Supplements and activity designed to improve circulation - an experiment.

Ok so first thing that occurs is that is a lot of protein you are hoping to keep in solution when you have whey, almond protein and inulin all wanting to grab the water (from the almond milk). The almond protein has an isoelectric point of between 4.5 and 5.5 so a little higher than whey.

Almond milk is alkaline (around 6) so,it is possible that the amino acids are reducing the ph past the isoelectric point of the almond pulling the almond protein out and some of the whey as well. I would first look at the total amount of protein you are working with though since this seems quite high and may be at the point where only slight variations in mixing will make it come out sometimes and not at other times.

What I think might be going on is that there is a problem mixing the almond protein with inulin and whey. They will all be competing for the water in the almond milk. The inulin will be competing for the water and this is what is probably pulling the almond out. It also wants to interact with the whey protein, so they effectively bully the almond protein out of suspension as they form a network. I know this has worked on other occasions but the additional tweak of ph may have tipped what was a precarious balance to start with.

I would try dropping the whey to 20g and mixing it into the almond milk first and then the inulin. Then if this works you can play with levels from there. Or you could remove the inulin completely and eat a carrot or two instead?

I would always recommend heat shocked predenatured whey (like you find in most isolates or powders) since it’s more stable in solution than native. Native is a bugger since it is unpredictable and splits much more easily (I have a horror story from a well known soup, company that learnt this to their cost). The whey is going to get denatured as soon as it hits your stomach so there is no need to buy un-denatured and it might help. Once you’ve used up what you have of course.

Hope that helps?

 

It could take a while to use up the whey - I have about 6kg left - at 60g a day that's a while.

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If inulin turns out to be the problem that's easy to solve, it mixes well with tea or coffee, or as far as I know, virtually anything.

I should know by Saturday morning what the issues are, what's causing the milk to curdle.

 

Good luck ...be interested to see what happens (I realise that makes me seem a little odd)

 

Apparently there is a name for the type of dietary changes I am making.

Given I'm simply hacking together 3 other things I've previously tried or read about, to try and compensate ofr their, and my, known weaknesses, the idea that someone is making what looks like a ell of a lot fo money fro m simply repackaging them is surprising.

It's called the bulletproof diet, and at it's foundation it's paleo, it has all of paleo's hangups about legumes, grass fed stuff, and grains. On top fof that, 6 days a week they've layered keto, a loose keto but still keto, with the 7th day of the week being a refeeding day using any acceptable paleo foods.

And then, they add intermittent fasting into the mix, thus allowing 2 food meals a day, within 6-8 hours, leaving 16-18 hours 'fasting'.

Apart from the silly legumes thing, and the total ban on grains of any sort, and not being able to buy, or afford meat that's been grass fed, some of the time I follow paleo-ish. I've used refeeding as a way of keeping my body from adapting to dietary change and stalling before, and I routinely, when not totally mucked up by insomnia, have an eating window of under 6 hours a day - I've been doing this for so long I can polish off upto 5000 kcal in that 6 hours (it's rare but it has happened). IF tends to only work coz people are asleep through half of it, if they are awake then hunger can go nuts, which is what happens to me when I can't sleep more than 3-4 hours a night.

There's books, various ghee's, coffees and who knows what else on amazon for it

As far as I can see the coffee (used for breakfast mixed with ghee or heavy cream and MCT oil), taken instead of breakfast, is the only thing that differentiates it from the others, and it's hardly a unique idea to just have coffee for breakfast.

Guy must be making a fortune.

 

I have a theory that we will see more of this sort of thing.

Special diets are a thing of fashion. Fashion can recycle old trends but it tends to want to add twists to them rather than direct copies of past Fashion.

Hence the need to do the mix and match thing. There does of course need to be a good dose of pseudoscience to give them credibility. Unfamiliar ingredients with funny sounding names that they can pass off as having special properties is a must, particularly with all those changeable millennials to please. If the ingredient is expensive and only available on the internet ...all the better.

They seem to now carry manipulating marketing themes that are being glued together as well e.g.

Avoidance - eating this at all will make you sick
Endorsing - eat this and you will be healthier because it’s a magic ingredient ..science says so
Moralistic - we are ruining the environment/treating animals badly so don’t eat this eat this instead
Heritage - we should eat more of what our ancestors ate because the modern world is bad
Paranoid - who knows what others are doing to our food ...only eat what you prepare to be sure ..here are some rules /things you can trust

I’m not sure it’s sustainable though...the speed at which these things are being churned out has already surpassed the ridiculous.

Even Jamie Oliver can’t keep up.

 

That's unexpected.

It seems there may be at least 2 things going on with the almond milk curdling.

I just made up almond milk, whey, inulin, arginine, MCT oil and added about 1g of citrulline malate. The MCT oil was added after the other bits had been mixed, just in case pouring it directly onto powder was causing the clumping.

The result was lumpy, rocks of pulp in the bottom, but it tasted fine, no curdled taste.

So it looks like the acetyl carnitine is what's giving it the off milk taste, and the citrulline is what's giving it the lumps.

