CrossFit Fire of the Gods

Cancer Sugar Again

2012-02-14T06:00:00.000-06:00

The study found:

(a) Women who ate the most carbohydrate had a 22% increased rate of breast cancer compared to the women who ate the least carbohydrate.

(b) Women who ate the most fibre had a 9% increased rate of breast cancer compared to the women who ate the least fibre.

That summary from this excellent blog:

http://healthydietsandscience.blogspot.com/2012/02/higher-carbohydrate-and-fibre.html

The original study here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19056583

It's just an epidemiological study, and it's not any information that is not already well known for those in the low carb world. Still, it's nice that the epidemiologists can get funding to study this, instead of punching out another study about fat. Why does this make sense? Because cancers are often very sugar and insulin sensitive and derive their fuel by fermenting sugars. If a cancer comes along (think of cancer as a cell which becomes damaged but does not go through apoptosis (automated self destruction), but cannot gain a competitive advantage against neighboring cells, then eventually it dies or just languishes. If that same cancer is getting boatloads of sugar by which it can fuel itself, it might become the thing you die from (not with).

To Burn Fat - GET COLD

2012-02-13T18:22:00.000-06:00

No need to work out, just take a cold shower twice a day. According to Tim Ferriss, author of the 4 Hour Body, you can boost your T (for men) and activate brown fat by exposing yourself to cold. Brown fat is a heat generation engine.

I doubt this should be considered a significant long term strategy, but it's interesting all the same.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/02/13/scientists-find-brown-fat-to-help-lose-weight.aspx

While I did no serious experimentation with this idea, I found that cold showers were a significant anti-inflammatory when I was feeling beat up after a few days of intense work outs. Too bad I hate cold showers as much as I do!

Time to Stop Talking About Low-Fat, Say HSPH Nutrition Experts - HSPH In the Media - News at HSPH - Harvard School of Public Health

2012-02-11T06:00:00.001-06:00

It is time to end the low-fat myth, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) nutrition experts told food industry leaders at the seventh annual World of Healthy Flavors Conference held in Napa, CA, from January 19 to 21, 2011. The conference, co-hosted by the Culinary Institute of America and HSPH, brings together nutrition researchers with representatives from schools, supermarkets, and food industry goliaths such as Burger King, The Olive Garden, and Panera Bread to share strategies for offering Americans healthier menu options.

HSPH nutrition department chair Walter Willett and associate professor of epidemiology Dariush Mozaffarian, along with Ron Krauss of Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, presented on the “Focus on Fat” panel. They encouraged audience members to avoid “low-fat” terminology and thinking, since diets low in fat are often high in sodium and carbohydrates from sources such as white flour and rice, refined snacks, and sugary drinks. Instead, the panelists said, chefs should focus on cutting trans fats from their menus and educating consumers about seeking out healthy fats.

Article Here

"Healthy fats" will be interesting to watch - are they still going to keep pimping "vegetable oils" (aka, chemically derived poly unsaturated fats, PUFAs, which are easily oxidized and STILL never proven beneficial)? Or will they finally say it - "there's no reason to fear real saturated fat."

What's the next big "oops" going to be - when the Harvard folks also admit there's no issue with sodium consumption, there never has been, and they likely killed a bunch of folks sweating that bit of bad science also?

I'm glad that an organization with the influence that Harvard has continues to publicly push back against the low fat fad diets, but I wish they would be as disciplined about the other myths of the last 30 years.

Energy Systems

2012-02-10T06:00:00.000-06:00

Most likely right now, you are doing aerobics. That is to say, your body is fueling itself via oxygen powered energy production, hopefully, oxidation of fat. Fat is the optimal fuel for your body. It can power you, in theory, if trained for it, for a long, long walk or run. You can run a long ways on fat because anyone running a long way should be doing - aerobics.

That everyone thinks of high carb drinks and pills for endurance running is a funny thing to consider. Technically, you don't need carb replenishment to power endurance running, unless you are running in the anaerobic threshold, and thus burning sugar via glycolysis. However, I think many runners eat so many carbs they lose their capacity for fat oxidation and are stuck in sugar town while they try to run their way to fitness and health. In particular, if you exercise with the goal of better health, or better glycemic control, the last thing you want to do is burn up 250 kcal or so on a 20 minute run, and then knock back 250g of carbs in a "replenishment" or "recovery" drink. Just skip both the run and the drink, you'll be better off walking.

For the record, you likely have something like 250g of glycogen stored in muscles, and another 70g stored in your liver. Add that to the 5g of glucose dissolved in your blood, and the grand total is about 325g or so of sugar available to burn, which is about 1300kcal, which is about a third of the caloric energy available in a pound of fat. So be you a 130 pound lady at 20% body fat, or a 175 pound man at 10% body fat, you have 6 to 10 times more kcal available as fat as you would have as sugar.

It hardly matters, as anyone who wants to could have figured out by now that spending hours a week doing high intensity aerobics is not the e-ticket to either fitness or health. But - a few short runs a week sure beats watching TV, and running has the benefit of being cheap and accessible to almost anyone. Thus, the point is, if you want those run sessions to translate into better health, knock if off with the goofy recovery drinks and love yourself some water, with potassium or salt as needed, like this: Now Foods Potassium Gluconate Pure Powder, and maybe add a little of this for good measure: NOW Foods ZMA. Nope, they are not paleolithic, but since we're not eating whole animals any longer, compromise is pragmatic.

Fat is the body's preferred fuel for most functions, as evidenced by the fact that it is the fuel we are built to store. One of the biggest benefits of the paleo prescription is that it restricts carbohydrate intake enough to require that the body regain the capacity for fat oxidation on a large scale. Eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, no sugar/wheat.

My Top Six Anti-Inflammatory Foods | Mark's Daily Apple

2012-02-09T06:00:00.000-06:00

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/top-6-anti-inflammatory-foods/#axzz1kVbkDAgu

Mark lists his favorites, which are: wild fish fat, pastured animal fat, red palm oil, cruciferous vegetables, berries, turmeric.

The article also presents a useful context for how to think of inflammation, when it is good and when it is not.

Read on: Any discussion of a concept as nebulous, multifaceted, and confusing as inflammation must integrate the question of context. Inflammation itself is highly contextual – as I’ve discussed in previous installments, there are times when inflammation is a good thing and times when inflammation is a negative thing. There are also times when anti-inflammatory actions, drugs, or foods are negatives, even though “anti-inflammatory” has a positive connotation. If you blunt the post-exercise inflammatory response with an anti-inflammatory drug, for example, you also run the risk of blunting the positive effects of that workout.

We must also pay attention to acute and systemic inflammation when discussing the desirability of an “anti-inflammatory” food. Eating a big meal tends to raise inflammatory markers in the short term. If you’re overeating every single meal, this is problematic; the acute will become the norm – the chronic. If you’re eating big after a massive workout session, or because you’re celebrating at an amazing restaurant with your dearest friends, or because you’re coming off a twenty-four hour IF, it’s fine. Context.

"But, Don't the Easterners Eat Tons of Rice?"

2012-02-08T22:18:00.000-06:00

How the Primal community loves the concept of a dietary paradox. How we eagerly point to its various manifestations as supportive evidence for our way of eating, living, and moving. You know the French Paradox and how it confounds the experts. To mention all those smug surrender monkeys with their brie and their butter and their duck confit and their Gauloises and their seeming imperviousness to heart attacks is to make Dean Ornish binge on bran and pull out tuft after tuft of frizzy hair. And then there’s the lesser-known Israeli Paradox, which attempts to answer why Israelis have skyrocketing rates of heart disease despite a skyrocketing intake of “healthy” omega-6 fatty acids. In its wake, Walter Willet might be found weeping into a mug of safflower oil. There’s even an American Paradox – those who ate the most saturated fat had the least coronary heart disease – that had the minds of researchers thoroughly boggled.

All those paradoxes work out in “our favor.” Saturated fat gets off pretty much scot-free and omega-6 vegetable oils get raked over the coals (and, presumably, oxidized). And if people were honest about things, they would see these paradoxes not as paradoxes, but as reasons to reevaluate previously-held beliefs about health and diet.

But what about the Asian Paradox? How can Asian countries consume so much white rice and so many noodles and remain so thin?

Read more: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-asian-paradox-how-can-asians-eat-so-much-rice-and-not-gain-weight/#ixzz1llD8EWsX

Mark does a nice job of chasing this one down.

I think it makes sense to assume that populations have different levels of carbohydrate tolerance just as individuals do. I you grew up in the Swiss mountain villages inspected by Weston Price, and you couldn't live on a diet of rye bread, butter, milk, and weekly servings of meat - you couldn't live at all. Your genetics would vanish. Those who did survive would, in general, leave a population of folks with reasonable tolerance for both grain and carbs. It's not impossible for a population to adapt/evolve - but it's not pretty.

Elevated Glucose Associated with Undetected Heart Damage

2012-02-07T06:00:00.003-06:00

A new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests that hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) injures the heart, even in patients without a history of heart disease or diabetes. Researchers found that elevated levels of glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), a marker for chronic hyperglycemia and diabetes, were associated with minute levels of the protein troponin T (cTnT), a blood marker for heart damage. The high-sensitivity test they used detected levels of cTnT tenfold lower than those found in patients diagnosed with a heart attack.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/585363/?sc=mwhn

I wouldn't say this proves anything, but it correlates well with the carbohydrate hypothesis of obesity. Every disease of civilization is correlated with high blood sugar/metabolic syndrome. High blood sugar is the natural, predictable consequence of excess carbohydrate consumption. Glycemic control is the rational goal of any nutrition intervention, for either weight loss or health benefit.

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

Sisson: Advice For Beginners

2012-02-07T06:00:00.000-06:00

Read on folks and find out how Mark Sisson summarizes what can be a very complex topic, and includes free resources for further information.

My advice: do something, anything you will do. Try and add a little - a little - every year to make your program more complete.

You need variation - don't do the same thing every day; variety prevents a plateau. You need intensity - shorter and harder works faster than comfortable but long - at least a couple days a week. If you can't wreck yourself in five minutes doing body weight work, you are not trying. And that five minutes of intensity is all you need that day. You need to play with stuff that's heavy - heavier today than yesterday, a little heavier tomorrow than today. You don't need to do curls, abs, calf raises, wrist work and hamstring curls - that stuff's low bang for the buck. If it's what you like, by all means do it. But the high leverage stuff is multi joint, real movement like your ancestors did in order to remain a "going concern."

Run, jump, climb, lift, and throw, and do hard fast and often.

Find new movements, find different ways to put movements in sequence, or search out a skill that appeals to you, such as kipping pullups or the snatch, and make learning those part of your warmup. There are many, many cheap ways to give yourself an adaptive stimulus - kettlebells can be had at wallmart, as can dumb bells and door jamb pullup bars. You can get rings online for under $40, and hang them off of a tree limb. You can make a sand filled medicine ball from a basketball. You can fill a duffel bag from a thrift store with sand for under $25 - better yet, use pea gravel and make small bags to fill the larger duffel for a variable weight. I made a pushing sled from treated 2x4s and half-inch ply for $30. You can get a 12" electrical junction box for box jumps from a Big Box Store for under $20. Etc. Have a big rock in your yard? A five gallon water jug? "It's all good."

Fitness gear can be simple but very effective.

Without further ado, here's Mark:

Assuming you’ve never done much, if any, strength training before, you’ll want to start with Primal Blueprint Fitness, my basic (free) fitness e-book.
Read more: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/dear-mark-mysterious-omegas-and-a-beginners-exercise-routine/#ixzz1kywPTeGA

Two or three days each week of lifting heavy things. To begin with, these “heavy things” will be the 195 pounds comprising your frame. That’s right – bodyweight exercises to start. Eventually, once you’ve hammered out the form for each movement, put on some strength, and strengthened that connective tissue, you can move on to lifting heavy things that are not your own bodyweight. Maybe you’ll join a gym and start moving barbells or machines. Maybe you’ll get into gymnastics and start using leverage to increase resistance. Maybe you’ll lift sandbags and swing kettlebells. The point is this: the early bodyweight days will get you strong enough to handle yourself and your own body so that you can then progress to whatever level you prefer. Putting on lean mass is precisely what you require. Jogging won’t do it – it hasn’t done it, in your case – and the longer you wait, the harder it will be to accumulate lean mass.
One day a week of sprinting. Now, that’s not an entire day of sprinting, which would be ridiculous and frankly impossible. You’ll be sprinting between five and ten times with plenty of rest in between. As an example, my sprint workouts last about 20 minutes total these days. If you’re not comfortable sprinting on a track or flat surface, you can sprint uphill (less impact on joints), in a pool, on a bike, on a rowing machine, etc.. The key is expending maximum effort during these sprint sessions, whichever method of transportation you’ve chosen. You go all out for ten or twelve seconds (or more, if you are fit and can handle it – maybe even up to 40 seconds on a bike) and then rest for a minute or two until the next one. Sound easy? It’s not. It’s simple and brief, but it isn’t easy.
Finally, at least 5 hours of slow moving per week. Walking, hiking, very slow jogging (as long as you can do so comfortably) – it’s all fair game. You don’t want to push yourself here. You’re not running a marathon or racing. You’re not even tracking calories. You’re just getting around. You’re moving your limbs and enjoying a conversation and oxidizing fat the entire time. Slow moving is the foundation of the Primal Blueprint Fitness program.

Inflammation: What Is That?

2012-02-06T06:00:00.007-06:00

A friend responded to a blog post recently by asking "What is inflammation?" Here's a blog all about inflammation, and I like the intro:
COOLING INFLAMMATION

INFLAMMATION IS THE FOUNDATION FOR CANCER AND DEGENERATIVE/AUTOIMMUNE DISEASES. SMALL CHANGES IN DIET AND EXERCISE, E.G. OMEGA-3 OILS, VITAMIN D, LOW STARCH, PLANT ANTIOXIDANTS, AND MAINTAINING MUSCLE MASS, CAN DRAMATICALLY ALTER PREDISPOSITION TO DISEASE AND AGING, AND MINIMIZE THE NEGATIVE IMPACT OF GENETIC RISKS. BASED ON MY EXPERIENCE IN BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH, I AM TRYING TO EXPLAIN HOW THE ANTI-INFLAMMATORY DIET AND LIFESTYLE COMBAT DISEASE. (This is Art Ayers' blog)

But was does it mean to say "inflammatory"?

First off, it's a description of the body's response to damage or invasion - damaged cells need to be killed off and cleaned out, or repaired. Invading pathogens must be eliminated, quickly. And the body has an exquisitely well designed system for doing just those things. You can somewhat test it just by smacking your arm a couple of times - hard enough to sting. See the redness? That's the inflammatory response. The term of course is a reference to heat, so when you are inflamed - "on fire" - your body is responding with a variety of techniques to save you from something.

Autoimmune disease is caused by the body's immune system turning on some part of the body as if that part were an invading pathogen. Many folks attribute that process to a leaky gut, which allows particles into the blood that should remain in the gut; as the body amounts an antibody defense to some such particle, it may also begin to recognize some part of itself as that invading particle, and attack it.

Dr. Sears' books always referred to the inflammatory cascade, in which the inflammatory hormones were parented by high insulin levels and built out of omega 6 fatty acids. So, in the model Sears described, an insulin resistant body, caused by high carb consumption over time, combined with a high omega 6 fatty acid intake, via processed vegetable oils and grains and their processed food products, would be the perfect storm for a state of chronically high systemic inflammation. The immune system in that case would be hyperactive, and thus cause the damage and abnormal processes that result in disease.

