High-fat, low-carb diet may cause obesity, anxiety (by raising serotonin), even suicide
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Is it the amount of fat that causes the increased serotonin or the lack of adequate carbs, (or both)? I'm wondering if one can still have a good portion of their calories coming from full fat dairy and cheese without raising serotonin as long as they are getting enough carbohydrate too?
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@haidut said in High-fat, low-carb diet may cause obesity, anxiety (by raising serotonin), even suicide:
Double whammy for two popular medical dogmas. One of them is that serotonin is the “happy hormone” and raising its levels has a variety of benefits, one of which is reducing anxiety. After all, it is hard to be happy if anxiety is through the roof, right? The second one is that low-carb/high-fat diets (also known as keto diets) are the best thing for health since the advent of antibiotics. Well, wrong on both counts, according to the study below. It found that a high-fat (45% of calories) diet caused anxiety by increasing serotonin production in the gut. It actually increased the expression of the enzyme tryptophan hydroxylase (TPH), which is even worse than simply increasing serotonin production directly since increased expression levels can persist for a long time and often do not decline back to baseline even if the offending (TPH-increasing) factor has been removed from the organism. The study actually refutes yet another medical dogma, which claims that gut-derived serotonin does not have central effects since it is unable to cross the blood-brain barrier. Considering the ubiquity of SSRI drugs, low-carb diets, and exhaustive exercise (which also boosts serotonin production) it is little wonder that anxiety rates are skyrocketing and it is now the most common mental health disorder.
https://biolres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40659-024-00505-1
https://www.colorado.edu/today/2024/06/13/how-high-fat-diet-could-make-you-anxious
“…When we’re stressed out, many of us turn to junk food for solace. But new CU Boulder research suggests this strategy may backfire. The study found that in animals, a high-fat diet disrupts resident gut bacteria, alters behavior and, through a complex pathway connecting the gut to the brain, influences brain chemicals in ways that fuel anxiety.”
“…When compared to the control group, the group eating a high-fat diet, not surprisingly, gained weight. But the animals also showed significantly less diversity of gut bacteria. Generally speaking, more bacterial diversity is associated with better health, Lowry explained. They also hosted far more of a category of bacteria called Firmicutes and less of a category called Bacteroidetes. A higher Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes ratio has been associated with the typical industrialized diet and with obesity. The high-fat diet group also showed higher expression of three genes (tph2, htr1a, and slc6a4) involved in production and signaling of the neurotransmitter serotonin—particularly in a region of the brainstem known as the dorsal raphe nucleus cDRD, which is associated with stress and anxiety. While serotonin is often billed as a “feel-good brain chemical,” Lowry notes that certain subsets of serotonin neurons can, when activated, prompt anxiety-like responses in animals. Notably, heightened expression of tph2, or tryptophan hydroxylase, in the cDRD has been associated with mood disorders and suicide risk in humans. “To think that just a high-fat diet could alter expression of these genes in the brain is extraordinary,” said Lowry. “The high-fat group essentially had the molecular signature of a high anxiety state in their brain.”
Ok, this is confusing. The article is saying that high fat causes anxiety?
Well, first of all what “type” of high fat was it discussing here? If it is high fat pufa, I can see that definitely causing or leading to anxiety. Because pufa fats do not satiate or make you feel good. Pufa fat makes you eat and eat and you are not satisfied.
I’ve deliberately upped my saturated fat ….40/30/30 and I have not gained weight on it and coincidentally, it makes me feel really really good. My hair is great my skin is great my sleep is great.
My body temperature is consistently high when I keep my saturated fat higher. And I don’t overeat because the saturated fat is satisfying to me.My mood is chill. Saturated fat has only done good for me. I used to be afraid of fat in the past, because I thought fat made you fat. Stupid me. I believed the so called experts. It was the pufa fat that messes you up.
So if this article is saying fat is causing anxiety, I’m finding that hard to believe because it has done the opposite for me. Makes me feel great. Has to be the pufa “fat” that caused the anxiety.
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@Butter-Girl many would argue 40:30:30 is not low carb, however. Also which is which?
