Classic Quotes: Wells

"Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative."
    - Herbert George Wells

Elevated Sugars Linked to Brain Shrinkage

"Numerous studies have shown a link between type 2 diabetes and brain shrinkage and dementia, but we haven't known much about whether people with blood sugar on the high end of normal experience these same effects. " The study involved 249 people age 60 to 64 who had blood sugar in the normal range as defined by the World Health Organization. The participants had brain scans at the start of the study and again an average of four years later.

Those with higher fasting blood sugar levels were more likely to have a loss of brain volume in the areas of the hippocampus and the amygdala, areas that are involved in memory and cognitive skills, than those with lower blood sugar levels. 

Interesting note:

A fasting blood sugar level of 180mg/dl.(10.0 mmol/l) or higher was defined as diabetes and a level of 110mg/dl(6.1 mmol/l) was considered impaired, or prediabetes. 
This part is the language of an epidemiological study:

After controlling for age, high blood pressure, smoking, alcohol use and other factors, the researchers found that blood sugar on the high end of normal accounted for six to 10 percent of the brain shrinkage. 

http://www.diabetesincontrol.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13511&catid=1&Itemid=17

These are interesting results, in that they correlate with the widely held view that high blood sugars are injurious to the nervous system.  In fact, for a while it was fashionable to cause Alzheimer's "Type III Diabetes" or "Alzheimer's of the brain."  However, as the authors noted, epidemiological studies only suggest a possible cause, and prove nothing.  Whether or not the effect is as dramatic as showing a loss of brain tissue in four years, there are many reasons to fear high blood sugar's negative impacts on your health, and zero negative side effects of eating for glycemic control.

The Optimal Diet - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/the-optimal-diet.html

Here's an opinion piece by the Dean of those low fat true believers that are still alive, Dean Ornish.  There are those who think his dogged devotion to low fat, non-meat diets is a reflection of his faith, and reading this, one would not be dissuaded from that perspective.  A test for you, dear readers, to see if you can find the faults in logic in his articulation of the case for low fat/against a paleo modeled diet - go have a look and see what strikes you as non-scientific, bad science, or wishful thinking.  You can hunt around and find critiques pretty easily, and I'll publish those next week, too.

Mercola On Fructose

What is the link between fructose and blood pressure? Fructose in your diet raises your blood pressure in three key ways:

1. When your liver breaks down fructose, uric acid is produced as a byproduct. Uric acid also drives up your blood pressure by inhibiting nitric oxide in your blood vessels. Nitric oxide helps your blood vessels maintain their elasticity. When you consume large amounts of fructose, increasing uric acid levels drive up your blood pressure. If your uric acid levels are chronically elevated, you have an increased risk for hypertension, kidney disease, metabolic syndrome and diabetes. Large amounts of fructose also place a great strain on your liver, which is responsible for most of the metabolic burden.
2. As metabolic physician and nutrition expert Dr. Ron Rosedale has explained, insulin stores magnesium. If your insulin receptors are blunted and your cells grow resistant to insulin, you can't store magnesium, so it passes out of your body through urination. Magnesium relaxes muscles; so, when your magnesium level is low, your blood vessels will constrict rather than relax, which further raises your blood pressure.
3. Insulin causes your body to retain sodium, which in turn causes fluid retention. Fluid retention results in elevated blood pressure and can ultimately lead to congestive heart failure.

I strongly advise keeping your TOTAL fructose consumption below 25 grams per day, or as low as 15 grams if you have high blood pressure, are overweight, or diabetic.

The fructose in whole fruits is generally healthy, unless you consume large amounts, and/or in the form of fruit juices or dried fruits. Still, if you have any of the health issues just mentioned and you're consuming large amounts of fruit, you would be wise to restrict your fruit intake to under 15 grams of fructose per day as well until your condition has normalized.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/09/23/broccoli-health-benefits.aspx?e_cid=20120923_SNL_Art_1

As always with Dr. Mercola's posts, you have to take the good with the bad.  This article starts out by hyping the benefits of broccoli consumption, but the citations indicate the research is mostly epidemiological, which means little to me.  Not that I would disagree with four servings of broccoli per week, but I doubt this would offer the mythical benefit for most of us in terms of improving blood pressure.  

However, I like the model he's proposing above with regards to how we are such a sick, diabetic, hypertensive culture.  And with this issue, we don't have to rely on goofy science to know if it helps.  With carb restriction generally and fructose specifically, most of us will see blood pressure normalization.

