Low Carb Breckenridge 2018

This is a very delayed post, but I really underestimated how badly only having one usable arm* would affect life in general, (for example, getting dressed, eating food, tying shoelaces)  or how exhausting it would be, so  writing blogs went into the “too hard basket”.

Now things are improving, I want to commend Jeff Gerber, Rod Taylor and their very capable team for putting on an amazing conference at Breckenridge CO (1-4th March).

It was the first time I had traveled overseas to a conference, let alone presented, so it was a bit nerve racking, especially considering the calibre of the other speakers  but Jeff and Rod made The Engineer and I feel very welcome and we took them up on the offer of some skiing before the conference. 

The conference started on March 1st with a meet and greet.  It was wonderful to finally  meet Ivor Cummins in person, and to meet people like Dave Feldman and Eric Westman, whose work I had read, but also to meet some of the people from Facebook groups – Larry, it’s nice to put a face to the name.    It was exciting to also see some young faces who were there to learn more about LCHF.  Victor and I had only spoke over email, but he made the effort to come to Breckenridge so we could meet in person to discuss research.

All of the presentations were amazing. They were all recorded by both the Low Carb Down Under Team and The Diet Doctor’s team.  (Being told that my presentation was being live screened to 45,000 people about 5 minutes before presenting didn’t help my nerves, but I actually thought Rod was kidding!)   Not all the videos are up yet, but they will be added over time.

Some stand out presentations for me were:

Ben Bickman’s discussion on the Insulin:Glucagon ratio and the effects of protein intake on blood glucose levels.  Trying to determine protein intake so that you receive sufficient, but do not affect your blood glucose levels can be tricky, but Ben explains this very clearly.   (Hint:  It’s about the baseline insulin:glucagon ratio and if you are in keto, protein should have a minimal to less effect on blood glucose levels.)

Dave Feldman’s discussion on “Remnant Cholesterol”, which strengthens the arguement that we should measure (not calculate) LDL cholesterol, but the trick is how the results are interpreted as the LDL is then used in the calculation:

Remnant cholesterol = Total Cholesterol – (HDL + LDL)

Remnant cholesterol has been linked as a causal factor for ischaemic heart disease

These two presentations were key for me, as they are easy adaptations into my current research but could have profound effects.

It was worthwhile attending all of the presentations, which is more than can be said for many conferences, including Ivor Cummins and how we could engineer better health care, and Georgia Ede, a psychiatrist and how diet can aid brain health and function.

I’m still waiting for the presentations by Nick Mailer, and the others who presented on Sunday.  I missed them as I was being interviewed by Eric Westman for Andreas Eenfeldt’s Diet Doctors series.  I was also nursing some laryngitis brought on by the cold and dry air, but also – I don’t think I ever had so many people wanting to talk to me.

The best part of the conference was the people.

 

 

 

The people attending LC Breck are movers.  It was a privilege to meet you and I hope we meet again.

Alice

P.S.  I’ll post again shortly about some of the non-conference aspects of the trip.

*72 hours after arriving home, I underwent elbow surgery and spent the next 4 weeks in a cast like bandage.