Dukan Diet

The brain is fed and oxygenated by capillaries that penetrate its grey matter, but the cells and proteins of the blood are kept separated from the brain by the cells and matrix of the vessel walls, the blood brain barrier (BBB). That barrier can be breached by inflammation that lowers the heparan sulfate composition and stretches the matrix.

The blood can be considered a large organ with liquid surrounding the cells of the tissue instead of extracellular matrix composed of proteins and polysaccharides. Organs are typically surrounded by a basement membrane made of laminin, entactin (nidogen), collagen and perlecan (a heparan sulfate proteoglycan). These components are secreted by the adjacent cells, and the proteins and polysaccharide (heparan sulfate) bind to each other in multiple ways and hold the tissue together. The cells lining blood vessels, endothelial cells, are connected to each other by tight junctions and the space between the cells is filled with the extracellular matrix of the endothelial cells, the equivalent of the basement membrane of the blood.

Inflammation leads to an alteration in the structure of blood vessels that produces the gross symptoms of inflammation: swelling, reddening, warmth and pain -- the blood vessels dilate or stretch. Persistent or chronic inflammation of vessels can lead to changes in the composition of basement membranes and one notable change is a decrease in the heparan sulfate proteoglycan.

In my own research on the molecular impact of inflammation, one of my students, April Reimers, induced inflammation in cultures of cartilage secreting cells, chondrocytes, using a glucan (similar to the glucan elicitor that I used thirty years earlier to stimulate disease resistance in plants.) She used real time reverse transcriptase PCR to follow the expression of the genes involved. The inflammation transcription factor, NFkB, was turned on (as judged by a compensating induction of its inhibitor IkB) and proteins and enzymes involved in the expression of heparan sulfate proteoglycans were shut down. Our interpretation was that inflammation reduces some heparan sulfate proteoglycans. Since there are at least a dozen different HSPGs with different patterns of expression, we would expect there to be some exceptions from the general suppression caused by inflammation.

Inflammation caused by many different diseases opens up capillaries to provide access of the immune system to damaged tissue. Breakdown of the integrity of an endothelial barrier with an inflammatory decrease in HSPG in kidneys is observed as proteinuria (loss of protein into the urine) due to high blood sugar of diabetes. Breakdown of the capillaries also disrupts blood flow to extremities and is responsible for amputations in diabetics with poor control of blood sugar. Inflammation of intestinal blood vessels and HSPG reduction occurs in protein lossing enteropathy (loss of blood protein into the lumen of the intestines) as a result of heart reconstruction to repair congenital structural defects. The same thing happens to the BBB when vessels of the brain experience inflammation.

Breaching of the BBB is an essential initiating event in many diseases of the brain. Subsequent flareups of symptoms may signal repeat compromise of the barrier between the blood and the brain. The reduction of the barrier, including a decrease in HSPG, permits transit of antibodies, other proteins, e.g. the beta amyloid peptides of Alzheimer’s disease, and lymphocytes from the blood into the brain. The region of the brain that is inflamed and the nature of the interaction between the blood components and the brain determine the symptoms. Examples would be the autoimmune attack on the myelin sheath of nerves in multiple sclerosis and the aggregation of fibers of beta amyloid peptides with heparan sulfate on the surface of neurons in Alzheimer’s disease.

Shutting the blood brain barrier would seem to be the first step in disease treatment, but in some cases, the BBB must remain breached for medication to reach the brain -- the BBB is also a barrier to drugs. If the BBB is to be repaired, then inflammation must be stopped. In most cases, this is accomplished by anti-inflammatory drugs. In some cases, such as protein lossing enteropathy, heparin therapy can reverse symptoms. A very effective supplement to reduce chronic or in some cases acute inflammation is an anti-inflammatory diet. The components of these diets are discussed elsewhere on this blog. These diets have been used effectively in the treatment of MS, Alzheimer’s and many other degenerative and autoimmune diseases.

Kalyn's favorite Phase One Recipes for June 2013 were Spicy Chopped Greek-Style Salad, Grilled Halibut with Basil Vinaigrette, Grilled Chicken with Lemon, Capers, and Oregano, and Vietnamese Cabbage Salad.

