Dr. Steven Gundry with diet recommendations for ApoE4

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Re: Dr. Steven Gundry with diet recommendations for ApoE4

Post by Nancy »

Thanks for the adinopectin study, Theresa. Mine has been testing too low (higher is supposed to be better) so I've been trying to increase it, but this article seems to be saying the opposite. Even though it also mentions that higher has been considered better in some ways. But that higher also led to more AD in their study. :shock:
But both say getting rid of belly fat is key.
Do you take ginko, Theresa? The reason I ask is because I've read that a side effect can be bleeding of the eye. I hope you're no longer having that problem.
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Re: Dr. Steven Gundry with diet recommendations for ApoE4

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Regarding adiponectin, Nancy wrote
Mine has been testing too low (higher is supposed to be better) so I've been trying to increase it,…
Low is good! Sort of. It's not as simple as that. I am not an expert, but during Dr Gundry’s dinner Q&A session at the Ancestral Health Symposium, I did have an “aha” moment regarding adiponectin.

With my "I'm not an expert" disclaimer, I believe adiponectin is merely a "traffic sign" indicating there is a lectin sensitivity, but not the marker to chase, that marker is TNFalpha.

The “problem” with adiponectin is what it says can be confusing. It's supposedly a "skinny" hormone, but skinny women can have high adiponectin (lectin sensitivity). And evidently obesity can mask what’s going on, i.e. adiponectin should be high if they’re lectin sensitive, but it’s not. Additionally, if you take lectins away from those with high adiponectin, the adipoenctin might stay high, because it's just a "traffic sign," a pointer as it were, it does not reflect inflammation.

Here’s excerpts from what I transcribed from Dr Gundry’s Q&A session on August 12, 2016:
“Years ago when I started getting really interested in this, I noticed that a lot of my patients with auto-immune disease and or elevated inflammatory markers had an elevated adiponectin and I thought that was very curious because adiponectin in theory is a very good hormone. It’s a skinny hormone, it reduces diabetes. But when I started looking at the literature, there are some fascinating studies, so when we looked at adiponectin and dementia, it turns out the women’s health study showed that skinny women with high adiponectin levels had a very high incidence of dementia, now that doesn’t make sense if adiponectin is so good for you. Plus if you look at people with rheumatoid arthritis they have a very high adiponectin level, and most people with rheumatoid arthritis are actually quite thin. So I said that’s interesting, there’s two things that are really an interesting marker for adiponectin, so what I did was I took away major lectin containing foods from patients with an elevated TNFalpha and we do a health survey of all of our patient’s family history and people with elevated adiponectin had a fascinating family history of auto-immune disease, irritable bowel, hypothyroid, by the way, …"

He then discusses if you’ve had your tonsils out that this indicates lectin sensitivity. He then goes on to say regarding his own experience,

“Then I realized what these were was this wonderful collection of dead white blood cells that were being spit out of my tonsils and (I was) prone to chronic sinusitis, and I was thin, and my father has psoriasis, and my aunt had psoriasis, so I come from a wonderful auto-immune family. I don’t have psoriasis, I’ve had a couple patches of it through my life, but I don’t have it. So all this added up, so I started looking at the lectin literature I said, oh my gosh, I have every known symptom of being lectin intolerant. So I permanently removed lectins from my diet, all these things went away. …”

Short discussion of another patient here.

“So we started to take the lectins away from people and their TNFalphas fell to normal, and oh by the way their joint pain went away, and their brain fog went away, whatever, but their adiponectin stayed high, so I concluded and gave a paper to the American Heart Association that an elevated adiponectin is merely a marker, a pretty doggone good marker, that they’re lectin sensitive.”

This should be the paper that he presented to the AHA http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/129/Suppl_1/AP354

He went on to say
“The only thing that screws that up is obesity. So it’s fascinating when I take my obese patients who I really suspect are lectin sensitive and we get them to lose weight, their adiponectin goes sky high, far higher than you would think from a little bit of weight loss. Then I go, I knew it! So that’s the adiponectin connection."

Question from the audience: “So they could have low adiponectin and be lectin sensitive….”