In this model, omega 6 FA are the parents of the inflammatory super hormones (eicosanoids), whereas omega 3 FA are the parents of the "return to normal" hormones. Just based on that idea, you could imagine the significance of having a balance between the two in your food intake (since we don't make enough of either, therefore, they are designated as "essential fatty acids"). More detail on this here.

Gary Taubes, in his incredible book "Good Calories Bad Calories" made a more clear case for the causes of chronic disease, but without reference to the inflammatory cascade per se. Nonetheless, the cause of "the diseases of the West" was identified as excess carb intake, the resulting insulin resistance, and the variety of abnormal metabolic impacts that result.

One way to think of chronic inflammation is to think just of pain - if you find yourself reaching for ibuprofen, or one of the other NSAIDS (non-steroidal anti inflammatory drugs), you are looking for a treatment for inflammation. When I used to eat high carb, low fat, I lived on NSAIDS because my various joint injuries hurt just about all the time. Now days, it's a rare thing when I take an NSAID, not because the damage has decreased over the years, but because the systemic inflammatory response is not hyper active and thus does not generate the sensation of pain around the injury.

A last thought about inflammation is to consider folks you know with red, irritated looking skin. Of course, anyone with sunburn has felt the body's inflammatory response to the damage. Folks with an inflammatory condition in their skin all the time - rosatia as an example - are suffering some similar, but hopefully less intense, response to an irritant all the time. There are many models that might explain this, but in short, there's some element of their diet and/or environment that is driving an expression of a genetic propensity for inflamed skin. In most cases, the inflammation is systemic and skin is just one of the warning signs.

Reducing systemic, abnormal, chronic inflammation should be a consideration for any of us. When wading through a neolithic food world, with only our paleolithic genetics to get us by, we do ourselves great harm by over eating grains, processed vegetable oils (massive amounts of omega 6 FA without a balanced quantity of omega 3 FA), and by not sleeping enough causing overactivity in other hormones like cortisol. Further, we don't typically have enough vitamin D because we don't get enough sunlight on enough of our skin (or eat enough vitamin D laden sea foods like the Inuit did).

Here's the rub - I don't know of a scientifically valid way to measure inflammation. You can evaluate your levels of arachadonic acid to eicosapentanoic acid, but your guess is as good as mine as to whether that's a valid measure of health. Thus, to know if you are doing a good job with inflammation you have to consider your general pain levels, your ability to recover from intense activity, your overall feelings of wellness, and other markers that are quite subjective - for example, decreased skin irritation, or taking less pain medication. It's possible to have high body fat, but not be chronically inflamed, but more likely, that fat is a correlate with a high inflammation diet. My guess is the best measure of overall health is blood glucose - if you have glycemic control, you should have good insulin sensitivity, have lower chronic insulin levels, and generally, "normal" inflammatory response. But I find it troubling to talk about inflammation as the be all end all of health since there's no way to objectively quantify what is being described.

That said, inflammation is an important topic - folks are describing models for all the diseases from depression to heart disease and Alzheimer's/Parkinson's/ALS in terms of inflammation. Chronic, systemic inflammation is very likely at the root human illness. To me, it's not the death that is tragic, it's the loss of life that one must endure before the end of chronic illness that I would like to avoid. It's harder to celebrate the goodness in life after stroke, heart attacks, dementia, or any of the various miseries we have inflicted on ourselves via agriculture.

So while you slog along with the many uncertainties of this life, hoping that you are not killing yourself with inflammation, eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch and no sugar/wheat. This Rx provides a starting point which you can adapt as you experiment and find tweaks that make the paleolithic diet work best for you.

More learning here: Dr. Ayers' 13 posts on inflammation

Natural Vitamin D Levels

2012-02-04T06:00:00.012-06:00

The Maasai are no longer hunter-gatherers but live, along with their cattle, either a settled or a semi-nomadic lifestyle. They wear sparse clothes, which mainly cover their upper legs and upper body, and attempt to avoid the sun during the hottest part of the day. They eat mainly milk and meat from their cattle, although recently they began to add corn porridge to their diet. Their mean 25(OH) vitamin D level was 48 ng/ml (119 nmol/L) and ranged from 23 to 67 ng/ml.
The Hadzabe are traditional hunter-gatherers. Their diet consists of meat, occasional fish, honey, fruits, and tubers. They have no personal possessions. They wear fewer clothes than the Maasai in that the men often wear nothing above the waist. Like the Maasai, they avoid the sun during the hottest part of the day. Their mean 25(OH)D was 44 ng/ml and ranged from 28 to 68 ng/ml.
http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=f545cba30e1f9697fddbe8acb&id=a87d885548&e=22cbca9760

Had your vitamin D levels measured? If no, assume you are deficient. Most of us are. If your skin is dark, the risk of deficiency is even greater. If you don't supplement, start.

The Perfect Heath Diet

2012-02-04T06:00:00.010-06:00

This is a very nice piece of work from the Jaminets at http://www.perfecthealthdiet.com/.

They make a great contribution to the dialogue, with a remarkably unemotional, even handed approach. In some ways, their diet is less restrictive than a "paleo" diet, and their ultra disciplined research based approach is remarkable, as is their ability to put it into plain language. If I don't agree with, yet, all their points, I'd still whole heartedly recommend this template of what to, and what not to, eat. If you take their version of "quality" foods, and apply their approach to macro nutrient ratios, you'll do well.

Their auto-biography reads like very many you see in the paleo blogosphere; dietary transformation leads to life transformation. Their book is a good read, as is their blog.

Thanks Jaminets for your great work!

Women, Statins

2012-02-02T06:00:00.003-06:00

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1973295,00.html

Interesting article, complex topic.

First, there's very little info that supports the efficacy of statin use for females, so I hope those who are getting that recommendation will take the time to research the matter carefully. My opinion based on experience is that doctors have as difficult a time keeping up with medical developments as any other profession does - there's absolutely not a guarantee that the doctor knows more than you do or could - especially since it's not the doctor's life that's at stake.

You needn't take my word for that - have a listen to this episode of Jimmy Moore's excellent podcast, for a decryption of how cardiologist Lowell Gerber found his way out of the low fat woods using carb restriction, and along the found out "that my patients had not been lying to me". IOW, the patients kept saying "Doc, I am doing what you say" but their conditions were worsening; it was only when the doc took his own advice that he realized he'd had them barking up the medically correct but wrong tree.

When looking at statin results, the confusing language is hard to get around. They talk about reduction of mortality from cardiac events. They talk about "reduction of risk." They talk about better cardiac results for this group or that group. But often, what is found in statin trials is the cardiac disease is interrupted, apparently, but other disease risks increase. Many statin trials show a wash for all cause mortality; thus the Cochrane Collection's ambivalent report on their efficacy in a 2011 meta analysis.

Further, statin trials are short, meaning there is probably time to evaluate the benefit but not to evaluate the side effects. With many medications, the benefits make themselves know before the costs - for example, alcohol and cocaine (and stimulants in general).

One thing I think HAS been proved about statins, and that is that they work, if they do, due to a reduction in inflammation. They are supposed to work by lowering levels of lipoproteins (the vessels that transport cholesterol), but that causality has never been proved. I would say it was convincingly disproved by vytorin, a med which combined statins with another cholesterol lowering drug, and was effective at lowering cholesterol - but increased mortality of those taking the drug (as I've reported on before).

Notice in the two year old article linked above, however, the entire intro is build around the "cholesterol gunks up your arteries like grease in a pipe" model. How quaint!

If you want to dig deep into the science of lipoproteins, cholesterol and disease - I recommend this podcast/transcript from Chris Kresser with Chris Masterjohn, and this link from chriskresser.com: Cholesterol

Here's the BLUF: think of heart disease as the result of broken glass floating around in your blood vessels, and the atherosclerotic plaques are your body's response to the cuts. What do I mean by "broken glass"? Masterjohn equates easily oxidized particles in the blood to glass - useful when whole, but dangerous when broken. The particles in your blood that oxidize most easily are LDL particles with a high content of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), and the small, dense LDL particles left over after your body responds to high carb intake via conversion of glucose to triglycerides. Under the "what to do" category, think of inflammation reduction via carb restriction and low intake of PUFAs, ingesting enough of the essential vitamins and minerals, maintaining a healthy gut, and cultivating a good set of gut bacteria. Easier said than done, sure, but the first step is - carb restriction. No sugar/no wheat is part two. These two are probably 80% of the formula.

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

Sisson: "What Mike Said"

2012-02-01T06:00:00.008-06:00

There’s a good reason so many people (mostly the sugar-burners, whose disparate group includes fruitarians, veg*ans, HEDers, body-builders, most MDs, the USDA and virtually every RD program in the country) can’t seem to grasp why a lower carb, Primal approach to eating is a better choice for health and fitness: their fundamental paradigm – the core theory that underpins everything else in that belief system – is flawed. They remain slaves to the antiquated notion that glucose is the king of fuels, so they live their lives in a fear of running low. The truth is, fat is the preferred fuel of human metabolism and has been for most of human evolution. Under normal human circumstances, we actually require only minimal amounts of glucose, most or all of which can be supplied by the liver as needed on a daily basis. The simple SAD fact that carbs/glucose are so readily available and cheap today doesn’t mean that we should depend on them as a primary source of fuel or revere them so highly. In fact, it is this blind allegiance to the “Carb Paradigm” that has driven so many of us to experience the vast array of metabolic problems that threaten to overwhelm our health care system.Read more: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/a-metabolic-paradigm-shift-fat-carbs-human-body-metabolism/#ixzz1kyS21ZPQ

This is another nice post from Mark's Daily Apple, which says in essense what Mike Eades' post said.

BLUF: Yes you need glucose to run the brain. No you don't have to eat all the glucose that you need each day, since your liver can crank out ketones (from fat) and glucose (from amino acids) to meet the needs of the brain (and a few other select tissues which are glucose dependent), whilst the rest of you runs "just peachy" on fat. The fact that you can store perhaps a 1000 kcal worth of glucose, and another few hundred kcal worth of amino acids, but many thousands of kcal as fat, is a clue to how the body is designed to run. Fat is the workhorse fuel, glucose is an expensive variant needed in relatively small quantities (note, in an emergency, aka starvation, you will also catabolize muscle for amino acids and some glucose, but this is abnormal, not normal, metabolic function).

Why do you care? Firstly, so you can sort through through the nonsense so widely spewed about diets needing to be carbohydrate based. Second, if you are one of the majority of us trying to optimize glucose levels, there's a simple way to you can get a grip on this: don't eat as much glucose as your brain needs, that way your liver will make up the difference and there will be no excess glucose in the system.

A supremely practical benefit of eating this way is that once your body regains its capacity to run on fat, you get the liberty to eat when you want to. You can ditch the fear of hypoglycemic crashes, or the belief that you have to eat "10 small meals a minute" - or whatever other sillyness folks advocate as the yellow brick road of looking good naked.

I don't mean to say you should never eat another carb in your life. The point is that restricting carbs to under 100g/day sets you up for a life of glycemic control, and with few or no side effects - unless you think of leanness, good kidney function, and disease avoidance in general as a side effect.

There's every reason to believe that our paleolithic ancestors didn't have food handy all the time, that it wasn't and isn't necessary to eat all the time in order to thrive, and that eating less often is more healthy than eating more often.

I agree with Mark - it's exasperating that so many professionals have gotten this so wrong for so long. Please accept my toast to a big fat, healthy meal or two in your future!

Kresser: 3, 2, 1 Treat Your GERD

2012-01-31T06:00:00.001-06:00

To review, heartburn and GERD are not caused by too much stomach acid. They are caused by too little stomach acid and bacterial overgrowth in the stomach and intestines. Therefore successful treatment is based on restoring adequate stomach acid production and eliminating bacterial overgrowth.
This can be accomplished by following the “three Rs” of treating heartburn and GERD naturally:

Reduce factors that promote bacterial overgrowth and low stomach acid.
Replace stomach acid, enzymes and nutrients that aid digestion and are necessary for health.
Restore beneficial bacteria and a healthy mucosal lining in the gut.

http://chriskresser.com/get-rid-of-heartburn-and-gerd-forever-in-three-simple-steps

It's no surprise that the first thing you have to do to reduce bacterial overgrowth and low stomach acid is to reduce your intake of carbohydrates to rational levels. In other words, GERD can be addressed the same way that hypertension can be addressed, the same way that gout can be addressed, the same way that abdominal fat stores can be addressed, the same way that osteoporosis can be addressed, the same way that a disease forecasting lipid profile can be addressed, and same way that diabetes can be addressed.

Clearly, this correlates nicely with the paleolithic model of nutrition. None of these diseases are either "normal" or "mysterious." They are a likely result, a predictable result, of feeding the human machine in a way that is contrary to design specifications.

The rest of the article details the process more thoroughly, read it. GERD is not just an annoying disease that you should be popping pills to treat for the rest of your life, it's a symptom of ill health created by a poor diet.

Fiber - Beneficial?

2012-01-30T06:00:00.001-06:00

High fiber diets and bacterial overgrowth are a particularly dangerous mix. Remember, Almost all of the fiber and approximately 15-20% of the starch we consume escape absorption. Carbohydrates that escape digestion become food for intestinal bacteria.
http://chriskresser.com/get-rid-of-heartburn-and-gerd-forever-in-three-simple-steps

High fiber intake was an interesting speculation but has never been proved beneficial as regards long term health. Did you read that right? Yes you did. Despite all the assertions heard by authorities all over the place, fiber has never been proved a valid benefit for long term health. Because fiber intake for its own sake is foreign to the paleolithic model, I distrust it until proved otherwise. But as the post above points out, there are marked reasons not to believe fiber is good for the human machine.

It can help in some cases when the human machine is fed improperly, as it irritates the gut enough to stimulate mucous production and can restore gut motility which may have been limited by eating poor quality foods. There is a much better option to maintain guy motility - eat as much magnesium as your paleolithic ancestors did when they drank unpurified water.

Taubes/Attia to NYT "Fat Trap"

2012-01-28T06:00:00.006-06:00

....this regulatory role of insulin in fat metabolism was established in the 1960s, a viable alternative explanation for the cause of obesity has been that it is caused by a dysregulation of insulin signaling. By this logic, the way to treat obesity is not by eating less and exercising more, as Ms. Parker-Pope implies, but by reducing insulin levels, perhaps as low as possible. That is accomplished most efficiently by severely restricting the carbohydrate content of the diet and removing, in particular, refined grains and sugars that have the greatest effect in stimulating insulin secretion.

The implication of this basic endocrinology is that obesity is caused not by eating too much and sedentary behavior, but by a disruption of the hormonal and enzymatic regulation of fat tissue caused by the easily digestible, refined carbohydrates and sugars that we do eat. Indeed, by this logic, calorie-restricted diets – starvation and semi-starvation diets as used in the studies Ms. Parker-Pope discusses – can be thought of as particularly counterproductive ways to reduce carbohydrate consumption and so insulin levels, starving the body, as they do, of the energy required to effectively run metabolic processes.

In the past decade, clinical trials have repeatedly demonstrated that when obese and overweight individuals consciously restrict the carbohydrates they eat, but not calories, they not only lose weight, on average, but their heart disease and diabetes risk factors improve significantly. Their insulin resistance, in effect, resolves. Those of us who have lost weight ourselves and witnessed the effect of these diets on our patients can confirm that this is exactly what happens.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/response-to-nytimes-the-fat-trap/

An outcut of the letter to the NYT in response to the 5000 word article about fat loss in which the primary regulator of fat storage, insulin, was not mentioned, even once. The entire letter is worth a read, and it's only two pages. They are asking for something radical - testing of the alternative hypothesis.

