Allgemein

I have recently seen an increased push towards carnivore dieting from some of our group members. I wanted to take the time to clarify my position and also address some of the misconceptions and oversights in this approach, which is very similar to what I did a couple of years ago when the keto-only (no carb days) approach was becoming more popular here.
We are repeatedly seeing this play out: “If some is good, more must be better”. If keto most of the time is good, why not do it all the time? If animal fat and animal protein are good, why eat anything else? 🧐
So I want to take the time and go through what we actually need as PKD patients 🩺 and help you to separate “fad” from fact.

The primary mechanism that helps to reduce PKD kidney size and increase kidney function is fat adaptation. We are simply steering the body away from its primary fuel, which usually is glucose. The metabolism of glucose without oxygen is necessary in PKD to grow cysts. By using another fuel that can only be metabolized with oxygen, we are preferentially feeding healthy cells. We are producing (and eating) less glucose, so there is less fuel for cysts to grow. 💪

Now the first misconception is that absolute ketone levels are an indicator of how well this process is working. This is only correct in the beginning phase (about 3 to 6 months) as the body is not yet fully fat-adapted. It is not using ketones very efficiently, so the increased production can be seen in the blood pretty easily as blood ketones. As the body becomes more and more fat-adapted, mitochondria (the little power plants inside cells) get used not only to metabolizing ketones, which are produced from fat, but they become even more efficient, skipping the need for ketone production altogether by metabolizing fats, or fatty acids, directly for energy. This is true fat adaptation and leads to the same desired outcome, which is decreasing the availability of fuel for cyst growth (glucose) by selectively feeding only cells that are using oxygen for their metabolism.

You can actually “force” your body to produce more ketones by overwhelming your ability to directly metabolize fatty acids. You can easily see this at home once you consume about twice as much fat as combined protein and carbs in any given day (2:1 ratio of fat-to-[protein plus carbs], measured in grams). Focusing on these higher levels of ketones does not confer any additional benefits, as can be seen by the steady level of blood glucose when forcing these higher levels. We are just switching from fatty acid oxidation to ketones that way. I have personally never forced my blood ketones (steady around 0.5-1.2 usually) and I have arguably seen the best results of anyone in this group. (creatinine-eGFR up over 50 points, creatinine 0.66 (low end of the range begins at 0.66), cystatin-C-eGFR up over 60 points)

Now while a high fat-to-protein ratio might not be needed, it can even be detrimental if you are reducing your animal protein intake below optimal levels to reach it. Optimal animal protein intake is essential to our ability to repair and grow the glomeruli, which are the functional filtering units of the kidney. Especially physically active people need more protein than the minimum amount. Somewhere between 0.6g and 1.0g per pound of body weight is considered ideal depending on physical activity. 🏋️

The same can be said for the blanket recommendation to remove vegetables. The most popular reason to remove vegetables is a very individual one, mainly gastrointestinal issues. This is called an elimination diet. A very small group of people is definitely benefiting from this to resolve these issues, but just as much as non-PKD people might not need to be in ketosis much, removing vegetables for most people in our community is going to be detrimental. Most gastrointestinal issues are solved with the bulletproof diet as they usually stem from grains, processed foods, or nightshade vegetables. Non-starchy vegetables 🥬 do not influence blood glucose. If there is a glucose spike after a meal containing only nonstarchy veggies, protein, and fat, it is due to a sensitivity to a specific food and the ensuing cortisol spike raising blood glucose, not from carbohydrates. Foods triggering sensitivities should be removed from the diet and can likely be reintroduced after gut healing has taken place.

The bulletproof diet roadmap puts vegetables with high levels of anti-nutrients like phytates, lectins, oxalates, and phytoestrogens into the yellow and red categories. This is the main reason I recommend the bulletproof diet, as it is the first and only diet that takes all of these into account. Further removal of vegetables that are in the green zone is actually not decreasing the burden of anti-nutrients in any meaningful way. However, it is increasing levels of our own internally produced toxins, mainly endotoxin, in the blood. There are several reasons for this:

• Any high-fat meal increases the migration of endotoxin from the gut into the blood as these toxins use the fat as so-called “lipid rafts” to make it across the gut lining, which is already genetically impaired in the PKD mutation. High-fat meals without fiber lead to higher endotoxin levels in the blood after a meal when compared to meals including fiber.
• Some gut bacteria actually start to feed on the gut lining in the absence of regular fiber consumption 🌱 which we would get from vegetable intake. A prominent example that Dr. William Davis recently mentioned on my podcast is Akkermansia muciniphila (“mucus-loving”). If you have this very beneficial bacteria in your gut, and it is well-fed, it even strengthens the gut lining and produces beneficial short-chain fatty acids. It is correlated with good overall health and glucose control in population studies. A lack of this bacteria is correlated with neurodegenerative and metabolic disease, as well as inflammatory conditions. It became available in probiotic form recently. Now if you do have it, but you don’t feed it enough, these bacteria will turn against the gut lining and weaken it by feeding on its mucus, making it more leaky. This in turn will of course increase the amount of endotoxin in the blood even more. 🤒