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@LetTheRedeemed said in High-fat, low-carb diet may cause obesity, anxiety (by raising serotonin), even suicide:
@Butter-Girl many would argue 40:30:30 is not low carb, however. Also which is which?
Why are you mentioning carbs?
The study he posted is about fat.
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Quotes from Ray about saturated fat:
“ JR: It is possible to live entirely without eating fats, as the body can make all the unsaturated fats it needs ? Therefore, is there any importance in consuming saturated fats ?
RP: One thing is that makes the food a lot pleasanter to eat. It makes it digest more efficiently and steadily. Experiments with a loop of intestine…they would put just proteins, or just carbohydrates, or just fats in at a time; they found that the digestion was very poor until you had all three types of food present at the same time. It was as if the intestine needed a complex stimulus before it would really effectively start absorbing and digesting the food. So it's partly a stimulus to your intestines to handle the protein and the carbohydrate effectively. It’s a signal of satisfaction, that helps to lower stress, to have fat and sugar in your food.
JR: Should, yes or no, a person live on a fat-free diet ( because the body would be working more efficiently) ? Or should people simply increase their saturated fats intake ?
RP: Yeah (the latter), largely because of the effect on the taste system, and the intestine reflexes; it helps to handle the other foods efficiently, and to make the whole body recognize that it's being fed properly. So it's part of the reflex nervous system that guides eating. And it helps to satisfy the appetite, so people feel more satisfied when they had fats, especially saturated fats. In the experiments with rats (they used a purified diet), when saturated fats where added, they had similar cancer free results; it's the very small amount of unsaturated fat that is responsible for the stress and cancer production. The equivalent of just about a teaspoonful of unsaturated fat per day is enough to show a threshold increase in the incidence of cancer. When we eat natural foods, where're always getting some of the unsaturated fats. On a normal diet it's hard to get down to that threshold of about 4g of fat per day. It's hard even eating coconut oil and butter fat, and beef fat, and so on ( they only have about 2% of unsaturated fats). So, besides eating the most saturated type of fats, that’s one of the arguments for using carbohydrates as a major part of your energy supply. Because if we have some extra carbohydrates more than we need to burn at the moment, they'll turn into saturated fats and extend the proportions. So that in effect you can lower the unsaturated proportion below the threshold of carcinogenic fats.
JR: Can you elaborate on why you’re such a huge proponent of coconut oil ?
RP: Any of the saturated fats have an anti-inflammatory, protective effect. A group studying liver disease has found that the fish oils and shorter seed oils (unsaturated forms) increase liver inflammation and tendency to become fibrotic and cirrhosis, and that can be blocked by the saturated fats. I think it was an Indian that noticed that alcoholics in India who lived in the areas where they had ghee or butter as their main fat, didn't develop liver cirrhosis despite being alcoholic. They began testing that, and saw that alcohol activates the unsaturated fats to react with iron to break down, and produce the liver damage. So, all of the saturated fats are protective when you have an inflamed situation. And that goes all the way up to the waxes, such as extracted from bee's wax, and sugar cane, and such, that are super long-chain saturated fats. Coconut oil is in the medium-chained lengths, that includes some of the very short-chain saturated fats; mostly it’s 14 and 16 carbon chains. The shortness of the chain means that it's very mobile in your system. And the shorter saturated fats can be handled in the mitochondria without relying on the transport systems for handling 18 carbon chains for example. The 10 carbon chains can be oxidized as easily as glucose. And so, instead of interfering with glucose metabolism and switching the whole mitochondrial function, they can participate and even activate the glucose oxidation. They interfere with the anti-metabolic effects of the unsaturated fats. By interfering with the anti-metabolites, they let the mitochondria run at full speed; and that works as if you were giving a thyroid supplement. The unsaturated fats interfere with all of the effects of thyroid; all the way from the gland secreting the hormone, the proteins transporting thyroid hormone, and the cells responding to it. So, at all of those points, coconut oil is probably getting in the way of the suppressive effects of the polyunsaturated fats. But especially in the mitochondrion, where the coconut oil itself is being very quickly burned and used as energy.
