The online ancestral health community, a.k.a. the "paleosphere" has been quite heated lately. The issue? Jack Kruse and Melissa of Hunt, Gather, Love. Melissa lead the charge agaist Jack and has been backed by some of the most credible names around including Kurt Harris and Emily Deans. I don't have much to add to the discussion, but I would like to state my opinion.*
I don't read Jack's blog regularly because, quite frankly, he is a low carb hack; and for that reason alone I assume that he is probably full of shit on most things, and anyone who looks at him as anything more than a fringe lunatic is fooling himself. But assuming that you are rational, you can still learn from the risky behavior of lunatics, and it is my current opinion that Richard is right that you can get away with training much colder than Ray Cronise recommends. The fact that Richard has done it for years and Tim Ferriss apparently does with some regularity is enough for me to feel safe trying it, though I will have to start very slow as I have serious Raynaud's that I'm up against. But eventually, I would like to get to 40 degrees or even polar bear swims, acknowledging that it is going to probably take me putting on 30 pounds of lean mass to be able to get away with something like that. We're talking big picture here, afterall, I do have 60 years to plan before I should expect to even think about dying of natural causes. John Durant hasn't come out with his opinion, but he does polar bear swims so I think we know where his head is at on that.
So to recap, Jack Kruse, still a hack, but he's probably onto something with cold hormesis training. My armchair hypothesis is that cold hormesis training will turn out to be somewhat necessary for many, including myself, to obtain optimal health. I think that this is especially true for people of European descent, but applies for all humans as well.
So now I would like to loop in Ray Peat, fructose, and that hullabaloo, because there's been some drama on that subject as well beween Danny Roddy and Kurt Harris. To me Ray Peat seems fringe and everything that Kurt said makes me question him, but the one thing that I am leaning toward him being right about is that the thyroid is where it all starts, and that his recommendations actually work in fixing thyroid issues. So if you need to go on a thyroid protocol, you cannot deny that he has the answer in the real world. This is why I decided to pay Danny for coaching; I wanted to understand his interpretation of Ray's writing, since I have read him for a long time and know he's a reasonable guy. More than anything, I wanted a new dietary toy to play with and see if I get results. $95 one time isn't money; I raise $95 with 72o just to with the bonus.
My armchair theory about thyroid is that it is the first thing that breaks in disease, especially autoimmune disease. I think that there is probably a relationship between thyroid function and androgen profile, as well as thyroid function and gut health/permeability. I think that Dr. Harris' characterization of autoimmunity as an overactive immune system is wrong. The immune system is doing what it's supposed to do, attacking foreign proteins in the bloodstream. But the reason that these proteins are getting into the bloodstream in the first place might be related to thyroid. That is why body temperature is the canary in the coalmine.
To bring back cold hormesis: in order to keep warm, the body upregulates thyroid function, so I think that it is quite possible that cold hormesis could train the hypothalamus to kick up thyroid a notch, and then feeding it correctly (Ray Peat) gives it the nutritional support it needs to get there. I think thyroid dysfunction also disturbs sleep, but it is possible that the cause and effect is wrong there i.e. sleep causes thyroid dysfunction, in which case it would really just be about getting more darkness every night, at least 10 hours of pitch black most of the time. Keep in mind that Tim used cold hormesis as a sleep hacking technique. Or maybe it's a positive feedback loop that needs to be unwound on both fronts simultaneously.
Look, fructose is not toxic. Sorry, paleo, you're just wrong about this. There is a level where it can become problematic; everything operates on a J-Curve; but it's a lot higher than anyone in the paleosphere believes. For me that limit happens right around 1 pint of Haagen-Dazs ice cream plus roughly two quarts of Tropicana Original orange juice in the span of about 1-2 hours (that's a lot and pretty hard to do, though some soda consumption can approach those levels in some people). Stephan has it right in saying that the only issue with sugar is its high reward value. And for those keeping track, it is high reward because it was rare in the environment prior to agriculture, but when it was around, it was in fruit, which is very tasty and good for you.
I can't believe that fucking hack Robert Lustig got a 60 minutes special. If someone is thin, you may or may not be able to trust his judgment when it comes to what to eat, but if he is fat, you absolutely cannot trust his judgment. If he is fat, he doesn't know how to fix himself, so why should any of us trust what he has to say about nutrition? It's a mean thing to say, but it has to be said by someone.
*I've done a 7+ hour each way road trip with Melissa when I went to the deer hunting class with her (big shout out to the Eating Paleo in NYC meetup Group). Needless to say, I rather like her. I generally trust her judgment in situations where I have yet to form my own opinion