I found that after carb restriction, potassium supplementation further normalized my BP, and recently met someone who's doctor recommended potassium for that purpose also, which I thought was good news.

The big takeaway - all these symptoms (high blood pressure, dis-lipidemia, visceral fat, gout, insulin resistance/diabetes) are not discrete illnesses, but representative of excess consumption of carbs in general and sugars (which almost always are about 50% fructose) specifically.

Even Moderate Carb Restriction Shows Benefit

Reduction in urinary albumin excretion with a moderate low-carbohydrate diet in patients with type 2 diabetes: a 12-month intervention

Introduction: Urinary albumin excretion (UAE) is a marker of the early phase of diabetic nephropathy. Although a low-carbohydrate diet (LCD) has been shown to effectively improve glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2DM), its effects on UAE remain unknown.
Patients and methods: A total of 124 patients (mean age ± standard deviation, 61.6 ± 9.2 years) with T2DM were instructed to consume a moderate LCD (1734 ± 416 kcal/d; % carbohydrate:fat:protein = 38:37:19) for 12 months. We measured the levels of UAE, hemoglobin A_1c, fasting plasma glucose, fasting serum insulin (IRI), and the serum lipid profiles in the patients and recorded their dosages of antidiabetic drugs during this 12-month period.
Results: Of the 124 patients, 68 were normoalbuminuric, 50 were microalbuminuric, and six were macroalbuminuric at baseline. The patients had relatively good compliance with the moderate LCD diet. After 12 months, the mean levels of hemoglobin A_1c, fasting plasma glucose, IRI, homeostasis model assessment-estimated insulin resistance, and the body mass index of all participants significantly decreased (P = 0.003 for IRI and P < 0.001 for the other parameters). Among the microalbuminuric patients (n = 50), remission to normoalbuminuria was frequently achieved (52%) and the geometric mean UAE significantly decreased by 53% (95% confidence interval: 43, 62) over 12 months (P < 0.001). After patients taking an angiotensin 2 receptor blocker were excluded, the UAE significantly decreased by 41% (n = 26, 95% confidence interval: 25, 54; P < 0.001). Moreover, the reduction in UAE was significantly and positively correlated with a reduction in homeostasis model assessment-estimated insulin resistance levels (r_s = 0.308; P = 0.031).
Conclusion: A moderate LCD (38% carbohydrate diet) achieved a remarkable reduction in UAE over 12 months in microalbuminuric patients with T2DM.


http://www.dovepress.com/reduction-in-urinary-albumin-excretion-with-a-moderate-low-carbohydrat-peer-reviewed-article-DMSO

This is not a particularly low carb or high fat diet, but the positive results after 12 months were significant.  Even moderately restricted carb intake - 38% of kcal, ~1750 kcal per day, or 166 grams/day of carbs, which is quite a lot for a pre-diabetic but still fewer than the 40% of kcal from carbs recommended on the Zone Diet - proved therapeutic.

Indicators For Insulin Resistance

Abstract

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES:

 

Lipid accumulation product (LAP) is an index, which combines waist circumference (WC) and triglyceride (TG) reflecting lipid accumulation. The aims of the study were to explore the relationship between LAP and insulin resistance (IR) and to assess whether LAP was superior to WC and body mass index (BMI) in identifying IR.

SUBJECTS/METHODS:

 

The study was cross-sectional and included 2524 non-diabetic subjects from China. The blood pressure (BP), anthropometric measurements, glucose levels, insulin levels and a fasting lipid profile were measured. BMI, the homeostasis model assessment of IR (HOMA-IR) and LAP were calculated.

RESULTS:

 

In both sexes, BP, BMI, total cholesterol (TC), non high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (non-HDL-C), HOMA-IR, fasting and postprandial glucose levels increased across LAP quartiles (P<0 .001=".001" across="across" cholesterol="cholesterol" decreased="decreased" hdl="hdl" i="i" lap="lap" levels="levels" quartiles="quartiles" while="while">P

<0 .001=".001" analysis="analysis" and="and" bmi="bmi" both="both" correlated="correlated" correlation="correlation" demonstrated="demonstrated" hdl-c="hdl-c" homa-ir="homa-ir" i="i" in="in" lap="lap" non-hdl-c="non-hdl-c" pearson="pearson" s="s" sexes="sexes" tg="tg" that="that" was="was" wc="wc" with="with">P<0 .001=".001" a="a" analysis="analysis" and="and" bmi="bmi" demonstrated="demonstrated" greater="greater" had="had" homa-ir="homa-ir" impact="impact" lap="lap" multivariate="multivariate" on="on" p="p" than="than" that="that" wc.="wc.">