Of course, endotoxin is probably one of the main triggers of PKD pathology and one of the main reasons the body produces cysts in the first place: to store away excess endotoxin. This makes it blatantly obvious that we should focus on reducing endotoxin in the blood. Elevated levels of endotoxin are routinely found in PKD patients’ urine, blood, and cyst fluid, among other toxins.

In addition, vegetables are our main dietary source of alkalizing nutrients. Most PKD patients actually have a pH that is way too low, which leads to sluggish activity of enzymes and repair processes. Optimizing pH as well as optimizing body temperature are integral parts to being able to heal optimally. Sometimes a low pH is what is keeping somebody who has been seeing good ketone levels for long periods of time from being able to increase their kidney function and seeing results. As many of you already know, you can measure your body pH by measuring your second morning urine, meaning you get up in the morning, pee, drink a big glass of water and nothing else, no medication, no food, no coffee, etc. and then you pee again after that has run through. That way you can measure what your body does to a neutral substance like water and we can see if it still has to get rid of excess acidity. The target range for second morning urine pH is 6.5 – 7.0.

I pioneered this way back in 2016 upon founding this group and there is good reason that it has caught on in other groups as well. Using a digital meter from an aquarium supplier is best, especially with a spherical electrode.

On a carnivore diet, there are no alkalizing foods – the only option is supplementation with citrate or bicarbonate. Of course, many people are still not even aware of this issue.

There will always be new dietary fads and ideas that need to be scrutinized and evaluated. The question should always be: what is this new change going to improve or add to the equation? The bulletproof diet has stood the test of time as many of the more extreme dietary movements have gradually evolved back to a similar diet design.

It still seems to be the most sensible type of moderation as we are not removing any macronutrient completely but we are choosing the most optimal type and timing for each of them and we know exactly why we’re doing it. 🤓

Anyone proposing changes to this is welcome to the discussion but will need to make clear what exactly is being improved.

In light of this, I am also announcing some changes to the group rules:

• attribution: this should go without saying, but of course, anyone publishing derivatives of my work without proper attribution will be removed.
• Terminology: content claiming any diet is a “treatment” or “cure” for PKD will also be asked to remove these statements. There is a reason I never use these terms. So please use proper language when discussing diet.

We all want to continue seeing progress. New ideas, founded in personal experimentation and science. A free, fair, and open forum for all people and free from dogma. The contents I and many of you have published on this group have shaped the discussion of PKD worldwide in a major way and will continue to do so.

For anyone needing a reminder of the details of the diet that I recommend, I have linked the featured section containing all basic information, as well as my more advanced book, which of course contains everything mentioned in this post and much more, below.

Heal well. ❤️
Felix

Additional reading:
Featured section with more details on the Bulletproof Diet and the PKDproof program: https://www.facebook.com/groups/reversingpkd/announcements
Reversing PKD Book: https://reversingpkd.com/booklinks
Fiber lowers blood endotoxin after meals: https://diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/article/67/Supplement_1/776-P/59642/Effect-of-Fiber-Intake-on-Glycemia-Insulin
My “More Keto Is Not Better” article: https://www.facebook.com/groups/610558479091161/permalink/1554865504660449/
Lipid Rafts: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32390462/

Since I am seeing this story again and again in my PKD coaching clients, I guess its time to explain why vegan diets are a dead end for managing PKD, and can even cost you vital time to actually improve your function.

 Many PKD patients go vegan for various reasons. While the intention is a good one, inadvertently this usually leads to a significant decrease in protein intake- which in turn leads to muscle loss over time, which is bad news for longevity. Lab tests will then show reduced creatinine levels, as less muscle requires less filtration. This is then often times misinterpreted as improved kidney function. It’s crucial to understand that creatinine levels are directly proportional to muscle mass, and lower values only reflect real improvement in kidney function when muscle mass is constant or increasing. After this initial decrease in creatinine, patients continue on the same slope of increasing levels, leading to the “lightning bolt” pattern on their creatinine and eGFR test graphs.

 Additionally, the vegan diet requires including high-carb or processed foods to meet protein needs at all. This is what makes vegan whole-foods keto literally impossible. The only options in this case are processed vegan proteins that are filled with pesticides and lectins, phytates and phytoestrogens, poisoning the kidney further and accelerating decline. To add to this, protein bioavailability is about half compared to animal proteins, so protein needs are actually much higher when vegan proteins are consumed, making them an even worse choice when total protein intake is an issue.

