Nutritional supplements

does anyone have suggestions on how to reduce cellulite? i seem to havepersistent cellulite on my back upper thighs. the quantity is just more thani’m willing to accept as my vanity won’t allow it i’m not overweight(125 lbs. at 5′6″) and fairly muscular in a feminine kind of way because ido weight training about 5 days/week. this past winter i gained about 10lbs. and for the first time in my life had a little bit of cellulite on thefront of my thighs. yikes! never had that before. i was wondering if myNT/WAP diet is increasing my cellulite, and if so, why? I eat a lot ofanimal fats including butter, lard, fatty cuts of meat, and heavy cream. ialso take 1 Tbsp. of CO daily. Could my diet be contributing to cellulite?originally i thought that it might be because for the past several yearsi’ve tended to eat a big meal late at night and go to bed on a full stomach.but now i’ve read a number of different theories on the cause ranging fromstored toxins (is this true????) to hormones to genetics. if it has to dowith stored toxins then i wonder about the quality of my animal fats. OTOH,i’ve also read that cellulite is pretty normal for women.

in any case, i’d like to reduce it. right now i’m trying a few thingsincluding CLA and skin support supplements, rubbing vitamin C cream on theaffected area (has shown to increase skin thickness, which i’ve read reducescellulite), and occasionally massaging the back of my thighs. i also justgot some capri length support hose for when i work out. any other ideas? hasanyone on this board successfully reduced cellulite? if so, how?

I went to the surgeon today to see what I needed to do after thestitches were removed on Monday. Well I can’t use my thumb for another26 days (that is when I see him again) and possibly a lot longer. Alsohe diagnosed me with tendonitis of my hands and that explains some ofthe problems I have had with my hands. It appears I have it in my hands,my left shoulder and right elbow. So now I have to learn what it is andwhat I can do myself without taking any drugs. I really would like someinput from any of you.

Has anyone come across a comparison chart of the nutrients fromdifferent livers (ie beef, lamb, chicken etc.)?

Since the liver question comes up regularly I think it would beuseful if we had a file on liver and a collection of recipes fromthe old posts. I’m putting it together from the archives but wouldlike to include some more information on the nutritional aspects.

Also can anyone point me in the direction of where the value ofeating “raw” liver comes from? I use it all the time but my reasonsare ancedotal from other reader’s success (plus my own success). Theonly real references I could find for eating [tag]raw liver[/tag] are from thePottenger tonic in NT and Gerson’s use of it to treat pancreaticcancer patients (which I think he got from Pottenger). Plus I thinksomeone mentioned American Indians eating it right after a kill.

I made some vinegar from wine with an [tag]apple cider[/tag] starter. Seemed likekindof an NT sort of thing to do. It has developed a brown powdery substanceon the top that looks like cocoa. Anyone know what this might be and if itcould be fatal (to me or the mother)?

I’m having the same problem waking up in the night. I go to bedbetween 9:00 and 10:00. I’ll wake up around 3:00am. I’m usuallywide awake, but very tired physically. I don’t really have typicallow blood sugar problems that I get during the day. I’ve started tokeep a food/sleep log to see if I can spot any patterns. I don’twake up every night, and have very sound sleep when I don’t wake up.I have noticed that I always wake up right before and during bothovulation and menstruation. Is there some connection betweenhormones and cortisol/adrenaline/insulin? I find it odd that ithappens both during ovulation and menstruation.

Here’s a question I’m looking at via a comparison of the following diets:

1. Optimal Nutrition (Homo Optimus by Jan Kwasniewski)2. Atkins3. The Schwarzbein Principle II (let’s say TSP)4. Ron Rosedale’s recs (metabolic medicine doc whose transcribed talk on”Insulin and its Metabolic Effects” is on Mercola’s site)

All are in the same ballpark as far as recognizing the need for healthyfats including saturated fats, and all recommend relatively low-carbs. Thediscrepancy I’m trying to tease out and explore is the issue of how muchsat fat, for whom, and when.