Your Leaky Gut May Be Caused By Excessive Grain Consumption

2012-01-27T06:00:00.009-06:00

There's no human requirement for grains. That's the problem with the USDA recommendations. They think we're hardwired as a species to eat grains. You can get by just fine and meet every single nutrient requirement that humans have without eating grains. And grains are absolutely poor sources of vitamins and minerals compared to fruits and vegetables and meat and fish.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/01/21/grains-causing-gut-leaks.aspx?e_cid=20120121_DNL_art_1

Gliadin is the primary immunotoxic protein found in wheat gluten and is among the most damaging to your health. Gliadin gives wheat bread its doughy texture and is capable of increasing the production of the intestinal protein zonulin, which in turn opens up gaps in the normally tight junctures between intestinal cells (enterocytes).

There is a growing body of scientific evidence showing that grains, as well as legumes, contain anti-nutrients and other problem substances that may increase intestinal permeability. This includes:
In celiac disease the body will make antibodies to gliadin after it is digested by the intestinal enzyme tissue transglutaminase, resulting in severe autoimmune damage to the delicate, absorptive surfaces of the intestines. It does not, however, require full blown celiac disease to suffer from the adverse effects of this protein. In fact, it is likely that our intolerance to gliadin and related wheat proteins is a species-specific intolerance, applicable to all humans, with the difference being a matter of the degree to which it causes harm.
This helps to explain why new research clearly shows gliadin increases intestinal permeability in both those with, and thosewithout, celiac disease.
Leaky gut - a bad way to start the new year.

Mercola: Rice, No Wheat

2012-01-26T06:00:00.002-06:00

An interesting survey of the topic of how much carbohydrate is necessary, is it the same for all of us, and if needed, which kinds are better?

The biggest takeaway - if you need to up the carbs beyond what you can get from vegetables, go with rice.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/01/23/wheat-or-rice-as-safe-starch.aspx?e_cid=20120123_DNL_art_1

Blog: War On Insulin

2012-01-25T06:00:00.040-06:00

While I appreciate the author's perspective, I would have named the blog differently.  Insulin saves us from neurological damage when blood sugars go too high, and those with no insulin die a cruel wasting death, as insulin is necessary to get vital materials into cells in order to sustain life. BUT - the fact that the science of the last thirty years has focused so much on fat intake (and dislipidemia) as the cause of disease, and by extension accumulated body fat as the cause of disease, while almost ignoring how necessary insulin is in the accumulation and maintenance of excess body fat, has resulted in a generation of weird science (much of which you and I funded via the NIH).

So, as blog author Petter Attia says:
My mission is to demonstrate that insulin — not calories — is at the heart of the most pervasive chronic diseases: obesity, heart disease, and even cancer. Suppressing the secretion of insulin is the key to running your body on your own fat, which leads not only to weight loss, but also to what I call “chronic health” and peak performance.
http://waroninsulin.com/nutrition/the-fat-trap-nyt-magazine-article-thoughts-and-comments

I think I would pick a minor nit and say it's the excess carb intake - that makes hyperinsulinemia a short term necessity, and a long term death sentence - that's killing us.  You could eliminate the body's ability to generate high insulin output, but if you still ate a high carb "heart healthy whole grain" low fat diet, you'd still be dead from excess blood sugars, and sooner rather than later.

Attia addresses Tara Parker Pope's "The Fat Trap":
I fully agree with Ms. Parker-Pope’s assertion that obesity is categorically not an issue of weak will, and I’m encouraged that she feels a sense of renewed optimism in her own journey.
There were two aspects of this article, however, that disappointed me. First, it focused a great deal on hormones that almost certainly play some role in obesity – leptin, peptide YY, ghrelin – but not once in over 5,000 words was the hormone insulin mentioned. The reason this disappoints me is not because I fixate on insulin, and therefore assume others should. It’s because I’m reminded of how confused mainstream nutrition and obesity research is. All of these other hormones – leptin, peptide YY, ghrelin – are reported to play a role in appetite. The notion that “the answer” to treating obesity lies in manipulating these hormones suggests folks still think obesity is a disease of over-eating rather than a disorder of abnormal fat accumulation. This distinction is not subtle, as I try to point out in the posts The great medical disconnect and Revisit the causality of obesity. If you believe obesity is caused by overeating then it makes sense to study hormones that govern hunger. Certainly hunger matters, and a person who is constantly hungry is likely to overeat, but the fact that this article doesn’t even suggest a role for elevated insulin levels strikes me as missing something.

It's more than missing something, the author is trying to be polite. It's an astonishing oversight. It's proof that the scientists Mr. Pope counts on in her reporting are off the reservation. It's an indictment of a generation of scientists who assumed they could reduce human metabolism to the simplicity of a bomb calorimeter and now are completely at a loss for what to try next (except pharmaceutical intervention) - but still have not confronted the reality that they have taken a dead end street.

Those same scientists who's work is rejected by their failure to either understand or treat obesity are the ones who control much of the funding for research into diet, obesity and health. Strangely, they don't want to spend much money trying to prove they have been wrong all these years. Gee, I wonder what to make of that.

If it is sad that someone like Tara Parker-Pope, who has such a potentially potent stage, is still trailing through the scientific boonies with the lost generation of science, the awesome thing is so many people like Peter Attia are on to the "alternative hypothesis".  These folks are treating their patients, and spreading the word, and empowered recipients are recovering their health and their futures. Their scientific results can be measured in smaller waists, eliminated medines, and by the fact that they look, feel and perform better. This is science you can do. Eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, no sugar/no wheat.

Eades: What Makes You Tick

2012-01-24T11:57:00.001-06:00

How does your body deal with the multitude of problems associated with an unpredictable food supply, varying food quality, and the feast or famine nature of the environment in which our genome was refined over time?

In one of my all time favorite blog posts, Mike Eades describes the process here in incredibly few words:
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/ketones-and-ketosis/metabolism-and-ketosis/

BLUF: you store excess energy from fat and carbs as triglycerides. You store excess protein in the "amino acid pool" and in muscles (of the two, it's better if you use fat first, muscles only in desperation). Most of your cells run well on either fats, glucose, or ketones. Certain cells, brain tissue for example, run well on glucose or ketones only (the heart, by the way, reportedly runs extremely well on ketones). If you are not ingesting enough food, the glucose hungry brain still needs sugar, and obviously keeping the brain well fed is a metabolic imperative. Thus, the liver will begin a process of converting amino acids to glucose. To power this transaction, the liver takes energy from fatty acids, and in the process creates ketones. Since ketones serve as a glucose proxy, the process of gluconeogenesis (making new sugar from amino acids, which come from muscle tissue or ingested protein) helps alleviate blood glucose short falls via both glucose and ketone production. The fact that the body can transform both fat and protein into glucose or a glucose substitute is a reflection of the criticality of feeding the brain. Here's the rub - this process can only keep you running if most of your cells are fat adapted, which is to say, they run on fat often, and thus at the cellular level adequate stores of fat oxidizing enzymes are maintained. If you are chugging down carbs all day, you've given yourself a totally different metabolic emergency - sugar disposal. To help with that, your tissues will burn sugar instead of fat when sugar is present in excess. If you are only sugar adapted, when food intake is delayed or not sugary enough, you will not be able to maintain adequate levels of blood sugar - and that feels bad. You will be highly motivated to eat more. And you will eat the kind of food that most rapidly becomes blood glucose, which will likely sustain your metabolism in "SUGAR DISPOSAL EMERGENCY MODE."

So, if want to be more lean, or need to get control of glucose levels, stop downing the mountains of "healthy whole grains" and processed high carb foods and modern frankenfruits like apples/bananas/corn/oranges and etc. The unfortunate belief that magic carbs are protecting you with phyto nutrients, anti oxidants, and vitamins is the health equivalent of "penny wise pound foolish". Restrict your carb intake to vegetables, preferably cruciferous gems like broccoli and brussel's sprouts, and become the fat burning machine you were meant to be.
_________________________________________________________________________
No, I don't think a banana or apple a day will kill you if your total carb intake is 100g/day or less. But you could also just eat a Snickers bar or Dr. Pepper unless you like bananas better; until you get your blood sugars under control, there's not much difference.
_________________________________________________________________________
After you fat adapt, your body will still need something like 150g/day of glucose to feed your brain, but since your other tissues won't be competing for glucose, your liver will make that 150g for you from ingested proteins, as well as from ingested fats and fat liberated from adipose tissue. Of note, fat adapted people rarely feel hungry because they can run 14-16 hours before they burn up the amino acids in the "amino acid pool" - and all the while with a stable, normal blood sugar level. In other words, fat adapted people aren't hungry because they have all the fuels their body needs, there's no biological reason for hunger.

With no hunger you also get the liberty of eating according to when you want to eat, vice eating to stave off hypoglycemia - or in response to your body's "this is a sugar crisis feed me now dammit" demands which will put you on the high carb express to crazy town.

There's every reason to believe there's nothing more significant for your long term health than glycemic control. The people with the worst glycemic control - diabetics - are the sickest population on the planet, short and long term. They are vulnerable to every disease of civilization at rates higher than non-diabetics, and they age about ten years more rapidly than the rest of us.

Carb restriction gives you excellent glycemic control, because the liver will make the glucose that you need - but not more. Along with glycemic control, you will see improved measures of every health marker and improved (improving) body composition. Eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, and no sugar/wheat. Live long and prosper.

Taubes, Pope, Attia, Ancestral Registry

2012-01-23T15:27:00.004-06:00

Gary Taubes did the world a favor by responding to "The Fat Trap" - linked in this link - and then going a step farther. He responded with a letter to the editor which he had signed by as many willing MDs and PHDs as he could get on short notice. The letter's point was - if Ms. Pope is correct that all of the "eat less move more" advocates are ready to throw in the towel and admit that it's impossible to lose weight over time, perhaps that's because they are using the wrong prescription. Thus, there's a good reason to invest in the alternative hypothesis - carbs drive insulin which drives fat - as the primary reason why we Westerners are getting fatter, and sicker, and more expensive to keep alive, even as we work out more, diet more, and obsess more about our diabetes and the resulting cascade of diseases of civilization.

Here you can find additional thoughts from GT's new comrade in arms, Peter Attia.

They also created the Ancestral Health Registry for those who have lost weight via a low carb/paleo diet to log their experience.

The Fat Trap is a good read. It fully represents to cognitive dissonance inherent in the last 30-60 years of the science of diet, in which the wisdom and science of the pre-WWII leaders in the field - that carbs are uniquely fattening - was dumped. Remarkably, an unproved, and still unproven, scientific model was inserted and became the accepted scientific template for diet and health science. That model is an imprecisely applied interpretation of the 1st Law of Thermodynamics to human metabolism, which does not account for the fact that the human body is not a closed system. It also does not account for the fact that in a living being, energy in and energy out transactions are dependent variables - in other words, each affects the other.

Once the absurdities of "a calorie is a calorie" are seen, it becomes nearly astonishing that anyone ever fell for a plate full of such unproved (and improbable) scientific reductionism.

Lean Gains Led The Way

2012-01-23T13:27:00.000-06:00

After reading the wealth of information on fitness and fasting at Lean Gains I tried an implementation last spring. I can't I say I did exactly what Martin Berkhan would have recommended, but adapted the info he provided to a version I knew I could commit to. It worked. I lost body fat while maintaining the ability to lift large loads long distances rapidly via CrossFit programming.

I got even more than better body comp and excellent physical performance, though; I also got liberty. Liberty to get up and get going without worrying about eating. Liberty to be unafraid if I miss a meal. Liberty to know that I can eat when I want to and not have a blood sugar crash. Liberty to train when I want to, not around some notion of a pre-training fuel requirement. Time is money, time is relationships, time is the only truly limited commodity - having more time and flexibility in how I spend it is truly the gem of intermittent fasting.

And I never would have tried IF except for Martin's testimony - and the convincing photos - that one can both lean out and maintain the muscle needed to perform well, even perform better, through demanding high intensity workouts. Farewell to the specter of fasted training leading to muscle catabolism - I won't miss you.

I think IF is nearly mainstream now, as even Precision Nutrition is onto the game - as evidenced by the PN IF Guide. PN has not always struck me as an avant guard institution - although it is a very, very well run business and does a tremendous job for clients - so when they took the time to validate IF, I think it's a reasonable sign that IF is no big secret.

Bottom line - IF works, it benefits health as well as body composition, and I think it is self evident why the news is spread mostly via the web, and not via some print monstrosity that makes all its money via advertisements for junk that folks don't need - which people buy anyway due to the poor quality of science in diet and nutrition. Because so few of the opinions asserted in the muscle rags can be tested, folks fall for anything and everything.

Ignorance leads to fear and poor choices, universally as far I can tell.

Folks argue that there's more mis-information now that ever due to the web - but there's also an amount of knowledge one can gain, in exchange only for time and effort, that was never before accessible to many for so little. Amazing times!

Chains Plates and Barbells - Here's Why and How

2012-01-23T06:00:00.008-06:00

What's Up With Chains - EFTS

Ever wonder what a gym full of plates and barbells needs with chains? I used to see this box with 5/8 inch chain - which by the way looks very cool and darn sure should be put to some use - and wonder "WTF?"

Short version - it provides a way to vary the stimulus of a movement. As Louie Simmons says, "Once you spell your name right, you can only spell it wrong." Which is to say, to get the body to keep adapting, you have to present a stimulus. What was a stimulus yesterday is not a stimulus today; you already know this, because you know if you lift 50 pounds for ten reps every day, it will not help you lift 100 pounds some day. This concept is termed "the law of accommodation." If you want your body to adapt, you have to present a stimulus to which the body is not already accommodated.

"So why not just lift more today than yesterday, won't that cause an adaptive stimulus? After all, that's how Milo lifted the bull ("He was said to have achieved the feat of lifting the bull by starting in childhood, lifting and carrying a newborn calf and repeating the feat daily as it grew to maturity")"

Yes, it will, with beginners. But when have trained using linear progression long enough, gains will eventually slow. At that point, you have to find a new way to stress the body in order to continue to make gains. That's why, both with Westside Barbell, arguably the most successful gym in the world for competitive power lifters, or CrossFit, variation is continuous.

Chain attached to a barbell allows a lifter to keep the weight at what is an achievable range when the barbell, and the chain, are on the floor, but makes for an increasing weight as the barbell is lifted. So a 325 pound deadlift with 50# of chain provides a 325 pound stimulus in the start position, when leverages are low, and a 375# stimulus as the chain is fully lifted. This is most assuredly a "different" stimulus than lifting a barbell that is plate loaded only.

Or as the article linked above puts it:
The biggest difference between chains and straight weight is the ability to add accommodating resistance to whatever lift you’re training. For those unfamiliar with the term, accommodating resistance basically means that the load changes during the lift to accommodate to your natural strength curve.

Another benefit of chains, or there accommodating resistance, is that they allow us to fully accelerate through an entire movement when working on speed. If you are squatting a moderate rate for the purpose of moving as fast as possible under load, you have to slow down near the end of the movement - since it can be truly inconvenient to launch a heavy barbell into the lower atmosphere directly above your body. Chains or bands, by providing increasing resistance as the barbell moves further from the ground, prevent this dilemma, allowing maximal exertion - and everybody wants that.

Most of us have no need for $150 worth of chains, we'd be better served putting that money towards coaching or bumper plates or a good pull-up system. But it never hurts to know the answer so you don't have to be the one asking the stupid question when you see the chains in a gym!

