Ketosis and 7 gaunt cows

leading to a whole bunch of fat people living more or less contentedly below sea level.

No you didn't just woke up in Sunday School, but there's this wonderful multicolored coat to riches story in the Old Testament about young Joseph, favored son of Israel, uhh... at the time Israel isn't a country yet but just one nomadic Middle Eastern guy with more than a handful of sons who resent/envy the hell out of pesky bro Joseph basking in said fatherly favor so things between brothers come to a boiling point. I'm guessing it's roughly 1700 Before Christian Era, and Joseph gets kinda shoved down a well, found by slavers and is tragically lost from his family's sight, as one of countless slaves worked to death by Egypt's Pharaohs. These things happen. But then the Bible tells us of Egypt's young ruler, Pharaoh having a troubling dream.

When Pharaoh heard of a young Hebrew slave blessed with the gift of divining dreams he summoned Joseph who with help of Jewish deity YHVH revealed that 7 fat cows predicted years of plenty, while the seven "ugly and gaunt" cows who "ate up" their fattened sisters represented a subsequent period of seven famine years. Happily the wise young slave offered up the solution: hoard massive amounts of grain and "foods" (presumably meat and other sweet or salted preserves) during the seven plentiful years, then help the people of Egypt survive using these supply stores as the seven year famine struck.

The Pharaoh thought me likey, appointed Joseph Vice Pharaoh or let's say...... made Joe his VP (has a familiar ring to it, doesn't it.....), and put him in charge of the entire grand plan to save Egypt from starvation. Nice.

It's not only a story about God. It's also ancient Jewish memory of how the people and nations of the Middle East alternately thrived, entering their respective version of 'promised lands overflowing with milk and honey' suggestive of Earth supporting life and agriculture by the optimum combination of rivers, rain, sunlight, healthy herd animals including cows, goats, sheep as well as donkeys and horses plus camel. Plenty of crops and juicy grass to go with that too. God blessed.

Then famine hit, sun got a little hotter, rains never came and people began to die of thirst and starvation. Rinse and repeat and faster than a camel in ketosis could cross a desert the survivors could fill entire holy books with their terrible and wonderful experiences. And they did.

Now over the past 100 years medical science has delved into a form of metabolism, the way our bodies burn energy, called Ketosis otherwise popularly known as 'keto'. Ketosis, simply is when we run our bodies on stored fat. The ability was designed into our genome by at least 350,000 years of intermittent famines, selecting those family lines who can switch to Ketosis when a biggo volcano erupted (killing off game and cattle, poisoning crops and water), comets violently impacted Earth's surface or mega tsunamis scoured cultures whole.

Regardless of what you or I believe, the Bible is a book that reminds us we were not born yesterday. We've been around the block: our bodies are ultimate survival machines BECAUSE WE HAVE BEEN SURVIVING IN A HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT for 100,000s of yrs Before Present.

Keto is one such awesome trace of the innumerable famines Mankind lived through.

MILK AND HONEY

My country, The Netherlands is where the Dutch have found their land of milk and honey, similarly to many western affluent nations including the US. I live in a land of plenty. Our modern diet relies heavily on carbohydrates which leads to high insulin states. Insulin is a hormone that helps with glucose utilization. But by nature, it’s a storage hormone that signals the body to store incoming glucose as glycogen, or fat, for utilization in times of energy deprivation. This turns off the body’s ability to release fat from cells (aka burn fat), relying solely on glucose for energy production. This is considered a loss of “metabolic flexibility” and can be experienced by blood sugar instability, insulin resistance, weight loss resistance, the inability of going 4 to 6 or more hours without food, becoming “hangry”, needing to eat before bed, or waking in the night to eat. (Click here for source info.) This sounds bad, and it is bad. But it's also a fun lifestyle while it lasts. Going from the supermarket to your kitchen, microwave or stove, enjoying some snacks on the go during work hours, then goin out on the town for your fav restaurant, at times having a last drink or two in the middle of the night. We can eat and drink, keep crunchin'n munchin on a sugary high for 24/7!

which appear suddenly when humans starve.

