Twitter fad fixating on Deuterium and carb seasonality? What's the deal?
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It seems like every second post I see on health Twitter lately comes from this new crew of people who are really fixated on not eating carbs in winter because supposedly it dramatically increases deuterium which is toxic to mitochondria. The thesis is something like eat a lot of fruit when you get a lot of sun, eat a lot of fat in winter because ketosis in lower light/heat circumstances yields more "metabolic water" which is relatively deuterium free and promotes mitochondrial decoupling.
I mean, afaict it's not a terrible thesis and I do agree that light is more important than many give credit for. However the fixation on a single substance (deuterium) sets off my diet cult/fad radar. I'm also skeptical of favoring fat oxidation even if cyclically.
What also throws me is that despite the basis of their ideas being about promoting mitochondrial health and they really are pretty "bioenergetic" on the face of it, they are constantly loudly countersignalling and ridiculing the general peat crowd. Have you all encountered this too? Did it all start with some influencer or crowd of influencers? What do you think of the thesis itself, internet pettiness dynamics not considered?
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Seems like they are borrowing from animals that hibernate, which during this time in winter use off their fat stores (as well as protein stores), but because animals do this tends to give the practice a lot of credibility to me.
A putative reason for koi raised in Japan developing better in terms of conformation (quality of body shape) and color development in their skin color is that they pass thru the cold of winter fasting and using up their fat stores.
The animals are not aware of the effect of deteurium, but if this can help explain the usefulness of metabolizing fats during winter, whether from internal or external sources, then I am interested in seeing how this group fares in their own development bioenergetically.
Does this explain why people have strong build and constitution coming from places such as Siberia?
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I am not on Twitter, but it sounds like people following Jack Kruse ( who likes to diss Ray Peat).
Dr. Peat was asked about deuterium on many occasions:
"You're changing your past every time you learn something because you become a different organism" Ray Peat
"Everything is changing thru time, whether it's a word, organism, thing. The world around it changes, and so its relationships change"Ray Peat
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@Sunniva interesting quotes at that link. Peat seems to suggest that organisms like oranges and cows serve as filters for heavy elements and therefore water that has passed through them and become juice or milk is safer than straight water, at least from tropical or coastal sources. With the bulk of oranges coming from semitropical and coastal places like Florida I wonder how deuterium content in commercial oj stacks up to the local water here, as I am fairly far north, decently inland, and near some mountains though still on a side of them that does not block weather exposure from the coast.
Milk from inland dairy farms would seem to perhaps be the lowest deuterium beverage commonly available to people.
It's all very interesting, but I think focusing on compounds like this where your options for avoiding it pretty severely limit you would ultimately be a restrictive and stressful mindset that may not make it worth the potential upsides. Managing your health really is a cost benefit game theory type thing were you have to carefully manage priorities to leverage maximum benefit from the least intrusive/demanding interventions.
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apparently water from glaciers is low in deuterium
it can be made too via one or two methods, it’s just expensive. im pretty sure it’s a “waste” product from nuclear reactors or manufacturers that supply nuclear reactors because they use heavy water and im assuming what’s left behind after making it is deuterium depleted water
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Among fats, polyunsaturated are the most deuterium depleted ones.