But I will try it tonight with acetyl carnitine and no citrulline and see what happens, I am expecting it to be curdled but with no lumps, and tomorrow morning with everything apart from the MCT oil, expecting it to be both curdled and lumpy, just for completeness.

 

Due to being stuffed with chocolate avocado mousse yesterday i didn't make a shake last night.

Hmm....adding acetyl l carnitine, instead of citrulline malate, results in a different taste but not curdled and a very small number of harder lumps. That may have been not shaking it enough TBH, as I didn't think it would be drinkable I didn't bother with it much.

It also didn't have any MCT oil in as I'd already had that today.

So this evenings one is everything apart from MCT oil - to rule that out.

I'll get there

 

Well this is puzzling.

I added the acetyl l carnitine, leaving out the citrulline, and it tasted okay, so I added the citrulline and mixed it again, and it's still okay.

A few little lumps in the bottom but the taste was okay, it hadn't curdled.

Now the first thing that I know 'you' will think is maybe the almond milk was turning, by a small amount, and this only became noticeable when the additives were added, that they accelerated something that had already started.

One problem with that, this is the same carton of almond milk as yesterday, and the day before, and even the day before that - I only use a little under 250ml a go, I missed a shake last night, and I've just finished that carton.

1 liter is 4 shakes, 2 today, one yesterday, and one the day before.

Same carton as was curdling.

So I have no idea what's going on, but I will probably shift the citrulline to a squash drink, just to avoid the lumps forming in the whey shake.

 

Did you try reducing the amount of whey @Wonko ?

It definitely sounds like competition for water rather than anything else.

Here is some geeky science regarding the interaction of whey and inulin in case it’s of interest
http://www.old.acta-agrophysica.org/en/semi_year_book.html?stan=detail&paper=748&i=6&vol=8&numer=2

There is quite a bit more, but this seems a bit overkill.

I should say that I worked in a biopolymers lab for nearly 6 years and specialised in polysaccharide gel networks so I do find this interesting . Although I only briefly worked with inulin I did a lot of work with polysaccharide/protein complexes and it does sound like competition for water may be a contender. If reducing the whey doesn’t cut it you can exclude the inulin (which is your worse ‘thug’ in the mix) and take it from there?

 

You may be right about the inulin, or I have a bad batch if that's possible.

I just made a drink using squash, 5g inulin, 2g citrulline malate and obout 500ml of cold water.

I can see lumps in the bottom of it.

A larger quantity of lumps than seems possible from 2g of citrulline.

So inulin, hot drinks only from now on.

I didn't have any of these problems when I used inulin last time, but then inulin was about 3 times the price of what I paid for this. A response to it being on the BBC at that time, now everyone's forgotten about that so hence the price drop, or so I thought.

What's puzzling is if it is the inulin then why do the lumps taste like nut pulp when it's made from chicory, or is that just my brain deciding that it was most likely the almonds separating and so ascribing that taste to the lumps.

Of course the whole curdling thing is still a mystery

 

Sorry I might not be explaining my “theory” very well.

The lumps will be almond protein. But it’s the inulin that’s caused them to fall out.

This is based on the inulin being a long chain polysaccharide and having a higher affinity for the water than the almond protein. As the inulin goes into “solution” it takes the water away from the almond protein. The whey is probably also contributing by associating with the inulin (hitching a ride). As these two form a network they effectively squeeze out the almond protein. This will probably look more like grainy sediment than a curdy clump (if I’m right).

So it’s not about one ingredient causing the lumps it’s about three in combination. The almond protein is the one that lost the battle over the water.
You can probably manipulate the outcome by adjusting the ratio and quantities of the whey and inulin used I suspect. You obviously can’t adjust the quantity of the almond protein because it’s ready made in the ‘milk’ (almond protein in water).

Of course it’s just a theory..difficult to tell without seeing it/having a play.

The most common source of inulin is chicory (because it’s the cheapest) but it’s also found in artichokes and asparagus in reasonable quantities I think.

As to quality variation , I’m not sure, but i would imagine different extraction processes give a different yield? It’s possible there is a variance? It’s also possible that mixing cold may need a higher shear mixing?

incidentally, there is no real proof yet that inulin does anything significant over other forms of fibre in terms of the so called pre-biotic effect. It’s mainly used for its thickening and sweetening properties in reduced sugar products. There is no claim other than ‘source of fibre’ permitted.

 

There is no almond milk, or whey, in this one, just squash concentrate, water, citrulline malate and inulin.

It still has a comparable number of lumps - I haven't got to the bottom of it yet so have yet to taste one.

ETA - the lumps taste of orange, given in almond milk they taste of nut pulp, and have roughly the same consistency (difficult to be sure as they are getting squashed when I hook them out of the bottom of the cup).

Definitely not chemically or anything like what citrulline tastes like.

So inulin, and inulin it seems takes on whatever the nearest flavour is.

It may not be necessary as fibre given my diet is likely to involve quite a lot, of veg, over the next few weeks.

ETAA - it dissolves, and is lump free, in tea. I am going to unreasonably extrapolate from that that it will do so in any hot drink I am likely to use it in. Last time I used it it was only in hot drinks, as far as I remember.