THE GAUNT, THE FAT AND THE WIGGLY

Because I was born in 1960 Netherlands I have no personal experience with famines, starvation or their slower semi controlled version: subsistence. Remember panicking once skipping one meal to make it to a really important job interview. Up into my early thirties I ate three goodly big meals a day. I do not truly know hunger. Yet the three types of cow listed in my belief represent one of the greatest secrets about human health we will ever discover. Let's go. For me, just having happily and hunger free lost 48 pounds on a low carb diet plan under doctor's orders, the first and most interesting dream cow is the GAUNT. It's a metabolic mechanism that has been kicking in for 100,000s of years whenever food and fresh water became scarce, even temporarily absent to mankind's tribes. When our ancestors starved, their bodies switched from running on rich and enjoyable carbohydrate foods (in one of many prehistoric cultures of plenty) to burning their own stored body fat as fuel. This mechanism is called Ketosis. Unfortunately those who were unable to make the switch to Ketosis starved and were culled from human evolution. Running your body off fat actually is a fascinating phenomenon, not to get into too much detail; on the cellular level the type of cells that take charge as we begin to starve are Mitochondria (click here), unique specialized cells in charge of converting our food into energy, kinda like the battery pack included, and you and I got it at birth from our momma, who inherited all her Mitochondria from hers and so on, going all the way back to the Mother of All Living, 'mitochondrial Eve'. Whoever she was, however she was truly named, we all along with our mitochondria, came from her. Now in the simplest summary, when there's no food, no carbohydrates, no sugar, we begin to starve and our bodies switch to Ketosis=burning own fat. In Ketosis an alternative 'fuel' is produced, so called Ketones, which keep the body running on our fat reserves while additionally signalling the Mitochondria to go into a do or die mode. Survival of the Species stuff. Appropriately alarmed the Mitochondria then engage in some amazing acrobatics by 'uncoupling', that is: creating a lot more versions of themselves who then work together to generate both a huge burst of heat energy as well as every last ounce of endurance, presumably to send off a last hunting/foraging party to somehow find meat, edible plants and possibly a new source for water. They must now track, kill, deliver the necessary means of sustenance to their tribe. Or they fail and die along with all their loved ones anxiously awaiting their return. Poof gone from human evolution.

Obviously Ketosis was not designed just to help us more hefty cows turn into Gwyneth Paltrow. Prehistoric Man could not survive famines, periods of subsistence when food became relatively scarce, not even a few days between meals (hunting megabeasts who preferred to hold on to their deliciously fatty meat could take a bit longer than hopping to the mall for entrecote) unless they managed to switch to Ketosis at the drop of a dime.

Fat cows may hold an awesome secret too. They stand for life forms, including ourselves, living in times of plenty, partaking perhaps a little too much of the overflowing milk and honey and gaining increasingly unhealthy weight with age. Almost every day I come across dangerously obese seniors and adults, a few worryingly plump kids, as well as tragically swollen dogs leashed to dogpersons literally loving their pets to death. For an individual FAT cow, caught in the endless cycle of carb/sugar cravings to highs, living in the promised land where you may eat your fill all the time equals death by obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancer and/or diabetes type II. Just wait for it. Unless you find out about the Ketogenic Diet, thank God, luck or the universe, and decide to break the cycle and switch into a healthy GAUNT mode while still alive.

But from an evolutionary point of view, you and I, as individual organisms, including our well being and ultimate death, are not all that important. And the mechanism of fattening, of storing extra fat in organs like the liver, in muscle tissue, building up visceral fat, even if it makes a fattened animal or human being bloat and sick and ultimately dead, is beneficial to species survival. In times of plenty many of us get fat aka store up energy. Then if famine strikes nature selects for those who can switch to Ketosis, who then burn off their fat until they hunt, fight and migrate their way back to subsistence or a new 'promised land', a time and place for a tribe or people to be secure and thrive. Similar to Ketosis being a trace of untold famines we survived, our capacity for fattening, for turning into FAT cows reveals a secret of human evolution too: we may not be the first modern humans who emerged from caves into the savanna, going from hunting to agriculture, nomadic existence to cities and civilizations, from stone tools to launching vehicles into space coupled with a level of technology allowing us to create the seemingly limitless human world we experience today. WE WERE HERE BEFORE. I wonder if Zachary Sitchin got it exactly right, and during prehistory many human civilizations rose and fell, often to natural disaster, including violent climate change with famine in its wake, so Mankind adapted by selecting for bloodlines that could switch from fattening on a carbohydrate rich life style to surviving the apocalypse where there was almost nothing at all.

To end, the final lesson from Ketosis' discovery (which actually happened back in the 1920s when doctors found that the Ketogenic Diet reduced seizures in severely epileptic children!) is the third cow frolicking into our fertile imagination, I call her Missus WIGGLY, who carries that precious mitochondrial DNA tracing back to Eve, the first modern human mom, that allows about half of mankind (similar to other earth animals) to SWITCH from burning sugar to using fat as our body's fuel BACK AND FORTH. Dr. Steven Gundry's research suggests that at optimum functionality our bodies could switch from running on sugar to fat to sugar etc. within days or... a day!!

Metabolic Flexibility means you have the capacity to live well, enjoy all the abundance, many carbohydrate rich foods included, yet with an understanding you will live healthier and longer if you choose to strategically apply your knowledge of Keto. In fairness, scientifically informed moderation with carbs makes sense for milk and meat cows, lab rats, smiling dogs and cats, people who want to live longer and happier, whatever unique mammal your good self happens to be. Yet the WIGGLY ones, witn DNA programmed for fast sugar-keto-sugar switching have best chance to survive when the world as we know it were to abruptly end (again). Be warned: it will be no fun.

Opting for the Ketogenic Diet to lose unhealthy pounds right now however turns out to be a HELLUVA LOT OF FUN! Guided by the likes of Keto gurus like Doctor of Chiropractic Eric Berg or Cardiac Surgeon Steven Gundry you may enjoy life more, very possibly have a little more of it. Certainly has worked for me so far. This here happy little cow (or kitten, these animal metaphors get so confusing ) is feeling decades younger.... Word...

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