Oddbean new post about | logout
 yeah, i rapidly started to look older recently (i'm 48) and it was due to problems with my kidneys, electrolytes, hydration, general strain being caused mostly by artificial sweeteners i think because it came on really fast in the last few years since is started to worry about that, 2021 i started to get crippling cramping that had reduced my mobility a lot

part of the problem, a big part, was potassium, i had previously understood part of it was magnesium but potassium is big (and that is something you don't get much of from carnivore btw, you need to eat green leaves)

but i have had a rapid transformation as i have cut out starches, i had to cut out glutinous grains because i have celiac, , and adding potassium, directly as KCl and with fruits like bananas and apples and eating more stuff made from potatoes, the cramps are reducing dramatically, also drinking a lot of water, and taking a lot of salts, mainly sea salt and potassium, and magnesium supplements, i'm feeling way way way better

there's something else going on with it as well, it's a mental thing... staying curious and hungry... i think the hungry thing is important, i think that probably eating too much calories overall ages you faster as well, in addition to stretching your skin and making it more likely to get scarred and start to crease 
 Potassium is super important and people don't talk about it much. I recently found out about it as a way to lower blood pressure, which my bp is dangerously high and doctor was useless (as usual). Turns out, there's a balance between potassium and sodium, and insufficient potassium makes bp go crazy. I'm still not certain this is my problem, but it's good to know. Also, potatoes have lots of potassium, assuming they're grown in good soil. 

The starch thing is what gets me - I look at Asians and they're young looking into mid 40's, some even older, and they eat wayyyy more starch than westerners do. I mean, they look like teenagers, or at worst early 30s... When I lived there, even though the tap water was polluted and the air was polluted (so bad there would be yellow fog), I still felt healthier than I do in the US. I consciously eat healthily and exercise and I still mostly feel like crap, but back in China I didn't give a fuck and every day I became healthier and stronger. Something is killing us here... Idk what, but I know its happening. Maybe the GMO food, maybe pesticides, maybe water fluoridation, maybe 5g signals - idk, I have to take it all seriously because I know how I feel and how I used to feel. We're resorting to drastic diets, trying to feel better - like, I love beef, but we shouldn't have to go full carnivore to feel okay. They don't have to do that in China. I don't think they do it in Korea, Japan, or Thailand - I've been to all of them and their food is so amazing its out of this world, and when I'm there I feel amazing. I really truly believe something is killing us here. 
 And it's not a racial thing, even though I phrased it that way out of necessity. Asians in America age just like everybody else.  
 it is actually genetics

a lot of asians are well adapted to high starch diets, but it's not universal

especially in the smaller south-east-asian countries they don't cope with the high starch chinese diet, they need more meat

there is genes associated with tolerating high levels of starch in the diet, and they replicate in the individual's DNA, more of them, better they cope

i'm from indonesian genetics, from north Irian and i'm pretty sure my great great grandfather looked like this:

https://assets.survivalinternational.org/pictures/1234/ind-wp-dani-adg-11_940.jpg

up high in the mountains of north papua there is not very much starch around, and lots of little animals, and you might guess by looking at him that those are bones in his face 
 You shared a picture a while back and you didn't look Indonesian at all. No offense, lol. Also, I gotta go explore Indonesia. 

I'm not so sure its genetics. I mean, everything is genetics ultimately, but I think environment is the main thing and environment (includinh diet) determines how the genetics are expressed. Maybe if we keep eating GMO shit, we'll turn into grey aliens, without our DNA even changing. Seems plausible enough.. 
 the people who live on Papua mostly are not asian looking except in the west

my grandmother's partly got the asian and partly the papua genetics and my father looks a lot like an australian aboriginal, and papua natives look like this

i don't have a lot of external qualities like this but i'm pretty sure my digestive system is at least partly from that, and my mother also i'm pretty sure she also has celiac, but it's hard to know where that came from because there is some questions in my mind about autoimmune problems caused by polio vaccines in particular (celiac is an intestinal problem, polio is an intestinal virus)

even if environment is important the the place matters a lot too... australia, west papua...