 Insufficient protein intake can not only lead to muscle loss, but also diminished functioning of the remaining healthy glomeruli, leading to further reduction in kidney filtering capacity.

 Self-Monitoring Tip for Vegans with PKD: To really understand the impact of a vegan diet on your kidney health, consider a GFR test based on cystatin-C, not just creatinine, before and after adopting the vegan diet. Cystatin-C is a better indicator in this context and can provide a clearer picture of your actual kidney function. Needless to say, you should still calculate optimal protein intake levels and supplement if needed.

 A healthier alternative is the Bulletproof Diet that we recommend in this community, which focuses on adequate protein intake. For those with high BUN levels, replacing some protein with essential amino acids can help lower nitrogen. The bulletproof diet and our focus on C8 MCT oil also promotes high ketone levels, which is the main focus for reducing cyst growth. Adequate protein intake encourages hypertrophy (growth) in the remaining glomeruli (a main component of nephrons), potentially leading to a genuine improvement in kidney function, which then is kept for a longer time or even continues to improve, resulting more in an “L” or “V” pattern on creatinine, cystatin C and resulting eGFR tests.

You can dive deeper into the issue by checking out this article investigating a low-protein diet:
https://www.kidney-international.org/article/S0085-2538(15)33696-6/fulltext

Quote:
“Muscle mass and plasma creatinine fell simultaneously in several patients. (remember, muscle mass index is a strong predictor of longevity) […]
Fall in plasma creatinine may not be due to improved GFR but instead to altered creatinine metabolism.”

An image from the study is also included below, showing reciprocal (inverse) creatinine levels, so higher is better. It is clearly seen that the illustration is mirrored here. At the onset of the low-protein diet, creatinine is lowered (so raised in the inverse graph), but continuing on the same slope on average.

Use this calculator to interpret your thyroid test results using the functional range and spot potential issues in production and/or conversion of thyroid hormone. The Thyroid produces FT4, the “4” meaning it has 4 molecules of iodine attached to it. It then gets sent through the bloodstream and gets converted, or activated at the site of the organs that need it, by stripping it of one of its iodine molecules, making it FT3. Please note that this calculator is not intended for use in thyroid hormone replacement therapy.

An optimal result would be FT3 and FT4 both in the 45-55% range. If FT4 percentage is lower than FT3 percentage, this can point towards an issue with production of thyroid hormone. Possible causes include low intake of iodine and selenium. A lower percentage of FT3 could mean FT4 is not sufficiently converted to FT3. Consider getting a reverse-T3 blood test in this case.

We can send your results to your e-mail inbox for easy referencing,
just enter your e-mail address below:

This website has its roots in a facebook group I founded way back in 2016 as my personal refuge – I founded it because it was the only place where I could tell people about the amazing results I was seeing with the bulletproof diet and my PKD. Back in 2015 I was getting thrown out of all of the major social media groups for telling people there was something they could do about their polycystic kidney disease besides standard polycystic kidney disease treatment with tolvaptan and blood pressure medication. Since then the group has transformed into one of the largest groups on Facebook and it is growing by the day. Scientists have finally started looking at a ketogenic diet for polycystic kidney disease seriously, and others have jumped on the bandwagon and are shouting it from the rooftops – keto works. But it is not just keto that is important.

There are caveats to any style of eating, and strict keto can be an issue for many people. This is why we are looking beyond keto, towards bulletproof, with its much more specific approach including intermittent fasting, meat quality and carb refeeds, as well as avoiding not just oxalates but also lectins and phytates. All of this is important to keep reversing PKD as we need to keep hormones and pH in balance while removing as many toxins as we possibly can. At the same time we need to keep the kidney stocked up with essential amino acids from high-quality proteins, so function doesn’t deteriorate and the kidney actually has the raw materials to rebuild. Many of these aspects are still widely unknown and I will keep bringing them forward to help everyone improve – and reverse their PKD.

But this post is more than a reminder of what Reversing PKD is about, it is also one to celebrate the successes that we have seen over the years. I have compiled a sort of best-of of our members posting about their own improvements.

If you have PKD, you are reading this and aren’t doing a clean ketogenic diet with intermittent fasting and carb-refeeds, avoiding antinutrients wherever possible and minding your pH levels- Use this as inspiration to get on the bandwagon, if you have not already. 😉

A very short statistical analysis of the 21 reports about GFR on my facebook group has resulted in an average reported GFR increase of almost 17 points over an average of 354 days, so roughly a year. Keep in mind that many of those reports are short term and could well have gone up further over time if people stay with the program. Also, not all members are adhering to all the recommendations, so these results might even be an underrepresentation of what is possible.

