Wow... it all makes sense!

So for those of us who are avoiding wheat, it sounds like wheat may not be the problem but instead the HFCS contained in basically all wheat products. If that were the case, I could just bake my own bread using xylitol instead of sugar.

Look what wikipedia has to say about it:

A recent report suggests that consumption of xylitol may help control oral infections of Candida yeast; in contrast, galactose, glucose and sucrose may increase proliferation.[17]

Amazing. It even ties in candida. I love it.

interesting info in here.... Im gonna have to give taurine a go

I eat a lot of apples daily too, guess thats gonna have to change while i experiment

I have the exact same problem. The key is to make sure your calories don't go down. I do have to make sure I put effort into eating enough every day. Rice and potatoes I have no problem eating because they are pure starch which is converted to glucose and not fructose, and xylitol is a great natural sweetener in place of cane sugar. I'm thinking of trying dextrose and using that in place of sugar instead, because it's cheaper than xylitol. It's pure glucose. You want to make sure you don't avoid all carbohydrates because if you do you'll go into ketosis which is really bad for your system. Just avoid fructose, not all carbohydrates, or you'll be exhausted, mentally fogged, and putting your body through physical stress. Fiber helps prevent you from getting a glucose/insulin spike.

Taurine can be purchased in pretty much any natural health food store, usually in the amino acid section. It's pretty inexpensive, I got a bottle of 60 1000mg caps from Jarrow Formulas for $13. That's a two month supply for me, so it's really inexpensive.

Xylitol can't be used for baking bread for the same reason that it kills a candida infection. Xylitol isn't sugar, but bacteria and yeast think it is. So they basically die of starvation/indigestion.
You can, however, use dextrose which is pure glucose for baking bread with no problem. I suggest adding fiber to the bread recipe to prevent a glucose spike.

I found this. This is an article about taurine derivatives being used topically to treat acne. Not exactly the same as taking it internally, but maybe there is some sort of connection.

Arch Immunol Ther Exp (Warsz). ;54 (1):61-8 16642259
Susceptibility of Propionibacterium acnes and Staphylococcus epidermidis to killing by MPO-halide system products. Implication for taurine bromamine as a new candidate for topical therapy in treating acne vulgaris.
[My paper] Janusz Marcinkiewicz , Rafał Biedroń , Anna Białecka , Andrzej Kasprowicz , Monika Mak , Marta Targosz
Introduction: Taurine chloramine (TauCl) and taurine bromamine (TauBr) are the main haloamines produced by activated neutrophils. TauCl exerts both anti-inflammatory and microbicidal activities. Clinical studies showed that TauCl may be useful as an antimicrobial agent in the local treatment of infections. Much less is known about TauBr. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Propionibacterium acnes (PA) has a role in the inflammation of acne. Available topical therapies include antimicrobial agents which reduce total PA numbers and anti-inflammatory agents which suppress activity of the cells present in acne inflammatory lesions. In this study the bactericidal activities of TauBr and TauCl against PA and Staphylococcus epidermidis (SE), as a control strain, were investigated. Moreover, the influence of these haloamines on the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) by activated neutrophils was also tested.Materials and Methods: TauBr and TauCl were prepared by reaction of taurine with HOBr and HOCl, respectively. The reaction was monitored by UV absorption spectra. The bactericidal activities of TauBr and TauCl were determined by the pourplate method. The generation of ROS by neutrophils was determined by luminol chemiluminescence assay.Results: In our experimental set-up, TauBr showed stronger antibacterial activity than TauCl. Interestingly, PA was significantly more susceptible to TauBr than SE was. Moreover, TauBr at non-cytotoxic concentrations significantly reduced ROS generation by neutrophils.Conclusions: Since PA is considered to be an etiological agent in acne and ROS are closely correlated with the pathogenesis of inflammatory skin diseases, the reported data suggest that TauBr may be a good candidate for the topical therapy for acne vulgaris.



My theory is as follows. You know how some people do very well on high protein diets for acne? Perhaps people are able to synthesize or utilize dietary taurine much more efficiently than others. For those not so lucky, those who might have ancestors who adapted to eating high meat protein diets, they might require substantially more taurine in their diet to support a healthy immune system. This is only a theory, but could potentially be a missing link for those who have tried fish oil, multivitamins and cutting out grains and dairy, etc etc. Unless they are eating tons of meat, they could still be missing out on a key piece of nutrition. Anyway, gnc sells taurine for like 5 bucks, big deal.