CONCLUSIONS:

 

LAP is closely associated with HOMA-IR and is a powerful index that outperforms BMI and WC in identifying IR in non-diabetic individuals.

http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v66/n9/abs/ejcn201283a.html?WT.ec_id=EJCN-201209

The BLUF:  BMI based measures do not indicate poor health (as measured by insulin resistance) as well as an index of waist circumference and triglyceride levels.   And why wouldn't it?  Waist circumference changes and decreasing triglycerides are hall marks of carb restrictions.

Can't Say It More Clearly Than That

What is CrossFit?

http://community.crossfit.com/video/crossfit-whiteboard-functional-movement

High Fat, High Health

Stewart, a professor of medicine and director of Clinical and Research Exercise Physiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart and Vascular Institute, says that his team’s latest analysis is believed to be the first direct comparison of either kind of diet on the effects to vascular health, using the real-life context of 46 people trying to lose weight through diet and moderate exercise. The research was prompted by concerns from people who wanted to include one of the low-carb, high-fat diets such as Atkins, South Beach and Zone as part of their weight-loss program but were wary of the diets’ higher fat content.

In the first study, presented June 3 at the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine in Denver, the Johns Hopkins team studied 23 men and women weighing on average 218 pounds and participating in a six-month weight-loss program that consisted of moderate aerobic exercise and lifting weights, plus a diet made up of no more than 30 percent of calories from carbs, such as pastas, breads and sugary fruits. As much as 40 percent of their diet was made up of fats coming from meat, dairy products and nuts.
After shedding 10 pounds, this low-carb group showed no change in two key measures of vascular health: finger tip tests of how fast the inner vessel lining in the arteries in the lower arm relaxes after blood flow has been constrained and restored in the upper arm (the so-called reactive hyperemia index of endothelial function) and the augmentation index (a pulse-wave analysis of arterial stiffness).

http://archive.gazette.jhu.edu/2011/08/01/low-carb-high-fat-diets-add-no-arterial-health-risks-to-obese/

While this is another bit of good news about the safety of high fat diets, the funny part is that there wasn't any of this testing 30 to 40 years ago when the "conventional wisdom" adopted the low fat diet. There was very little scrutiny, sadly.  Would that the establishment had been as disciplined about evaluating the effects of low fat diets - but perhaps the current efforts are the result of "lessons learned" about embracing dietary philosophy without rigorous evaluation.

More from the article:

Low-carb dieters showed no harmful vascular changes but also on average dropped 10 pounds in 45 days, compared to an equal number of study participants randomly assigned to a low-fat diet. The low-fat group, whose diets consisted of no more than 30 percent from fat and 55 percent from carbs, took on average 70 days, nearly a month longer, to lose the same amount of weight.

“Our study should help allay the concerns that many people who need to lose weight have about choosing a low-carb diet instead of a low-fat one, and provide reassurance that both types of diet are effective at weight loss and that a low-carb approach does not seem to pose any immediate risk to vascular health,” Stewart said. “More people should be considering a low-carb diet as a good option,” he added.

Sugar = NAFLD

Abstract

Background: Cross-sectional studies have identified a high intake of simple sugars as an important dietary factor predicting nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

Objective: We examined whether overfeeding overweight subjects with simple sugars increases liver fat and de novo lipogenesis (DNL) and whether this is reversible by weight loss.

Design: Sixteen subjects [BMI (kg/m²): 30.6 ± 1.2] were placed on a hypercaloric diet (1000 kcal simple carbohydrates/d) for 3 wk and, thereafter, on a hypocaloric diet for 6 mo. The subjects were genotyped for rs739409 in the PNPLA3 gene. Before and after overfeeding and after hypocaloric diet, metabolic variables and liver fat (measured by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy) were measured. The ratio of palmitate (16:0) to linoleate (18:2n−6) in serum and VLDL triglycerides was used as an index of DNL.

Results: Carbohydrate overfeeding increased weight (±SEM) by 2% (1.8 ± 0.3 kg; P < 0.0001) and liver fat by 27% from 9.2 ± 1.9% to 11.7 ± 1.9% (P = 0.005). DNL increased in proportion to the increase in liver fat and serum triglycerides in subjects with PNPLA3-148II but not PNPLA3-148MM. During the hypocaloric diet, the subjects lost 4% of their weight (3.2 ± 0.6 kg; P < 0.0001) and 25% of their liver fat content (from 11.7 ± 1.9% to 8.8 ± 1.8%; P < 0.05).