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Ingredients:

• 1 whole egg, pasture raised organic
• 150ml MCT Oil/Avocado Oil (You can substitute up to 50ml Olive oil to save money, more makes it too bitter)
• 1 tsp mustard
• 1 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar
• 1-2 pinches of salt
  
  This, my friends, is a game changer! Are you tired of not being able to get good quality mayo? Always reading about sunflower and canola oil in the ingredients lists, but have no patience to make your own?
  
  Well, fear not! This recipe is for you. Delicious, simple mayo made in one minute or less! Yeah, thats right. Oh, and, its made from MCT oil, so your ketones will get a hefty bump, too.
  
  INSTRUCTIONS
  
  Add everything to a tall cup, use a stick blender to first blend everything fully at the bottom, then sloooowly pull up on the blender until everything has that gorgeous creamy mayo consistency.
  Makes about 200ml give or take.
  Enjoy with sweet potato fries, brussels sprouts, boiled eggs, grassfed beef sausage,…

Yesterday I had the pleasure of making some more of my fabled Curcumin capsules. Details below. You can check out the recipe video I made a while ago here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvPpC6J3La8 (This recipe is 15x cheaper than NovaSOL.) Since the topic of Curcumin supplementation has gained so much traction here, I wanted to quickly talk about it again here.

We know, that in conjunction with Ginkgo B., Curcumin has potent effects on cyst growth so naturally it would be a great supplement to choose. The only problem is reaching adequate blood levels, which is tricky since it is a large molecule that doesnt easily penetrate the gut barrier.We can help it get through with several methods. A crude method is using Piperine, also Bioperine or Black Pepper, which basically opens up the gut lining and gives the user temporary “leaky gut”, letting curcumin through in small amounts, but also letting other nasty stuff penetrate into our blood stream like toxins, endotoxins, food particles and bacteria, which can worsen infections or even theoretically increase cyst growth since endotoxin seem to play a big role in triggering cyst growth.There are newer and more sophisticated methods of making curcumin bioavailable using chemicals that bind to it on one side and can bind to water on the other, making it water-soluble. That is key for optimal absorption of curcumin.We also need it to be “enteric coated”, which means it is encapsulated by HPMC, which will only dissolve in the gut, preventing disintegration in the stomach.

The two products i used to recommend the most were CurcuWin and NovaSol Based Curcumin formulations since both have a very high bioavailability. However, my most recent research has uncovered that NovaSOL’s Polysorbate-80 and CurcuWin’s PVP (Polyvinylpyrrolidone) are questionable compounds. Polysorbate-80 opens the tight junctions just as black pepper does, or even worse- and Polyvinylpyrrolidone is a synthetic polymer that has some research showing carcinogenicity in rodents. Hence, I am now recommending you use Theracurmin or Longvida, which have slightly lower bioavailability than these products, but they do so without highly questionable ingredients. Theracurmin works by using a nano-sized curcumin, while Longvida uses a Lipid encapsulation. Longvida has better studies for brain effects, while Theracurmin seems better suited for whole-body applications. Blood levels also seem to rise more with dosage than for Longvida. Now, you could buy and use these products, no problem. But if you want more curcumin for your money, I have discovered an awesome recipe that gives an unbelievable value, unmatched solubility and, to top it all off, no weird chemicals as well as 5.3x higher potency than NovaSOL even.

I call it “Black Sludge”. It’s a recipe by Brad Culkin, who is a multiple patent-holding chemist and developed it for his own use- and for his family.It is a little more involved to make but you can get so much more out of it than by buying the standard products, financially but also dose-wise and even from a chemicals standpoint.

Ingredients are:

– Curcuminoids 95% or higher
https://amzn.to/2ZnJdfu
– Sodium Carbonate (not bicarbonate)
https://amzn.to/3rX0fNG
– 99% Vegetable Glycerol
https://amzn.to/2Zp42ad
Germany:
– Glycerin
https://amzn.to/3u76Uqm
– Curcumin 95%
https://amzn.to/3jWdJXc
– Sodium Carbonate
http://ebay.us/7yUzA2
– HPMC Coated Capsules
http://ebay.us/JAgQZj

Thats it!
Much cleaner than the other formulations. No Pepper, No Polysorbate-80 or PVP, no weird stuff.160mg of Water-soluble and thereby maximally bioavailable curcumin in one capsule! You can actually see the difference between Black Sludge and NovaSOL in this picture. The darker it is, the more curcumin is dissolved in the mixture.
Our Product is so dark its practically black. But if you dip it in water, you can see that it is a beautiful, transparent, deep red.
No weaksauce You can check out the recipe video I made a while ago here:

PS: You can use an FFP2 mask instead of the respirators we use here. Makes things a lot easier. Also, remember to wear glasses to protect mucous membranes in the eyes.The steam can irritate so if you notice anything, please stop, ventilate and reassess.