I'm not sure of the fructose content of apples, but they are also high in starch which converts to glucose, which naturally helps balance the fructose. Apples are a whole food, and as such have a natural sugar balance. However, for the short term in order to allow the liver to recover, I suggest eliminating as many sources of fructose as possible. Eventually, the liver should be cleared and return to normal functioning, and then normal sugar-balanced foods like apples and bananas can be eaten without a problem. Long term, fruit is a healthy thing to eat, eliminating it is only a temporary situation in order to allow a recovery from an unnatural state. I absolutely suggest staying away from fruit juice though because all the starch has been removed, so the fructose balance is way out of wack.

Taurine is anti-inflammatory too, that's awesome!

You bring up a great point. I think having a high animal protein ancestral diet would lead to a person having a higher demand for taurine. Kind of like cats, they will die without it because they are carnivores, that's why it's required to be added to all cat food now.

You would need an awful lot of fruit before you can tax your liver with fructose.
The liver can tolerate without problems up to 60 grams of fructose in a day.
Most fruits contain 3-4 grams of fructose per piece.
On the other hand soda contains up to 30 grams of fructose per can.
So fruit is pretty safe. Beside fructose helps the body handling sugars.
Whatever sugar consumed with fructose improve the sugar metabolism of the body.
Fruits were not rare in the paleolithic.
First of all botanists will tell you that modern fruits are not sweeter than ancient fruits that both warm climate and cold climate environment product lot of fruits but on the second place it is calculated that at leat 80% of ancient edible fruits available to our ancestors are extinct nowadays.

Check out Ray Mears wild foods. There is a paleo-botanist in that show. He says that the fruits our ancestors would have eaten was smaller and much less sweet compared to todays sugar laden varieties.

As far as I know this is a myth.
While certain fruits nowadays are selected to breed the sweetest varieties (and that's it) ancient fruits were pretty sweet anyway. The counterevidence to the myth is the plethora of wild fruit trees in the region of europe were paleolithic sites have been found. These trees has never been planted or selected or anything and the fruits they provide are often sweeter than the modern varieties. I have seen wild apples trees and the fruits were of average size and very juicy and sweet. In provence there's a Wild Fruits Fair with all kind of wild fresh fruits, jams, compote, juices and what not. The variety is just amazing with hundreds of very unknown delicious fruits and there's as much soureness as sweetness. Of course if a fruit is sweeter you just need to eat less of eat so you get the same amount of sugar you'd get from a less sweet fruit. But still fruits are sweet, it's their nature to be so and even fresh wild berries are as sweet as honey (unlike the ones you find on supermarket) That being said whatever GI and nutritional tab would show that today fruits are not sugar laden, just normally sweet as always.

Sounds reasonable to me, i went from avoiding all grain, to just avoiding processed grain. Who actually eats much unprocessed grain? It'd be interesting to see how you get on.

I think milk still causes me a problem, but i put that down to the processing too. Unpasteurized cheese doesn't seem to affect me. But i don't really fancy raw milk - even though i love milk and miss my bowls of cereal

Whats funny is my diet is low carb (which works for me), not through choice but because of how difficult it is to get a decent amount of quality carbs that aren't too processed or contain stuff like this. I'm eating about 3400 calories a day just to maintain, and i'm trying to bulk up at the moment - nightmare! And i've just noticed that my favourite oat pancake ingredient "pure vanilla extract" contains inverted sugar syrup! Marvelous!

It is not a myth.

The apple comes from the crab apple. A tiny tiny sour apple full of tannins. The so called wild apples have been contaminated with genes from modern varieties.

Sure there are natural sweet fruits but most of what we see in the stores today are hybrids bred to increase sugar content. The size and abundance of fruits in the produce section is nothing natural. Maybe in some tropical areas it is possible to find large amounts of sweet fruit
Where I live there is only some berries during summer, and you waste more energy picking them (if you pick them by hand) than the carbohydrates they provide give, thats why they always say that if you get lost in the forest here never waste time picking berries.

found this

In inflammatory disease, plasma taurine becomes depleted, signifying a greater demand by the body in this state. Taurine prevents the tissue damage that may otherwise result from inflammation. The mechanism involves taurine monochloramine, a product formed through a series of reactions based in the leukocytes (white blood cells) which chlorinate the taurine molecule. In a dose-dependent manner, taurine monochloramine inhibits the production of substances that promote inflammation, such as nitric oxide, prostaglandin PGE2, and tumor necrosis factor. Thus, taurine itself counters the inflammatory response by reducing the expression of nitric oxide synthase and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), not unlike the role of the new COX-2 specific inhibitor drugs celecoxib and rofecoxib. Taurine monochloramine reduces the toxicity of free radical oxidants, serving to decrease the production of tissue-damaging inflammatory substances and regulate the function of neutrophils to promote their protective effect. Taurine also works cooperatively with the cysteine pool to lessen the depressive impact of tumor necrosis factor on cells of the lung.

