Thank you for the reply and suggestions. I am compiling a little library on these topics.

To be honest, although I have been studying the topic for over 2 years and although I have concluded that I am on the right track, I need to wait until November/December to get my yearly medical exam before I can overcome my last misgivings regarding LCHF diets. I need the data before I pass it on.

You see, I am eating two dozen eggs a week (for example). How can I recommend this to a person that has had several coronaries and is on heavy anti-cholesterol meds? I need to be 100% sure I am not going to harm anyone.

first ring - emergency appendectomy at 48 - hit the snooze button...

major slam: healthy 1 year old's teeth showing some decay despite organic "healthy" diet including wonderful whole grains, lots organic fruit, and well yes - always some meat but gotta watach the high fat right?

organic didn't save us (although we still support that wholeheartedly) but dear ol weston price did--

may he RIP--

I just came across your blog and I'm utterly impressed at how succinct and to-the-point your writing is. Congratulations on a work well done.

I had several turning points... I was too far out for a single one. 🙂

I'm 37. At around 33 years old I started having severe Reactive Hypoglycaemia. I would feel an uncontrollable urge for chocolate after lunch, and unless I binged on chocolates and sweets every 30 minutes or so I would feel like sh**. In about a year I became a non-functional human; I couldn't work or have fun. I was scared that I had become a diabetic but my symptoms didn't quite square with the expected for diabetes.

I did an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test and came back negative for diabetes. So everything was just fine and dandy, it would appear to the doctors.

I went to an endocrinologist an she took a look at me and my story, didn't say a word, wrote out a prescription, and that was it. I thought "great, she knows what it is and I'll be well in a jiffy". After a week and a half taking those drugs without any improvement, I had turned into a violently aggressive person. It took me a few days to realise it, I was so chemically unbalanced. I threw the stuff in the garbage, and decided I had to take control of my own health. Goes to show that you pick the diagnostic and treatment when you pick the type of doctor.

I got an "alternative" doctor, someone with a more "holistic" approach, and she said I should go "paleo". I had no idea what she was talking about. Being an engineer, I had utter faith in science and progress, so I struggled with that notion of "caveman eating". I couldn't fit it in with the rest of reality... yet.

I went back and did the Glucose Tolerance Test, only this time I did it at home; I wasn't convinced that only 3 samples in 2 hours was an adequate data resolution to analyse the problem. After all, I really felt like crap after every meal: I would either fall asleep 20min after eating, or develop the most extreme brain fog, shakes, hotness and sweating. It was debilitating, it had to show up somewhere! And it did: a 6 hour home test with 15min sampling revealed a highly erratic hormonal system. You can take a look at it here. As an engineer, I recognized that pattern: it's a negative feedback system that's too tight (it "rings" instead of converging slowly). I was obviously hyper-sensitive to sugar. But what caused that sensitivity? the doctors were at a loss for words there.

I read Cordain's book, fumbled with Paleo for about 2 years, and started to get a feeling that maybe the conventional wisdom wasn't so great. But traditional Paleo wasn't working, I still had the shakes and the craves and was hungry and weak.

Then I went to the dentist to take out a couple of molars that were crooked. The usual antibiotics were applied. And miraculously, I was cured of everything for a couple of weeks! But then it came back, slowly at first, then full on.

With this episode I convinced my "holistic" doctor to make deeper tests. We did a special kind of Glucose Tolerance Test: an intra-venous and oral one in sequence. Lo and behold, there was nothing wrong with my hormonal system! The intra-venous test went perfectly normal, while the oral test provoked a drop from a fasting glucose of 50 to a post-prandial peak of 162 to a drop of 21. No wonder I felt bad, that 21 low was pushing tons of epinephrine into the system! It's amazing I didn't kill anyone.

But I had found the smoking gun: it was the gut bacteria!
We then tried eradicating Helicobacter Pylori, which did improve the symptoms a lot, but didn't quite resolve the problem.

I kept insisting on traditional paleo for another year or so, but it just wouldn't work right. I eventually gave it up, and just settled for avoiding refined sugars and living with the pain. My wife knew she couldn't speak to me after meals, but my small daughter couldn't understand my temporary bad temper. It wasn't fair on them, and I couldn't take antibiotics all the time. I had never heard of prebiotics or probiotics by then, and my holistic doctor was against dairy, so that was it. I just soldiered on.

