Dr. Rosedale’s presentation at Ancestral Health Symposium 2012 (AHS12) is not great. But it is damn good. In his talk, he takes the long view on a lot of nutrition topics. In this context, you might expect “the long view” to mean 10 million years or so… but no, he takes the long looong loooooooooong view. As in, ~4 billion years long. He starts from the earliest forms of life on Earth and walks us up to the present, touching on various implications for nutrition along the way.
Some of his touchpoints include:
- The error of calcium supplementation
- The primacy of glucose (not fat) for the earliest forms of life
- Mitochondria and fat metabolism
- Insulin as the major nutrient sensor for glucose
- Leptin as the major nutrient sensor for fat
- Leptin is probably the most important regulator in humans
- mTOR is the regulatory pathway for protein
- You can double your leptin by eating a high carbohydrate meal
- The spikes of insulin correspond to the spikes in leptin and both cause resistance
- Fiber: soluble vs. insoluble
One of my favorite parts is where he claims Dr. Chris Kresser is incorrect when he claims that the brain evolved to run on carbohydrates. Rosedale responds frankly, “He’s totally wrong on that.” He then goes on to an interesting discussion about how ancestors needed to have a more energy dense food (fat) in order for the brain to evolve and expand as it did in our history.
As I said earlier. It’s a damn good talk. Not great, but very good. Ultimately, however, I enjoyed most his discussion regarding leptin. This is something I am recently interested in and happen to be researching more of at the moment.
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