Some Personal Observations

You may get bored of reading my personal rants, but let me post a few personal observations.

I used to have trouble getting out of bed. Now, I get out of bed easily, and have a big appetite. Maybe it's because the weather is getting cooler here, so I'm functioning better. I don't know.

I tend to have kidney pain if I ate too much salt with my meals. But eating more potatoes and vegetables curbs my kidney pain. Is it the potassium that lets my kidneys to function better? I don't know.

I noticed that at exactly two and a half hours after dinner, I suddenly have the urge to urinate. I do urinate more after dinner, but the rate of urination suddenly increases at exactly two and a half hours later. Is it caused by hypoglycemia two and a half hours after dinner? I don't know. But what I do know is that hypoglycemia increases cortisol. And high cortisol causes sodium retention and potassium excretion. Is cortisol causing me to excrete too much potassium at that time? Does that explain my increased urination? I don't know.

After two and a half hours of dinner, I get really thirsty. Drinking more water doesn't help, because I realized that I would just urinate it all out. So drinking more water at that time will be detrimental, and possibly dangerous because of water poisoning. In fact, that was EXACTLY the same thing that I did before I went to the emergency room for water poisoning. Enough said.

At those times, I have tried to eat a salty meal along with water, but that doesn't help. It caused my kidney pain, several times. In fact, I was shocked to found out that I suddenly urinated out all my water, and my urine had a tinge of redness. That happened two days ago.

Will orange juice help? Never tried it at that time. I will try to buy orange juice and see. Coconut water is another possibility.

I would like to thank Hans at Beyond Paleo for mentioning a study that a potassium deficiency will induce urination. Orange juice has potassium, so I will experiment with that.

It would be REALLY interesting if I can get a blood glucose meter. I would like to see if it's really insulin resistance.

Finally, I found grass-fed beef in China! Then I realized that many of the cows in China are fed grass rather than corn, because corn isn't subsidized in China as in the United States.

In China, pork is the predominant type of meat. Pork is so popular here that "meat" and "pork" are almost synonyms. If you say "meat", then the they will immediately think you want pork. So it's harder to find beef here in China. In many places which sell pork, no one would sell beef.

People are so fearful of fats that they cut out all of the fat, and throw them out. But that's good news, because I probably can get fatty beef for free!

I can speak Chinese, but I can't read it well. So it will be difficult for me to travel and buy the things that I want.

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Ruining My Kidneys

Yesterday, and the day before yesterday, I think I ate a lot of salt, because I craved it and felt bad. But once I ate some fruits and vegetables, my salt craving was gone. This does NOT mean that I should restrict my salt intake. I don't want to experience what I had done in the past.

Another thing is that I ate salty meals before I go to bed. That helps me from getting up and urinating at night. So it reduces my urination to some extent.

But in the back of my mind, I always had an idea that something is wrong with this. If I ate a salty meal before bed, then my back near the kidneys hurt. I would also see a tint of redness in my urine. This is unlike the dark yellow color of urine when I'm dehydrated. So a salty meal before bedtime may be damaging my kidneys.

Therefore, I will try to eat a little less salt. But this will cause me to urinate more at night. It's a catch-22.

The only safe solution is to restrict my starch intake, so I wouldn't urinate too much.

Ever since I moved to China, I was "coerced" to up my starch intake. This isn't because I don't have the money—I have the money. This is because I can't find any fat in the farmers' market or in the grocery store. Maybe I hadn't looked enough.

Maybe because I have social anxiety, and I just don't want to search for more places to buy fatty foods. (I have mild social anxiety. But this isn't an excuse for me not to go out and ask strangers to buy stuff. I know I should interact with strangers more, so I can expose myself and get used to it. But I don't know how to start. My whole family doesn't want me to go outside without their guidance because they're worried that I will get lost or can't find my way. (Or maybe I'm rationalizing! Am I using my controlling grandparents as an excuse not to interact with strangers??? After all, they don't have absolute "control" over me. Not as much as my mom.))

I can shop online, but, sadly, I don't have a bank account. I can tell my mom to buy stuff, but I must get her permission.

On average, I eat about 400 grams of carbohydrates daily. This was more than what I ate before I had moved to China.

I will now try to replace some of my carbohydrate intake with fat. I'm trying to reduce my carbohydrate intake to 200-250 grams initially, and up it as I heal.

