Vegetable Oils, Mitochondria and Ray Peat (Patreon)

Hey everyone,

I'm working on a video about vegetable oils. I've slipped it in a couple videos that vegetable oils are bad for your health, but have been meaning to make a video dedicated to them - that's what's up next.

People like Dr. Chris Knobbe have gone as far as to say that vegetable oils (more appropriately named "seed oils") are at the root of all modern diseases.
Hoping to get the video out by this weekend, so keep an eye out.

To give you an idea of just one of the many ways that seed oils damage our body, take a look at the attached video file - it's the electron transport chain explained with Homer and Maggie. Using that analogy, the problem with seed oils is that they oxidize very easily and this can lead to damage in the mitochondrial inner membrane (the conveyor belt). This means that protons can escape through the damaged membrane, rather than going into ATP Synthase (the big machine at the end of the conveyor belt). Simply put, the damage to the mitochondria means less ATP production meaning less energy for you. Of course low energy might bring to mind fatigue, and defects in mitochondrial function have been linked to fatigue, but to run all the processes needed to keep your body healthy, the body uses tons of energy. In fact, your body makes your body weight in ATP (the storage form of energy) every day.

Ray Peat
A couple people had asked me about Ray Peat and what I thought about his approach to nutrition, but it took me a while to get around to checking him out. Ray Peat's main thing seems to be to maintain efficient production of energy in the mitochondria and keep thyroid function up to support this. You should aim to have a somewhat higher pulse rate - 85bpm and a temperature of at least 98.6°F (He claims these to be indicators of thyroid function).

To this end, he recommends eating a lot of sugar (like actual table sugar - sucrose, not just starch). If you've seen my old sugar video, I think you'll know why I'm very skeptical of that. He also recommends getting plenty of calcium, vitamin D and other sensible vitamins. He recommends eating oysters and liver. So I agree with some things, I think nutrient density is very important, but eating a ton of sugar... not so much.

I'll have to dig more into his specifics, but for now, here are three things he's said that have not seemed to pan out.

(1) He said on a podcast with Tucker Goodrich in response to Robert Lustig's presentation on Fructose paralleling fructose with alcohol that fructose cannot be bad for the liver in the same way alcohol is because fructose is the cure for acute alcohol intoxication. However, at least according to this study, fructose was not helpful in the treatment of acute alcohol intoxication and in fact worsened uric acid levels, just as Lustig's presentation suggested.

(2) Contrary to the idea that we should eat sugar to enhance or preserve our mitochondria's capacity to efficiently produce energy, studies have found "an increase in oxidative capacity in response to nutritional ketosis." Further, Dr. Flemming Dela's work has found that if you want to increase the production of mitochondria (a very good thing), you will generate more mitochondria by having low glycogen (body's storage form of carbs) stores before exercising and by eating a low carbohydrate meal after the exercise.

(3) Lastly he says that a ketogenic metabolism is inflammatory. On the contrary, ketogenic diets are well known to be anti-inflammatory and the anti-inflammatory effect of ketosis is one of the key benefits of a ketogenic diet. See Paragraph 2 of the introduction of this paper. In fact, for a while ketosis was initially thought to be dangerous, but to the surprise of medical professionals, a ketogenic diet was a fantastic treatment for epilepsy. (Someone with epilepsy on twitter I follow, "Seizure Salad," has remained seizure free for 4.5 years thanks to a keto diet. Ketogenic diets reduce inflammation in the brain, and this is thought to be one reason why ketosis works so well for epilepsy.

So, so far, I'm still pretty skeptical of Ray Peat's high sugar approach but he's a very interesting guy with plenty of other ideas worth looking into. Thanks to him, I've upped my calcium intake and I think I feel better for it.

Have any of you heard of him or have some thoughts on him?

-Joseph