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It's salad season, and my favorite Phase One Recipes for May 2013 were Leafy Green Salad with Roasted Chickpeas, Leftover Chicken Asian Chopped Salad, Barely Blanched Broccoli and Cauliflower Salad, and Pinto Bean Salad with Avocado, Tomatoes, Red Onion, and Cilantro.

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Kalyn's favorite Phase One Recipes from March 2014 were Pressure Cooker Mexican Beans with Avocado-Poblano Salsa, Cauliflower with Garlic and Lemon, Cheesy Baked Cauliflower Tots, Ground Turkey Low-Carb Enchilada Casserole with Red and Green Chiles, and Sriracha Beef Cabbage Bowl.

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Phase One Recipes from Kalyn's Kitchen or other blogs during November 2012!

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Ever wondered, why you hit a plateau, "although" youve started to use this whey protein w/ extra aminos?

I have to admit this is not a new paper and though I have not written about it explicitly, some of you will probably have seen me cite it in previous posts. With some recent rambling about how great BCAAs were and that whey alone could never achieve what its overpriced, but revenue generating parts could do, I just felt inclined to dig into the archives of the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research to bring back up one of those excellent randomized controlled, double-blinded long-term resistance training + supplementation studies, you wont find in the supplement write-ups very often, cause they would make most of the "great innovations" look pathetic.
In the case of the paper Chad D. Kersick et al. published in the March Edition of the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research in 2006. The latter, i.e. the looking pathetic applies to the combination and addition of "extra-anabolic" amino acids in form of BCAAs and glutamine to a simple whey protein supplement.

Table 1: Overview of the resistance training progamm (Kersick. 2006)

And when I am talking about "looking pathetic" I do not refer to the packaging or the powder itself; no, not even to the strength gains, which were more or less identical in all of the 36 resistance-trained males men (mean age 31, 84kg, 17% body fat) who followed the 4-day training protocol you see in Table 1 for 12(!) weeks.

That was a pretty long time, and as you can see in Figure 1, it was long enough to produce significant results. Significant results that tell you that the only addition you want to make to your cheap whey protein is some (not so cheap) micellar casein to achieve what I outlined in Mai 2012 and on countless other occasions, a stable hyper-aminoacidemia (= elevated levels of amino acids in the blood) for several hours (learn more)

As you should be able to see even without scrutinizing the bars in Figure 1, the latter lead to significant increases in lean mass in an already resistant trained group of subjects.

Figure 1: Changes in total body mass, lean mass and fat mass

The addition of 3g of BCAAs and 5g of glutamine, on the other hand, "made" the whey protein as "anabolic" *lol* as the 48g of plain sugar the CHO control group was guzzling their shakes within 2h (ideally immediately after) their workouts.

"Thats not true, cause Ive had great success with bullocks advanced proteins!"

Now, I obviously know already that there are certain people who dont like to hear facts like this. These people who are actually oftentimes only unwilling to admit that they have been screwed who will now probably be freakin out about "what if"s like "What if the casein made them hungry, so that they ate much more" ... I hear ya, folks, but how would that explain that the fat mass of the whey + casein (WC) group increased by 100g, while the guys on the "advanced" formula gained 200 albeit statistically non-sigificant grams?

Table 2: Energy & macro-nutrient intake in the whey + casein (WC), whey + BCAA + glutamin (WBG) and the carbohydrate control (P) group (Kersick. 2006).

Furthermore, the data in Table 2 clearly indicates that the only significant difference in terms of the total energy intake and the macronutrient content of the diets was the intended difference in protein content between the WC & WBG group and the P, i.e. the carbohydrate control group.
References: 

• Bilsborough, Shane, and Neil Mann. "A review of issues of dietary protein intake in humans." International Journal of Sport Nutrition & Exercise Metabolism 16.2 (2006).
• Dangin, Martial, et al. "The digestion rate of protein is an independent regulating factor of postprandial protein retention." American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology And Metabolism 280.2 (2001): E340-E348.
• Kerksick, Chad M., et al. "The effects of protein and amino acid supplementation on performance and training adaptations during ten weeks of resistance training." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 20.3 (2006): 643-653.