Yes, I found that my kidneys don't hurt if I ate a fatty meal.

It's proven that fatty acids are stored in fat tissue. But the half-life of PUFAs is two years. So I must be careful, as a priority, during this healing process so I will not damage anything while doing it.

I know my writing sounds like it's written by a third-grader (no offense to third-graders), but my style of writing depends on my mood. When I don't feel well, I don't write well. Enough said.

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Butter/Ghee vs Coconut Oil vs Tallow (Rambling)

Butter/Ghee is more nutritious than coconut oil. They contain fat-soluble vitamins, conjugated linoleic acid, gamma linolenic acid, dihomo-gamma linolenic acid, arachiadonic acid, DHA and EPA. But coconut oil contains only its precursors - linoleic and alpha-linolenic acid. So coconut oil is less nutritious in terms of fat-soluble vitamins and fatty acids.

Despite this, coconut oil has an advantage in terms of the antiviral, antimicrobial, and antifungal properties of its lauric acid content. In addition, its short and medium-chain triglycerides helps speed up the metabolism by the means of competitive inhibition of the polyunsaturated free fatty acids.

When it comes to total PUFA content, they make little difference. Butter/Ghee is 4% PUFA, while coconut oil is 2% PUFA. Since the PUFAs are spatially separated, they can't do much in terms of oxidizability (Ray Peat hypothesized this in his coconut oil article).

Grass-fed tallow has a nutritional profile similar to butter. It also has a similar fatty acid profile to butter - about 67% saturated, and 30% monounsaturated.

One misconception is that the cholesterol in butter and tallow will be oxidized during cooking. However, it's untrue because the more stable saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids will protect the cholesterol from being oxidized. So enjoy your butter/ghee and tallow!

One concern is that butter and tallow has a monounsaturated content of 30%, which is higher than coconut oil - which only 6% are MUFAs. MUFAs are less stable than saturated fats, so they will cause more oxidative stress. But I don't know how stable monounsaturated fatty acids are, so I can't give your any opinion.

But the big picture is that coconut oil, tallow, and butter are excellent cooking oils that comparing them makes so little difference when compared to the toxic polyunsaturated oils (which I'm currently consuming "in average quantities").

Butter (grass-fed) is the most expensive, at $6 per pound. Coconut oil is the second most expensive, at $2-3 per pound. But tallow is the cheapest by far - I heard that you can even get it for free in some places where the demand for animal fat is low.

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Saturated Fats are Good (Warning: Low Quality Post)

It's pretty much common sense that we can synthesize saturated fats from starch. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have adequate intake of saturated fat from the foods we eat.

We need saturated fats to properly absorb fat-soluble vitamins. For instance, it's important to eat foods high in beta carotene with a saturated fat. Saturated fat is required for your body to convert the beta carotene into vitamin A.

Saturated fats are essential for the absorption of essential fatty aids. Consumption of foods high in essential fatty acids should be paired with a saturated fat. For example, there are fish-eating cultures in which people eat their fish with a saturated fat source such as coconut oil or lard. In this way, the essential fatty acids will be properly utilized as saturated fats protect against the peroxidation of essential fatty acids within our body.

In addition, saturated fats help protect against the peroxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids. So saturated fats are the ideal for cooking, as they don't oxidize at high temperatures, as olive oil will do.

Saturated fats can also protect your liver against toxins such as alcohol and polyunsaturated fatty acids. They do this by pretecting the peroxidation of PUFAs within your body. In the liver, saturated fats help to reduce liver disease by protecting against their peroxidation. In fact, it's important to eat a saturated fat when you drink alcohol to reduce liver damage.

Besides reducing your oxidative stress, saturated fats can also protect you against chemical toxins, such as industrial pollutants and heavy metals. They help reduce the absorption of those toxins within your digestive tract.

The short- and medium-chain fatty acids have mitochondria-stimulating functions. They can speed up your metabolism.

The lauric acid found in coconut oil have antimicrobial and antifungal properties which can boost the immune system.

Those are some reasons why saturated fat consumption is needed, despite that we can synthesize saturated fat from starch. So you should consume at least some saturated fat if you are eating a very-low fat diet. The saturated fat in you coconut oil or tallow that you use to cook your food with is enough. So my comment may be a waste of time for those who are on a very-low fat diet already using coconut oil or lard for cooking.

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