exercise more’ myth which is just malnourishing you, it will make you feel like crap; but when you eat more of the right kinds of things, you will feel great! Health is healthy! It’s happy! It’s good! If it’s not, that’s a good sign that something about the approach is not optimal.  “When you’re doing it correctly, you should see results and you should feel good.”
6. Start with that Paleolithic ancestral template – eat whole natural foods – and then tweak depending on where you are in your life, where your goals are headed, what your individual tolerances are.  Your goals can be regaining a healthy status or weight reduction diet or a fat-loss or muscle-building or athletic performance goal…
7. How much variation would you say there is from your research in what you would call ‘the perfect health diet’ based on different goals?  For example, is the perfect health diet for an athlete – let’s say an explosive power-lifter – substantially different from an individual just trying to heal themselves?  Paul says, “They are actually very close. A power-lifter will eat a lot more food than someone else, but I think the optimal proportions are pretty similar. You might tweak carbohydrate intake, 10% of energy, in either direction based on different goals, but in general, it’ll be optimal for everybody to eat pretty similarly. Usually the thing that has the biggest impact is some kind of infection or health problem. Like, it’s not uncommon for people to develop gut infections or the gut microbes really feed on carbohydrates and they may benefit from a very low-carbohydrate diet because it starves the microbes; but apart from that, generally, most people find similar proportions pretty optimal and it is generally the proportion that is lowest stress because it has the right balance and nutrients in order to construct the human body and construct new tissue.”
8. Nutrient dense diet importance: Paul says, “So if you’re an athlete, you want to build muscle, you want to provide your body with all the raw materials that it needs to construct that tissue and the blood vessels and the nerves which feed it and similarly, if you’re trying to lose weight, the appetite system of our brain evolved in order to make us well nourished. So your brain is monitoring your body and if it finds you are short of some nutrient that it needs, then it stimulates appetite to make you eat. In order to lose weight, the best way to minimize your appetite is to provide your body with all the nutrients that it needs in the right balance in the right proportion so that you’re deficient at nothing and that suppresses appetite and enables you to not eat an excess of macro-nutrients which provide energy because your brain is trying to get more micro-nutrients in order to support a healthy body. So exactly the same strategy that works for an athlete – trying to give it all the materials it needs to build tissue in a healthy way – also helps to minimize appetite in people trying to lose weight and it also supports a healthy body composition because adipose tissue isn’t very nutrient-dense.                  If you look at an animal when you slaughter it, you’ll see the adipose tissue is basically lots of fat and not much else; whereas organ meats and other lean tissue are much more nutrient-dense when you look at the micro-nutrient composition. So if you’re eating a more nutrient-dense diet, you’re going to support a much healthier body composition, a much leaner body composition, which is good for people trying to lose weight.    Just about every health problem that you may have benefits from good immune function, which is supported by a nutrient-rich, balanced diet. Just about every health problem that we know about benefits from a very similar diet and similar nutrient proportions which meet the body’s needs when there’s low stress on the body.”
9. Understand that it’s not about just globally eating less (for weight loss),  It is about eating more of the right kinds of foods so your body behaves optimally as it is designed to.  The SAD is 40% plus junk garbage carbohydrate that is as well heavy in processed industrial seed oils – ‘and just eat less of that’ doesn’t work.  What you are doing is taking a highly stressful nutrient-deficient diet and just eating less of it. So now you’re even more malnourished than when you started and we wonder why that approach fails for over 95% of us!  Most Americans are malnourished. They get over 60% of their calories from things that are very nutrient-poor and often toxic like vegetable seed oil, sugar, and wheat products, and then if you eat the same diet, but eat less of it, then you’re even more malnourished and that’s why diets fail, I believe.
10. The key is eating whole foods and eating a balanced diet that provides all the nutrients that you need. I think the whole foods prescription – if you just give up those unhealthy empty-calorie sources, like the sodas and the cookies and the crackers, things that are made of wheat, vegetable seed oils, and sugar, and replace them with healthy whole foods, so many problems would go away.
11. How-To Implement Practical changes:
    • Eliminate oil, sugar, flour, soy and corn and replace with healthy whole foods.  Then eat nutritional balanced: between plant foods, animal foods, healthy fats and oils, healthy acids like vinegar, lemon juice, lime juice, and a mix of vegetables like fermented and sea vegetables. In general, most of the foods should be on a food chain whose base are green, leafy plants – so either seafood which feed on algae or among animals – ruminants like beef, lamb, goat are really the healthiest foods. Things that feed on basically seeds are less healthy for us. That’s why conventionally-raised factory animals that feed mostly on grain and seed products are not as healthy for us as, say, grass-fed cows.

