A key feature that is continuously overlooked by mainstream medicine, especially the clueless vegan docs, is the complete lack of cancer, diabetes, heart disease and autoimmune disease in hunter gatherer cultures. The immediate argument is “hunter gatherers did not live very long…” Oy vey! They need to read the common counter arguments rebuttal. These folks just do not get it but there are some people who still believe in a flat earth…go figure!
Here we have a talk from Prof. Loren Cordain on the therapeutic potential of the paleo diet for multiple sclerosis. I suspect prof. Cordain will have a solid mechanism underlying ALL autoimmune diseases in the not too distance future…keep your eyes peeled for that.
Oddly enough, I don’t imagine Mcdougal will be publishing anything similar on the vegan diet…
Robb,
That video link doesn’t seem to be working… Got any alternate URLs?
travis-
It’s working for me…here is the original url:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhkmDHLCUEs&watch_response
Rob –
I’m having the same problem and wanted to share this with a friend that struggles with MS. Any other known links? YouTube says “the uploader closed their account”.
A little persistence in googling will derive huge benefits
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=paleo+diet+multiple+sclerosis#q=paleo+diet+multiple+sclerosis&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbo=u&tbm=vid&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wv&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=fa473180f5e1714f&biw=1488&bih=712
It seems like the two independent variables are gluten and lectins, along with epidermal growth factor. Either way, the causal factor is a neolithic diet …
EXACTLY
Robb
Paleo man….death from falling off cliff or eaten by tiger…
Modern man…death from body progressively destroying itself…
Yes I can see a difference…degenerative diseases are modern issues….from modern sources.
This lecture is also available at http://www.direct-ms.org/presentations.html , which is Dr. Ashton Embry’sm website, whose son was diagnosed with MS years go, being symptom free for years, thanks to a Paleo type diet (he uses Loren Cordain’s template), along with supplements. What amazes me is the fact that this gentleman is a geologist, who already has published scientific papers on MS.
MC
kill all the bakers and burn all the bakeries. Toast is the root of all evil.
Champ-
Now we are talking!
Robb
Hi Robb,
I just found your blog; nice work. It also gets on my nerves when people assume being sick all the time is just part of the human condition.
This is a bit of tangent, but you seem to be clued in to Weston Price’s work. Have you heard they figured out what activator X is? It’s vitamin K2, isoform MK-4. It’s every bit as important and interesting as what WAP described. There’s a very convincing article on the WAP website by Chris Masterjohn; you can find it by searching their site for ‘activator X’. If you haven’t checked it out already, I highly recommend it. I’ll be putting up a post about it once I collect my (numerous) thoughts.
Stephan-
Some folks mentioned the activator x article a few months ago. GREAT stuff. Let me know when you have your post ready!
Robb
Hi Robb,
I just put up two posts about activator X/vitamin K2. The first is mostly about Price and how he discovered it; the second gets into health effects, a bit of mechanism, where to get it and some opinions of mine.
Right on!
Robb
Robb,
I have been following CrossFit since early February of this year and it has got me into the paleo diet and reading your blog along with several others. I definitely love the diet and feel great on it. The one thing that has been tough to give up is milk because I just really like the taste and using them for protein shakes, again cuz I like the taste and they’re quick. So I know milk gives a much higher insulin response than it’s GI would indicate but I recently read an article on PubMed where the result indicated whey as the main proponent of this rise in insulin. Do you know anything about this? My next step was going to be eliminating milk from the protein fruit smoothies and be done with dairy, grains, and legumes altogether, but if it is the whey causing the problem then I guess that just leaves the fruit smoothie…
Thanks for any response you give, I know you are real busy and I love your reading your stuff.
p.s. the article is called
Glycemia and insulinemia in healthy subjects after lactose-equivalent meals of milk and other food proteins: the role of plasma amino acids and incretins. Thanks again!
Hey Kyle-
Pedro Bastos is a research associate of Loren Cordain and he is working on a review paper for dairy, similar to the one Cordain did for grains. It will cover EVERY element of this topic but like you indicated, whey appears to be the largest player in this process. If you think about it, the growth inducing potential of dairy makes sense in the context of a growing mammal…then when growth is finished, milk consumption halts. I think you can tackle this stuff by eliminating the dairy for a time, then re-introduce it and just see how you feel, look perform etc. Nothing beats that personal experience. I have noticed that shakes tend to do one thing: make people chubby. The refinement of the food is tough with regards to insulin release…this is perhaps exacerbated with dairy in the mix.
