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Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

nytimes.com

221–230 of 322 posts

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#221
post #56

I dropped all forms of sugar and corn syrup a few months ago. I was never a health nut. Quite the opposite. It's incredible how much your physiology alters just from that. Water tastes good now. I used to drink water with crystal light, because it was so bland. Shed 20lbs without even exercising. I eat bananas, apples, peanut butter and chicken. Learned to cook a few things. You sort of have to, if you want to avoid…

Yeah, I'm definitely the same way. I experience a number of clear shifts when I'm off refined carbs. Hunger, energy level, mood, inflammation level (e.g., joint pain). Fruit is fine. I fell off the wagon while with family over Christmas and I'm eager to work my way back. Regarding cooking, I'm a big fan of the Instant Pot, the countertop pressure cooker. Tonight I made pork shoulder over cabbage [1] with root vegetab…

> I experience a number of clear shifts when I'm off refined carbs...inflammation level (e.g., joint pain).

I'd like to highlight this one in particular. It's not necessarily obvious that your diet has an effect on joint pain, but it really does. I've gone on low carb about four times now. Each time, before I went on the diet I had lower back pain for weeks and weeks or months on end (I have a slight disc protrusion, I know now thanks to an MRI).

Then I stop eating sugars and refined carbs (because I went low carb) and I start feeling better. It's been a week since I went back on low carb and my back pain -- that was present every day for the past several months and made me whimper and collapse on the couch after taking the dog for a short walk each time -- has pretty much completely gone away. After only a week. This is the fourth time in a row where that's happened, where it's gone away after a week of avoiding carbs.

A low carb diet is known to have an anti-inflammatory effect, and it's happened enough times just with me that I don't think it can be a coincidence.

So if you're having joint pains, seriously consider altering the foods you eat so you can reduce inflammation. These aren't the only foods that cause it, you can look them up. For me that small change has made a big difference.

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am considered overweight because a doctor calculated my BMI and said I'm two kilos over where I should be. BMI is a the ratio between weight and height. I think it's kind of stupid but it got me labeled as overweight.

It is my understanding that BMI is pretty much useless for the individual to know, but it is a valuable aggregate statistic. So it makes sense for the doctor to record your BMI for the national database, but you obviously have much better information and metrics to use on yourself.

My understanding was that BMI was pretty accurate for most people and only gets out of whack for more muscular people.

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#223
post #81

I dropped all forms of sugar and corn syrup a few months ago. I was never a health nut. Quite the opposite. It's incredible how much your physiology alters just from that. Water tastes good now. I used to drink water with crystal light, because it was so bland. Shed 20lbs without even exercising. I eat bananas, apples, peanut butter and chicken. Learned to cook a few things. You sort of have to, if you want to avoid…

I don't get why you would exclude potatoes and eat bananas. They are very very similar foods. Everything that is flour based is refined, lacks fiber etc so I get the pasta and bread exclusion, but the potatoes one makes no sense imo. Overall in this thread, once again americans discover that they eat shit and simply cooking meals yourself from scratch (with limited fat of course) with no treats between meals makes yo…

Woah there, bananas and potatoes are not similar foods at all. Yes they both primarily provide carbs, but the glycemic index of bananas is 48, while potatoes are at from 82-111 (https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glyce...). Don’t make incorrect assertions.

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#224
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the carbs that is the problem in my experience. Coconut has very little carbs. Eating low carb diet allow me to loose weight and stay down.

And my mother-in-law lost and keeps off over 100 pounds by restricting random food groups, however she still eats very high carb. And when I say random, I really mean random! There's literally no rhyme or reason to her choices other than she thinks they are "bad." Same with my vegan+ friend, high carb, 80 pounds kept off for a decade. I say vegan+ because she's vegan plus she has other random restrictions. Those are…

I also eat carbs I just stay away from them most of the time. That sounds like your mother-in-law if she eats random.

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#225
post #174
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many hours per day do you hike? You probably have to hike for an hour to offset just one chocolate bar.

I'm talking about proper hikes I do on the weekend. Like 6-10h. That's 6-10 chocolate bars, and I don't eat that much on these hikes.

Considering hiking is mostly walking, and calorie burn rates are dominated by distance, I'm guessing between 30 and 50 km? You generally burn about a quarter of what you would above basal metabolic rate per unit time walk versus running. So this would be equivalent to about a 1:30 to 2:30 run. Its very good,but certainly isn't at the level where you get to ignore food.

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#226
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diet guidance in America has been co-opted by capitalistic food companies who push their processed junk our way - going on for decades now. The government is complicit of course. Let's not forget the laughable food pyramid [1] which adorned the walls of every school in the US for most of the 90s and undoubtedly created much confusion about how to eat (ie: fat bad, carbs good) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_py…

If I'm not mistaken, I believe I saw ketchup on the food pyramid in elementary school in the 1980's. :(

Little known fact...Tomatoes are both a fruit AND a vegetable!!!

That's why the cheeseburger is a perfectly balanced food pyramid meal. You have protein from beef, dairy from cheeze product TM(contains no actual cheese), grain from the bun, AND your fruit and vegetables from the ketchup.

~ Dave Thomas (Founder of WENDY's, and fitness enthusiast)

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He went from zero refined sugar to 200g of sugar a day. The average in America is 125g and nobody would recommend anywhere near either amount. He also only ate packaged foods - presumably no vegetables, rice, pasta etc. It's hard to see how any lessons can be learned from this. And as for the talking heads he chose, well... http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...

Thanks for the link. I had no idea. Up until 2yrs ago, it appears that the WHO recommend up to 50g of sugar per day and recently reduced that to half that. I still think there is a lesson to be learned. If we can assume his calorie intake remained the same (which he claims, but given your link, who knows), we can say that the source of the calories matters. I've met a few people who only subscribe to calories in vs c…

Added sugar recommendations are always given as "no more than X grams per day." In other words, it's an upper limit and less is always better.

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#228
post #81

I dropped all forms of sugar and corn syrup a few months ago. I was never a health nut. Quite the opposite. It's incredible how much your physiology alters just from that. Water tastes good now. I used to drink water with crystal light, because it was so bland. Shed 20lbs without even exercising. I eat bananas, apples, peanut butter and chicken. Learned to cook a few things. You sort of have to, if you want to avoid…

I don't get why you would exclude potatoes and eat bananas. They are very very similar foods. Everything that is flour based is refined, lacks fiber etc so I get the pasta and bread exclusion, but the potatoes one makes no sense imo. Overall in this thread, once again americans discover that they eat shit and simply cooking meals yourself from scratch (with limited fat of course) with no treats between meals makes yo…

Potatoes are high carb, and high carb makes most people fat. To be fair, bananas are high carb too.

Also fat doesn't make you fat. A lot of people actually rapidly lose weight on a ketogenic diet with approx 70% of their food being healthy fats.

The Story of Fat: Why we were Wrong about Health https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S6-v37nOtY

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#230
post #124

Title: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome The first sentence of the article: Exercise _may_ change the composition and activity of the trillions of microbes in our guts... Kind of a title bait. Also, if you measure your microbiome every day you would see that it varies widely from day to day. So these results based on one measurement before the experiment and one measurement after are not reliable.

what are other MB influencing factors ? mood ? circadian rhythms ? diet ?

diet mostly I think. There was a good recent article about fiber too. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/science/food-fiber-microb...
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