One thing that kept me sane was regular exercise. It has loads of beneficial effects on me. I enrolled on a Jujitsu class and stuck with it. It does wonders to my good temper and my energy levels. But the shakes were still there, just waiting under the skin for a square of chocolate or a slice of bread to blow up. I needed to get down to the bottom of it.

After 5 years of searching the web, I was pretty sick and tired of it all. But I gave it another shot, this time from scratch.
I found the excellent and now defunct "Canibais e Reis" blog, and learned about ancient tribes nutrition and saturated fat benefits. Then I ended up on Mark's Daily Apple.

I bought Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories" and then I saw how conventional wisdom was made of wishful thinking and commercial interests, instead of scientific endeavour. What a wake up call that was.

Wow!... I lost the extra 7 kg (15 pounds) of belly fat in a couple of weeks, and never felt better. It turns out I just needed more fat. A big chunk of it every day. I totally subscribed to Mark Sisson's way of life and even my wife wanted to jump on that wagon. We've been really happy with the changes that our bodies have gone through. I now have 2 small children and have the energy and patience to play with them.

I found several other useful blogs too: "Hyperlipid" and "Whole Health Source" are always a gas to read. And now that I found gnolls.org, there is an even better science-driven source of information to pick through! 🙂

The remaining obstacle is now getting doctors to understand what is going on. My blood lipids profile looks downright scary with an LDL=223, but with TG=79 and HDL=72 (and TG/HDL=1.1) I'm not worried at all (all large fluffy LDL here). I've been taking full blood works results to "mainstream" doctors I know, and although they can't see anything wrong in all the other markers (quite the opposite, I've never been or felt healthier or stronger), that LDL is the big black spot in the middle of the table that they just can't stop staring at. Good god, when will there be an update to the conventional wisdom's model??

Well, that's it. Sorry for the long comment.

May wakeup call was the time I was at the beach. I plopped down on the sand and a group of volunteers surrounded me and set to work trying to get me back in the water before my skin dried out. They kept saying things like "Someone splash some water on his blowhole, we can save this one!"

A slight exaggeration, but coming back from a trip with the family and then seeing my wife's pictures of me in my swimsuit. It made me go get on a scale! 239 pounds and I was having a hard time buttoning my size 40 jeans. I'm 5'10".

Today I weigh 188 pounds, I wear size 32 jeans and I'm physically capable of more at 44 than I have been at any other time in my life. Thank you Robb Wolf and CrossFit!

First, let me just say thank you so much for the time and effort you put into this fantastic blog. I've enjoyed reading for the last several months, though this is my first post.

My pain thermometer reached it's max about 3 days ago. I was coming out of a somewhat severe depression following the end of a relationship that was not healthy for me. I was sitting at a job that I hate, but have been too paralyzed to attempt to find a new one. I was miserable, and aside from that, unhealthy too. I had been aware of paleo and all of the benefits, but for one reason or another just couldn't commit. I had one excuse after another, (I do paleo except I still eat, X, Y, or Z.) Monday afternoon, I found out that my dad, who is a Type 2 diabetic with one below the knee amputation, and a recent bypass surgery, has some sort of infection in his other leg. It hit me really hard, because 1) I hate that the abuse his body has sustained over the years is probably permanent, and 2) because I realize that I was on the same path he was. I'm not diabetic and am actually pretty active (Crossfit) but I'm overweight by 30-40 pounds, and desperately need to get these extra pounds off for many, many reasons.

I'm 35 and realized that NOW is the time to change. To quote you: "We don’t get what we want: we get what we are just barely willing to tolerate." And that is when it hit me, for too long I was getting what I was just barely willing to tolerate in every facet of my life: my health, my relationship, my career. No longer.

Thank you so much; your writing helped to give me the shove that I needed. And thanks to everyone who shared their stories. I'm looking forward to this journey.

My wake up call was when I came down with rheumatoid arthritis at age 38.

What 38 year old has arthritis???

And the other thing...I was fed up trying to sh*t a giant brick every 2 weeks.

My wake-up call was passing 200 lbs at 5'11" and 21 years old (my max was 210 in 2009). It took me a while to find paleo, but it's been the only thing that worked. I didn't really realize how fat and out of shape I was until I lost most of the extra weight (I'm still working on the last few % bodyfat to really consider myself lean) and started moving and lifting more. Right now I'm at a comfortable 180, but still with some definite room to improve my body composition. The biggest difference is that now I KNOW I can--and will--get there, and I'm actually not doomed to being fat my entire life just because my mom is and "it's genetic". That's a pretty powerful weapon in my arsenal.