and diet matters also, it's not just the dirt around you, it's what you put inside your body, and that is influenced by the australian system and who controls it 
 this is literally the first thing you see when you search "papua new guinea" 

https://cdn.satellite.earth/74817c05a8c5e71c7ef5a732964171d881708075ec5ac334a574cb5c2dea86c9.webp

https://search.brave.com/images?q=papua%20new%20guinea 
 Is it inaccurate? 
 it's not... my oma, as we called her, was very much quite dark and died of alzheimers and i'm pretty sure it was neural damage caused by her weak ability to tolerate carbohydrate western diet, which is typical among austro-indonesian people

i also remember my father had problems with his kidneys, he also was infected with malaria at 6 months old and nearly died in hospital from it, and i'm pretty sure that made him tip over into psychopathic 
 brave's AI generated this:

Amyloid plaques are a characteristic feature of Alzheimer’s disease, but recent research suggests a more nuanced understanding of their role. A decline in soluble amyloid-beta levels may be the primary driver of the disease, with plaques being a consequence. Toxic amyloid oligomers and inside-cellular origins of plaque formation are also being explored as alternative mechanisms. Ongoing research aims to clarify the complex relationships between amyloid, tau, and other factors to develop effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.

essentially, there is a really good reason to think that this amylose formation that is characteristic of alzheimers may be a result of chronic elevated blood glucose, as a secondary mechanism to reduce blood sugar - by stringing it together into amylose

this stuff builds up and sticks to nerves because it is quite nonpolar (like fats and oils) and this interferes with the transmission of nerve signals by constricting the pathway between synapses, by repelling hydroxyl ions (acids) part of the normal salty solution around cells

this is almost certainly related to the optic and muscular problems i have had in the last few years, and part of it has to do with dehydration and part of it with the kidney not working well there is an excessive elimination of potassium

my aunty, who is the child of said oma whose ancestry likely traces back to a dude who looks along similar lines to the dude in thet photo, either 2 or 3 generations back, is not of stock that is used to consuming starches, they are from mountain land and their diet is fruits and meats, and they are known to have been cannibals at some point and very warlike, so it can be safely guessed that they mostly eat meat and starve in between their hunts

the asian genetics associated with tolerating grains and especially rice originate from the mainland of china, and many of the islands and peninsulas that come from this region are full of people who don't have these genetics, and it wiped them out, mostly, the Ainu of japan, the papuans, the aboriginals, they all were devastated by the introduction of starch based diets 
 she also reported that she found much assistance from supplementing with Boron, and i probably should try to get a hold of her again sometime soon and ask her if she's had any experience with potassium, and foods rich in it like potato and banana (the aunty)

i had a quite dramatic change in my metabolism by adding boron to it and boron and potassium seem to be the two things that help me get back to a decent state of health

and both of these elements are primarily found in leafy and root vegetables, which fits with what you would expect from the diet of austro/indonesian people, whose main diet literally was root starchy veg and green leaves and meat 
 Okay, I need to look into boron then. I've heard about before but assumed it was one of those whacky health fads. I didn't know about kidneys expelling potassium - why would they do that? I also have reduced kidney function, and I'm sure it plays some role in my high blood pressure 
 yeah, if you are deficient in boron, your kidneys eliminate calcium and magnesium and this leads to bone and nerve problems

it definitely also affected my mother too, she almost had a hip fracture from a fall down stairs about 15 years ago, and was diagnosed with osteoporosis, which is a calcium deficiency based problem but magnesium is also critical to absorbing calcium so boron is a limiter there, and she also has celiac like me, but not quite as severe

anyhow, yeah, boron is a thing, and i like to joke about how it's the "fifth element" yes, it's element 5. 
 i will just add that potassium also can be important in this picture, because it clearly is for me, supplementing it has massively reversed problems i have had with cramps and vision 
 I think I misspoke earlier when I said potassium and sodium have a balance - I'm remembering a thing a little better now and I think it was potassium and calcium that have the balance. 