The supplement list can be found here.

Or: Why you should switch your default search engine NOW.

This page is all about finding unconventional health information, and for that it is vital that we get access to every bit of info thats out there, not just what is regarded mainstream. In 2019, Google signed a contract with mutliple governments to “limit the spread of misinformation” and since that day, the tech giant has begun censoring health information. Facebook signed that same contract so, when I tried to link the following article there, it had made the previous version of this post “disappear” right after posting it.

https://www.youtubecensorship.com/2019-09-19-google-is-the-anti-health-search-engine.html

So I am writing this post, for the second time. How ironic.

The biggest alternative health site, in 2019 after signing of the contract logged an over 90%-drop in traffic from google, and now is down to zero. Search results that were once top-ten are now nowhere to be found on the engine. I have been using the alternative search engine duckduckgo.com for some time now and it has been a good experience. Whenever I need something that it is not showing me, I can still resort to google, which is totally fine.

But you should never again rely on google if you want to find out the truth about something regarding health, which has become all the more important in the past year, or politics even.
The tech giants are controlling your information sources, and thereby your opinions. This is not okay. And we need to stop it in our own homes first. Here is a quick tutorial how to change the default search engine on your devices.

https://www.wikihow.com/Change-Your-Browser’s-Default-Search-Engine

or: How I stopped gaining weight on carb days

A couple of months ago I went to a Lindt chocolate factory outlet and couldn‘t resist buying a couple of really high quality bars that did however contain an appreciable amount of sugar. I found two of those bars lying around my house recently and decided that it was time to indulge on one of my carb days.
I‘ve been known to gain quite a lot of weight whenever consuming even smaller amounts of sugary carbohydrate. So I bit the bullet and ate almost a whole bar of chocolate and yes, the next day I saw the expected weight gain of about 1.5 pounds. Jeez!

I decided to eat the other bar the next day so that I would not be tempted again in the future and my weight loss will not be further impaired. On this day I also tried a couple new supplements. I ate the rest of the bar from the day before plus a whole new bar and went to bed fearing the scale for the next day.
In the morning to my total surprise I had not gained any weight. I was totally flabbergasted and immediately tried to find out what caused this change. After a little bit of thinking I remembered that I had taken some kind of chromium which I read about in the context of improving blood sugar levels and I was curious if that might‘ve been the cause. So, in the name of science, I bought yet another chocolate bar and did another experiment. I opened it in the evening, popped a capsule and started eating it. To my total surprise, after about two thirds of the bar were gone I was satisfied and the thought of eating the rest of the bar was not very appealing to me. That was a striking difference as I normally always have to restrain myself to be able to leave part of the bar on the table.

The next day, I had actually lost a little weight. The experiment was a success!

Of course I‘m not the first person to discover these effects even though I‘m pretty shocked that I only find out about this now.

In the 1970s, researchers discovered that giving brewers yeast to diabetic mice produced resensitization to insulin and dramatic improvement of their diabetes. It was later discovered that a certain molecule in the Yeast that also contained chromium was responsible for the beneficial effects.

Since then there have been many efforts to isolate this molecule. Past efforts have resulted in the naming of something called GTF, which stands for glucose tolerance factor. Another attempt at naming the substance was Chromodulin or LMWCr, which stands for low-molecular-weight chromium-binding substance. However, the exact structure of the molecule still remained elusive up until 2016. Arakawa et al. Were finally able to isolate the molecule and describe its structure, which is comprised of Glutamic acid (4), Aspartic acid (1) and Glycine (2). This small peptide has the ability to bind to chromium very effectively and at multiple sites.

While the human body produces its own Chromodulin whenever the building blocks are present, especially the glycine contained within the molecule has become rare in human diets. Most notably bone broth or collagen supplements are good sources.
However, the necessary chromium to bind to it and make it active can be hard to come by these days. One out of four Americans over the age of 50 essentially have no detectable chromium in their body, the same goes for basically all patients dying of atherosclerosis. Let me say that again, so it really sinks in. Essentiall all Atherosclerotic deaths are related to chromium deficiency. This was even tested in rats. No chromium equals plaques. Chromium supplementation equals no plaques.

Our societal chromium deficiency can be either the result of insufficient intake or a high rate of urinary excretion. So what does Chromodulin actually do and why do we lose it?

