On The Need for a New Theory

A One Year Retrospective On Qualified Success

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know

PUFAs are the original sin. The cause of the obesity crisis, and the widespread epidemic of metabolic slowdown and ill health.

It Is Known, as the Dothraki girls so wisely say.

There is endless theoretical and circumstantial evidence that proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt, and it explains everything.

As a (failed) mathematician, (reluctant) professional engineer (computers though so not a proper engineer), and (enthusiastic childhood) chemist I am convinced.

Unfortunately this Idea, it is not true.

We would know, if this were true in a straightforward way:

Eat PUFAs, get fat and ill. Stop eating PUFAs, get thin and well. Should be really obvious.

Medical “Science” is crap.

But it is not that crap. This signal should be blinding. If it were true it would be known.

---

As Scott Alexander (peace be upon him) wrote back in 2020:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/10/for-then-against-high-saturated-fat-diets/

I find this to be a really elegant and provocative theory, with impressive circumstantial evidence. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell all of the direct evidence is against it.

I love this post!

I love this Idea, even though it is not true. Precisely because it is not true.

I have always had a weakness for simple ideas that explain everything but are wrong:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fYpfoRgqzrXaT3ZcC/in-defence-of-simple-ideas-that-explain-everything-but-are

And what is more, I bring significant extra circumstantial evidence to Scott's argument, because I believe in Broda Barnes' 'Epidemic of Hypothyroidism'

I do not believe in Broda Barnes' explanation of his 'Epidemic of Hypothyroidism', because, again, we could not possibly have missed that!

The 'Epidemic of Hypothyroidism' is not an epidemic of hypothyroidism.

It is an epidemic of things that look very like hypothyroidism, and which can sometimes be treated with thyroid drugs.

And one thing I know for almost for sure is that I am one of the victims of this epidemic, and that Broda's idea of just taking thyroid drugs anyway even though you haven't got a thyroid problem saved my life.

Call it if you will 'type 2 hypothyroidism', or 'peripheral thyroid resistance', or 'pseudo-hypothyroidism', or 'metabolic slowdown of unknown cause'.

That is what the great line of heroes who together saved my life sometimes called it, when they were being careful...

And I also know almost for sure, because Greg Cochran told me in terms that to a failed mathematician are very persuasive indeed, that such things do not just happen:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2000.0016

There is a modern poison at the root.

---

That's why I started down this mad path a year ago.

Forswear, I thought, All Polyunsaturated Evil

See what happens.

What happened is that I enjoyed my new diet a lot, my appetite went up, and my general sense of well-being, which had been a bit on the ragged side in the run-up, improved significantly.

My weight, which previously had seemed to be climbing at a slightly worrying rate, continued to climb at a worrying rate.

Although since I'd never previously worried much about my weight or indeed measured it, it is quite hard to tell, about rates and such.

And this went on for six months.

---

The abjuration of the polyunsaturated curse involves renouncing all processed food.

(Except the eucharist, because the processing changes only the metaphysical essence of the bread while changing none of its physical properties, and I am a materialist, so I do not care about the metaphysical essence. Eucharists with seed oils in them are right out even before the processing)

With most of the chaotic brew of chemicals which are totally not short-term poisons in rats and are thus legally fine to get added to processed foods out of the way, I finally managed to notice that I had developed a serious problem with sulphites.

So I added 'No Sulphites' to 'No PUFAs'. And felt even better.

But I was starting to get pretty fat!

At the point where I needed to go and buy yet more new trousers (40" waist! Up from 34" not so very long ago... I weep for my svelte and youthful self and the horror he is become), I thought both:

"I am keeping this diet even if it turns me into a Barrage Balloon".

and:

"Barrage Balloon is nevertheless Right Out.”

and, as Lenin famously asked:

“What is To Be Done?"

A bit of digging turned up u/exfatloss and his substack:

This was the first time I had ever seen anyone talking sanely about weight.

He is quite mad, in the way that the Visionaries and the Prophets of the One True Faith are always quite mad.