Conclusions: Carbohydrate overfeeding for 3 wk induced a 10-fold greater relative change in liver fat (27%) than that in body weight (2%). The increase in liver fat was proportional to that in DNL. Weight loss restores liver fat to normal. These data indicate that the human fatty liver avidly accumulates fat during carbohydrate overfeeding and support a role for DNL in the pathogenesis of NAFLD. This trial was registered at www.hus.fi as 235780.

http://m.ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2012/08/28/ajcn.112.038695.abstract

BLUF:  High sugar intake does in fact EFF up your liver.

Game On

Cape Town - Sports scientist Tim Noakes goes too far in suggesting that a switch to a high-fat, high-protein diet is advisable for everyone, say six top doctors and academics.

It may, in fact, be dangerous for anyone with or at risk of heart problems, they say, adding in a letter to the Cape Times (full text below): “Having survived ‘Aids denialism’ we do not need to be exposed to ‘cholesterol denialism’.”

The six signatories of the letter were doctors Patrick Commerford (professor of cardiology and head of the cardiac clinic at UCT and Groote Schuur Hospital), Miko Ntsekhe (of the cardiac clinic at UCT and Groote Schuur Hospital), Dirk Blom (of the lipid clinic department of medicine at UCT and Groote Schuur Hospital), David Marais (of chemical pathology and clinical laboratory services at UCT’s Health Science Faculty), and cardiologists Elwyn Lloyd and Adrian Horak.

Noakes, a professor of exercise and sports science and head of the Sports Science Institute of SA, launched an updated edition of his book, Challenging Beliefs, earlier this year, which contained an abrupt turnaround on his previous views toward carboloading – instead promoting a high protein and fat, low-carbohydrate diet.

http://www.iol.co.za/lifestyle/noakes-goes-too-far-doctors-1.1383310#.UFc1-Yl5mc1

Summary of the case represented by the six complainants:

"We are experts, and we think this is wrong.  If we had evidence, we know it wouldn't take a fight in public like this, because we could just show data from intervention studies instead.  But since we don't have science on our side, we expert you to take our expert word for it."

Here's the funny part - the diet these doctors likely advocate - high carb, low fat - has no more evidence to support its long term goodness than does a high fat diet.  In fact, in short term studies, high fat diets win hands down.  There was a time when the best info one could get was expert opinion.  That time has passed.  We all have access to information, and relying on experts is not longer smart.   Instead, you can sort things out for yourself by self experimentation.

Full fledged advocacy of statins is based on belief but not science - it requires that 100 people take stains every day for five years in order to save a statistical life - ridiculous.

The complainants say:  "We understand some patients are placing their health at risk by discontinuing statin therapy and their prudent diets on the basis of this “expert opinion”."

"Such a diet may have allowed him to lose weight and run faster but its widespread implementation is contrary to the recommendations of all major cardiovascular societies worldwide, is of unproven benefit and may be dangerous for patients with coronary heart disease or persons at risk of coronary heart disease."

In other words, "experts think this might be bad for some people".  Hardly a convincing scientific case, and in short a feeble, pathetic response.

For what it is worth, it probably is true that high fat diets are not good for everyone.  But there's no reason to be fussy about this since it's clear that high carb diets are bad for almost everyone!  For folks who respond well to high fat diets, they'd be foolish to listen to the huffying and puffing of these statinators.  Anyone who cares to can simply check and see if their smart, low carb diet reduces their waistline, their triglycerides, their blood pressure, their gout and their appetite, while raising their HDL.  Having accomplished that, there's not a respectable doctor on the planet that could argue with the results.

Folks who don't respond well to high fat diets - typically ectomophs - would be able to figure this out by their non-favorable response in the above criteria.

We'd all be better off if there were conclusive long term science on the topic, but until then I recommend you sort out these issues for your own satisfaction and ignore the blow hards who can do no more than appeal to authority.

Go Gary Go!

There’s no such thing as objective science journalism, any more than there is objective science. Some journalists are just more overt about their biases.