 

It’s possible you have discovered new ways of making the same lump or perhaps have created a new type of lump

 

The reduced carb dietary approach is working better than expected, than previous experience would have suggested.

Not in terms of weight loss, I may have lost 0.2lb in the last week, but in terms of blood glucose levels.

I checked this morning and had a level of 5.6, which is the lowest I've seen it when not going hypo due to meds.

I haven't had any diabetes meds for a couple of days and subject to the levels remaining roughly the same I won't.

I also no longer need the blood pressure meds as that's been stable for a while, below where I have been told to keep it.

I'm nowhere near a keto diet yet, yesterday I had around 100g of carbs, all in one meal, and will have the same again tonight (finishing stuff off).

I'm aiming to get down to 50g or less by the end of the week but no rush, I've still got a lot of stuff to use up, I'm just not buying any more stuff that's carb 'heavy' for a while so it should happen naturally.

Hopefully.

Other than the not sleeping thing, which was happening anyway, and sometimes feeling a bit weird, nothing much as side effects, but then I'm not low enough yet.

On the downside a fair bit of fresh veg will have to be refused in a bit, sainsburys have informed me they are delivering normal mushrooms instead of shitake ones. These were intended to make a miso soup, white mushrooms aren't the same thing, and I already have white mushrooms, and not being able to make the soup immediately means that all of the other fresh veg that was supposed to in it will spoil, if I wait for them to get the mushrooms I ordered, that they said were available, in.

So, another 2 weeks before I can try miso soup

The cocoa avocado mousse remains a hit, although I prefer my version to the recipe (basically using coconut solid with avocado milk instead of coconut milk, sweetened with about a teaspoon of xylitol granules instead of stevia liquid), very handy, a couple of teaspoons of it stops me being hungry.

Today I Have a slightly bigger french press turning up (800ml), yesterday I had a 1000ml one turn up but it was pitted , scuffed, and had significant amounts of grey machining grease on it, and it's too big, so that's going back, probably along with the 500ml one, which is just a bit too small. It claims to be 500ml but the maximum amount of coffee that can be made in it is just over 300ml, the 800ml one can apparently make around 600ml of coffee so that should be better.

 

This morning I got some puzzling results on testing.

A test strip suggested my glucose levels were raised, not much but not normal.

But my blood glucose monitor says my level was 5.3 - under the value required to be considered normal for a non diabetic (5.5 or 5.6 depending on who you ask)

Either way something is working.

My blood pressure is now 114/73 - after decades of it being too high and NHS meds not really having any effect it seems arginine does.

One unexpected effect is increasing vascularisation, I've never been able to see raised veins before, even when I was young, when I was thin, or when I was strength training, but I can now, and I'm not (young or training).

I'm getting smaller, and my body fat percentage seems to be dropping, but my weight remains stubbornly at around 15 stone 8.

ETA - so much for the idea of getting anything done, my legs don't work worth a damn. I just put out the recycling, not coz there was a lot of it, just to assess my condition today. I fell into the wall, sideways, only 2 steps down the stairs. Even on a level I'm in trouble.

I suspect, and hope, that this is simply weakness caused because I haven't transitioned into ketosis yet, although that sort of thing is precisely what the MCT oil is supposed to prevent.

So nothing but miso soup and rest today.

 

when I was in ketosis I went very weak and wobbly. I put up with it for 8 weeks and when I went back to carbs it resolved itself. I still control carbs though since too much the other way gives me the runs (sorry tmi).

 

I ain't no scientist, but I know from experience that the brain runs on glucose. And the brain's in charge of everything, so I need a certain carb level to feel okay (or whatever passes for that these days.)

Diabetic diet (carbs limited) is good. Still, hard to not OD on carbs: popcorn, chips, French bread, potatoes, etc.

 

The brain can run on ketones as well. I accept that some/many people do better with glucose as their main brain food - but ketones shouldn't be dismissed as irrelevant.

 

Either I've broken my metabolism or one of the diabetes drugs I am on is not as specific as they've told me.

I've been managing keto ish (below 40g carbs a day) for 3 days now so thought I'd check my ketone levels.

My ketone levels are around 2.0, maybe a little more, somewhere in between 1.5 and 3 anyway.

However the test strips also measure glucose, and those are off the scale, darker than the darkest block on the measuring 'chart'.

Which would imply that my blood glucose levels are sky high, but they aren't, my blood glucose meter says they are 5.3mmol - perfectly fine for a non diabetic, let alone a diabetic who has had 4 meals so far today, the last one being only an hour ago, the most carb heavy of the day - 12g.

So....blood glucose levels fine, but I am literally pissing out glucose, and I am in mild ketosis, at the same time.

One of the diabetes meds acts by lowering the amount of glucose which is reabsorbed into the blood, after the kidneys have filtered it out, but my blood doesn't have that much glucose in it, so where is it coming from?

Doesn't matter much, it's just a puzzle

As I say, broken lol

 

@Wonko

I'm not knowledgeable on the subject of diabetes testing, but would people normally expect the glucose level in urine to be similar to the glucose level in blood? And if they are markedly different, what is that telling you?