Whenever we eat carbohydrate or otherwise want to utilize glucose in our cells, we need insulin. And insulin, without the help of Chromodulin is heavily impaired in its function. When Chromodulin  is present, it potentiates Insulins effects- and gets used up and excreted in the process.
More Carbs = more Chromodulin usage.
Once it gets used up it is excreted and Insulin stops working efficiently – so I gain weight.
When enough Chromodulin is present, Insulin works efficiently. This is the reason why diabetic rats saw such a profound effect.

For PKD this means we can use Chromodulin to our advantage and appreciably lower our blood sugar on ketogenic and especially on carb days. This could have a double effect on your carb days since you can utilize them better for their actual intended functions such as HPA axis and hormone rebalancing- and lower cyst promoting blood glucose in the process. Since your cells can now utilize carbs correctly, you will feel more satisfied – which will drastically reduce carbohydrate cravings. But that‘s not all, Chromodulin has actually been shown to lower triglycerides, LDL and circulating fatty acids showing that it helps cells to metabolize all fuel, not just glucose. This is great news for increasing overall health. Lower triglycerides will move us away from inflammation and that is something that we can all benefit from.

So, first and foremost we should make sure to consume adequate amounts of glycine in the form of collagen or bone broth and also make sure our chromium requirements are met. There is no RDA in place for chromium but statistically speaking an average daily intake is somewhere between 50 and 200 µg. Bulletproof High chromium foods include Oysters, egg yolk, liver, kidney and nuts. Some vegetables also have an appreciable chromium content.

Now, looking at this chart I personally should not be needing chromium supplementation since I‘m exceeding the upper end of the range for standard intake on most days. However, production of peptides such as Chromodulin can be dependent on many different factors and for some reason I seem to be benefiting from supplementing with yeast based chromium. I suspect this is because of preformed Chromodulin through the fermentation process but it is also possible that just the increased amount of chromium available to me is the reason for the effect. I for one will keep supplementing with yeast based chromium on many days, especially when I eat carbohydrates.
The ability to actually use them for energy and not immediately store them as fat is a very liberating concept. Who knows what other benefits this will have in the long term.

Now, chromium is excreted through the kidneys and if function is impaired this can be an issue. Chromium supplementation has been shown to be very beneficial for the kidneys in diabetic mice. However, there are three case reports of renal dysfunction secondary to chromium picolinate supplementation. Two of the three cases supplemented many times over the upper range. (They took between 600 and 2400mcg per day for months on end)
Keep in mind that this form of chromium does not contain the essential component which is the Chromodulin peptide. One of these cases was tested and had chromium blood levels three times over the upper limit which was consistent with his high intake.

So as always, proceed with caution, check for interactions with your medications and see what works best for you. If you want to try Chromodulin, it is not sold explicitly as a supplement but there are some brands that sells „Chromium GTF in a Yeast matrix“ and I believe this also contains Chromodulin since this molecule is produced in yeast fermentation.

This is the brand I use: https://iherb.co/qwmpcBuG

Alternative: https://amzn.to/2JMHUlB

Always check the back, it has to say its sourced from yeast.

Sources:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26898644/

https://www.intechopen.com/books/glucose-tolerance/glucose-tolerance-factor-insulin-mimetic-and-potentiating-agent-a-source-for-a-novel-anti-diabetic-m

https://www.pharmanord.com/news/chromium-yeast-and-insulin-and-type-2-diabetes

https://healthfully.com/155321-side-effects-of-gtf-chromium-supplements.html

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12126463/

https://www.olaloa.com/resources/articles-on-nutrition/342-chromium-deficiency-is-epidemic

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11376359/

http://www.vitalstoff-lexikon.de/Spurenelemente/Chrom/Funktionen.html

Did you know that the types of fat you choose to eat on a daily basis have a distinct impact on your metabolism- and thereby on PKD progression?

Our mitochondria are the power plants in our cells and they are responsible for keeping us running with energy. It is their metabolism that converts glucose or ketones into ATP, which is what our actual cells need to function. In PKD kidneys this metabolism is impaired, which is part of the reason for cyst growth.

In a 2020 study, Italian researchers examined in detail the mitochondria of a mouse model of PKD. What they noticed were several alterations “including reduced mitochondrial mass, altered structure and fragmentation”. Also, they found reduced expression of the proteins responsible for mitochondrial fusion, fusion being the process by which the fragmentation can be rescued.

So, this means, the power plants in our kidneys are broken into smaller pieces, and the pieces themselves also don’t quite look like they should, which in biology means they also don’t work as they should. In cell biology, structure equals function. So, one question the patient might ask is, how can we induce mitochondrial fusion? How do we get these disparate smaller mitochondria to bond together again and give us a more efficient and healthy metabolism? And more importantly, how can we do it safely with diet and without medication?