Gary Taubes has been ferociously attacking conventional dietary wisdom for more than a decade. Conventional wisdom holds that consuming more calories than you burn off makes you fat. Wrong, Taubes insists: It’s not the calories, per se, but the kind of calories that matters. The chief culprit in obesity, he says, is carbohydrates. You can lose weight and keep it off, Taubes contends, on a diet with lots of fat and protein as long as you minimize your carbs.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2012/09/13/journalist-gary-taubes-raises-bucks-to-disprove-his-diet-theory/

"I'd love to change the world

                                                                                   But I don't know what to do

                                              So I'll leave it up to you"

Song:  I'd Love To Change The World, by Ten Years After

Gary Taubes, unlike the song's protagonist, found a way to change the world.  It's called NuSi.  Horrible name, but it stands to change the world of science research.  The stakes are immense.  I can't wait to find out how to contribute.  Read on to get a fabulous, short, intro to Gary's effort to right wrongs, slay dragons, save damsels, and keep Medicare from bankrupting the US of A.

POSE Method

From the CF Journal:  http://journal.crossfit.com/2012/09/romanovshortlesson-p1.tpl

This is a great example of how much change a good coach can give to a good student in a short time.  While it's not easy to follow Dr. Romanov's ideas or accent without understanding ahead of time where he's going, you can easily see how much less effort his student is using to run after the lesson.

All the big points are there - maintain a vertical posture in order to waste the least effort resisting gravity; do not place the feet in front of the GCM, rather, let them place themselves under the GCM to avoid having the feet act as a brake; do not push off the rear foot, rather pull it from the ground as soon as it touches.  Let gravity do the work, so that all you have to do is use just enough strength to sustain your position in the fall.  Most of us use more strength than we need to, and the most pleasure in running comes from using the least necessary effort.

Want A Stronger Core?

Thus began an article from a publication from Harvard Med School - what do they mean?
Sit-ups once ruled as the way to tighter abs and slimmer waistline, while "planks" were merely flooring. Now planks — exercises in which you assume a position and hold it — are the gold standard for working your core, while classic sit-ups and crunches have fallen out of favor. Why the shift?

One reason is that sit-ups are hard on your back—literally, by pushing your curved spine against the floor, and also by working your hip flexors, the muscles that run from the thighs to the lumbar vertebrae in the lower back. When too strong or overly tight, hip flexors tug on these vertebrae, which can be a source of lower back discomfort.

Second, planks recruit a better balance of muscles on the front, sides, and back of the body than sit-ups, which target just a few muscles. Remember, your core goes far beyond your abdominal muscles.

Finally, activities of daily living, as well as sports and recreational activities, call on your muscles to work together, not in isolation. Sit-ups or crunches strengthen just a few muscle groups. Through dynamic patterns of movement, a good core workout helps strengthen the entire set of core muscles—the muscles you rely on for daily activities as well as sports and recreational activities.

This stuff is all true, so hats off to those that are catching up with what should have been obvious for a long time.  I still do situps in CrossFit WODs, but think of them as a metabolic conditioning tool vice a method for achieving core strength.

I've been working on an article for the CrossFit Journal for many, many months, which uses simple models to describe how the structures of the torso combine to contribute to the best midline stability; hoping to finish this week.  The BLUF:  the design compromises inherent in the human design are significant challenges to maintaining a stable torso under a load.  Being able to maintain a stable torso under a load requires skill and practice, but it applies to many, many human movements.

Exercise: For Your Brain

Upending the cliché of muscleheads, scientists at the Laboratory of Neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging recently set out to examine whether changes in muscles prompted by exercise might subsequently affect and improve the brain’s ability to think.

Lab animals and people generally perform better on tests of cognition after several weeks of exercise training, and studies have shown that over time, running and other types of endurance exercise increase the number of neurons in portions of the brain devoted to memory and learning. But the mechanisms that underlie this process remain fairly mysterious. Do they start within the brain itself? Or do messages arrive from elsewhere in the body to jump-start the process?

What was the gist of the results?

And as it turned out, muscles did affect the mind. After a week of receiving either of the two drugs (and not exercising), the mice performed significantly better on tests of memory and learning than control animals that had simply remained quiet in their cages. The effects were especially pronounced for the animals taking Aicar.

The results, published in the journal Learning and Memory, showed that the drugged animals’ brains also contained far more new neurons in brain areas central to learning and memory than the brains of the control mice, an effect found by microscopic examination.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/how-working-the-muscles-may-boost-brainpower/

There are interesting take aways in the linked summary of this study, but the big one for me is - "it's about 50% half mental", as an ex-athlete was reported to have said.  If you want to be your smartest, feel your best, and be at your best health, exercise is essential.  