JR: So, saturated fats help to protect and detoxify the body from unsaturated fats; they help with glucose oxidation, and enable the liver to store glycogen and thus regulate blood glucose. They are pro-thyroid, and anti-inflammatory.
RP: Yeah. Speeding the metabolic rate, that's the most important thing that thyroid does. And sugar and coconut oil work right with it to maximize the good metabolic oxygen consumption.
So, Ray favored saturated fat.
Our mitochondria favors saturated fat.
Haidut and Danny Roddy said this on a podcast:
"Saturated palmitic and stearic acids decreased insulin-induced glycogen synthesis, glucose oxidation, and lactate production. Basal glucose oxidation was also reduced. Palmitic and stearic acids impaired mitochondrial function as demonstrated by decrease of both mitochondrial hyperpolarization and ATP generation"*
Link: https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/saturated-fats-and-mitochondrias.9177/
So, saturated fat speeds up the metabolic rate, it protects and detoxifies the body from unsaturated fat, it helps the thyroid, helps your mitochondrial run at full speed, protects one’s liver.
Also, eating saturated fat with carbs and protein ( which is what I am now doing) according to what Peat says here, is good.
So why is Haidut pointing out in this study that fat is not good? That’s all I want to know.
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From those quotes Peat said “ it's the very small amount of unsaturated fat that is responsible for the stress and cancer production. ”
So it’s the unsaturated fat ( PUFAS) that is responcible for STRESS AND CANCER.
Which is what I was suggesting in my first comment on this post.
It’s the TYPE of fat that is the cause of anxiety….and stress, and cancer. Not that saturated fat is bad for you but that the type of fat, PUFAS, ARE.
Pufa causes stress, which leads to inflammation which leads to anxiety which leads to cancer and so on and so on.
NOT saturated fat.
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I noticed that the fats used in the diet were soy oil and lard (pig fat), the latter of which is typically high PUFA, especially if sourced from CAFO pigs.
Something to keep in mind when assessing their results. -
@Butter-Girl
Due to the title of the post: "High-fat, low-carb diet may cause..."
And, the study itself delineates a high fat diet, vs a not high fat diet.Georgi is doin some heckin classic reasoning. Apparently, pufa making a high percentile of the fat in a balanced diet doesn't cause the same deleterious effects as the same diet, minus the carbs. This does not indicate pufa is safe on a higher carb diet, nor does it indicate pufa is the controlling factor for raising serotonin in the high fat / low carb diet - of course we know that it no doubt exacerbates it (as does Georgi.
I know I made sure to incorporate lots of low carb dairy fat and protein in my keto carnivore days, and I experienced all the things the study results show before I added carbs.
Georgi is a fan of dairy fat for weight management, immune function, metabolism, etc. He's posted studies extolling it in rpf.
I don't remember for sure if it was Ray or Danny Roddy, but I'm positive I heard him say that if you're going to cause the stress of a low carb diet like carnivore, low fat is safest (even if it's saturated), to keep the FFA levels low in the blood.
https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/free-fatty-acids-ffa-as-the-cause-of-insulin-resistance.7824/ -
@LetTheRedeemed said in High-fat, low-carb diet may cause obesity, anxiety (by raising serotonin), even suicide:
@Butter-Girl
Due to the title of the post: "High-fat, low-carb diet may cause..."
And, the study itself delineates a high fat diet, vs a not high fat diet.Georgi is doin some heckin classic reasoning. Apparently, pufa making a high percentile of the fat in a balanced diet doesn't cause the same deleterious effects as the same diet, minus the carbs. This does not indicate pufa is safe on a higher carb diet, nor does it indicate pufa is the controlling factor for raising serotonin in the high fat / low carb diet - of course we know that it no doubt exacerbates it (as does Georgi.
I know I made sure to incorporate lots of low carb dairy fat and protein in my keto carnivore days, and I experienced all the things the study results show before I added carbs.
Georgi is a fan of dairy fat for weight management, immune function, metabolism, etc. He's posted studies extolling it in rpf.