The ON diet recs high sat fat and says that people shift over tofat-burning usually fairly quickly, younger people especially. His recsseem simpler than the others, at least as they’re laid out in his book,whereas in his clinic he individualizes more.

Atkins also says you can plunge right in with the fat rec, as far as I’ve seen.

TSP, by comparison, outlines four different metabolic types. She uses theparameters of insulin sensitivity/resistance and adrenal health/burnout, sothose combine for 4 different types. While she says we need sat fat in thediet, she recs that the two insulin resistant types minimize the amount ofsat fat during the transition phase of the program.

She stresses that for some people, that transition stage can take even upto a few years to go through before the metabolism has shifted tofat-burning and the sat fat can finally be utilized for energy and not bestored as fat. (ON also describes this as a rebuilding phase, but doesn’tdiscuss the time frame).

So for those who are already insulin resistant, TSP says it would be astress on the metabolism that is already storing fat, to be dealing withmore sat fat at that time. Then once the metabolic damage has healed, theywould increase their sat fats up to a maintenance level.

TSP outlines a therapeutic diet for that particular transition period tohelp take people from insulin resistance back to insulin sensitivity, andthat diet is quite low in sat fat although it contains mono and good PUFAs(I don’t agree completely with her choices of veg oils, but that’s not theissue here).

So her approach is markedly different from the other two which seem to sayjust go ahead with the sat fats and everything will come out in the wash.

Ron Rosedale takes the same approach as TSP, limiting sat fat while aperson is insulin resistant. Some quotes:

hyperinsulinemic or overweight, I want them on a low saturated fat diet.Because most of the fat they are storing is saturated fat. When theirinsulin goes down and they are able to start releasing triglycerides toburn as fat, what they are going to be releasing mostly is saturated fat.So you don’t want to take anymore orally.<<

from the moment you were born, but we don’t, we are dealing with animbalance here that we are trying to correct as rapidly as we can.You have plenty of saturated fat. Most of us here have enough saturated fatto last the rest of our life. Truthfully. Your cell membranes require abalance of saturated and poly-unsaturated fat, and it is that balance thatdetermines the fluidity. As I mentioned, your cells can become over-fluidif they don’t have any saturated fat.Saturated fat is a hard fat. We can get the fats from foods to come mostlyfrom nuts. Nuts are a great food because it is mostly mono-unsaturated.Your primary energy source ideally would come mostly from mono-unsaturatedfat. It’s a good compromise. It is not an essential fat, but it is a morefluid fat. Your body can utilize it very well as an energy source.<<

I’m tending to go with him and TSP on this issue, even according to ON’smessage that you shouldn’t “mix fuels” (high [tag]carbs[/tag] with high fat). Becausewhen you’re insulin resistant, even if you’ve started a low-carb diet, yourmetabolic processes are still geared toward sugar burning not fat burning.So that’s a special condition that seems to call for a special temporarymeasure. And if temporary for you really means a year or two, as opposed toa week or two for a youngster, this could be a significant issue.

I can see going easy on the sat fat temporarily, but also it occurs to methat eating a lot of fats is what mainly helps people overcome their carbcravings, and it’s hard to get the amount of fats that will accomplish thatwithout much sat fat. Maybe a person in that situation can do the high fatsfor a few days or a week at first just to get over that hump, and then cutback for the duration of their transition period.

Then there’s the question of the insulin resistant person who isunderweight, how do they prevent further weight loss with this approach.My guess is that TSP would say that the weight isn’t an issue at thatstage, that the metabolism has to be healed first before the weight cannormalize.

I think the main overriding issue here is finding out what are the specialneeds of a damaged metabolism. Looking at traditional diets may not beenough of a guide in this area, since traditional people were maintainingtheir already healthy metabolism, not challenged to heal one that’s beendamaged over years. So how do we get from where we are now, to a baselinelevel of health that then puts our dietary needs more on a par with theirs.

I may not be able to respond to many replies here, but I’d reallyappreciate some discussion on this.

I’m way behind on reading the digests again (there have been a lot of posts) sothis may have been commented on but I haven’t read it yet.