The taurine derivative N-chlorotaurine is a weak oxidant produced by leukocytes in response to bacterial and fungal exposures. Recently, researchers have also found that it destroys pathogens incurred as a result of inflammatory reactions (62). This may become an important addition to the list of substances that are useful as antiviral agents.

The neutrophil-based anti-inflammatory effect of taurine is important in dermatological conditions. Psoriasis is essentially a skin disorder in which hyperproliferation occurs. Psoriasis of a chronic, plaque-type nature has been correlated to marked depression of neutrophil taurine levels (63). As odd as it may sound, bile acids, produced by the liver, are involved in the activity of keratinocytes, cells of the living epidermis which produce keratin in the process of differentiating into dead or fully keratinized cells. Researchers have demonstrated that the taurine conjugated bile acid TUDC exerts a growth suppressive effect on keratinocytes, and thus its presence may be of importance in skin conditions (64).



It is more likely that taurine might treat acne from more than one angle, like fish oil. After perusing a few science articles, it seems like alot of its antiimflammatory effects are the result of taurine metabolites, such as TUDC and others. So thats something to keep in mind.

Fruits may be/have always been smaller in cold climates or mountains and larger in tropical climates. It's a big planet with a variety of climates resulting in a variety of diets.

Also, in recent history we have been preferring more tart fruits since we now have access to tons of sweets in other forms. Tart apples were once considered only good for baking, but now are the most popular.

I don't think that's possible without conscious hybridization and no trees in a wild remote zone miles away from whatever orchard is going to be "contamined".

Besides they're probably talking about american fruits.
If you look at supermarket american fruits they're strangertly perfect and huge (look like wax fruits) but we have nothing like that in our small regions of europe and even our commercial varieties are nothing like the fruits american are used to.

Besides it's just not true that scandinavia, in spite of the cold climate, provides only berries.
There's a plethora of wild fruits everywhere even in very cold climate regions but what is most important is that during the last centuries we have lost hundreds of them.

Yeah...this is all just a theory. I'm doubtful that fruit fructose is taxing my liver, but anything is possible.

Also, please cite your sources for things like 60 grams of fructose taxes your liver and everything you wrote about paleo vs. modern fruits. I have no idea whether this is just your opinion or someone else's opinion you read or whether there is evidence to back this up.

I can find references for the fruits things, since it doesn't seem like a topic for a good research. I have a book on wild fruits but it's just not in english. I also considered the counterevidence of wild fruits who can't possible be contaminated by modern fruits who are very sweet and close to those region where paleosites have been found. The only other thing I/we can do is to post in a botanical forum and ask this very same question.

As for the fructose thing, it's one of those information I've stumbled upon often on physiology books. Can't find much online, but found this: Challenge the Expert - Fructose

Can't find more as I'm on a internet point.
By they way can anyone help me to find a very cheap used laptop?

Lili, how would you describe your acne? Were you very oily or dry. Whiteheads or cysts etc

OK, thanks. All the sources I've seen have stated that wild fruits were smaller, contained less sugar and more micronutrients. But I don't know where they're getting that information from. Although it does make sense logically, that ever since the advent of agriculture, we have been slowly breeding our fruits to be sweeter and larger. Even so-called "wild-fruits" could just be leftover from an old agricultural site and thus have been breeded as well.

I guess it might be an american thing.
I saw some pics of the fruits sold at the market in america and they were all big, bright and flaweless. The fruits I buy at the market here on the other hand are smaller, more "normal looking" and also have imperfections. They're sweet but not that much, I mean the right amount of sweetness (I'm disgusted by too sweet stuff) but I don't know if american fruits are sweeter.
I remember reading once that the american and canadian varieties of fruits all score higher in the GI compared to mediterranean and european varieties.