    • 

      

      Once you’re eating whole foods, the next big factor is to get a good balance and to eat some of each.  One thing people may not realize is that in general, whole natural plant foods don’t have many calories per pound. Even if you’re eating a low-carb diet, you’ll still generally be eating a high plant food diet. So our recommendation is by weight, to eat about maybe three-quarters plant foods and one-quarter animal foods. That still gives you up to a pound a day of meat or fish and multiple pounds of plant food and that gives you a good variety of nutrition and it’s still a low-carb diet, but you’re getting plenty of nutrition from both plants and animals.

    • Supplementation:  “We recommend some supplemental foods that people try to eat routinely – things like egg yolks, liver, shellfish, bone broth, soups – that will help you get a balanced nutrition and we suggest some things that are just missing from most people’s diet.  ..Some things in our modern lifestyle – it’s just difficult to optimize. Like, people have to work. They generally work indoors. They often work in northern latitudes and in the winter it’s hard to get much sun, so it’s hard for people to optimize vitamin D so it’s good to supplement. There are various other things that can be hard to optimize. Some people just don’t like to eat liver and don’t do it and some nutrients are only found in certain foods. Like, it’s hard to optimize your copper status if you never eat liver. People who don’t eat organ meats or who never make a bone broth – it’s hard to optimize calcium and phosphorus if you don’t make soup or broth using bones… We don’t recommend taking multivitamins because it’s easy to get too much of some things, especially things like manganese that are toxic at pretty low doses. It’s a challenge to supplement intelligently and how much you should supplement depends on what else you’re eating in terms of other food. The more nutrient-dense and balanced your diet, the less you need supplements; the more unbalanced your diet, the more you’ll benefit by supplementing from the things you’re missing.
12. How to make change:  Approach change slow, gradual and continuous because this is something that you don’t just do for two weeks, you don’t just do this for three weeks, you don’t just do this for three months; this is something if you want to keep enjoying the benefits, it’s got to be something you keep on doing and you want life-long health, so you have to eat this way life-long. Ease your way into it is such a key component and makes sense. If you want to run a marathon, you don’t go out tomorrow and attempt to run 26 miles. You gradually work your way up to it because you know you’re in it for the long haul.   It’s very difficult to make a massive change. People take a month or two and they change things one piece at a time. Like, you might start by trying to avoid vegetable oils. Big lifestyle changes like doing more cooking at home and less eating out, less eating packaged foods, it’s hard to change your habits immediately. People who adopt our diet tend to do it gradually over a period of months and they notice fairly steady improvements each time they make a change.
13. Why you want to make change:  It is so sad that most people don’t really know how crummy they feel till they educate themselves and implement some changes that takes your wellness to that next level.  While it seems like “work” to educate yourself,  just look over your research and give it some time because while it may seem complex on the surface, once you find something that works for you, the impact that you’ll have, like the return on the investment, is gigantic.  There’s no better way to spend your time.  It’s by far the best thing you can do for your health.  People spend a lot of money on health insurance and they spend a lot of time going to doctors, but the things doctors can do for you, like pharmaceutical drugs and surgeries and so on, just don’t have much impact on your health. They can’t eliminate the causes of ill health which often are an unhealthy diet and an unhealthy lifestyle. We had really high hopes for medicine 50 years ago, but they really haven’t panned out that much.  We’re gradually realizing that diet and lifestyle can have a huge impact, and that benefits your lifespan and quality of life, as well as your family and your children.  Be the change you want them to be.  It’s definitely worth an investment to buy a book, or research online, and spend a weekend reading and to thinking about these things. People should really be willing to experiment with changing their diet and their lifestyle because often people notice a huge impact just in the first month and they start feeling tremendously better and their mood is better, they sleep better, they’re happier, problems go away, they go to their doctor and their blood lipids improve and their other bio markers.
14. Precautions for those adopting a very low carbohydrate diet:   It’s definitely the case, a very low-carb diet can be quite stressful on the body and if your body has already adapted to eat an extremely high-carb diet, then you’re going from one extreme where your body has had to make all these unnatural adjustments to an unhealthy diet that just has too much carbohydrate. So your body is all set up for this one extreme and then you go to the opposite extreme with a very low-carb diet and where you may be getting less carbohydrates than is optimal; so then it’s also stressful, but stressful in a totally different way where your body needs a totally different set of machinery in order to adapt to it [going from carb burner to a fat burner]. That’s a hard transition to make and that’s one thing, because it’s so simple to say ‘just quit eating carbs, eat lots of meat’. Sometimes people do make that transition very quickly and then they are going to have problems.
15. Lastly, here is an interesting full length movie on GMOs by Gary Noll, “Seeds of Death.”  All  should seriously eliminate GMOs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUd9rRSLY4A

Last updated: March 23, 2016 at 5:52 am for SEO optimization.

Better health through awareness,