Dr Gundry:
“Correct, because they’re obese. Yes. If you’re thin and have low adiponectin and don’t have any of the other inflammatory markers, odds are you’re not lectin sensitive. Having said that, everyone know about wheat germ agglutinin? So gluten gets a lot of publicity. I think gluten is an innocent bystander. He’s getaway car driver, the robbers are wheat germ agglutinin. You can have a normal gut lining, no leaky gut, and wheat germ agglutinin is a very tiny protein Gluten is a huge protein. Gluten in general cannot get through the gut lining unless it turns on zonulin and breaks the gut lining. But wheat germ agglutinin can get through the gut lining without any problem. The problem with wheat germ agglutinin it’s one of the master mimicking lectins. It can bind to sialic acids on your blood vessels. It can bind to an insulin receptor on fat cells and (stay open?)… But one of the things we’re missing, especially in old age, is that wheat germ agglutinin binds to insulin receptors on muscles and insulin receptors in the brain and blocks them. Muscles can’t get to the glucose when binds to insulin receptors in muscles so have sarcopenia (? I think this is what he said ) and when it happens in the brain it blocks the affect of insulin. So a lot of what we think is Type 3 Diabetes is actually the accumulation through the years of wheat germ agglutinin.

Whew! Clear as mud, huh?

You also asked
Do you take ginko, Theresa? The reason I ask is because I've read that a side effect can be bleeding of the eye. I hope you're no longer having that problem.
I do not take ginko, but I’ve also not had eye issues, I think you might be confusing me with someone else, but interesting nevertheless.
Last edited by TheresaB on Wed Sep 07, 2016 1:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Dr. Steven Gundry with diet recommendations for ApoE4

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We've gone round and round with this, but this is the first time I've understood that excess weight could be artificially lowering adiponectin masking the opportunity to accurately use it as a marker for lectin sensitivity. I'm one of those thin women, with high adiponectin (40 μg/mL) who coincidentally (?) is very sensitive to lectins. When I eat specific lectin-laden food, I get severe and debilitating pain in my neck and shoulders. When I avoid it, I don't have pain. I've never checked my TNF-Alpha, but that's enough of a reality check for me. If I take glucosamine chondroitin before a meal where I'm exposed to lectins, it helps. I'm also using D-mannose nightly for my bladder and that seems to help as well. I look forward to peer-reviewed science to support this whole lectin sensitivity issue, but plan to (try :? ) avoid it in the meantime just because I feel better.
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Re: Dr. Steven Gundry with diet recommendations for ApoE4

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Juliegee, Not to mention that Dr Gundry's comments on wheat germ agglutinin are scary. I think what is he saying, is that it can block the insulin receptors in the brain regardless of whether a person is lectin sensitive or has a leaky gut.
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Re: Dr. Steven Gundry with diet recommendations for ApoE4

Post by Nancy »

Oh, my goodness. It was KatieS, not you, Theresa, I'm sorry! I must be suffering from MCI :oops: :cry: I guess I need to do more... I am going to start piano lessons.
The adinopectin issue is really quite complicated! Thank you for explaining it. My adinopectin runs low, but I have Hashimoto's hypothyroidism. I've never been real heavy, but I have had a bit of a belly and it is going away as I do the protocol. Two inches this summer so far. Not sure exactly what that all means.
Well, maybe I need to try giving up lectin and/or gluten. Funny, Julie, I have been eating the fat free plain yogurt for a few weeks (I ate oatmeal for breakfast for decades until now), and I have been having a lot of neck and shoulder pain every morning since. I do a lot of physical work in the morning so I am having a very hard time fasting for breakfast like most on here. Though I do fast from about 6 or 7 pm until breakfast. I don't particularly like eggs in the morning, plus they always have elevated my cholesterol a lot when I have tried them in the past for breakfasts. :roll:
But I guess that isn't necessarily bad. So confusing!
I don't know what to eat for breakfast now. I can't seem to function without it, though...
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Re: Dr. Steven Gundry with diet recommendations for ApoE4

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This thread wasn't long enough so I decided to post this here ...

I've glossed over a number of papers on PubMed that mentioned lectins in the fight against cancer. I'd think, 'Okay, maybe I have high adiponectin and lectin sensitivity and should avoid lectins, but what is this about their possible benefit in at least one disease state? Are they simultaneously health-promoting?'

Today I came across this article that mentions a banana lectin inducing the cytokines interferon-gamma, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, and interleukin-2 while inhibiting cancer cell proliferation. I don't quite understand it all, but it seems dietary lectins are part of our bodies' natural cancer fighting systems along with having their otherwise dark side as inflammatory molecules. Are they something some of us can't live with but maybe also can't live without?