A member, as a very wise man once put it, of the "Correct Contrarian Cluster", or at the very least, of that cluster of contrarians whose ideas are clear enough that they make predictions. And those predictions are not obviously false, in his case.

And he is also a bit of a no-PUFAs man, and he claimed to have found not only a definition of what it would mean for a diet to work, but a diet that actually works according to that definition.

It looked a bit difficult, this diet, so I made up a version that would be easier to do but still based on the same principles, because amongst my many virtues is the virtue of laziness.

And then I tried it, and bang. Weight coming off scary fast. And not coming back afterwards either.

His diet was so mental, so extreme, so weird, that I daredn't try it for more than a couple of weeks at a time, because amongst my many virtues is the virtue of cowardice.

So imagine my joy and surprise when the weight loss continued after I stopped the diet.

And my continued joy and surprise when the weight loss continued, on what seemed to me to be a trajectory of gentle exponential decrease with a bit of noise, as if a homeostat had been fixed, for three solid months.

But that was nothing to the joy and surprise and fear that I felt when I noticed that I was overheating, and had to lower my long-time dose of thyroid drugs to compensate.

A long time ago, those drugs lifted me out of the swamp of despair. Patched the horror that no-one could explain or fix. So effectively that apart from the very fact of taking those drugs, I had pretty much stopped thinking of myself as ill.

Given me back my life, which had been lost.

And if I was never quite again the bouncy energetic sporty extrovert that I once was, I was at least a functioning human being, rather than a basket case.

With immense trepidation I lowered my thyroid dose.

With open fear and dread I did the bad thing that had always caused the curse to return, and I watched in terror for the return of the symptoms of hypometabolism, wondering what the hell I would do if they came back.

But they did not come back as they had always previously come back. For months as I carried on feeling too hot, I carried on lowering the dose. Today it is low indeed.

And I feel fine.

Not fixed. Not well. Not optimal. But fine.

[Editor’s Note: At this point the author’s computer threw him out because he’d been staring at it for too long. Usually this is a key to go and lie on the sofa for a bit with a book. But this time, he felt full of restless energy, couldn’t face the sofa, and decided to go for a walk in the dark and the drizzle. And this walk ended up being about four miles long and involved randomly calling on friends in an outlying village. That sort of thing hadn’t happened for a long time…. For a very long time…. ]

---

Now at this point, I confess, I had forgotten that "PUFAs are the Root of All Evil" was not true.

PUFAs, I thought, are indeed the root of all evil.

But I thought it secretly, because a philosopher must look into the dark, as a very wise man once wrote.

And publicly I remained sceptical. And privately I tried to remind myself that I should not believe things that are not true. But I failed.

It is at the point where a man starts to believe things that are not true that he is easiest to surprise.

---

The surprise came when eventually, after three months or so, it seemed that the magical return to health had stalled out a bit.

Necessary thyroid dose rising a little, weight stable, neither rising nor falling.

“Hmmmmm”, I thought.

No PUFAs, No Sulphites has worked pretty well, but it was ex150ish that seemed to start it all off, so I shall try it again.

In addition to "No PUFAs, No Sulphites" ex150ish had two components that seemed load-bearing:

(1) Protein Restriction, and

(2) Ketosis

So this time, in a spirit of enquiry, I thought I would try just the ketosis without the protein restriction.

And so I did a much more 'normal' ketogenic diet. I just cut out all the carbs and otherwise ate what I liked while keeping "No PUFAs, No Sulphites".

I called that heart-attack-keto. It involved a lot of beef and cheese.

Looking back at my notes, it looks like heart-attack-keto worked in the sense of taking me slowly into ketosis, with the attendant water-weight loss and regain, but it also looks like it did nothing at all in terms of fat loss or thyroid dose:

https://theheartattackdiet.substack.com/p/heart-attack-keto

https://theheartattackdiet.substack.com/p/heart-attack-keto-rebound

And also it didn't produce the limitless energy that I had got on ex150ish, and, despite being able to eat more things, I didn't like it nearly as much just in terms of food as I had liked ex150ish. It seemed to contain too much protein, in a weird way, and I had carbohydrate cravings that I hadn't had before. I longed for the clean and effortless simplicity of ex150ish.