One Very Interesting Way to induce mitochondrial fusion is the consumption of stearic acid. What is stearic acid? It’s about 10% of butter, 25-30% of suet and up to 35% of cocoa butter. It’s also used in soap and candles. So, it is one of the main constituents of healthy dietary saturated fats. This gives us one more reason to choose carefully which fats we consume, since other, less healthy vegetable oils such as soybean oil for example have been connected with mitochondrial dysfunction.

So please, pay attention. Don’t assume your favorite restaurant will not be drowning your food in vegetable oils. Don’t assume your salad dressing will not contain canola oil, don’t assume your burger was not fried in soybean or sunflower oil. If you eat out, try to think, where could they have hidden those bad oils? Because they are out to make a buck and cheap vegetable oils for sure are one way to make a lot of profit- and to get you satiated very quickly for pennies. At the restaurant, ask to have your steak or burger fried in butter. Tell them you’ll have a seizure if you eat vegetable oil if necessary, so they don’t try to dupe you. Instead of mitochondrial destruction, you will be promoting mitochondrial fusion, and with that a healthier kidney.
It’s a simple change, but it makes a big difference.

It’s also not just about the stearic acid content of any given fat that you eat, but it’s also about the ratio of long chain saturated fats to unsaturated fats. Brad Marshall has compiled an awesome table for us to compare different fats:

You want a high ratio and also a high stearic acid content. So Tallow (represented here by wild elk) and cocoa butter start to look pretty appealing!

Brad has developed something else that is pretty interesting. In a 2012 dissertation he read about an experiment that was done on a group of mice, in which the mice were either fed standard chow, chow enriched with oleic acid and chow enriched with stearic Acid. The enriched diets contained about 40% of these fats. Interestingly, the stearic acid group gained the most muscle and was the leanest. Using this as a template, he developed what he calls the “croissant diet”.

Don’t get me wrong, this diet is in no way suitable for PKD since it is very high in carbohydrates and we have a specific problem here that does not react well to this. But in the process of developing this croissant-centered diet he came up with a product he calls stearic acid enhanced butter oil. You can find it in the table above as well. And you can make it at home. Using grass fed butter of course. If you have ever made your own ghee, you know what to do. It’s pretty simple. If you haven’t, here is a link for a simple recipe at the bottom of this post.

when you’re just about done with the recipe and everything is nice and hot, for every 8 ounces of grass-fed butter you would add 55 g of pure stearic acid to the pot and dissolve it with the rest. You can now use your stearic acid enhanced ghee for everything you would usually use ghee or butter for. If this is too much for you, you can also just throw about 5 g of stearic acid into your bulletproof coffee in the morning, provided you are using about 20 g of butter. (Aiming for that same 27% stearic acid content) Or sprinkle it into your pan when you’re cooking, and let it dissolve right in. If you’re curious where to buy purified stearic acid, it does exist on Amazon, however, buyer beware! Most sellers don’t list the purity of the product and is not unusual to be 60% or less. This is not a risk that we can take. So, for now it is best to buy it from reputable chemical suppliers that list the purity of the product. If it says 100%, its not true. Anything above 90% is acceptable if it is food grade.

One example would the product from the company carl roth. Link below.

it’s 98% pure and from a reputable company. There is no affiliation.

But, I hear you saying: Felix, I’m not starting to eat pellets from a chemical company on a regular basis! Really? Isn’t that pretty much what a supplement is?

If you’re still not convinced,  I hear you.

So what are some other steps we could be taking to increase our intake of stearic acid? We could be adding chunks of cocoa butter to our bulletproof coffee, which i am doing at this very moment. Roughly a 1:1 mixture of butter and cocoa butter will give you about 22% stearic acid which is not bad. We could buy suet, which is kidney fat, from grass fed cows and render it at home to use in cooking. Just put it into a bowl in the oven on a low temperature for a long time. This stuff has a whopping 25-30% Stearic acid content and can be had pretty cheaply if you are in good contact with the farmer. Do you think it might be a good idea to consume parts of a healthy kidney if you want a healthy kidney? ?

Other tallow from beef will still give you around 20% stearic acid.
We could also limit our intake of Linoleic acid, which displaces stearic acid in our fat cells and gives those fat cells the signal to grow. I havent found any research on this in connection to PKD, but any growing signals should be avoided wherever possible if you ask me, especially when its unhealthy growth like tumors, cysts – or fat cells. We dont want any of these to grow, do we? So check your cronometer the next time you make a meal and see how much linoleic vs stearic acid you just consumed. The less linoleic and the more stearic, the better. As a rough guideline you can look at beef tallow, which is under 3% linoleic acid and around 20% stearic acid, which gives a ratio of about 1:7 linoleic to stearic acid.

