180 Degree Health: Mark Sisson: by Matt Stone
attack on Sisson's 50-150 grams of carb a day threshold advice, and low carb theory in general.
Extract:
But it’s also important to spell out exactly where Sisson comes up short – not to attack the guy or nitpick his program, but more to provide a resource online for those who are failing miserably following his general guidelines and need to hear the other side of the story. At the end of the day, there are many out there that will be demolished by trying to run sprints, lift heavy things, and go on long walks fueled by less than 150 grams of carbohydrates per day – what Sisson calls the cutoff that leads to “insidious weight gain” if you exceed such levels. Don’t even get me started on that. Well, okay I guess I guess I should take a closer look at that bold statement. That’s what this post is all about…
Yes, you heard that right. In Mark Sisson’s book, The Primal Blueprint, he shows a little chart with carbohydrate levels ideal for weight loss, weight maintenance, and the levels of carbohydrate intake that lead to, in his words, “insidious weight gain.” Get above 150 grams of carbohydrates per day in your diet and you enter the danger zone. I have said this many times and I will say it again – in all the information I’ve ever read on nutrition and health, this could very well be the dumbest and most unsubstantiated tidbit I’ve ever come across. It is downright retarded, with 5 billion…. 5 BILLION living exceptions to the rule that a carbohydrate intake exceeding 150 grams per day triggers insidious weight gain. This is just plain stupid. I couldn’t even believe my eyes when I read it. This guy is, and should be, the laughingstock of anyone who studies obesity or nutritional science. He completely undermines his credibility as an intelligent person with this one uber-knuckleheaded and poorly-thought out conclusion.
and:
Glucose is the ultimate source of cellular energy. Short and medium chain saturated fatty acids like butyric acid and lauric acid are the only thing that can compete. If you do not get enough glucose, stress hormones rise. At first this can feel amazing – giving you tireless energy, blunting appetite, and burning up body fat. But over time the wear and tear on the adrenal glands to produce this increased demand for stress hormones catches up with you. When the adrenal energy finally wanes you are left with lower thyroid hormone production – the adrenal hormones oppose the thyroid and even cause the thyroid gland to atrophy (the catecholamines cause the thymus – the epicenter of the immune system to atrophy as well, which would explain my observation that low-carb eating increases proneness to allergies, food allergies, and autoimmune disease).
When the thyroid is negatively impacted, the whole system goes into decline. The thyroid controls the production of hormones like progesterone, DHEA, and testosterone – perhaps the most important anti-aging hormones known. It is no surprise why it is so common for women to have reproductive and menstrual issues on a low-carbohydrate diet, especially if that is paired with a lot of stress or exercise or lack of sleep and so forth. Insulin resistance increases and glycogen storage becomes impaired. Thus, eating carbohydrates can trigger massive hypoglycemic attacks (which, oddly, often reinforces people’s devotion to a low-carb diet). In men, testosterone falls. I for one had some pretty substantial erectile problems on a low-carb diet for example. My athletic performance and recovery was at an all-time low.
The list goes on and on. To think that no health problems could emerge from eating a low carbohydrate diet is absurd. I have had plenty – from chest pains to increased allergies to foul body odor to mood disorders to digestive problems to insomnia. Hundreds of people have gravitated to this site after their health was ravaged by prolonged low-carbohydrate intake.
Lack of carbohydrate intake is just one issue with low-carbohydrate diets. Another is intake of excessive amounts of animal protein, which I have found to be particularly destructive. Animal protein concentrates highly-inflammatory amino acids like tryptophan, methionine, and cysteine. After the growth and development stage of life, unless you are trying to add muscle mass for bodybuilding, there is only a tiny dietary requirement for these amino acids to maintain lean body mass. Any excess is, I believe, a huge detriment. Eating large quantities of protein in general, particularly without complementary carbohydrate, raises the hormone glucagon as well, which triggers the stress hormone and inflammatory chain reaction in the body.
At the end of the day, while there could be some individual exceptions no doubt, a carbohydrate-based diet is vastly superior for health, longevity, and human performance – athletic or otherwise. By carbohydrate-based I don’t mean low-fat, but just 50% of dietary calories or so, maybe drifting towards 60-70% of dietary calories if you are a hard-training athlete.
Anyway, I’m done with this rant. The point of this post is very simple. There are people out there brainwashed into believing that mimicking a caveman by fasting, eating a low-carbohydrate diet with a bunch of meat, etc. is a surefire path to everlasting health and Sisson-like abs. This is false. More than that, some aspects of Sisson’s approach are causing health problems in people, even in those with seemingly-miraculous health benefits initially like those I experienced with a similar approach. Abandoning nonsensical phobias like the fear of insidious weight gain if more than 150 grams of carbohydrates are consumed is very important, and there are literally millions of people out there with low-carb-induced health problems that could be easily overcome if they were able to get past their carbophobic stigma.
For recovering from some of these issues and guru infatuation – Sisson or otherwise, read this FREE EBOOK on how to recover your metabolism from prolonged restricted dieting of any kind