I don't remember for sure if it was Ray or Danny Roddy, but I'm positive I heard him say that if you're going to cause the stress of a low carb diet like carnivore, low fat is safest (even if it's saturated), to keep the FFA levels low in the blood.
https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/free-fatty-acids-ffa-as-the-cause-of-insulin-resistance.7824/You wrote:
“ Apparently, pufa making a high percentile of the fat in a balanced diet doesn't cause the same deleterious effects as the same diet, minus the carbs”
Are you stating it is the carbs and not the fat that “cause the deleterious effects” then?As far as Georgi “being a fan of dairy fat for weight management, immune function, metabolism, etc. “
that’s what I thought he promoted as well.
So that is why I made the comments I did and questioning why it seemed like he was supporting the posted articles assertions that high fat was what was the “deleterious factor”.If he happens to see the responses, perhaps he can clear up the confusion a bit.
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@OliverCloasov said in High-fat, low-carb diet may cause obesity, anxiety (by raising serotonin), even suicide:
I noticed that the fats used in the diet were soy oil and lard (pig fat), the latter of which is typically high PUFA, especially if sourced from CAFO pigs.
Something to keep in mind when assessing their results.So you are saying they used soy oil and lard? I didn’t happen to see what type of fat they used. But if that is the case, then that corroberates what I am suggesting that it is the type of fat that caused the anxiety.
If they had used saturated fat as opposed to the Pufa fat, the results might have been different. Perhaps very different.
Or, from another vantage point, the data is suggesting (and perhaps this is Georgi’s point in posting the study) that it is the AMOUNT of fat used that was the cause of the anxiety, and not necessarily the TYPE of fat that was used.But, given that Peat has written extensively on the anti inflammatory effects of saturated fats, I would tend to conclude that it was the fact that Pufa fat was used, and not the amount of it that caused the anxiety.
However, I can see that an inordinate amount of even the saturated anti inflammatory fat can lead to obesity.
But higher intake of saturated fat has a satiating effect, so you tend to eat less of it. -
You wrote:
“ Apparently, pufa making a high percentile of the fat in a balanced diet doesn't cause the same deleterious effects as the same diet, minus the carbs”
Are you stating it is the carbs and not the fat that “cause the deleterious effects” then?The opposite. Sorry I guess that wasn’t clear. Aka, I believe they used the same type of fat ratio for the dietary interventions, but one dietary intervention had more carbs, and one had less carbs.
The one with less carbs fared worse.As far as Georgi “being a fan of dairy fat for weight management, immune function, metabolism, etc. “
that’s what I thought he promoted as well.
So that is why I made the comments I did and questioning why it seemed like he was supporting the posted articles assertions that high fat was what was the “deleterious factor”.I think the study enforces an important point: free fatty acids in the blood is toxic — even saturated free fatty acids in the blood will be toxic, tho they didn’t address that alone. So if you really want to disagree with it you could just say “the study can’t determine that,” it can determine that pufa is apparently fine when combined with carbs — but we know they to be false cumulatively.
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@Butter-Girl
"Just about everything that goes wrong involves FFA increase. If they are totally saturated fatty acids, such as from coconut oil and butter, those are less harmful, but they still tend to shift the mitochondrial cellular metabolism away from using glucose and fructose and turning on various stress related things; By lowering the carbon dioxide production I think is the main mechanism." - Ray PeatAnd this reply from Georgi:
“This is true, but palmitic acid specifically activates the pyruvate dehydrogenase enzyme unlike any other fat. Stearic acid can do the same but it much less potent than palmitic. Peat said it several times and I posted studies on that too. Low pyruvate dehydrogenase activity is found in virtually all disease, especially diabetes and cancer, and aging in general. Thiamine (B1), thyroid, and palmitic acid restore its function.
Also, palmitic acid is crucial for keep the mitochondrial limid cardiolipin saturated. Aging and diseases are all characterized by both decrease in cardiolipin levels and increase in the unsaturation of the composition. Babies have almost fully saturated cardiolipin and very old people have cardiolipin composed almost entirely of omega-6. Cardiolipin is one of the main controllers of cytochrome C oxidase function and the activities of electron transport chains III and IV. Animal studies with phosphatidylcholine showed that it can restore cardiolipin levels back to youthful levels, and eating saturated fat restores its saturated composition.
