Low Carb/High Fat: Context Matters

Low carb, high fat seems to be the latest dietary fad now that people are discovering the flaws of the dietary fat/cholesterol relationship with coronary heart disease and obesity. A lot of people now will tell you to eat more fat and less sugar if you want to lose weight and be healthy. Today, sugar has replaced fat as the new enemy contributing to heart disease and many other inflammatory conditions. But what if I were to tell you that blaming a dietary macronutrient for disease, or searching for the “optimal diet” is a waste of time and effort? Perhaps we should be shifting our attention away from diet and explore other avenues.

Take a look at this picture above. Now consider the conventional wisdom above. Are you seeing a problem? Sugar consumption hit its peak around the early millenium in the US, while obesity continued to rise (looks like the 2 walked the line together). But between 2000 and 2013, when this conventional wisdom arose regarding sugar as the “devil”, consumption steadily declined, while obesity continued its uprise. Are you scratching your head? I’m not.

If you’ve read my post regarding the different haplotypes for mitochondrial coupling efficiency, you should begin to realise that a static, optimal diet does not exist. Diet is not determined by analyzing how much protein, carbs and fat is required. Diet is determined by what’s available in your local environment. Loosely coupled Inuits do well on their high calorie, high fat marine diets, and that is really the only food available in their environment. Tightly coupled Africans do well on their low calorie, high carbohydrate, fruit and vegetable diets as these foods grow in strong equatorial UV light.

When you live in a dynamic environment (i.e. Northern hemisphere) where climate varies significantly according to season, then you must adopt a dynamic diet. I recommend an Inuit-like diet for winter, and an African-like diet for summer, with spring and fall being transition periods. I have already explained before why a high carbohydrate diet is not wise for winter, but a quick recap: they contain high powered electrons that captured UV photons from the sun, and in order to be properly assimilated, the environment in which the carbohydrate is consumed, must also contain strong UV light. Eating carbs in winter is like tricking your body that it’s summer, which is not wise when trying to deal with the cold.

On the contrary, why might a low carbohydrate diet not be a wise choice for summer? Without making your brain hurt too much, the body has two main metabolic pathways: glycolytic (carbohydrates/glucose burning) and lipolytic (fatty acid burning). Irregardless of your diet, the body chooses the metabolic pathway based on the environment: glycolytic in high stress, warm environments, and lipolytic in low stress, cold environments. The glycolytic system is less efficient than lipolytic, but that’s not a problem in summer because strong UV light makes up the energy deficiency of this system, so our mitochondria do less work. The lipolytic system is highly efficient, but requires a lot more mitochondrial output to generate more energy and heat when UV light is lacking. In a dynamic environment (like we have here in Canada), here is what is supposed to happen: in the glycolytic system, when carb metabolism dominates, electrons from carbs enter the Electron Transport Chain (ETC) at Complex I, which is a site for superoxide (a potent free radical) production. This is important, because superoxide, although damaging to cells and mitochondria, triggers a process known as mitophagy, which helps recycle/replace poorly functioning components of our mitochondria. By the end of summer, with this process upregulated, our bodies will have nice, new, highly functioning mitochondria which we can then heavily rely on to get us by in the winter time. Once winter hits, and we shift to the lipolytic system, our mitochondria are the power houses for energy and heat production. Electrons from fatty acids enter the ETC at Complex II, thus limiting superoxide production, so mitophagy is no longer actionable. This means our strong mitochondria will have to last us until the spring before the cycle repeats, and we can begin to use mitophagy again to replace the “burnt out” cells/mitochondria with summertime UV light.

Tying it all together: breaking this dynamic cycle with altering your environment by using artificial heat, heavy clothing and carbs in the winter, inhibits your ability to sustain the highly functioning mitochondria you require in winter. On the contrary, low carb diets in the summer inhibit your ability to use mitophagy to replace your poorly functioning mitochondria, so your body continues to work off old machinery.

The problem is humans think they can outsmart Mother Nature, but the reality is, we don’t stand a chance. If you live in harmony with nature, you will thrive. If you try to re-invent the wheel, you will be lose the battle every single time.