When in this country over-eating has been more the norm?
Ok, so let's concede that one can overeat and still be malnourished, but I promise you that was not the case with me. I became interested in good nutrition at a young age but I was underweight until I turned 18, didn't eat much then but I was very healthy though. I began having some problems dealing with stress when I was in my late 20s and I began having some problems with my weight after I had kids, a time when I was diagnosed with hypoglycemia, a disorder related to the adrenals and/or the liver. However, I developed AF in my late 40s after over 10 years of being an overworked SINGLE MOM. When I finally "caved", my 2 children were a couple of lazy teenagers (with an absent father and no other family around to help) who hardly ever helped around the house, I was going to school 6 hours/day 5 days/week, worked 6 more hours 5 or 6 days/week, took care of most of the house chores, shopping, paying the bills, supervising homework, etc. That was an awfully huge load for someone like me. ALL THAT is what did me in, and you know what that's called??? STRESS, STRESS AND MORE STRESS! As a result of that my thyroid slowed down, I'm sure I was hypo long before I was diagnosed because of the insidious weight gain, which resulted in me gaining more weight (was about 25 lbs. over by then, but anyone knows that stress will cause weight gain) and now only a low-carb or carb-cycling diet (also gluten-free and preferably dairy-free) is what works for me for losing weight. In fact, eating too many carbs makes me feel more sluggish and depressed.
But this is NOT new at all, in the 80s there was Nathan Pritikin preaching a very low-fat diet, and in the 90s we had Susan Powter who came yelling "Fat makes you fat!", she said you could eat all the carbs you wanted as long as you used very little fat and did lots of aerobic exercise. But time has proven that very low-fat diets are very unhealthy plus people age quickly on them, with lots of wrinkles. Oh sure, on all of those crazy plans some people have lost weight and maybe even kept it but they've failed FOR THE MAJORITY! There are countless ways to manipulate the 3 basic food groups and there will always be some who lose with each "new" discovery, but that's simply because we're ALL DIFFERENT, but the truth is that there's no "ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL".
I'm imagining that perhaps you are still young and believe that the testimonials you have seen are "it" for everybody but I have news for you, time will tell you differently, just wait until you are my age (60) to see if you still feel the same. So please, don't be so dogmatic about what you believe, I promise you that unless you're a very close-minded and/or stubborn person in a few more years you may believe something else.
Anyway, eating 4,000 calories a day is nothing but a glorified form of gluttony and I can see why some would defend that... And the reason for having to eat that much is because a diet so low in complete protein and fats, which are so needed to repair our bodies, cannot satisfy, the person has to keep eating ALL DAY in order to stave off the hunger that would surface if they let any significant amount of time go by... and I ask... is that any way to live, still always stuffing something in your mouth??? Not for me, thank you very much! Btw, I also have Candida, which I believe you call a myth... But never mind, I wouldn't want to argue with someone like you on that, I know what I know and you probably just need time to learn more.
LOL! Your post was very entertaining and accurate, thank you!
After I posted I remembered his insistence (is Natway a "he"??? I'd not seen anything yet indicative of gender...) on debunking the existence of hypoglycemia with his toxic hunger threads, which I thought could apply in some cases, we all know how doctors can often misdiagnose things, right? But whenever anyone insists on the "one-size-fits-all" approach that's where we part company. That Dr. Furhman seems to ignore some things older and wiser doctors than him discovered many years ago, some of which were also confirmed by some research. Hypoglycemia has been denied by many doctors on and off for several decades, despite the fact that the 4-hour glucose tolerance test has been a good tool to confirm what the symptoms already showed.
And IMO it's not a coincidence that many people who are first diagnosed with hypoglycemia eventually show to have liver problems and AF. The liver plays a key role in converting glucose into glycogen and then storing it and converting it back to glucose when needed, so if there's impaired liver function that perfect loop cannot be completed. And since hypoglycemia itself keeps the body in perennial state of stress by forcing the adrenals to release extra gluco-corticoids to avoid serious consequences of dropping glucose levels in the blood, it makes sense to me that those tiny organs would eventually have difficult meeting the other demands of the body when lives stresses require greater output. It's a SIMPLE concept of "offer and demand", stress creates a greater demand for the nutrients required for healthy adrenals and those are very often difficult, if not downright impossible to meet through any kind of "regular" diet. And I'm sure that all of us here are conscious that the SAD is the most inadequate of all in providing sufficient nutrients for the body even under normal untressful conditions. And I'm also sure many of us concede to the fact that even other diets which are excellent for normal times, also fail to meet the demands of stress. But to say that ANY one diet is perfect for everybody every time is to be very short-sighted and even ignorant of how the body works... and I say that flinching a little bit because I'm sure there's still plenty for humankind to discover about the functioning of the human body for us to pretend that anyone has all the answers.
Since you have confirmed what I suspected, that Natway enjoys the attention, perhaps from now on we should just ignore him and eventually he'll get tired of playing his games. Your last paragraph said a mouthful and because I don't want to be intentionally mean I will just leave it at that.
You think that posting news links and the Huffington Post you've made convincing points??? Or by repeating yourself like a broken record while ignoring what people are saying??? - SLAPPING FOREHEAD!!! - And since I know you do not listen to reason I don't see the point in countering some of the nonsense you have posted, you lost me the moment you lumped us together with cows and horses, as much as I like animals I have to say that maybe you belong in that category but I certainly DON'T, I believe I have a more developed brain and a completely different lifestyle than a farm animal, therefore, my needs are completely different too.
But I do want to tell you, you little know it all, that yes Candida IS a normal part of the human flora BUT in a small percentage. It's when not quite natural things as ANTIBIOTICS and refined flours and sugars were introduced in the human body that the perfect natural balance of that flora was DISRUPTED and caused the overgrowth, and many of us could show you the evidence in our tongues, or skin or other parts that I will not mention.
No offense, but if your brain was only half healthy you would comprehend this and would realize that there's plenty of evidence in this internet itself that candida overgrowth is real, that it CAN be seen and felt beyond a collection of vague symptoms that, as you say, could be confused with something else. You obviously are a "black & white" thinker with a gross inability to see not only the colors in between, but the many shades of gray as well, and if I were you instead of reading all that junk that you read and call "research" I'd go and read some of Dr. Daniel Amen's books about the brain, there's a physical reason for every kind of extreme thinking and the one diet you actually might benefit from is the one that he promotes.