Let me know if this makes sense and thank you for the kind words!
Robb
Hey Robb,
Thanks for the fast response to the last question on dairy. I was wondering if the review paper on grains that Cordain did is the one called Cereal Grains: Humanity’s Double-Edged Sword? If not which one are you referring to? Also, do you happen to know when we can expect the review paper on dairy from Bastos?
On a completely different note do you have a list of preferred fats? What I mean is if I am looking to increase fat intake on the zone to the 2x or 3x blocks where is it easiest to get this from? I know there are problems with doing it all through nuts and I try use a lot of oil… any suggestions on fat sources would be great!
Thanks for all you do and any response. You are definitely my favorite source for nutrition info seeing as you take in performance, health and longevity into mind and do not lean so hard on just performance!
Thanks again
Hey Kyle!
Pedro has a great paper in the works…just finished reading it last week. I offered some suggestions to tweak for the final submission but I have no idea how far out it is…I’ll check and make a post on that.
I tend to get a BUNCH of my fat from olive oil. Kinda heavy in n-6’s but easy and yummy. I think mixing it up is the way to go…we just need a source of grassfed tallow! YUUUMAY!
Robb
I watched this on youtube, it was very interesting. I have one question to ask: In one the videos, Cordain says you need inflammation to have cancer. What is meant by this? I know carbs have a proinflammatory effect and I know alot of chronic degenative diseases out there: heart disease, diabetes, obesity, etc. have a chronic low level of inflammation present. Does the inflammation turn on genes in susceptible individuals that will give one cancer, another heart disease, another autoimmune disorder, and etc…? At the age of 32 I developed carpal tunnel, the previous 2 years before I would say glycemic control was slipping, I don’t have an actual blood test but would not be surprised if I had IGT. The actual week that my carpal tunnel really got worse,I purely by coincidence went on the Atkins diet (I went on to lose 40 pounds in the next 5 months). I noticed that it improved over time but went ahead with carpal tunnel release surgery. I did not know at the time that the carpal tunnel was the result of the high blood sugar excursions damaging my nerves. We have rheumatoid arthritis in my family and I am well aware of the fact now that carpal tunnel out of the blue is an herald for RA. I know this is just speculation, but if I avoid inflammation in general, a high glycemic carb diet, to what extent will that decrease the chances of developing RA? My family’s health history includes heart disease, breast cancer, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, overweight not really obese, and few diabetics and as you probably suspect a low carb diet makes a huge difference in my health. I can already guess, that you would probably say to me, considering my family’s background, that a gluten-free, low carb diet for the rest of my life would be the best option.
Mary-
I’m going to tackle this on the front page.
Hi Robb
As my younger brother was diagnosed with MS recently and I have read your book (great stuff!), I’d like to introduce Paleo also to him. Cant’ hurt, can it? 🙂
So, the video above doesn’t exist anymore because the person who uploaded the video obviously has closed down his/her youtube account. The link from Miguel Carrera does work. Is that the same content as the video?
And, since this post is rather old, have there been any news since 2008 regarding Paleo and MS? I listened to your last podcast (I guess it was #56) but you’re referring there to the FAQ section and I suppose you meant this post here?
Thanks in advance for your answer!
Regards from Greece,
David
David-
You just need better google-fu!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZgE-S4m3kI
And another question I have is:
What can Paleo (probably/most likely/for sure) do against MS?
– Prevent in case not affected yet?
– Slow down the process once diagnosed?
– Even heal?
Thanks for letting me/us know!
David
David-
Yes, all of the above, but we have seen consistent remission in folks who actually DO the protocol.
Great stuff, thanks for the quick response, Robb!
I watched the video, I am assuming that this is a 5 minute summary of the lecture that Miguel Carrera posted above.
I am encouraging my brother to give it a real try and to buy Cordain’s DVD (unfortunately I’ll have to make a summary of that and translate into German because that’s where my brother and I come from 🙂 ). He told me he’ll have to inject Rebif 3 times a week. What’s your take on that, i.e. should he do the diet change parallel to the Rebif treatment or reject the treatment and go Paleo only instead? But how do you measure results and when??