POSE Certified

2012-01-20T12:35:00.001-06:00

Passed my POSE Method running certification test today, first try, and learned even more in the process - which to my way of thinking means the test was a "good test."

Next goal - try to add photos and video to the blog which will help folks start to learn better running technique.

Fat Head Hits 'Em In the Junk (Science)

2012-01-20T06:00:00.011-06:00

I highly recommend "Fat Head the Movie", the creator of which (Tom Naughton) is both funny, smart and diligent in defense of high fat eating for health. Among other feats, he totally dismantles the pretense of seriousness to which "Super Size Me" pretends; SSM is a funny but dis-ingenuous film.

The linked post from the Fat Head blog provides an elegant way to interpret the vast number of observational studies - which are released with great fan fare and media coverage - which mean nothing.

Pancreatic Cancer, Processed Meat, and a Load of Bologna

Fat Head: As the authors of the current study noted:

The Study: Our study has some limitations. First, as a meta-analysis of observational studies, we cannot rule out that individual studies may have failed to control for potential confounders, which may introduce bias in an unpredictable direction. All studies controlled for age and smoking, but only a few studies adjusted for other potential confounders such as body mass index and history of diabetes. Another limitation is that our findings were likely to be affected by imprecise measurement of red and processed meat consumption and potential confounders.

Fat Head: Let me put that into plain English: Our findings are meaningless. The studies we analyzed were based on food-recall surveys that are notoriously inaccurate, and most of them didn’t control for body mass index or diabetes, which essentially means they didn’t control for intake of sugars and refined carbohydrates. Okay, folks, move along; nothing here to see.

Observational studies are cheap, relatively speaking. And they have a role in science. So they get funding. But their main role is to examine correlations to determine if any are interesting enough to justify further research for the purpose of determining cause and effect. In short, when a study says that breathing air increases your risk of death by 27% or eating red meat is guaranteed to kill you in 15 minutes or less, or some such stuff, but there are already intervention studies that show meat eating and low carb reduces your markers for every known disease of civilization - you should just file that study away as the smelly bovine excrement that it is.

Then again, if you don't want to eat industrially produced bacon, salami, hot dogs, and sausage every day, that's OK too. I don't. But I eat it when I want it and I like it!
(Minor edits 20 Jan 2012, 1415)

Bray On The Loose

2012-01-18T11:00:00.001-06:00

The article linked below examines a study of what happens if you feed folks 1000 kcal/day more than you think they need. To test the question, the participants were combined to metabolic ward. The results and study design itself are quite interesting.

-Exercise was not part of the study, and their physical activity was controlled

-The low protein variant result in lean muscle mass loss and fat gain; but the total weight gained was less than that of the other variant

-The carbs levels were kept the same, it was protein levels and fat levels that varied

The author didn't seem to understand the study and essentially parroted the party line:

Whether you are just starting a New Year's diet or struggling to maintain a healthy weight, a provocative new study offers some timely guidance. It isn't so much what you eat, the study suggests, but how much you eat that counts when it comes to accumulating body fat.

"That's a very important message," said Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, an obesity researcher at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn., who wasn't involved with the study. "Weight gain depends primarily on excess calories, regardless of the composition of the meal."

These are funny conclusions to reach when the study shows that calories do not dictate weight gain – the groups all ate the same excess calories, but the low protein group gained as much fat while losing muscle mass.

The study author is well known – some might say notorious – for his advocacy of the concept that might be know as “a calorie is a calorie.”

Dr. Bray said the more than 50,000 extra calories were roughly equivalent to the excess calories the average American consumes over a decade.

And he is of course right, as regards oxidation of macronutrients in a bomb calorimeter. However, his own test shows that calories are not calories when we’re talking about a human subject:

After eight weeks, all participants in the study gained weight. The 16 men and nine women made similar gains. The low protein-diet group gained about seven pounds, about half the 13.3 pounds added on by the normal protein participants and 14.4 pounds put on by the high protein group.

In other words, sometimes the body takes extra protein calories and makes (or sustains) muscles from them, and sometimes, the calories become fat.

This is a great study for illustrating how truly difficult it is to do good science on humans. For example, one of the common observations about folks that are leaner is that they are more active in unconscious ways than heavier folks are. Their bodies adapt to higher food intakes by expending more energy as activity. Likewise, folks that are starving tend to be lethargic and to feel cold, as if their internal feedback systems find ways to conserve. In short, there are plenty of reasons to believe that the body is “not a closed system” and therefore, simplistic application of the first law of thermodynamics to humans is problematic.

One very important element that was not included in the write up from the article would have been an assessment of what the subjects’ fasting lipid profiles were like. It would also be interesting to see what would happen if the carb levels were not held constant – cause I’ll bet you 1000 kcal per day extra of a 60% carb diet would indeed have had a measurably greater fat gaining effect. But that’s part of the problem; if you can’t hold constants constant, the study cannot determine causality. Of course, there’s the other problem – if you hold constants constant, you are not examining how the human body responds “in the wild.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203462304577138993430777580.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

Luckily, you don’t have to subject yourself to the vagaries of the scientific method with a bunch of other folks being force fed high calorie diets, with their activity constrained, and their calories counted. You can just eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, and no sugar/wheat, and prove for yourself whether or not it is good for you.

PS - Here's Fat Head's review: Another Bad Study, Badly Reported

Eccentric DOMS

2012-01-18T06:10:00.010-06:00

In regards to this post, a friend asked whether the reduction in muscle soreness (DOMS or delayed onset muscle soreness) referred to in this post - BCAA Supplementation - was a sign of decreased adaptation to the workout adaptive demand.

In short - the answer is no. Muscle soreness in not a sign of adaptive demand per se, it is a result of eccentric load on a muscle. Two examples illustrate the idea.

Cyclists are very strong, and if introduced to weighted squats, they can often post a large number on day one. However, their muscles are conditioned to concentric loads only - which is to say, pushing or extending the legs. If you let a cyclist workout to capacity without an adaptation cycle of squat training first, they will be crippled from DOMS the following day.

Sled pushing is known as being intense, but it's virtually impossible to become "sore" after a sled training session. Why? Like cycling, sled driving requires concentric effort only. Unlike squats, deadlifts, pushups, pullups, etc, there's no point at which the muscle is loaded and getting longer.

In short, muscle soreness represents muscle tears resulting from eccentric loads or volumes which exceed the athlete's conditioning for eccentrics.

Yes, that's right - all those times you thought "this post workout soreness sucks but at least I'm getting stronger" you were right and wrong. You were getting stronger due to the adaptive demand you placed on your system, but the soreness was a reflection of eccentric loading only - which, thankfully, the body adapts to relatively quickly.

Faster by Technique

2012-01-18T06:00:00.000-06:00

Running speeds improved in the 1950s with the introduction of interval training, a method that interspersed periods of high-intensity work with periods of rest.
It took a leap forward when races began being held on synthetic tracks and runners began wearing track-spiked shoes. World-class results for five-kilometre runs improved by 30 seconds virtually overnight. Sprinters could improve race times by ~0.2 seconds on a 100-metre dash. These were huge gains in a sport where performance is measured in the hundredths of a second.

Recent advances suggest support time - the amount of time each foot spends on the ground - is the key driver of speed. Shorter support time means faster running.
http://greatfutures.thestar.ca/posts/article/212

The interesting thing to me is that speed - like any athletic endeavor - can be taught as a skill and improved like any skill. I don't think technique will transform my slowish self into the Barry Sanders, but it will allow me to express the athletic potential I have. Perhaps more important, by relearning an innate skill, one that has degraded by mis-perception of running and the inevitable muscle imbalances of the modern life (lived in chairs), I'm running with the least pain I've experienced in years. And because I've learned the skill and have a framework from which to judge degradations in technique, I can avoid another technique downturn like the one I experienced post-ACL surgery. Lastly, I can give the same gift to others.

Classic Quote, Eisenhower

2012-01-17T14:55:00.008-06:00

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

I think this is truth for one's personal food war too.

Interestingly, Eisenhower was a victim of the "lipid hypothesis". Diagnosed with high cholesterol, he was given a diet, described in Gary Taubes' "Good Calories Bad Calories", consisting of very low fat, very low cholesterol, and very low in nutrition. He was observed to be grumpy, complained of his mental clarity, and he gained little reduction in cholesterol. If the carbohydrate hypothesis is correct, Eisenhower was in effect poisoned. He was given exactly the foods that would worsen his "disease of the west." That he died relatively young isn't as tragic as unnecessarily having to live badly.

Cancer Sugar

2012-01-17T06:00:00.002-06:00

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/08/040806094822.htm

Study Links High Carbohydrate Diet To Increased Breast Cancer Risk

In a case-control study of 1,866 women in Mexico, those who derived 57 or more percent of their total energy intake from carbohydrates incurred a risk of breast cancer 2.2 times higher than women with more balanced diets. Dietary patterns in Mexico are characterized by higher consumption of carbohydrates and lower intake of fat and animal protein than those in more affluent western countries.
The team of researchers from the Instituto de Salud Pública in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, suggests that the association between carbohydrates and breast cancer may be related to elevated levels of insulin and insulin-like growth factor binding proteins in the blood.
“Scientists have long suspected that diet was among the factors contributing to breast cancer,” said study co-author Walter Willett, M.D., M.P.H., Dr.P.H, the Fredrick John Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. “Now, with studies like ours, we are beginning gradually to understand what elements of diet specifically are associated with the disease, and to grasp the chemical and biological processes that contribute to it at the cellular level.”
Of all the carbohydrate compounds, sucrose and fructose demonstrated the strongest association with breast cancer risk in the study. Sucrose is derived from sugar cane, sorghum and the sugar beet; it is most commonly found in table sugar and sweetened prepared foods and beverages. Fructose is a component of sucrose and is also found in fruit.
Eating sweets and starches causes a rapid rise in the body’s blood sugar levels, which in turn cues the production of insulin and triggers a biological process that ultimately can influence carcinogenesis by causing cells to proliferate.

Dietary fat – certainly a contributor to obesity – fared well in the research, showing no significant association with breast cancer risk overall.

Yup. Although - I'd like to see how they think that dietary fat is "certainly a contributor to obesity". And for that matter, if you ate enough fat to be fat, you still wouldn't have the cluster of other disorders - hypertension, dislipidemia, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease - that come with the standard high carb style obesity. (Minor edits 17 Jan 2012, 1250 CST)

2,000-year-old Mummy Cancer

2012-01-16T06:00:00.002-06:00

But they also found a variety of tumors,‭ ‬measuring between‭ ‬0.03ins‭ ‬and‭ ‬0.59‭inches,‭ ‬interspersed‭ along ‬M1‭'‬s pelvis and lumbar spine.‭
Prostatic carcinoma begins in the walnut-sized prostate gland and typically spreads to the pelvic region,‭ ‬the lumbar spine,‭ ‬the upper arm and leg bones, and the ribs,‭ ‬ultimately reaching most of the skeleton.‭
Agonising end: The mummy, known as M1, was a 5ft 5ins adult male who died a painful death at the hands of the disease aged between 51 and 60
Dr Prates and colleagues‭ ‬considered other diseases as alternatives.‭ ‬But‭ ‬M1‭'‬s sex,‭ ‬age,‭ ‬the‭ ‬distribution pattern of the lesions,‭ ‬their shape and density,‭ ‬strongly argued for prostate cancer.
'It is the oldest known case of prostate cancer in ancient Egypt and the‭ ‬second‭ ‬oldest case in history,‭' Dr ‬Prates said.
The earliest diagnosis of‭ ‬metastasising prostate carcinoma came in‭ ‬2007 ‬when researchers investigated the skeleton of a‭ ‬2,700-year-old Scythian king who died,‭ ‬aged‭ ‬40 to 50,‭ ‬in the steppe of Southern Siberia,‭ ‬Russia.‭
'This study shows that cancer did exist in antiquity,‭ ‬for sure in ancient Egypt.‭ ‬The main reason for the scarcity of examples found today might be the lower prevalence of carcinogens and the shorter life expectancy,‭' ‬Paula Veiga,‭ ‬a researcher in Egyptology,‭ ‬told Discovery News.
Moreover,‭ ‬high-resolution CT scanners,‭ ‬able to detect tiny‭ ‬tumors‭ only ‬became available only in‭ ‬2005., which suggests earlier researchers may have missed them.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2057026/Prostate-cancer-2-000-year-old-Egyptian-mummy.html#ixzz1icLxS39d

IOW - the diseases of the West are probably better termed "Post agricultural disease cascade."

Paleo Start Tips

2012-01-15T22:04:00.000-06:00

I know I have a few readers who are starting or restarting their low carb effort - these two posts link to a great summary from Mike Eades on how to make it less difficult to transition to becoming a fat burner vice a sugar burner.

Mike Eades on How To Start or Restart

Eades on Low Carb/Paleo Transition Tactics

Note on Cancer Ketone Relationship

2012-01-15T06:00:00.001-06:00

Interesting collection of notes which is consistent with other materials I've read. It makes a case for intermittent fasting, low carb intake most days, and in short - comports well with the Paleolithic model of nutrition.

http://her2support.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=39588

Thomas Seyfried–“Ketone Bodies and Cancer”

Most brain tumors are untreatable and patients die from the pressure build-up
Calorie restriction is necessary for treating brain tumors
The mitochondria are dysfunctional in human brain tumors
Otto Warburg noted that cancer leads to irreversible damage
Tumor cells are unable to shift from feeding on glucose to ketones
Cancer is more of a metabolic disease than a genetic one
There’s an 80% reduction in tumor weight when calorie-restricted
Calorie-restriction one of the most powerful therapies for killing cancer cells
As glucose is decreased, cancer cells reduce as well
A low-carb, calorie-restricted diet is better than the best drug therapy for cancer
Ketogenic calorie-restricted diets have reduced brain tumors in mice and humans
Blood glucose remains too high on an unlimited calories low-carb diet to treat cancer
Calorie-restricted low-carb diets create adequate ketones for treating brain tumors
Ketogenic, calorie-restricted diets don’t cure cancer, but they come close
Tumors can’t grow when calories are cut to create ketones
Limiting carbs and calories puts you in the zone of managing tumor growth
Brain cancer in children can be treated with ketogenic diets by reducing glucose
Avoid radiation therapy if all all possible–ketogenic, calorie-restricted diet is best for cancer

Dr. Eugene Fine–“Reduced Carbohydrates in Aggressive Resistant Tumors (RECHARGE Trial)”

Not all cancers are dependent on glucose for growth, including prostate cancer
Hyperinsulinemia is a major cancer risk factor–that’s why reducing insulin in paramount
It’s plausible that reducing insulin secretion could inhibit cancer growth
The typical American diet contains 300-400g carbs daily–spiking insulin
Cut the carbs and you’ll cut the insulin and reduce your cancer risk
You don’t want an insulin knockout (Type 1 diabetes), but rather an insulin knockdown
A low-carb diet provides the proper control of insulin without eliminating the good it does
Reduced carb diets have not demonstrated adverse effects up to 2 years as a medical therapy
Humans were built as hunter-gatherers to be in a ketotic state most of the time
Fasting is in our ancestral biochemistry with no ill effects
There is no known dietary requirement for carbohydrate in your diet
Grains and vegetables are only a relatively recent addition to the human diet
A very low-carb diet changes the metabolic environment where cancer would grow
Too many people are living outside of a sustained ketogenic state leading to more cancer
RECHARGE Trial used very low-carb diet on 10 patients who failed on chemotherapy
The study placed the participants on a very low-carb ketogenic diet for 28 days
Average daily intake consumed by study patients was 27g carbs and 1236 daily
All of the study participants were ketotic
Future direction of research will be a larger study using ketogenic diets–funding needed

Dogs, Tails, Wags

2012-01-14T06:00:00.001-06:00

The scientific study of obesity has been dominated throughout the twentieth century by the concept of energy balance. This conceptual approach, based on fundamental thermodynamic principles, states that energy cannot be destroyed, and can only be gained, lost or stored by an organism. Its application in obesity research has emphasised excessive appetite (gluttony), or insufficient physical activity (sloth), as the primary determinants of excess weight gain, reflected in current guidelines for obesity prevention and treatment. This model cannot explain why weight accumulates persistently rather than reaching a plateau, and underplays the effect of variability in dietary constituents on energy and intermediary metabolism. An alternative model emphasises the capacity of fructose and fructose-derived sweeteners (sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup) to perturb cellular metabolism via modification of the adenosine monophosphate (AMP)/adenosine triphosphate (ATP) ratio, activation of AMP kinase and compensatory mechanisms, which favour adipose tissue accretion and increased appetite while depressing physical activity. This conceptual model implicates chronic hyperinsulinaemia in the presence of a paradoxical state of 'cellular starvation' as a key driver of the metabolic modifications inducing chronic weight gain. We combine evidence from in vitro and in vivo experiments to formulate a perspective on obesity aetiology that emphasises metabolic flexibility and dietary composition rather than energy balance. Using this model, we question the direction of causation of reported associations between obesity and sleep duration or childhood growth. Our perspective generates new hypotheses, which can be tested to improve our understanding of the current obesity epidemic, and to identify novel strategies for prevention or treatment.

http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v65/n11/full/ejcn2011132a.html#bib31

Translation: Gary Taubes might be on to something.