Exercise Does A Brain "Good"

It’s widely accepted among scientists that regular exercise transforms the brain, improving the ability to remember and think. And a growing and very appealing body of science has established that exercise spurs the creation of new brain cells, a process known as neurogenesis. But just how jogging or other workouts affect the structure of the brain has remained enigmatic, with many steps in the process unexplained.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/12/how-testosterone-may-alter-the-brain-after-exercise/

The BLUF of this study of exercise and the brain:  evidence suggests that even moderate aerobic exercise stimulates production of sex hormones which enable neurogenesis in the brain.  The mechanisms are not crystal clear, as I'm not sure how they differentiate between BDNF (brain derived neurotropic factor) and the sex hormones.  

Of note, most research is done with folks that are doing low intensity (aerobic) exercise, but when high intensity exercise is tested (with a caveat here that intensity for endurance activity is still low, even if termed "high".  By definition, endurance means aerobic which means a max of 40% of total output) results are better on virtually every measure of physiology.

In summary, the masses have been getting it wrong for years - exercise makes you smarter, stronger, and sustains mood, but does little to make you lean.  Leanness results when you eat the right food, primarily by restricting carb intake to levels that do not destroy glycemic control.

Eat meat, vegetables, eggs, nuts and seeds, little starch or fruit, no sugar/wheat.

Wheat Belly Blog: Heart Poison

The most common ingredients used to replace wheat flour in gluten-free products–rice starch, tapioca starch, cornstarch, and potato starch–are chosen because they provide a reasonable facsimile of wheat flour in baked products. But these are among the few foods that have a glycemic index higher than even that of wheat! So, sure, gluten-free multigrain bread or pasta does not cause appetite stimulation like the gliadin protein of wheat, nor do they cause intestinal destruction like the wheat germ agglutinin in wheat, nor do they trigger allergies like the alpha amylase inhibitors in wheat–they “only” cause sky-high blood sugar and, with it, formation of extravagant quantities of small LDL particles.

http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/08/heart-poison/

In short - there's "no free lunch."  You can't eat fake foods and expect abundant health.  

How do you "get off" the bread, wheat, sugar train to illness, poor mood, poor appearance and higher risk of early terminal illness following years of degraded mobility and wellbeing?  

Short answer:  First, you have to want to change, and then you have to stay with it over time.  I know of few folks that ditch their food indulgences and never regress.  Most succeed because they start over, many times, and eventually break their negative food habits and associations.   Eventually, feeling better becomes its own reward, and there's a lower need to use food treats to feel better in the short term at the expense of health.  These changes are not easy, but it's also not easy to be overweight, in poor health, with poor moods, physical pain and little hope to escape serious illness.  It's also not easy to take meds every day and hope they stave off the symptoms of one's illness.  It's also not easy to think you should change, to know you want to change, but be unable to change.  

Everyone has their time.  When you are ready, call me and I'll give you all the shortcuts you need for sustainable lifestyle change following the paleolithic model of nutrition.

Saturation Be Damned

One of the benefits of using the evolutionary approach is that it allows you to make rational decisions about your life choices without having to double-check them with Pubmed. And it doesn’t involve re-enactment of Paleolithic times, although heaven knows, I find some modern social conventions really tedious (like people requesting to know how I am going on a Monday morning prior to my first cup of coffee). As the opponents of the Paleo approach correctly point out, we don’t really know what our ancestors ate. But I sure as hell know what they DIDN’T eat: excessive amounts of sugar, grains, seed oils and other industrially produced food-like substances. Not even almond flour cupcakes. Sorry.

Regulating your fat intake is easy: eat fish, seafood, meat (preferably grass-fed), eggs, some nuts, seasonal fruit and veggies.   Go back to eating food, not labels.

http://primalmeded.com/2012/09/06/saturation-be-damned/

While I didn't like this article much in toto, the conclusion was rock star grade (although I have to admit I like the phrase but don't think much of rock stars).  I will also say, like the author, I can't believe anyone's still worried about saturated fat.

After a CrossFit sabbatical in Ramona with the founders of CrossFit Kids, and all around delightful people, Jeff and Mikki Martin, I'm fired up to get back to blogging and kicking my paleo brain into gear.

Have a nice weekend, all!

Mobility: Ankle

Going through the basics for restoration of ankle mobility - nicely done.