If you want to learn even more about stearic acid and its benefits, I can highly recommend this short podcast:

I for one am ordering a kilogram of the 98% stearic acid and will start to add this to my coffee and foods for the near future. I will also take some suet in my next grass fed beef order. I will be very interested to see if there are immediate weight loss effects or even long-term effects on energy or cyst growth. However, since I’m combining so many strategies it’s never possible to tell which one worked, but the most important thing is progress by whatever means necessary.

I hope I could motivate you today to try something new and keep reversing PKD.

Ghee Recipe:

Stearic Acid at Carlroth: https://www.carlroth.com/en/en/stearic-acid/p/9459.1

Sources:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32239723
https://fireinabottle.net/introducing-the-croissant-diet/

For everyone wanting to get into a good supplement regimen, here is my basic program, by popular demand. Please note that everybody is different, and needs and dosages may vary quite a bit for you.

BASIC HEALTH

FASTED

Magnesium *400mg morning, 400mg evening* https://amzn.to/3apevqG
Manganese *(chelated form) 8mg* https://amzn.to/31HHi5M
Molybdenum *(chelated) 150mcg* https://amzn.to/38ekKfv

WITH MEAL

Vitamin D – *1000IU per 25 pounds of body weight* Vitamin K2 MK7 *(all trans)* *at least 200mcg*
Combination: https://amzn.to/38b2HWX
Vitamin E *400 IU (mixed tocopherols or tocotrienols. No synthetic forms. Read label closely.)* https://amzn.to/2vg0U4N
Vitamin A *At least 10.000 IU from retinol (not retinyl palmitate, not beta carotene. Possibly higher dosage, very individual)* https://amzn.to/2OIKYyP
Vitamin B Complex -*Coenzymated forms.* https://amzn.to/2OEJrKk
Chromium – *200mcg* https://amzn.to/3YHAwuK
Iodine – *Around 1-3mg daily, from Lugol’s solution, always with selenium* *(1 drop a day or every other day, see how you feel, check thyroid levels- FT3, FT4, TSH)* https://amzn.to/38dSPfr
Selenium – *(L-Selenomethionine) 200mcg* https://amzn.to/38f0fPJ
Zinc & Copper – *15mg zinc + 1mg copper (15:1 ratio)* https://amzn.to/2SxfX1R Omega 3 – *At least 1000mg of combined DHA&EPA* *(can go much higher. Get Omega 6:3 Index tested in blood at least every year and adjust dosage to get 4:1 – 1:1 ratio)* https://amzn.to/38azM5M
Extra B12 & Folate *Methylcobalamin form for most people. Has to be taken with folate, not folic acid. 5-MTHF form.* *5000mcg Methylcobalamin with 800mcg 5-MTHF.* https://amzn.to/2ScqxfW https://amzn.to/379FXWl

PKD SPECIFIC
FASTED

Quercetin – *1000mg/day or more* https://amzn.to/379GQy9

WITH MEALS
Curcumin https://reversingpkd.com/curcumin/
Oxaloacetate 100mg or more, take with Vitamin C 1000mg https://amzn.to/2Tt8K57
Ubiquinol (version of CoQ10)- 50-150mg, with meals https://amzn.to/2SdCWQz
Prebiotic with Arabinogalactans Generic Inulin/Acacia Fiber plus generic Arabinogalactan https://amzn.to/2OIglcL
https://amzn.to/48Mv4v1
OR Bulletproof InnerFuel. https://amzn.to/2OFikOY
Ginkgo B. – 240mg https://amzn.to/2HawgfV
Berberine – 500mg https://amzn.to/35YTr6E
Megasporebiotic https://microbiomelabs.com/products/megasporebiotic/
Colloidal Silver – 1tsp Reduces blood pressure in some people. https://amzn.to/39o4Lvr

EVENING
Mercola Autophagy Tea Alternative: Activated Coconut Charcoal (dont take with other supplements, this one will mop up toxins from your gut, but nutrients, too.) https://amzn.to/2uqmwLR
Autophagy Tea Recipe

I don’t currently endorse taking a ketone product, but if you want to try it, I recommend trying an ester form, because the salt load on the kidneys is not a good long term solution. KetoneAid and HVMN are the two companies selling esters at the time of this post.
KetoneAid seems most affordable as of now: https://amzn.to/38d8GuM

The links are affiliate Links and may support this page to some extent in the future, you are of course welcome to search for the product names yourselves if you don’t agree with that.

Please ask questions if you are not sure about a product. Of course you dont have to or even should do/take everything.