Of course, Taubes has just re-articulated what might be called the pre-70s conventional wisdom, as well as the pre-WWII scientific consensus - which was that excessive carb intake makes you fat. And it still does.

Dr. M - "Glassman Is Right"

2012-01-13T06:00:00.000-06:00

“…high-intensity interval training cuts down on your exercise time so dramatically. You're actually getting MORE benefits from high-intensity training than you do from aerobic/cardio, in a fraction of the time—all because you're utilizing your body as it was designed to be used. You can literally be done in about 20 minutes, compared to spending an hour running on the treadmill.

"… [T]he exercise physiology world has created an inextricable link between the aerobic metabolic system and the cardiovascular. But that's not true at all. There's no way that your heart and blood vessels are hooked up only to the mitochondria. The heart and blood vessels support the entire cellular metabolism," Dr. McGuff says. "The best way to get that benefit is with high-intensity intermittent exercise."

If you give it some thought, it's actually easy to see that your body was designed for high-intensity, short-interval exercise. As Dr. McGuff says:

"… the issue isn't necessarily the running for hours and hours and hours. It's the modality itself. You will never, in nature, see an animal jogging… What the steady-state activity does is it trains the plasticity out of your physiologic system—that ability to handle widely varying levels of exertion within a short span of time gets trained away. You actually make yourself less plastic and less adaptable to physical stress in general."

http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2012/01/06/dr-doug-mcguff-on-exercise.aspx?e_cid=20120106_FNL_art_1

It is interesting to see mainstream, relatively speaking, medical folks saying, in essence, "CrossFit makes perfect sense." It works that way often - a practitioner finds something that works, and eventually, everyone else says "of course it does."

Another interesting nugget:

Your body's need for sugar is, biologically, very small. And when you consume more than you need, your body turns it into fat. As I've stated before, you do not get fat from eating fat—you get fat from eating too many carbs (sugar).

Dr. McGuff explains:

"Your skeletal muscle – if you're lucky – can hold maybe 250 grams of glucose, and your liver holds about 70. If you take 320 grams of glucose as what your storage capacity is, you can kill that with a single trip to Starbucks. Once you go beyond that, your body is going to find some sort of way to deal with those excess carbohydrates.
If your glycogen storage is full, your body has nowhere else to put it. So instead of going all the way through this metabolic pathway, it… produces body fat. That's called the novel glycogenosis. We are in the midst of a very bizarre, evil-scientist type experiment in the Western world, because we are dumping into our bodies an amount of carbohydrate and, in particular, refined sugars, that are way above the capacity of our metabolism to handle normally."

Simply put, intensity trumps duration.

A Consideration For Northern "Hemisphere-ers"

2012-01-12T06:00:00.007-06:00

A study of more than 81,000 women found those with the highest intake of vitamin D from food sources had a significantly lower prevalence of depressive symptoms.
The researchers suggested that vitamin D may affect the function of dopamine and norepinephrine.
These are neurotransmitters that are likely involved in depression, while also modulating the relationship between depression and inflammation.
This adds to growing evidence showing that if you're suffering from depression one of the best choices you can make is to spend as much time outdoors in the sun as possible.
Sun exposure is by far the best way to optimize your levels of vitamin D.
This is particularly useful to know as Daylight Savings Time is now over for most and will not having access to enough sunshine to make vitamin D until spring.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/11/13/vitamin-d-for-depression.aspx?e_cid=20111106_SNL_Art_1

Low Fat, Low Health

2012-01-11T06:00:00.020-06:00

What happens when folks eat low fat? This study showed that folks who ate low fat had a number of desirable health behaviors, but on average were larger than their peers who did not reporting eating low fat. BMI is a lousy measure of individual health, but may have some merit in a population - in general, a group that's heavier is a group that's fatter and less healthy.

From inside the Paleo bubble, it just seems like a matter of time until the masses see the obvious. It still surprises me when I see how many folks buy the low fat fad diet.

Conclusions: age, BMI, physical activity and non-smoking were associated with an increasing consumption of low-fat foods. The fact that low-fat foods consumers had a higher intake of carbohydrates and proteins question the efficacy of these items in energy reducing programs.
Highlights
► The two most daily consumed low-fat foods were meat and yoghurt. ► BMI was associated with an increasing consumption of low-fat foods. ► Consumption of low-fat foods was associated with a decreased daily total and saturated fat intake. ► This decrease was compensated by an increased intake in carbohydrates and sugar.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666311005794

You Could Learn A Lot From A Mummy

2012-01-10T06:00:00.001-06:00

The BLUF: before sugar, before transfats, before fast food, before high fructose corn syrup became the source of 20% of our caloric intake, before mean people began forcing us to eat processed foods carefully dosed with sugar-fat-salt ... the mummies were getting heart disease.

I hope it won't seem too radical to suggest that you'd be a dummy to eat like a mummy.

Sorry, I just had to ...

The study concludes:

Forty-four of 52 mummies had identifiable cardiovascular (CV) structures, and 20 of these had either definite atherosclerosis (defined as calcification within the wall of an identifiable artery, n = 12) or probable atherosclerosis (defined as calcifications along the expected course of an artery, n = 8). Calcifications were found in the aorta as well as the coronary, carotid, iliac, femoral, and peripheral leg arteries. The 20 mummies with definite or probable atherosclerosis were older at time of death (mean age 45.1 ± 9.2 years) than the mummies with CV tissue but no atherosclerosis (mean age 34.5 ± 11.8 years, p < 0.002). Two mummies had evidence of severe arterial atherosclerosis with calcifications in virtually every arterial bed. Definite coronary atherosclerosis was present in 2 mummies, including a princess who lived between 1550 and 1580 BCE. This finding represents the earliest documentation of coronary atherosclerosis in a human. Definite or probable atherosclerosis was present in mummies who lived during virtually every era of ancient Egypt represented in this study, a time span of >2,000 years.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1936878X11000660

HT: @dreades

Glucose Control? Pick Up Heavy Stuff

2012-01-09T06:00:00.001-06:00

The link below will take you to the abstract of an interesting prospective study. As always with these studies, it would be impossible to assert cause and effect relationships. At least, it shows that having more muscle mass is not bad for you, and that perhaps sustaining activities which result in creating and sustaining muscular strength are healthful as regards glycemic control.

http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/96/9/2898.abstract

CrossFit Memphis

2012-01-08T14:33:00.000-06:00

I gave my best shot at explaining the what and the why of the Paleo diet to an audience at CF Memphis yesterday, and as always, benefitted from the effort.

The best I can tell I made the impact that I hoped to. Like anyone, I can tell the stakes are high as regards eating and living a life we can enjoy. I have a lot of respect for folks that will step out of their comfort zone and do something they know they should. It is exciting to share hard won knowledge with folks who can put it to good use.

My thanks to Mike, Doug, Ashley, Rob and Chris and all the Team Faction folks that made it a great event!

Wheat Belly - The Wheat or the Running?

2012-01-08T14:25:00.000-06:00

An interesting read from the wheat belly blog.
BLUF: going wheat free might be all you need to do to cure what ails you.
http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/01/does-running-cause-intestinal-bleeding/

Low-Salt Diets May Raise Risk of Heart Disease

2012-01-05T20:46:00.000-06:00

Cutting back on salt may not be as beneficial for your heart as once thought, a new study suggests.
While a diet low in salt reduces blood pressure, it increases the levels of cholesterol, fat and hormones in the blood that are known to increase the risk of heart disease, the study found.
Overall, the good and bad consequences of a low-salt diet may cancel each other out, so the diet has relatively little effect on the development of disease, said study researcher Dr. Niels Graudal, of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark.
http://www.livescience.com/16959-salt-diet-heart-health.html?utm_content=LiveScience&utm_source=@LiveScience&utm_medium=twitter

So if lower blood pressure equates to lower risk of CVD, and lower salt levels decrease blood pressure, then how could it be that low salt diets don't lower risk of CVD?

In short, high blood pressure is a symptom of a high carbohydrate diet. It results when the body retains sodium due to excessive insulin levels. So, the key factor isn't how much salt you eat, it's how much your body retains. Even though treating the symptoms of the illness - metabolic syndrome - somewhat results in decreasing risk of CVD, lowering salt or medically lowering blood pressure is still only treating a symptom. In this way, low salt diets and BP meds are just like statins and just like gout medications.

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

Beware the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

2012-01-04T16:27:00.004-06:00

I eat about 80g/day of carbohydrates. The average for Americans is between 300 and 400 grams per day.

Interesting label on a "healthy and nutritious" drink. Note the 33 grams per serving of carbs, with 4 servings per bottle, for a whopping 132 grams of carbohydrate in one bottle. I would love to know how many purchasers drink this all in one sitting.

So, if you find you need to get a bunch of empty calories but convince yourself that you are doing yourself a favor, here's the ideal solution, which has "NO SUGAR ADDED." It's also "ALL NATURAL FRUIT."

According to this site, a cup of blueberries has ~21g of carbs. (http://www.carb-counter.net/fruit/1061) That means you can get 6 cups of blueberries in just one bottle of this stuff!! Such a deal.

Here's a smaller version of the same product:

Sorry for the sideways angle, but the numbers are: 2 servings, 29g of carbs per serving, which delivers a nice daily jolt of 58g of carbs to start your day off on the right track. I just can't figure out why we have this epidemic of diabetes in our country ...
(Minor edits 4 Jan 12, 2141)

Low Mouse Carb, Low Mouse Cancer

2012-01-04T16:05:00.001-06:00

Since cancer cells depend on glucose more than normal cells, we compared the effects of low carbohydrate (CHO) diets to a Western diet on the growth rate of tumors in mice. To avoid caloric restriction-induced effects, we designed the low CHO diets isocaloric with the Western diet by increasing protein rather than fat levels because of the reported tumor-promoting effects of high fat and the immune-stimulating effects of high protein. We found that both murine and human carcinomas grew slower in mice on diets containing low amylose CHO and high protein compared with a Western diet characterized by relatively high CHO and low protein. There was no weight difference between the tumor-bearing mice on the low CHO or Western diets. Additionally, the low CHO-fed mice exhibited lower blood glucose, insulin, and lactate levels. Additive antitumor effects with the low CHO diets were observed with the mTOR inhibitor CCI-779 and especially with the COX-2 inhibitor Celebrex, a potent anti-inflammatory drug. Strikingly, in a genetically engineered mouse model of HER-2/neu-induced mammary cancer, tumor penetrance in mice on a Western diet was nearly 50% by the age of 1 year whereas no tumors were detected in mice on the low CHO diet. This difference was associated with weight gains in mice on the Western diet not observed in mice on the low CHO diet. Moreover, whereas only 1 mouse on the Western diet achieved a normal life span, due to cancer-associated deaths, more than 50% of the mice on the low CHO diet reached or exceeded the normal life span. Taken together, our findings offer a compelling preclinical illustration of the ability of a low CHO diet in not only restricting weight gain but also cancer development and progression.

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=24317332

Interesting, of course, if not conclusive - and though not conclusive, it fits quite well with the Paleolithic Model of nutrition, in which high carb intakes like those associated with the "Western Diet" provide a novel adaptive demand to the human genome and might easily be assumed to be destructive.
(Minor edits, 4 Jan 2012, 2148)

How To Fail At Weight Loss

2012-01-02T16:56:00.001-06:00

Just talking to Bridge about the effort required to maintain her weight is exhausting. I find her story inspiring, but it also makes me wonder whether I have what it takes to be thin. I have tried on several occasions (and as recently as a couple weeks ago) to keep a daily diary of my eating and exercise habits, but it’s easy to let it slide. I can’t quite imagine how I would ever make time to weigh and measure food when some days it’s all I can do to get dinner on the table between finishing my work and carting my daughter to dance class or volleyball practice. And while I enjoy exercising for 30- or 40-minute stretches, I also learned from six months of marathon training that devoting one to two hours a day to exercise takes an impossible toll on my family life.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1325217928-b7yep3wriQbZ8W2ru2w8/A&pagewanted=print
This is a telling clip from a long article about why fat loss is hard. The author comes off as sincere and likable. She is also disciplined and skilled at telling the story of the conventional wisdom of weight loss. In short, that theory is:
-Fat makes you fat, so eat low fat complex carbs and enough whole grain to keep cement running through a 100 foot hose. Also, eat enough fruits and vegetables to employ half the world's population of immigrants in fruit/veggie farming, unless you can jam down a few more pieces of fruit in addition
-Most people gain the equivalent of 50-100 kcal per day of fat daily, so just exercise moderately every day to burn that extra amount of kcal
-We are in a toxic food environment which is riddled with food marketing and social temptations making it all but hopeless for most folks to manage their weight. Medical interventions (drugs, surgery) are the only hope we have

These folks would also say something like, "sure, carb restriction is effective and safe in the short term, but because folks don't stay on low carb diets, they don't work." As Gary Taubes says, that's like saying "sure, quitting cigarettes works but as soon as you start smoking again, you just get sick again."

Although there are many telling elements, the element best highlighted by the article is how lost a science can get when it starts with no guiding framework. Nutritional science should be a sub set of biology. Nothing in the field of biology makes any sense outside of the context of the evolutionary model. If you insert nutritional science into the context of biology, nearly all of the cognitive dissonance of nutritional science can be viewed as part of a logical whole. Instead, the field seems dead set on trying to solve a large complex puzzle (human nutrition) by peering through the equivalent of a straw. Or, put another way, the evolutionary model gives a scientist a conceptual alternative to the reductionist and minimally helpful concept of caloric balance as the driving factor in health and obesity. It is not the case that caloric balance is evident by fat gain or loss - but it is also not the cause of fat gain or loss. This last fact, by the way, is well illustrated in the references the author cites. Strangely (to me) though, she never thinks to question why human who were never fat as hunter gathers are inexplicably unable to live now without becoming obese.