When you eat sugar in excess you synthesize primarily palmitic acid. Yes, eating tons of fat is not wise but is someone has been ingesting PUFA poison for years, it's better for them to gorge on saturated fat for a while to change the body composition of fats. Otherwise, if they try to lose weight all that PUFA will flood the bloodstream and wreak havoc from which very few people will be able to come out fine.”https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/saturated-fats-and-mitochondrias.9177/
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@LetTheRedeemed said in High-fat, low-carb diet may cause obesity, anxiety (by raising serotonin), even suicide:
You wrote:
“ Apparently, pufa making a high percentile of the fat in a balanced diet doesn't cause the same deleterious effects as the same diet, minus the carbs”
Are you stating it is the carbs and not the fat that “cause the deleterious effects” then?The opposite. Sorry I guess that wasn’t clear. Aka, I believe they used the same type of fat ratio for the dietary interventions, but one dietary intervention had more carbs, and one had less carbs.
The one with less carbs fared worse.As far as Georgi “being a fan of dairy fat for weight management, immune function, metabolism, etc. “
that’s what I thought he promoted as well.
So that is why I made the comments I did and questioning why it seemed like he was supporting the posted articles assertions that high fat was what was the “deleterious factor”.I think the study enforces an important point: free fatty acids in the blood is toxic — even saturated free fatty acids in the blood will be toxic, tho they didn’t address that alone. So if you really want to disagree with it you could just say “the study can’t determine that,” it can determine that pufa is apparently fine when combined with carbs — but we know they to be false cumulatively.
Ok thanks for the clarification.
Well, I’m of the belief that we need some fat (saturated of course) and some carohydrates in one’s diet….and some protein. I believe Peat even elaborated on this, saying that our microbiata needed the balance of all three in order to function properly.
Ray Peat said this:
“ One thing is that makes the food a lot pleasanter to eat. It makes it digest more efficiently and steadily. Experiments with a loop of intestine…they would put just proteins, or just carbohydrates, or just fats in at a time; they found that the digestion was very poor until you had all three types of food present at the same time. It was as if the intestine needed a complex stimulus before it would really effectively start absorbing and digesting the food. So it's partly a stimulus to your intestines to handle the protein and the carbohydrate effectively. It’s a signal of satisfaction, that helps to lower stress, to have fat and sugar in your food.”The necessity of having, fat, carbs and protein is good for digestion as well as keeping inflamation down. Mono eatings to me, seems to be an unbalanced way of eating.
But I get your point about the the free fatty acids in the blood leading towards toxicity, particularly if it is too much.
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@Butter-Girl totally agreed. Whenever I try low fat for weight loss I don’t feel good.
I remind extremist peatarian gate keepers that he said in an ideal healthy state one could eat 50% of calories from fat; but on the other hand that, pufa even from animal sources like dairy, is relevant enough that it’s worth supplementing fat intake with fructose intake (moderately lowering fat intake).
I of course follow how I feel, and so drink several glasses of raw milk in the morning and with each meal and eat a pint of icecream a day.
Dairy really is the super food — especially for caucasians — due to them missing the genes to more efficiently convert fructose to lipids (fat), and the low melanin skin doesn’t retain calcium. This is why I supplement a few teaspoons of calcium carbonate (pasteurization converts the calcium into a colloidal calcium — indigestible).
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@LetTheRedeemed said in High-fat, low-carb diet may cause obesity, anxiety (by raising serotonin), even suicide:
@Butter-Girl totally agreed. Whenever I try low fat for weight loss I don’t feel good.
I remind extremist peatarian gate keepers that he said in an ideal healthy state one could eat 50% of calories from fat; but on the other hand that, pufa even from animal sources like dairy, is relevant enough that it’s worth supplementing fat intake with fructose intake (moderately lowering fat intake).
I of course follow how I feel, and so drink several glasses of raw milk in the morning and with each meal and eat a pint of icecream a day.
Dairy really is the super food — especially for caucasians — due to them missing the genes to more efficiently convert fructose to lipids (fat), and the low melanin skin doesn’t retain calcium. This is why I supplement a few teaspoons of calcium carbonate (pasteurization converts the calcium into a colloidal calcium — indigestible).