Banana contains a lectin with immunomodulatory activity capable of inhibiting HIV virus and acting as an antitumor agent

When I had my Gundry lab work over a year ago I was long off gluten and dairy and extremely rarely had something with a little soy, but basically avoided grains and legumes. I didn't even know about vegetable lectins but always avoided eggplant and cucumber skins which act like legumes in my gut. My TNF-alpha was normal (2.4 pg/mL), IL-17a moderate risk (2.8 pg/mL) and IL-6 normal (3.8 pg/mL). This was two weeks after a cold had gone away and I think Dr. Gundry said that could have affected the IL-17a. He wants a retest. Maybe I really only need to avoid the grain and legume lectins while plant and fruit ones aren't an issue for me, other than eggplant. Any other biomarkers I should consider in this context, whether Gundry orders them or not? I'm considering getting retested without concern for vegetable and fruit lectins (except eggplant and cucumber skin) but not following on a bad chest cold.
ApoE 3/4 > Thanks in advance for any responses made to my posts.
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Re: Dr. Steven Gundry with diet recommendations for ApoE4

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circular wrote:... but not following on a bad chest cold.
Interesting. We have Gundry blood draws tomorrow, still at the tail end of bad colds we got around Dec 24. We'll see what this does to the results.

My understanding of Gundry's lectin theory is that all foods have them, however his program is to reduce/eliminate lectins we aren't adapted to deal with. For example grazing animals are adapted to grasses, humans are not.
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Re: Dr. Steven Gundry with diet recommendations for ApoE4

Post by apod »

I'm really looking forward to checking out Gundry's new book in April. I never picked up Diet Evolution, so I'm hoping this one can sort of get me up to speed. I'm at a weird spot where I don't really notice a whole lot when eating (or avoiding) lectin-rich foods. It would be interesting to look into TNF-a sometime and see if that responds at all to a legume / grain-free diet vs a legume / grain-rich diet.

It makes sense that we might not be adapted to legume / grain lectins in the raw & unprocessed state, or nightshade / melon lectins, or egg / dairy lectins...(or nuts / seeds / cacao / coffee lectins?)... but how about with a bit of preparation? Can I really just put a tomato and zucchini in my pressure cooker, hit the 1 minute high-pressure button, and consider this a non-issue? (And, why can't I do that with a grain like oat bran?)

Lately, I'm starting the day with a hefty amount of nuts, which are probably not ideal to pressure-cook. I'm curious if these aren't supplying more lectins than if I was eating WAPF-prepared legume / grains. If zucchinis are full of lectins from the seeds, does this not apply to fruit like strawberries? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11479328

Apparently onions are rich in lectins: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25887266 (and related veg, like garlic.) . I suppose a lot of my spices might be lectin-rich as well, like cumin-seed, turmeric, etc? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4139268/
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Re: Dr. Steven Gundry with diet recommendations for ApoE4

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Apod wrote
Can I really just put a tomato and zucchini in my pressure cooker, hit the 1 minute high-pressure button, and consider this a non-issue? (And, why can't I do that with a grain like oat bran?)
As I understand it, not all lectins are the same. Dr Gundry says the issue with grains isn’t gluten it’s the wheat germ agglutinin. Here’s what I transcribed from what he said during the Q&A session he gave to us at the Ancestral Health Symposium in August 2016:
Having said that, everyone know about wheat germ agglutinin? So gluten gets a lot of publicity. I think gluten is an innocent bystander. He’s getaway car driver, the robbers are wheat germ agglutinin. You can have a normal gut lining, no leaky gut, and wheat germ agglutinin is a very tiny protein Gluten is a huge protein. Gluten in general cannot get through the gut lining unless it turns on zonulin and breaks the gut lining. But wheat germ agglutinin can get through the gut lining without any problem. The problem with wheat germ agglutinin it’s one of the master mimicking lectins. It can bind to sialic acids on your blood vessels. It can bind to an insulin receptor on fat cells and (stay open?)… But one of the things we’re missing, especially in old age, is that wheat germ agglutinin binds to insulin receptors on muscles and insulin receptors in brain and blocks them. Muscles can’t get to the glucose when binds to insulin receptors in muscles so you have sarcopenia and when it happens in the brain it blocks the effect of insulin. So a lot of what we think is Type 3 Diabetes is actually the accumulation through the years of wheat germ agglutinin.
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Re: Dr. Steven Gundry with diet recommendations for ApoE4

Post by MAC »

Theresa, HUGELY insightful connection of agglutinin and insulin receptors!

Ancestral man likely wasn't eating a lot of glutenous grasses/grains, so why are we?

On my LCHF, I pretty much avoid all grains, and feel amazingly better re gut/intestinal discomfort previous to eating more wheat/gluten foods.
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