This article is fertile with material for future posts as the author does a faithful job of highlighting most if not all of the "calorie is a calorie" confusion that has led so many to despair.
(Minor edits 4 Jan 2012, 2152)

For A Happy New Year - Start At The Beginning

2012-01-01T06:00:00.002-06:00

Your number one New Year's Resolution should be learning how to squat with grace and power, to squat with thoughtless ease, to squat as well as the average eighteen month old child.
Read on and learn why.

...data show that squats are excellent for building strength, power and mobility. Full squats can help counteract many of the chronic musculo-skeletal problems we face today, such as weak glutes, hunched back, weak torso, etc.
If a person can perform a full depth squat with their own bodyweight, they’re probably a fairly fit person.
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/all-about-the-squat

I like to think of the squat as your ticket away from the nursing home. In other words, a person that can perform ten full depth squats will not ever be so immobile or incapable that they will be unable to care for themselves. Squatting demands and develops the capacity for healthy knees, hips and back, as well as the ability to use them together to generate force. As the Precision Nutrition article points out, about the only muscle not engaged in a simple "air squat" is the eyebrows - although you can get some eyebrow action going if you desire to do so, and high rep squatting will likely get enough of a pain induced scowl that you can take the eyebrows off the list of ignored muscles.

That said, some squats are better than others. Conceptually, learn to see the squat as a hip movement vice a leg or knee movement. Start the movement by moving your hips back - as if you have an armload of groceries and you need to close the car door with your backside. There are many details involved in learning to squat - and typing is not a great way to communicate them.

If you are new to squatting, start with a chair or box, perhaps around 12" tall - a $15 plastic electrical junction box from a big box home improvement store works perfectly. Put a stack of books or pads on top until the surface is approximately 18" high. Sit on this "squat box".
-push your knees out
-raise your hands as high as you can reach
-VERY slowly, lean forward until your center of gravity is over your heels; then stand.
If you can do this from the 18" box, take an inch or so off, and repeat. Over time, you should develop the ability squat to full depth, glutes to heels.

When you can squat as effortlessly and deep as an 18 month old child, consider yourself an expert.

Teaching yourself, or someone else, to squat is not a "one and done" proposition. Watch videos from CrossFit.com, Elite FTS, and keep learning about squatting. This effort will be well rewarded because there's nothing else I know that has more potential to positively affect your physical capacity for work and movement than mastery of the squat - with the possible exception of the deadlift. (BTW, the above referenced link has a treasure trove of links to further your understanding and practice of the squat).

I squat to keep my knees healthy, and the left one in particular is significantly damaged. I squat to keep my back functional and strong - this has been an issue for me since I was 18. I squat to sustain proper hip function - and the squat's propensity for building hip function is, I believe, why the squat is so good for those with knee issues, because the squat can be used to learn how to use hip/hamstring levers vice the inferior levers of the quads, to significantly reduce knee stressors.

It is the commonest of common sense to use to body's largest levers and strongest muscles to move yourself - but most of the people I see every day have no idea how to do that and don't even know they are not doing it. This is one of the reasons why we live longer today but not better.

Your paleolithic ancestors "squatted like you read about." They were delivered to this earth by a squatting mother, squatted for life's other essential functions, and probably ate and rested in a squat. The squat was a ubiquitous element of human life - until we became neolithic, chair building, house living, inflexible and weak.

If you can't squat - you should consider yourself defective, disfunctional and unhealthy. This is not bad news, because for most of us, defective, disfunctional and unhealthy can be converted to functional and healthy with minutes per day devoted to learning and practicing the squat.

So assess yourself today, set a goal for squatting brilliance and let me know how you are doing through the year!

PS - I'm available for online coaching for the squat, call me!

Chauve Cave

2011-12-31T06:00:00.002-06:00

What did paleolithic man think of, aside from paleolithic woman? Interesting answer to that question here:
http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2011/12/when-you-hear-the-term.html
The BLUF: they were not dreaming of fruits and vegetables. Those folks wanted MEAT! (and liver, and kidney, and heart, and brains, and eyeballs, and marrow ...)

It is always interesting to me to be confronted with someone else's assumptions, when those assumptions are just about the opposite of mine.
"Scientists examined a series of palm prints within the cave and determined that one of the artists was at least six feet tall, a somewhat rare size in an era where proper nutrition could be hard to come by."
Man, and I was thinking it is hard to come by "proper nutrition" in the current age, in which we all get enough protein to be tall but our teeth and jaws are a mess, our lives defined by fear of food driven disease, and our science of diet is still trying to decide if it would like to be a discipline within the field of biological science (and therefore based on evolution as the defining model) or just stumble around in the dark trying to measure discrete elements of health until they find the golden health BB in the form of enough medications to treat all the diet induced diseases we give ourselves.

The other interesting assumption or artifice of the author is his/her use of the terms "scientist." It's a catch all meaning "authoritative figure."
"Chauvet Cave was unearthed over fifteen years ago, and in order to maintain it's integrity scientists have restricted the public's already limited access."
If you need to validate any action or opinion or practice, especially when performed by the government, just inform the "public" that "scientists" did it or wanted it done. Apparently that's satisfactory for many a "public" reader.
I prefer to think of scientists as what they are - folks like us. They likely know more than you do about one thing, but they are no more likely to make good decisions than any other homo sapiens. Keep in mind - the defining characteristic of the scientific method is the belief that one should never trust the opinion of a scientist.

Dr. Weil on Fat

2011-12-30T06:00:00.012-06:00

I read one of Dr. Weils' book in the late 1990s and enjoyed it, and I've always enjoyed seeing his videos; he's a likeable guy. I never thought I'd see him switch to the carbohydrate hypothesis, but apparently, he's as open to new evidence as most of us Paleo folk are. It's always a nice surprise to see someone shift from the the accepted dogma to a demonstrably useful alternative hypothesis.
Highlights of this clip:
-Fat does not make you fat
-Fats help create satiety
-Some fats are essential
-Whole fat milk better than skim/low fat

Gout from Taubes

2011-12-29T14:00:00.001-06:00

Ever had gout or known someone that did? Ever heard the line about excess purines being the cause? Consider this:
Because uric acid itself is a breakdown product of protein compounds known as purines – the building blocks of amino acids – and because purines are at their highest concentration in meat, it has been assumed for the past 130-odd years that the primary dietary means of elevating uric acid levels in the blood, and so causing first hyperuricemia and then gout, is an excess of meat consumption.
The actual evidence, however, has always been less-than-compelling: Just as low cholesterol diets have only a trivial effect on serum cholesterol levels, for instance, and low-salt diets have a clinically insignificant effect on blood pressure, low-purine diets have a negligible effect on uric acid levels.
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/10/05/gout/

That's right - eating foods with less purine content does not help with gout. How can that be true, you may wonder. The answer is that eating foods lower in purine content does not reduce the intake of purines enough to matter; even vegetarians can have relatively high rates of gout. What matters is why your body stops clearing the purine fueled uric acid, which, at high blood concentrations, results in accumulation of destructive crystals in (most commonly) the joints.
About that, Taubes comments:
... there’s the repeated observation that eating more protein increases the excretion of uric acid from the kidney and, by doing so, decreases the level of uric acid in the blood.(7) This implies that the meat-gout hypothesis is at best debatable; the high protein content of meats should be beneficial, even if the purines are not.
The alternative hypothesis is suggested by the association between gout and the entire spectrum of diseases of civilization, and between hyperuricemia and the metabolic abnormalities of Syndrome X.
In other words, there's really no reason to think that gout is "caused" by anything other than what causes all of the clusters of diseases known as the diseases of civilization. In fact, the treatment that works best for gout is carbohydrate restriction, generally, with particular attention paid to fructose consumption.

Uric acid is cleared from the body via the kidney, but with the metabolic derrangement that results from high carbohydrate diets, the kidney becomes overloaded and uric acid clearance becomes secondary.
... a series of studies in the 1960s, as clinical investigators first linked hyperuricemia to glucose intolerance and high triglycerides, and then later to high insulin levels and insulin resistance.(14) By the 1990s, Gerald Reaven, among others, was reporting that insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia raised uric acid levels, apparently by decreasing uric acid excretion by the kidney, just as they raised blood pressure by decreasing sodium excretion. “It appears that modulation of serum uric concentration by insulin resistance is exerted at the level of the kidney,” Reaven wrote, “the more insulin-resistant an individual, the higher the serum uric acid concentration.” (15)

Second, fructose directly raises uric acid levels.

Third, fructose, which is broken down in the liver in a manner similar to that of alcohol, can over task the liver and contribute to accelerated insulin resistance, which exacerbates all of the symptoms of metabolic syndrome.

In other words, just like statins and blood pressure medications treat symptoms of metabolic syndrome, but don't cure it, gout medications treat the symptoms of gout but don't deal with the cause.

I recommend you read the article linked above, but for treatment, all you need do is eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, and no sugar or wheat as you pursue vigorous health vice relief of symptoms.

I'll include more on why fructose consumption should be moderate in following posts.

Classic Quote, Unknown

2011-12-28T06:00:00.002-06:00

"1000 days a beginner, 10,000 days a master."

As told to me by Mr. Greg Johnson, a senior ranking kyokushin man, from whom I learned and to whom I have always been grateful. Shihan J, those late 90s NKJU and NMAA training camps were brutal and fun, thank you!

Eades On Human Design

2011-12-26T06:00:00.007-06:00

I can’t help but recall the great quote by Dr. Blake Donaldson, who changed the complexion of his practice in New York after spending some time with Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Wrote Dr. Donaldson in Strong Medicine, his book about an almost all meat diet:

During the millions of years that our ancestors lived by hunting, every weakling who could not maintain perfect health on fresh meat and water was bred out.

Are we meat eaters or vegetarians? Part III

Another cut:
(I am aware that Denise Minger put up a post not too long ago showing all the high-starch, high-sugar tropical fruits available in tropical areas, intimating that early man must have consumed these and, therefore, should have evolved to do okay on high-carb diets. Problem with this reasoning is that archaic homo sapiens migrated out of tropical areas anywhere from 60,000 to 150,000 years ago and went through the crucible of natural selection in other less fruit-laden climes. People of European descent certainly had ancestors who could not avail themselves of tropical fruits at any time.)

Another great post from Mike Eades. As a practical matter, some folks can tolerate carbs better than others, and in general, those who have never been significantly sick (metabolic syndrome, or worse) can tolerate carbs in relatively large amounts. Still, the human requirement for carb intake is so low it is difficult to eat and avoid "getting enough" carbs in the diet. I am in the Eades camp on this one.

It is definitely worth going to the link for the whole article and the prior two versions.

Mark on Cholesterol

2011-12-26T06:00:00.001-06:00

BLUF: If your triglycerides are below 100, and your HDL is above 50, you are on the right track.
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/how-to-interpret-cholesterol-test-results/#axzz1hTBdyeQn

The bad news - taking drugs to manipulate the numbers isn't really going to help a ton. In other words, manipulating numbers to avoid the consequence of eating the nastiness that most of us eat is no panacea.

Taubes in the CFJ

2011-12-23T06:00:00.022-06:00

A condensed version of the full presentation Gary Taubes made at the CrossFit Trainer's summit - 18 minutes to be introduced to the "carbohydrate hypothesis of obesity." Free. Enjoy!

Taubes Mac
Taubes Windows Media

BLUF: The majority of fat people got that way because eating the wrong amounts of the wrong foods (IOW too many carbohydrates) created a hormone imbalance that results in energy sequestration as fat. Because so many calories are sequestered as fat, the normal feedback loops acting to defend the body against sugar toxicity result in hypoglycemia and hunger signals. Because hungry people tend to eat more, the cycle of over-carbization leading to hypoglcemia and then to hunger results in increased food intake and decreased fat utilization and therefore obesity.

Suppose your car had a storage tank for fuel, a back up tank. Suppose that every time you filled the regular tank, some of the fuel spilled over into the back up tank. Suppose the mechanism that allowed you to access the fuel in the back up tank was inoperative. Over time, your vehicle would accumulate fuel in the back up tank. That's a very rough analogy of what makes us fat. To take it one step further, if you drive more, you will not solve the problem of accumulating "fuel."

To change the process, one must restrict carbohydrate intake, but do so intelligently. Eating according to the paleolithic model is one way to address the problem of excess carbohydrate intake.

BCAA Supplementation

2011-12-22T06:00:00.001-06:00

BLUF: Branched chain amino acid supplementation reduced post exercise muscle soreness.
Or, as they put it: "... muscle soreness increased after exercise and was 64% reduced in BCAAhttp://www.jissn.com/content/8/1/23/abstract

They started out with this observation:

"Branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) supplementation has been considered an interesting nutritional strategy to improve skeletal muscle protein turnover in several conditions. In this context, there is evidence that resistance exercise (RE)-derived biochemical markers of muscle soreness (creatine kinase (CK), aldolase, myoglobin), soreness, and functional strength may be modulated by BCAA supplementation in order to favor of muscle adaptation."

Subjects used "3.5 g of leucine, 2.1 g of isoleucine, and 1.7 g of valine; divided in 4 daily doses."

Dosing schedule was: "In the exercise day (12 sets of 10 repetitions at 120% of concentric 1 repetition maximum), subjects consumed the supplement 30 minutes before, 1.5 hour after, between lunch and dinner, and before bed; on the following 2 days, 4 doses of supplementation given between meals."
This concept of dosing would be appropriate for any athlete subject to a significant degree of eccentric loading (for example, a CrossFitter!), and in particular for a beginner athlete, for which high rep resistance exercise (especially functional movements like pullups, squats and deadlifts) offers a significant penalty in the form of post exercise muscle soreness.

Lastly, BCAAs are relatively inexpensive, easy to take, and offer little to no potential for side effects.

supplemented group when compared to the placebo group. Thus, it appears that BCAA

supplementation can also modulate muscle soreness independently of biochemical markers."

Kresser: Chronic Stress = Obesity

2011-12-21T06:09:00.001-06:00

When stress becomes chronic and prolonged, the hypothalamus is activated and triggers the adrenal glands to release a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol is normally released in a specific rhythm throughout the day. It should be high in the mornings when you wake up (this is what helps you get out of bed and start your day), and gradually taper off throughout the day (so you feel tired at bedtime and can fall asleep).
Recent research shows that chronic stress can not only increase absolute cortisol levels, but more importantly it disrupts the natural cortisol rhythm. And it’s this broken cortisol rhythm that wreaks so much havoc on your body. Among other effects, it:

raises your blood sugar
makes it harder for glucose to get into your cells ¹
makes you hungry and crave sugar
reduces your ability to burn fat
suppresses your HPA-axis, which causes hormonal imbalances
reduces your DHEA, testosterone, growth hormone and TSH levels ²
makes your cells less sensitive to insulin
increases your belly fat and makes your liver fatty
increases the rate at which you store fat
raises the level of fatty acids and triglycerides in your blood

Each one of these consequences alone could make you fat and diabetic, but when added together they’re almost a perfect recipe for diabesity.
http://chriskresser.com/10-ways-stress-makes-you-fat-and-diabetic

In other words, you may need to change more than what you eat to obtain and sustain optimal health. However, some of these things go together. Smart exercise helps to regulate lipids, as well as cortisol levels, and improves insulin sensitivity - that's all good. Good quality sleep, in adequate amounts, also helps to improve your ability to adapt to stressful circumstances - not least because it improves your ability to think clearly and identify what you can and cannot control, and have creativity in identifying options going forward. Identifying an option to work your way around, through or with stressful demands is a huge stress reliever all on its own.