And I agree with you.
That’s an interesting point about dairy being important for caucasians. I didn’t know that.
Well, good thing I love dairy! And ice cream
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@LetTheRedeemed said in High-fat, low-carb diet may cause obesity, anxiety (by raising serotonin), even suicide:
@Butter-Girl
"Just about everything that goes wrong involves FFA increase. If they are totally saturated fatty acids, such as from coconut oil and butter, those are less harmful, but they still tend to shift the mitochondrial cellular metabolism away from using glucose and fructose and turning on various stress related things; By lowering the carbon dioxide production I think is the main mechanism." - Ray PeatAnd this reply from Georgi:
“This is true, but palmitic acid specifically activates the pyruvate dehydrogenase enzyme unlike any other fat. Stearic acid can do the same but it much less potent than palmitic. Peat said it several times and I posted studies on that too. Low pyruvate dehydrogenase activity is found in virtually all disease, especially diabetes and cancer, and aging in general. Thiamine (B1), thyroid, and palmitic acid restore its function.
Also, palmitic acid is crucial for keep the mitochondrial limid cardiolipin saturated. Aging and diseases are all characterized by both decrease in cardiolipin levels and increase in the unsaturation of the composition. Babies have almost fully saturated cardiolipin and very old people have cardiolipin composed almost entirely of omega-6. Cardiolipin is one of the main controllers of cytochrome C oxidase function and the activities of electron transport chains III and IV. Animal studies with phosphatidylcholine showed that it can restore cardiolipin levels back to youthful levels, and eating saturated fat restores its saturated composition.
When you eat sugar in excess you synthesize primarily palmitic acid. Yes, eating tons of fat is not wise but is someone has been ingesting PUFA poison for years, it's better for them to gorge on saturated fat for a while to change the body composition of fats. Otherwise, if they try to lose weight all that PUFA will flood the bloodstream and wreak havoc from which very few people will be able to come out fine.”https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/saturated-fats-and-mitochondrias.9177/
Based on the quote you posted by Georgi, would it then be advantageous to supplement with Pyruvate, or just use the thiamine?
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@Butter-Girl good question, and outside my pay grade, lol.
I'm generally a fan of the building block nutrients that restores a pathway or metabolism, rather than bypass it supplementing the end-product -- idk about the consequences of that. Let me know what you find if you try research it -- if there is knowledge that it won't retard the pathway in anyway, I'd like to try it, too.
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@LetTheRedeemed said in High-fat, low-carb diet may cause obesity, anxiety (by raising serotonin), even suicide:
@Butter-Girl good question, and outside my pay grade, lol.
I'm generally a fan of the building block nutrients that restores a pathway or metabolism, rather than bypass it supplementing the end-product -- idk about the consequences of that. Let me know what you find if you try research it -- if there is knowledge that it won't retard the pathway in anyway, I'd like to try it, too.
Found this on Hans website: https://testonation.com/2020/06/05/how-to-improve-insulin-sensitivity-the-right-way/
“ Glucose oxidation promoters
Gluconeogenesis uses lactate as a precursor, so lowering lactate can help to reduce the activity of gluconeogenesis. Pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) is the rate limited enzyme in glucose oxidation and it’s inhibited by pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase (PDHK).
PDHK inhibitors or PDH promoters increases pyruvate oxidation and decreases the level of compounds (e.g. lactate) for gluconeogenesis in the liver. Several PDHK inhibitors are in a clinical trial including, JTT-251, AZD 2545, and leelamine which have proven effective in lowering blood glucose levels in diabetic rodent models.
Natural promoters of PDH include vitamin B1 and Pyrucet (combination of ethyl acetoacetate and ethyl pyruvate). Substances that inhibit lipolysis such as niacin and aspirin are also able to increase PDH, as fatty acids activate PDHK and inhibit PDH.”
Haidut’s article on it: https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/pyrucet-liquid-ethyl-pyruvate-aceatoacetate-mix.27487/
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@Butter-Girl very interesting. Thank you.
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