My stepfather (79 yrs) is type II insulin dependent. He has been taking 25 unitsin the evening. I got him started on kefir about 2 weeks ago. To him it is likethe real [tag]buttermilk[/tag] he used to get as a kid. He drinks a big glass before bed.It has helped his sleep and he has had to cut his insulin to 20 units becausehis morning test was too low - 60, and he was feeling light-headed. It seems thekefir has helped him.Carol

Oh, I’m not on the Warrior Diet. I’m going to probably give it a shot thisweekend, we’ll see. I was just saying that the discussion was very related toour scope of topics, not that the way of eating is necessarily central to atraditional way of eating.

I have a question for you, since you test your blood sugar and need to adjustinsulin to carbs. Do you consider lactic acid to be a carb? In other words,if you eat [tag]yogurt[/tag] or kefir, which has significantly less lactose than milk,but a lot of lactic acid (which can be converted into glucose in the liver), doyou need proportinately less insulin, or do you need insulin to correspond tothe actual carb amount plus the amount of lactic acid?

You might not have tried kefir, but I figure you’ve had yogurt. (it wouldhave to be plain of course though.)

I’m really having trouble being consistent in my eating lifestyle.Partly because I’m so undecided about what’s healthy and what’s not.Study after study seems to support calorie restriction, and if this isthe case, then I obviously don’t want to throw 20-30 healthy years ofextra life down the drain. On the flipside, I’m aware that perhapsit’s all a matter of insulin and what I should be doing is cutting outmost carbs. So half the time I feel guilty about eating high caloriefatty foods (cheese, coconut, butter, whole milk, pate) and half thetime I feel guilty about eating high carb foods like sweet potatoes,bananas, pumpernickel bread, etc.

On the one side I figure I should just eat till I’m satiated but ithas occured to me that satiety is really hard to define. Feelinghungry is largely psychological for me and doesn’t stem from PUREhunger (I suspect this is the case for most people not suffering fromdiabetes or insulin resistance). (Ie: I can fast all day withouthunger…but as soon as I start eating a banana I suddenly can’t stopeating). Sometimes I also feel like I can never feel full. I’m prettysure I could devour entire bags of nuts in one sitting and ingestseveral thousands [tag]calories[/tag] that way. My guilt usually stops me after ahandful, though.

Sometimes I wish I could go ahead and eat whatever I want like mostpeople… at least they’re not aware of the harm they’re doing totheir bodies. Then again, ignorance isn’t really blissful either ifyou feel like crap and you end up getting cancer or cardiovasculardisease.

I’ve cut out all refined grains and flours, sugars (very occasionalmaple or honey), vegetable oils and trans-fat from my life. That’smainly because they can easily be replaced with genuinely moredelicious foods. But when it comes to a bananas or dates…I’m clueless.

Ever tried to do any running?I have yet to see a huge runner or at least one with astomache issue. If you are doing the abs, then youdefinitely have the muscle you just have to burn thefat off of them so that you can see them. One morequestion have you ever been huge before? Skin iselastic and you may have to have some trimmed a bit.Really it sounds like its time to change the way youdo situps. Do some leg /Knee lifts so that it willtrim that waiste down some. Then do the ole almostinverted sit ups and you are good to go. If you havethe apparatus, then do inverted situps. There is noway you can train like you do and not see results.Watch that caloric intake a bit more closely and stayconsistent.

Please forgive me if this has been answered as I’m about a week behindon reading the digests, but I just had to add this to the discussionhere on muscle cramps.

I too get the leg cramps in bed. Usually when I roll over wrong. All thesuggestions are good but there is another reason you may be getting thecramps and it won’t respond to any of the earlier mentioned protocolsspasm. That’s my problem. I ruptured a lower back disk over 15 yearsago. My disk pinches the sciatic nerve that runs down the right leg.Sometimes they are just out of place. Depending on the condition of thedisk, a [tag]chiropractor[/tag] can usually help, at least to some degree. Learninghow to roll over in bed without twisting the spine also helps.