And afterwards, my weight seemed to start rising! Faster than it had ever risen before, I think. And my thyroid dose continued flat.

And all that in the total absence of PUFAs (and sulphites).

So that should have reminded me that "PUFAs are the root of all evil" was not true. Or at least not the whole of the truth.

At least I remembered to notice that I was confused.

---

After a bit I did another couple of weeks of ex150ish, and that worked exactly as expected.

So I thought, great, back on track.

And then I went to visit my parents.

https://theheartattackdiet.substack.com/p/the-test-of-the-mom-jabbar

Mum was very on board with "No PUFAs, no sulphites", and although mistakes were made, she managed largely to feed me royally without any injury to my philosophy. I got my own chip pan full of beef dripping, fatted calves were slaughtered in full compliance with dietary principles.

I had at least been disturbed enough by the failure of heart-attack-keto that I didn't know what to expect from the Mom Test.

Would the magic continue? Would the magic go away?

As it happened, it went both ways strongly and simultaneously.

I had several emergency cold showers because I was overheating so badly, and my thyroid dose came down quite a lot.

And I was really noticeably hungry for most of the time, and I ate a lot of all kinds of things. Much more than usual.

And I gained what, three kilos in three weeks? The fastest weight gain of my life and then some. Staggering. That trend doesn’t extrapolate well.

When I came back and was in control of my own diet again, eating normally:

Weight stable, thyroid dose stable.

So now, these last couple of weeks, a fourth bout of ex150ish, to try and make the magic come back. Seems to be going roughly as usual. Time will tell.

---

For the last year, I have either hypothesised or flat out believed:

(1) PUFAs are the original sin. The cause of the obesity crisis, and the widespread epidemic of metabolic slowdown and ill health.

And further I have believed, almost without noticing that there was a difference:

(2) If you cut out the PUFAs, you will slowly burn them off, and everything will just get better as they go.

This second thing. It is not true.

If it was true, then heart-attack-keto should not have led to weight gain.

If it was true, then Mum might have been able to overfeed me a bit, and maybe I would have got a bit heavier as a result, but it would have come on very slowly and burned off very quickly once I was out of range of the maternal influence.

I didn't replenish my PUFA stores in any significant way while I was at home.

But I gained weight ridiculously fast, and it did not come off afterwards.

(2) is refuted. It is not true. I have always known it was not true. But now I know that it is not true.

I think I will hang on to (1) for a while, although my confidence in it is shaken.

---

I think I had a vague model of a mechanism that went something like:

PUFAs are not the natural substrate for your metabolism. Your system cannot burn them for energy in large quantities.

You can burn them for energy, but only in small amounts. The pathway is rate-limited for some reason.

In large quantities they clog up your metabolism and make it run slow. And they somehow sod up the signal that tells you how much stored fat you have, so that the homeostat that controls your appetite feels that you are short of stored energy when actually the opposite is the case.

However, if you just stop consuming them, then the stored supply of them will fall, and your metabolism will speed up, and your stored-energy-level signal will become more accurate, and you will feel better, lose your appetite and lose weight. This cycle is self-reinforcing.

---

This model, this mechanism, is refuted. It has made false predictions. It is not true. I renounce it.

Something more subtle is going on.

I actually wondered, for most of the last six months, whether the decline in my weight and thyroid requirement, that started around the time of the first ex150ish experiment, and possibly even slightly before, had just happened at that time by coincidence, because six months of no-PUFAs had been enough to start a virtuous cycle of PUFA depletion leading to lowered set-point leading to further PUFA depletion.

But now I don't think it was a coincidence at all.

I think ex150ish was causal. Strongly causal, not just the thing that tipped the balance at just the time when it was about to tip anyway.

I need a new theory to explain what has been going on.

But I notice also that the old refuted theory/model/guess-at-a-mechanism had a good run. It explained a fair bit of what was going on, but there were a couple of times where it predicted the wrong result.

So the new theory somehow has to make those same correct predictions.

Protein Restriction seems important. High protein seems to reverse some of the good effects. Maybe even put the virtuous cycle into reverse.