I can attest to the benefits of magnesium - I've felt much better since I started supplementing it. I'm currently doing a vitamin D3/k2, magnesium, and zinc, and its helping a lot. 
 yeah, that makes sense, i think magnesium limits calcium absorption though, but i never heard this idea that potassium limits/relates to calcium, but it totally makes sense

i always had this impression, sodium and calcium relate to muscle tensing, and magnesium and potassium relate to relaxing, they call it polarising and depolarising, the muscle fibres shorten and lengthen in accordance with ionic/electrostatic effects of current flowing through them, and normally the nerves conduct these opposing voltages with these opposite ions, so it still is consistent with the potassium/magnesium vs calcium/sodium pattern, but it's related to not only the nerves but the muscles as well

muscles function partially by electrostatic effects as well and nerves have this in their function in the dendrites, the "ion channels" that conduct signals, so, yeah, these 4 minerals are definitely all tied together in neuromuscular health 
 also, just to mention, zinc is related to vitamin C in not just the health of the lungs but also the skin, it is part of the complex of enzymes that synthesise collagen and both organs (skin and lungs) depend on the ability to regenerate the tissue when it is put under stress, which ... anyway, i talked about the fats/vegan diet and how it accelerates the aging of the skin, it also affects the lungs and makes people more vulnerable to cold and flu viruses

zinc helps with this too, and nuts are a key source of zinc

so, yeah, for me this is putting nails in the carnivore diet theory a lot more

i think that humans are primarily adapted to various kinds of diets, we are able to tolerate everything from high starch wheat/rice based diets to carnivore (eskimos and siberians) and root/leaf based diets that you see more in the equatorial regions where these foods are more available

or in other words, humans have adaptations for all three patterns of diet, both grain, meat, and nut/leaf based diets, in various mixtures, but every single individual's health is based on respecting this natural tendency and not imposing some other culture's fucking diet on us

is this some kind of extreme racial purity idea, idk, idc, fuck it this is what my body needs, and it is very clearly basically what would have been available to my great grandfather in the papua highlands lol 
 Ouch. Diet is everything... Is the word "oma" from Dutch? I think it's grandma in Dutch, but its possible my family just used it wrong. Different grandparents claim different titles, and having a somewhat multicultural family gives them options. Part Dutch, though its a little awkward saying so, since they were total fuckers when they controlled Indonesia. Or so I hear. Anyways. I've also noticed that family-related words tend to be similar in lots of languages. Chinese, for example - mama = mom, baba = dad. Kinda crazy, considering how different the rest of the language is. 
 yeah, oma (uh-ma) is grandma, and oom is uncle (ohm)

yeah, my oma's sister was a psychotic bitch, one or two generations from aristocracy, and my whole family line in that direction is filled with rumors of pedophilia, and it happened in my family too, so, yeah, i believe it, that there was much rape and psychosis definitely in my grandma's history and i think also some in my grandfather's history as well, and my grandfather's family name, he was unable to trace it back to before the institution of family names and person registration in the netherlands

but the name itself is almost literally the transliteration of a russian word which means "bundle of sticks used to sweep" and this is the ongoing style of broom used by street sweepers in the netherlands to this day, and there is some crazy ass names that people in the netherlands have, it seems to me like sometime in the 14-15th century they got invaded and some fucked up shit went on, and if you know dutch people you will sorta have this inkling there's something wrong with them,wrong with their minds somehow 
 as you can probably imagine, as a second generation of a child of a northwest irian (west papua) person born from a child of a concubine slave of swiss colonist ... yeah, i'm a bit unusual, God granted me some special mental abilities to see things and hear things, i'm not your regular person, and i can prove my provenance but why the fuck should i do that publicly aside from making reference to where my family sprung from? 
 I think the difference is in our microbiome. A study I heard about showed that the gut microbiome of recent immigrants assimilates to that of their new country very quickly, I think it was within a couple of weeks, even if they continue to eat their own cultural foods. Their microbiomes lose a lot of species diversity so quickly. 
Conversely, you and I had the same exact experience living in China. We quickly went the other way and probably had healthier microbiomes while we were there. I always find it very easy to maintain a healthy weight while I’m there, among other benefits. 

Glyphosphate is just one of the underlying problems. It disrupts mineral uptake of plants as well as plant and human microbiomes.  For sure other industrial farming practices are involved, that’s just an easy one.