Demands from the life we choose are inevitable - and not bad, per se. There are many sad rich, bored, unstressed people as there are sad, poor, stressed people (percentage wise). How we respond to the demands determines how those demands will impact us. The more abundant your health, the more capacity you have to adapt to any demand. This is the point of striving for health in my view - not to live forever, not just to have an optimal appearance, but to have options and resources from within yourself that you may bring to bear when life makes the unexpected demand.

Intermittent, Low-Carbohydrate Diets - Better

2011-12-20T09:30:00.002-06:00

This was a very interesting intervention study - the good kind - which compared the results for 150 women who were assigned to one of three dietary approaches - calorie restricted "mediterranean", calorie restricted low carb 2 times per week, or "eat all you want" low carb 2 times per week.

The result?

Data revealed that both intermittent, low-carbohydrate diets were superior to the standard, daily Mediterranean diet in reducing weight, body fat and insulin resistance. Mean reduction in weight and body fat was roughly 4 kilograms (about 9 pounds) with the intermittent approaches compared with 2.4 kilograms (about 5 pounds) with the standard dietary approach. Insulin resistance reduced by 22 percent with the restricted low-carbohydrate diet and by 14 percent with the “ad lib” low-carbohydrate diet compared with 4 percent with the standard Mediterranean diet.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/intermittent-low-carbohydrate-diets-more-successful-than-standard-dieting-present-possible-intervention-for-breast-cancer-prevention (emphasis mine)

Insulin has long been identified as a player in cancer growth, because many cancers run only on glucose (which they ferment for fuel), are more insulin sensitive than normal tissues, and are also more sensitive to insulin like growth factor one (aka IGF1). In short, a high glucose, and therefore high insulin human provides an ideal environment for a cancer to outgrow surrounding tissues.

These factors are of course another indicator of the validity of the paleolithic model as a guide for human health.

How It Was Done

2011-12-20T09:02:00.000-06:00

John Durant (@johndurant)
12/20/11 1:42 AM
Long-time diabetic Kim Jong Il successfully assassinated by Western foods

Nutrition Seminar At CrossFit Memphis

2011-12-16T11:59:00.002-06:00

Faction Strength and Conditioning

Faction S&C team and I will be presenting a nutrition seminar at their fabulous gym on 7 January - at which you will learn why food choice has more impact than portion control, how to develop your body's ability to burn fat as grade A fuel, and how eating in a paleo style is likely best approach to reduce your risk for the diseases of the West - and to look, feel and perform your best!

Tips on how to start? Of course.

Testimonials from those with experience in this approach? Heck yes.

Information for both beginners and veterans? Of course!! Click the link, sign up today. Get your 2012 started off with a transformational, root cause performance enhancement!

http://factionsc.com

Article in the CrossFit Journal

2011-12-14T21:53:00.000-06:00

The CrossFit Journal published an article I wrote about the POSE Method of running; take a look!

http://library.crossfit.com/premium/pdf/CFJ_Pose_Eich_Dec2011.pdf?e=1323920154&h=b36268c298098c83ef019f3faa84f33f

Fat Is Fuel, Fat Is Good

2011-12-12T06:00:00.005-06:00

There are two ways to sustain adequate blood sugar levels. Because the brain shuts down when deprived of glucose, producing and sustaining blood glucose levels is a primary driver of metabolic processes. Given the significance of maintaining blood glucose, it would be no surprise that the body has more than one way to get the job done.

That said, how many times have you experienced, or known folks who experienced, hypoglycemia? This is characterized by feeling droopy, irritable, and hungry - for anything but often especially for carb foods. Most folks experience this as "reactive hypoglycemia", in which the "victim" eats a large amount of carbs, resulting in a blood sugar spike, to which the body reacts with an insulin surge, after which, blood sugar levels fall too far.

Normally, as blood sugar levels fall, the body compensates by making blood sugar in the liver, and by producing ketones, which allow the brain to use less sugar. Also, most non-brain cells run well on fatty acids, which is why we store energy as fat. In short, it should be very hard to achieve "hypoglycemia" in a healthy person. Strangely, it's so common that folks speak of it often and even plan for a mid morning or mid afternoon snack to avoid the "sugar low light."

The reason for that is that the body has a finite and relatively small capacity for glucose storage, and folks who eat a big dose of carbs are giving themselves a glucose management problem. The body is equipped for glucose management, but it appears to be the case that when the body has to deal with glucose management problems routinely, it does not sustain the process well. One reason is that cells will burn sugar inside the cells preferentially, so if the body is always stuffing cells full of sugar, the cells so rarely burn fat for fuel that they begin to maintain very low levels of fax oxidizing enzymes. In short, repeated high carb intake makes you both sick from the excess sugar, fat, and at the same time, dependent on exogenous sugars as your body's fat burning systems atrophy from lack of use.

Based on the above described cycle, it's no wonder that folks who eat a lot of carbs all the time often get fat - except for the ectomorphs (tall and lean) who seem less capable of using fat for fuel in general.

The question then, is "what do I do about it?" That's a question we can answer next time.

Cholesterol Disinformation

2011-12-06T06:00:00.005-06:00

So, you think people are to ignorant to know and process the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. You decide you need to tell them something simple enough to follow, and so what if it is unproved - YOU MUST ACT!! So you tell everyone to stop eating cholesterol in your foods (no more eggs), and to stop eating foods with saturated fat. Easy, simple, a prescription anyone can both understand and act on.

Just one problem - it doesn't help anyone to be healthier! This Rx does not result in much "improvement" in your cholesterol numbers, and an even smaller improvement in mortality reduction.

Why, then, would I still see such a poster on the wall of a medical professional's office?!

It's simple enough, in that once enough people said "saturated fat and cholesterol is bad", folks believed it, science be damned. The old model, which seems so banal now that it is hard to believe anyone truly believed it, was that cholesterol was floating around in the blood in excess, and stuck to the arteries like grease clogs a drain. In hindsight, this seems almost impossibly simplistic.

The best understanding at present is that, unlike the poster above's clear message, LDL isn't "bad" per se. Further, reducing cholesterol via statins, oatmeal, or any other "number manipulation" does not improve mortality (as has been addressed in this blog often).

What you can do to measure your health, the best measure known now, is to reduce triglycerides while raising HDL. While you do this, control your glucose levels. To do this, eat meat, vegetable, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, and no sugar or wheat. Adjust your intake after measuring glucose levels and re-evaluating TG/HDL levels. With TG under 100, and HDL over 50, and with fasting glucose under 100 and falling, you can be confident you are eating well.

Cholesterol isn't the villain, and never was. This has been known for a long time. It's a shame that an otherwise proud profession cannot catch on.

Romanov On Running

2011-12-05T22:34:00.000-06:00

the key to overcoming your limitations isknowledge. Knowledge of your circumstances gives you thewisdom to successfully integrate your running into your familyand home life. Knowledge of proper running gear, hydration andrest permits you to run in any conditions. Knowledge of your neighborhood and your hometown allows you to nd suitabletraining routes.Most importantly, knowing

how

to run gives you the possibility torun freely. When you know your body and you know how to run,you will have no fear of overtraining, no fear of injuries. You can betruly free to run long distances, to run hard intervals. You can befree to run faster than you ever have before.To reach your peak performance, you must have the psy

...the key to overcoming your limitations is knowledge. Knowledge of your circumstances gives you the wisdom to successfully integrate your running into your family and home life. Knowledge of proper running gear, hydration and rest permits you to run in any conditions. Knowledge of your neighborhood and your hometown allows you to find suitable training routes.

Most importantly, knowing how to run gives you the possibility to run freely. When you know your body and you know how to run, you will have no fear of overtraining, no fear of injuries. You can be truly free to run long distances, to run hard intervals. You can be free to run faster than you ever have before. Belief in your technique then gives you the confidence to move past your limitations and explore your true potential.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/74807672/-Freedom-To-Run-Your-Best

There's no question in my mind, a weekend training with Dr. Romanov resulted in running "enlightenment." If you like to run, or if you would like to like to run, you have to re-learn how to run with gravity, vice running against gravity. Dr. R can show you how.

Bottom line - it feels delightful to run this way!

CrossFit Mainstream

2011-12-02T06:00:00.003-06:00

http://www.thedoctorstv.com/videolib/init/5302
This was a really interesting video of folks who don't do CrossFit style stuff, being asked to. They are fitness professionals, but weirdly uncomfortable doing a short, intense workout with complex movements. That said, it was a gutsy move that they accepted the challenge to do this on a public stage.

My compliments to Jillian - she didn't "crush"this workout by any means, but she at least got the concept of force production using the hips; they other guy was almost comic in his inability to grasp how to do sumo deadlift high pulls. Jillian, though, was not as impressive with the push presses - that is a weight that my beginner client could smoke.

That folks can be fitness professionals, but totally unable to understand effective force generation, and also be unable to work at high intensity for short intervals, that CrossFit has made the impact in the fitness world that it has. They look good, they are lean, presumably they are healthy - but if they had to use their bodies to get work done, would you want them on your team? Likewise, as you choose how to invest your fitness hours, do you want to look good but be relatively low in work capacity, or would it better to chase work capacity headlong - and as a bonus, look like CrossFitters do?

As the saying goes, "you pays your money, you takes your chances."

And He Could Play the Guitar Just Like Swinging a Bell ...

2011-12-01T06:00:00.000-06:00

I always wondered what that song was about, now I know ...

How to Swing A Bigger Kettlebell, Faster and Easier, by Squatting Less…
Check out my good friend, who is also one of the maestros leading CrossFit Memphis, Doug Larson, and his supreme instruction on how to get to the most bang from your butt while swinging a kettle bell.

It may not look it, but blasting that bell overhead with precision and power is just plain fun!

Understanding How You Were Made To Run

2011-11-29T09:25:00.000-06:00

The BLUF: gravity is the most important factor in skilled running, so to run with skill, do not oppose gravity. To work with gravity and not against her, use the hamstring to pull the weighted foot towards the hip, let gravity and your nervous system do the rest.
NOTE: if you stick your foot out by extending the knee in front of you with dorsiflexion of the foot, which is the way to make your heel strike first, your sins will be punished by slow running and more injury.
NOTE 2: if you forget about the foot that is not in contact with the ground and focus on pulling your weighted foot, your body will do a better job of putting your foot in the right place than you can with conscious effort. Your mind does not know where the foot should go, but your highly evolved nervous system does.

Watch BMack's video clips and see if you agree.
http://www.iamunscared.com/hamstrings-vs-hip-flexors/

Yawn - Another Epidemiological Study

2011-11-25T06:00:00.001-06:00

A new study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers finds a strong association between the consumption of red meat—particularly when the meat is processed—and an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. The study also shows that replacing red meat with healthier proteins, such as low-fat dairy, nuts, or whole grains, can significantly lower the risk.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2011-releases/red-meat-type-2-diabetes.html

Another junk observational study, another foolish conclusion, yawn.

I joined a chorus of others who have written ad nauseum about this process of having to get funding to do research to be relevant in the field, and about how the only types of studies that are cheap enough to fund are these observational studies, and how observational studies are a tool to find statistical relationships worthy of further study - but cannot be used to determine causation. Given the incentives in place, these studies and these kinds of results will not cease.

My advice to the study publishers is - go for it. Eliminate the processed meat and the red meat and eat all the whole grains and low fat milk you can find. Many people like to eat that way. You may even thrive that way, and I hope you do.

Let me know how that goes for you, in the mean time, I'm betting on red meat and less than 100g of carbs per day, and there's no available measure of health that indicates this is a problem. I'll take that over another cheap observational study any day.

Hero WOD: Santora

2011-11-24T09:04:00.000-06:00

Fair winds and following seas on your journey warrior!

Santora
Three rounds for reps of:
155 pound Squat cleans, 1 minute
20' Shuttle sprints (20' forward + 20' backwards = 1 rep), 1 minute
245 pound Deadlifts, 1 minute
Burpees, 1 minute
155 pound Jerks, 1 minute
Rest 1 minute

U.S. Army Sergeant Jason A. Santora, of Farmingville, New York, assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, based out of Fort Benning, Georgia, died in Logar province, Afghanistan on April 23, 2010, from wounds sustained during a firefight with insurgents. He is survived by his parents Gary and Theresa, and sister Gina.

Thanksgiving - Give Thanks and Enjoy What You Like

2011-11-24T06:00:00.000-06:00

Aside from the unquestionable health benefits (in my humble as ever opinion) of being able to experience gratitude, my advice to you today dear reader is to enjoy any food you like. Give yourself a day of no restrictions at all on food quantity or quality.

Notice which foods you enjoy, and if that selection has changed as you have trained yourself to eat food, vice a bunch of high carb crap. For me, over the last few years, eating is different. The cakes, pies, cookies, doughnuts, and sugary "ice cream like junk" I used to pound down like there was no tomorrow no longer thrills me and rarely tempts me. When I eat it, I don't get a fraction of the satisfaction that I used to get - oh, the high price of losing one's addiction.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Taubes on Food Reward/Palatability, IIc

2011-11-23T06:00:00.000-06:00

One point I’ve been making in my posts and in my books is that it’s possible to find evidence in favor of virtually any idea – including the Flying Spaghetti Monster as the ruling force in the universe. More important to the validation of an idea or a hypothesis is the strength of the evidence that seems to refute it. Can the hypothesis survive more or less intact our best attempts to refute it?

This is one of the points I was trying to get across at the Ancestral Health Symposium: that the foods we eat today during our current obesity epidemic might have a high reward value, and that diets consumed by lean populations in faraway locales might not, isn’t particularly interesting. Yes, it supports the hypothesis, but how do we explain epidemics of obesity in populations that eat diets that don’t appear to have a high reward value? Do we need an entirely different hypothesis for them? That would be unfortunate.

Catching up on lost time – the Ancestral Health Symposium, food reward, palatability, insulin signaling and carbohydrates… Part II(c)

I think this is Taubes' most compelling post yet, but taken together, the series is enough to convince me that "food reward" is a compelling but incomplete explanation for population obesity.

Another element of the carb hypothesis that is compelling is the studies which show that low fat, low calorie diets (~1200 kcal/day) lead rather rapidly to the symptoms of starvation (folks feel cold, lethargic, irritable, think about food all the time, and are inactive), whereas folks on a high protein/fat diet at the same number of kcal/day will continue to lose weight and feel relatively good. Presumably, those on a low protein/fat, low cal diet would naturally eat more food so that they can stop feeling bad - they would also not lose weight, and if they did, they would not feel better and so might wonder "what's the point of losing weight if I still feel like dirt?" In short, based on physiological reality, one could predict that low fat/protein and low calorie would be a losing proposition - which it usually is. Even worse, it does not improve the measurable markers of health very speedily, or as dramatically, as does carb restriction.

I await the next series when Taubes discusses the evidence in opposition to the "carbohydrate hypothesis" of obesity.

Part IIb In Taubes' Rebuttal of the Palatability Conjecture

2011-11-22T06:00:00.000-06:00

What can we take away from these studies? Well, these three papers certainly support the contention that the sugars consumed in western diets have very specific deleterious metabolic effects, and that maybe these sugars are the, or at least a proximate cause of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome, and so, we can assume, obesity and type 2 diabetes and perhaps all the other chronic diseases that associate with these two conditions (cancer anyone?). This was the thesis of my April New York Times Magazine cover article “Is Sugar Toxic.”
http://garytaubes.com/2011/11/catching-up-on-lost-time-%e2%80%93-the-ancestral-health-symposium-food-reward-palatability-insulin-signaling-and-carbohydrates%e2%80%a6-part-iib/

Look, I know we're all going to have some sugar in our lives, I'm not deluded that a purist diet of no sugar is either easy or necessary. I would suggest, though that increasing your intake of fructose from 5% to 20% of your total caloric intake is problematic for your health. Further, if you are the average American knocking back close to 150 pounds of sugar per year, you shouldn't be surprised if you are as weak, fat and sick as the average American is - and just as subject to the diseases of the West (gout, cancer, heart disease and stroke, obesity, diabetes, etc).