Thanks in advance for your answer!
David
P.S.: Is there no automatic notification system as soon as someone (e.g. you) answers to my question on this blog? Or am I simply overlooking that?
Hi Robb
Sorry for ‘bothering’ again.
After one day I see that at my last comment from Dec. 28, 11:31 it says “Your comment is awaiting moderation.” so it seems to me that is not officially online yet or needs approval from your side first.
While probably you simply haven’t found the time yet to look into my comment, I just wanted to make you aware of it, so it doesn’t get overlooked or stuck somewhere unnoticed 🙂
Thanks and best regards!
David
I thought i approved that!
David-
I think you can toggle auto-response…I’ll check.
Hi Robb
In case you approved that, as you stated above, then I need to double check quickly that I understood correctly:
you’re saying that it would be a good thing to go paleo (minus eggs, tomatos etc) instead of starting with the Rebif treatment? If so, then my brother will probably ask me how he can be sure that he’s not losing precious time without the Rebif treatment.
Any answer on that which could sound convincing to my brother (as well as to his Doc)?
Thanks again!
David
David-
This is just something your brother needs to look at the information and make an informed decision. I know what I;d do, but I cannot speak as to another’s decision in this.
Indeed, and insightful video. Diet should not be overlooked by MS patients.
One thing that should be mentioned: It is very important for all MS patients to have an exercise routine since this will help them keep their muscle fit and prevent disability, as it is also important to change their diet.
It is well known that some aliments excite the central nervous system and this can worsen some of MS symptoms. It is also recommended to MS patients to keep a food journal in which to write the foods consumed and the way it made them feel.
Hey Robb, old thread I know so not expecting miracles here but would love your opinion on one thing.
My wife has MS, I have psoriasis (what a pair) so we both have an autoimmune disease. We have been strict paleo or a while now (year or so) and she has the disease in remission but on our path from health, to MS diagnosis we took a wrong turn and ended up in vegetarian / vegan / low fat / high grain hell (hell I tells ya).
Now, after lots of reading that included your book, mark sissons books, loren cordains three books, good calories bad calories (in small manageable bits) and a whole bunch of other stuff we are got onto paleo but it was hard to move completely from the low fat thing to begin with as it was seemingly working for the MS progression and there is a whole history (swank diet – 50 year study) and the modern Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis (modern version of swank) diet and community where lots of people are putting MS into remission with a low fat, high grain diet.
They do get some stuff right and they supplement with vitamin D, eat some oily fish (although don’t distinguish between wild and farmed salmon), moderate exercise, stress management through meditation, supplement with some omega 3 but beyond that it is a T. Campbell’esque whole food diet + fish (quite the contridiction but….) with no meat a zero tolerance policy for saturated fat.
Thing is, it works for a lot of folks as did the swank diet for MS. So…. my question would be why? Why does this work if it is so grain heavy?
I have an idea that it inline with the modern suggestions to just lower omega 6 as much as possible rather than try to even it out with omega 3 that this is getting the inflammation in check and that is containing the disease, or damage from the disease at least. So, whilst not looking to stop the disease process, it at least helps contain it so people can carry on living (if life without meat is living at all).
They also have another claim that eating saturated fat makes cells in the body rigid and that in turn is a problem – I quote:
“If the fats in the diet are mainly saturated, then the cells behave accordingly. That is their membranes will be hard and inflexible and tend to stick together. This one fact is really at the heart of the current epidemic in Western countries of diseases due to cells sticking together. Diseases due to clots, like heart attacks, strokes, and deep venous thrombosis, are all the result of this increased stickiness. And tissues and organs made up of these hard and inflexible cells become hard and inflexible.
So the big blood vessels coming out of the heart for instance become very rigid, in a process called atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries. So when the heart pumps out blood, the pressure rises much higher than if the arteries were soft and flexible. Hence high blood pressure (hypertension) results. If polyunsaturated fats were the main fats in the diet, the tissues would be soft and pliable instead, and so less likely to clot or result in high blood pressure. Hard cells are also more prone to degeneration, and degeneration is now known to be a key part of the development and progression of MS.”
I would love to hear your thoughts on that as well.
As a quick aside, this is not just for my own personal curiosity and I am setting up a site to help people try and see out the autoimmune protocol. It’s pretty tough and needs some planning above and beyond normal paleo and there does not seem to be a lot of help out there. I am trying to come up with recipes, problems we have overcome and answers to common questions like this one but I am no scientist and at times, I can’t determine which is right or which is wrong to present the facts in a meaningful way.
The site, is http://www.primod.co.uk, just got started but hoping to really get a lot of stuff on their to help people with autoimmune issues by sharing our experiences and what we are learning as we go.
Anyhow, thanks for all you do and if you can find the time to fire off a few quick answers I would sincerely appreciate it.
Marcus – aka – information beggar
Marcus- this needs to be a front page question and comment, this is important stuff. Short answer: lots of ways to address inflammation. Is swank better than food pyramid? Yes! Is coconut (a sat’d fat) bad for autoimmunity? No! You could easily tweak this low fat approach to paleo? Yes! Look up kitavans.
Do me a favor, send Your question to Chris at Robb wolf dot com and I’ll expand on this.
Hey Robb, that’s great, firing off that email now!
Hey Robb, that is sent, I fleshed it out a bit to give you some more background + created a bridged version so if you were going to read it out on the podcast and make me Paleo famous people don’t need to hear my whole life story.
Cheers buddy!
Marcus
Hey Robb, I sent an email off to Chris a while back but had a new question that may or may not be an interesting addition to this and falls into the biology / parasites area where myself and many others who don’t have a science background simply can’t determine whether this is garbage or of genuine interest for people with MS or other autoimmune diseases.
Anyhow, the parasite is called Protomyxzoa and was identified by Dr Steven Fry. Few more details here: http://www.ldn-international.com/ldn-parasites.html
I did some more googling around it and lots of people seem to talk about this being a new parasite that has never been found before as it hides behind something called a biofilm – anyhow, this is where it gets interesting and ties into the whole low fat approach for MS as there are claims that this parasite feeds of fat and where this parasite is present a low fat diet effectively starves it and a high fat diet feeds it and allows it to spread at a 100x the rate.
I came across this after reading around pork and possible infectious agents in Pork meat that may affect MS on the Paul Jaminet site: (3 part post)
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2012/02/pork-did-leviticus-117-have-it-right/
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2012/02/the-trouble-with-pork-part-2/
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2012/02/the-trouble-with-pork-part-3-pathogens/
Paul comes to the conclusion that whilst there is no correlation between Beef, Lamb etc that Pork is not a healthy meat and has a strong correlation with MS and that is most likely due to some kind of pathogen.
Also, he makes a good point that whilst pigs from good farms may be pastured, but they are still not eating a diet that is natural for them and they have a tendency to forage and eat pretty much anything from other dead animals to feces – not nice – and due to the genetic similarity, they can pass it on (longest sentence ever).
So… more food for thought on the whole low fat MS thing?
Cheers
Marcus
Here is a link to the guy being interviewed as well, seems interesting and may be the answer to why the low fat thing works – unless it’s complete gibberish of course! 🙂
http://www.iadvocatehealth.org/protozoal_infection0.aspx
Was just sent here after having some strange symptoms that my dr says are probably not MS but some are similar. I watched the video from start to finish and found it interesting.
Now have one question… many other websites state to not ingest foods high in arachidonic acid which promotes inflammation. They suggest staying away from red meat, egg yolks, shellfish, dairy, transfats, ect. all I understood except the red meat and egg yolks. I had no idea untill I googled yolks all the info about them.
Your take on all this??? really want to work hard at getting this inflammation under control.
Pick one and try it. I obviously think the Paleo concept is better. The AA boogieman is ahold over from the zone.
Just finished reading your book. My son had bought it but had 3 others wanting to borrow it so I got it from library for now.
Son and I are doing the 30 day try starting Aug.1. I had a great supper. I still have some issues with what to eat, now that I have to keep the eggs,tomatoes, potatoes, nuts off too!!! eeek I was great when knew I could have eggs.
But will eat meat and veggies and see how my knees feel and if any other symptoms let up. Have no Gallbladder so have been gf. for 2 wks now. Not any noticable improvement but am so full of inflammation right now it may take awhile.
Thanks for answering when this was so old, I wasn’t sure you would see it.
Cindy
You bet! Keep me posted!