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

The Last Mile ...

2011-11-21T05:59:00.001-06:00

Two dead as they finish the Philly marathon, and in doing so are just like the original marathoner, who died upon arrival and delivery of the warnings of war. Marathoners are not likely to die in the marathon, but when they do it is almost always during the last mile.

Tragedy for their families, and it makes it makes one ponder what internal drivers make humans wish to test themselves in ways such as this.

http://espn.go.com/olympics/trackandfield/story/_/id/7261093/two-runners-die-collapsing-philadelphia-marathon

Low Salt Is Low Science and Low Smart

2011-11-20T06:00:00.001-06:00

Or as Fat Head The Movie creator Tom Naughton put it, So if your blood pressure is 130/90, cutting back on salt might reduce that to 128/89 or so. Whoopie.
http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2011/11/10/odds-ends-2/

I know I've posted several references to the low salt hocus pocus, and one can start to believe, once they've waded through same, that everyone else is on to the idea also, but incredibly, virtually no one is.

A bit more from Tom's post:
Since so many experts are pushing low-salt diets in spite their negligible effect on blood pressure, I’ll bet those other effects are fabulous.
People on lower-sodium diets had an average 2.5% increase in cholesterol and a 7% increase in bad blood fats called triglycerides compared to people who were eating more than 3,450 milligrams of sodium — an amount that’s close to what the CDC says the average American eats every day.

Dude, pass the salt! And by the way - make some of that salt iodized salt because our non-paleo diets don't include enough fish eyes to keep us up to snuff on that iodine stuff.

Know the Desired Outcome

2011-11-19T06:00:00.001-06:00

The BLUF from an interesting post from "That Paleo Guy":
Not much point in blunting a training session by tipping large amounts of antioxidants down the throat is there? http://thatpaleoguy.com/2011/11/15/more-antioxidants/

People have beat the antioxidant supplementation concept to death because it is an attractive idea and sells a bunch of stuff, not because it has been proven to work. Yes, that's right, all that hoohaa you've read about eating a pound of brightly colored vegetables every 15 minutes is probably just another great sounding idea which is funded by the brightly colored vegetable industry group du jour.

To be sure, for all I know if a human eats more vegetables per day than a rhino does, it might actually help someone somewhere - just like drinking your own urine every morning may help someone somewhere.

Before I went off the deep end trying to eat like an herbivore, though, I think I might do what I could to stop eating food which results in chronically high inflammation levels, such as those "heart healthy" vegetable oils to include corn, canola aka rapeseed, safflower, etc (doesn't that term strike you as a bit odd, "vegetable oils"? Ever notice that no matter how hard you squeeze corn, it does not produce oil?).

Instead, try meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit and starch and no sugar/wheat.

Fat and Sick or Just Fat?

2011-11-17T06:00:00.001-06:00

Interesting blog post, with a typical BLUF: study tests a typicaly "low fat" dieteary intervention, and the results are lukewarm at best, and the study authors conclude that the only solution these sick and non-sick but obese people have to hope for is a yet to be invented pharmaceutical intervention.
http://ramblingsofacarnivore.blogspot.com/2011/11/low-fat-another-nail-in-coffin.html

The most interesting part of the post is this:

“In the last few years it has been shown that metabolically healthy obese (MHO) individuals comprise roughly 30% of obese people and 10% of the adult general population [1– 5]. In addition to having insulin sensitivity that is similar to non-obese individuals, MHO individuals have lower liver fat content and lower intima media thickness (IMT) of the common carotid artery than obese insulin-resistant (OIR) individuals [6].”

In other words, about 30% of those people who can be labelled "obese" still retain normal metabolic function, which is to say their body is still able to regulate glucose via the action of insulin.

The study cited is just another example of the mediocrity of low fat diets, and what would have made interesting is if, like some similar studies, a low carb group had been included for comparison (100g/day of carbs, or approximately 20% of total energy intake in a 2000 kcal diet). My prediction, not particularly bold since this has already been determined, is: for most of the participants, the low carb approach would result in more weight loss, better lipid results, and improved insulin sensitivity/metabolic health.

Lustig: Insulin and Satiety

2011-11-16T06:00:00.007-06:00

A shorter explanation from a gent with some nifty insights in the relationships between obesity, insulin, leptin and what causes what.

There's a key point here with relevance to the Taubes/Guyanet highlighted debate between the palatability theory of weight loss and the carb theory of weight loss. Guyanet and others in that camp point to the fact that insulin injected directly into the brain results in satiety, therefore, the carb theory, which hinges on the action of insulin in causing overeating and under activity, must be false.

Whenever I've read a report on that study - that insulin injected exogenously reduces hunger - I wonder why anyone would take that to mean anything significant. The idea that we can deduce the effect of insulting in the system, in the organism, from the effect of it being exogenously injected, is fraught with peril - as is any rational analysis of diet without massive long term well controlled intervention studies.

Lustig does a nice job of pointing out the difference between short term impacts of hormones, and the longer term impacts or chronic impacts.

It does make sense, of course, that if the body is secreting insulin to control a carb bolus, that it should also reduce hunger - at that moment. After all, there's a glucose crisis to deal with, which eating would exacerbate. Two hours later, when insulin is overdoing the job of saving the body from too much glucose, and blood sugar levels of dropping, it would also make sense that appetite would increase, which is what many people experience in their pattern of high carb eating. To say that the short term effect of exogenously injected insulin disproves the carb theory shows, to my mind, some defect of thinking - due to either a desire for the carb hypothesis to be wrong, or due to the tendency of many to mistake a measurable, discreet fact for the whole picture, which it is only a factor (and perhaps a minuscule one) in the whole picture. It appears that this kind of defective thinking often results from the specialist's confidence that they know more, perhaps their desperate need to believe that they know more, than those who don't share their credentials.

"Are you strong?"

2011-11-15T22:46:00.000-06:00

As my friend David "Chef" Wallach put it: "I'm stronger today than I was yesterday, and I'll be stronger tomorrow than I am today."

From HBR:
Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality, and our physical aptitudes are fixed — that no matter what we do, we won't improve. As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves, rather than developing and acquiring new skills. http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/02/nine_things_successful_people.html?cm_sp=most_widget-_-default-_-Nine%20Things%20Successful%20People%20Do%20Differently

In other words, who cares how good you are today - celebrate your progress, anticipate your next milestone, enjoy the process of creating new strength, new capacity, exceeding prior limitations, and don't be limited by your notions of who or what is or isn't strong!

Coach's fitness

2011-11-14T06:00:00.001-06:00

This is a portion of an email I received from Mike Boyle. Boyle is no friend of CrossFit, but he's a knowledgeable coach all the same. I like his approach to remaining fit while dealing with a full schedule. He's both growing a business and taking care of friends, family and clients. This is an admirably effective approach from a person who's decided fitness and performance must be sacrificed to meet other goals.
Do brief workouts. Again, if you are busy you don't have time to lift for two hours.

I try to do 4-5 High Intensity Cardiovascular Workouts a week. These are either 12-14 minute threshold rides (usually a five mile AirDyne for time) or a series of distances for
time. My favorites are timed miles or half miles with a heartrate recovery. These workouts take a maximum of 20 minutes. In addition, I've modified Craig Ballantynes Bodyweight 100. Most days I just try to get 100 reps in broken up into push, pull, legs, and core. It currently takes me less than 4 minutes to get a full body lift. I try to lift twice a week
but, probably average one workout every five days.

As I always say, the secret is there is no secret.

http://www.functionalstrengthcoach3.com/
http://www.onlinebodybyboyle.com

"Depth Jumps"

2011-11-11T06:00:00.002-06:00

The BLUF: Before you do heavy back squats, do some depth jumps (in this case, 2-6 from 33cm/1 foot), wait four minutes, and your 1RM is likely to be higher than if you tried it without doing the depth jumps.
Research has demonstrated that high-load low-velocity (HLLV) exercises (≥85% 1 repetition maximum [1RM]) increase performance in subsequent low-load high-velocity (LLHV) exercises, when separated by a rest period ≥4 minutes. To date, few studies have investigated LLHV exercises on subsequent HLLV exercises. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of 2, 4, or 6 depth jumps (DJs) on subsequent 1RM back squat performance. Fourteen subjects (age 22 ± 4 years, height 177 ± 10 cm, body mass 80.3 ± 14.4 kg) completed five 1RM back squat testing sessions, either control, retest, or 1 of 3 interventions (2, 4, or 6 DJs from a height of 33 cm, 4 minutes before the first 1RM attempt), in a counterbalanced order. Intraclass correlation coefficients demonstrated a high test-retest reliability for the 1RMs (r = 0.989, p < 0.001). Repeated-measures analysis of variance with Bonferroni post hoc analysis revealed significantly greater 1RM performance (140.71 ± 35.68 kg: p = 0.004, 140.50 ± 33.77 kg: p < 0.001, 141.43 ± 34.39 kg: p = 0.002, respectively) for each intervention (2, 4, or 6 repetitions, respectively) compared to the control condition (132.43 ± 34.56 kg). No significant differences were found between interventions (p > 0.05). The findings of this investigation demonstrate that the inclusion of 2, 4, or 6 DJs, 4 minutes before a maximal squat, enhances subsequent strength performance.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21993028
HT: Martin Berkhan

What's a depth jump?
http://www.ehow.com/how_4510248_do-depth-jumps.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teyc5pxc_FQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKtSJc39QNc

Taubes on Food Reward/Palatability, IIa

2011-11-10T06:00:00.001-06:00

The conventional wisdom is that we get fat because we take in more calories than we expend. Simple enough. We get fat because we overeat, not the other way around. Changes in energy balance—calories-in minus calories-out—drive changes in adiposity, in how much fat we carry around in our fat cells.

Ultimately, as I discuss in Why We Get Fat, this is a brain-rules paradigm. After all, both the components of overeating — eating too much, aka gluttony, or moving too little, aka sloth — are both behaviors and in this paradigm behaviors are psychological phenomena not physiological.

Researchers who live in this paradigm are invariably trying to discover what’s wrong with our brains or the signaling to our brains that cause this particularly cherished organ (what Woody Allen memorably described as his “second favorite organ”) to screw up. Why can’t the brains of people who become obese or overweight get the energy balance thing right? Or why do these brains effectively desire more fat on the body than is healthy? Why do they set the “set point” of adiposity too high? The problem with people who get obese is in their brains, not their bodies (even though the excess fat is in the body).

http://garytaubes.com/2011/11/catching-up-on-lost-time-%e2%80%93-the-ancestral-health-symposium-food-reward-palatability-insulin-signaling-and-carbohydrates%e2%80%a6-part-iia/

While I think Stephan Guyanet's advice to "eat bland food" might be helpful, and carb restriction is no panacea with so much social custom fixed on carb/sugar/wheat consumption, "eat bland food" will never approach carb restriction as a long term approach to both living well, being healthy and lean, and enjoying food as the human animal was meant to do.

Tate: "I Hate The Deadlift"

2011-11-08T12:08:00.000-06:00

The BLUF:
His answer, while classic Louie, just made me hate the deadlift more, “You were never strong enough to have a grip problem before.”

Great read from Dave Tate. And if you are into learning how to deadlift, or to do it better, the videos at the end of the article are excellent.
There was ONE day where I almost liked the deadlift, but as usual with the deadlift, that got shot down. I have no idea why, but at a local Ohio meet back in 2002, I pulled my 650-pound opener and it was easy (it always was). I then jumped to 720 pounds for a PR total. Normally I would call it a day and pass the third, but the 720 was really easy. This isn’t “powerlifer talk” it was seriously really easy. I called for 770 pounds on my third attempt for a 30 pound PR. The bar flew up and right before lockout without even slowing down, my right hand popped open and the bar hit the floor.
At this point, I did the infamous “hand stare.” You’ve seen it. You may have actually done it. This is when you drop a pull and look at your hands like WTF just happened.
I was totally confused and did the hand stare for what seemed to be 20 minutes until Louie finally walked over and said, “Your pulls looked really good.” I asked him what the hell happened to my grip. His answer, while classic Louie, just made me hate the deadlift more, “You were never strong enough to have a grip problem before.”
http://articles.elitefts.com/articles/powerlifting-articles/why-i-hate-the-deadlift/

In other words, weakness is relative - and yes, I just called a guy who couldn't hold onto a 770 pound bar "weak".

NYT Shows You How To Run Wrong

2011-11-08T06:00:00.001-06:00

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/11/06/magazine/06running-vertical.html?ref=magazine
Nope - check out the advice to extend the leg behind, and to have "drive" from the hips.

From the perspective I advocate, a leg extended behind is a guarantee of inefficiency, and there is no "drive" - there is only falling. Either way, you will find little succes in improving your movement via only learning a new concept of running, although that is a good place to start. What must follow, for success, is a process of learning accurate perception of where your body actually is in space. My presecription: Drills, video, coaching.

Running

2011-11-07T06:00:00.002-06:00

We were once the greatest endurance runners on earth. We didn’t have fangs, claws, strength or speed, but the springiness of our legs and our unrivaled ability to cool our bodies by sweating rather than panting enabled humans to chase prey until it dropped from heat exhaustion. Some speculate that collaboration on such hunts led to language, then shared technology. Running arguably made us the masters of the world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/magazine/running-christopher-mcdougall.html?_r=4

“The data suggests up to 79 percent of all runners are injured every year,” says Stephen Messier, the director of the J. B. Snow Biomechanics Laboratory at Wake Forest University. “What’s more, those figures have been consistent since the 1970s.” Messier is currently 11 months into a study for the U.S. Army and estimates that 40 percent of his 200 subjects will be hurt within a year. “It’s become a serious public health crisis.”
Nothing seems able to check it: not cross-training, not stretching, not $400 custom-molded orthotics, not even softer surfaces. And those special running shoes everyone thinks he needs? In 40 years, no study has ever shown that they do anything to reduce injuries. On the contrary, the U.S. Army’s Public Health Command concluded in a report in 2010, drawing on three large-scale studies of thousands of military personnel, that using shoes tailored to individual foot shapes had “little influence on injuries.”

How To Get Depressed

2011-11-04T06:00:00.021-05:00

OK, perhaps the title is a bit excessive, but there's an interesting point in this write up:

Across all the studies, results showed that those who rated their own performance as much higher than it actually was were significantly more likely to feel dejected. “Distress following excessive self-praise is likely to occur when a person’s inadequacy is exposed, and because inaccurate self-assessments can prevent self-improvement,” said co-author Chi-Yue Chiu, of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
http://www.newswise.com/articles/too-much-undeserved-self-praise-can-lead-to-depression

Obviously there's a causality question here - are people who are less secure more likely to be depressed, and avoid it by puffing themselves up? Or, is the causality as stated - puffing oneself up is a set up for a fall?

Interestingly, there are other variables - some people who are competent seem to thrive when they repeat negative messages to themselves. No matter what they do, they still focus on what that fail at, or what they miss the mark at. No self help guru, though, would advise that course of action. They typically advise people to celebrate their accomplishments, to "anchor" in the feelings of success. No one, however, would advocate self deception as the means to a fuller enjoyment of life, so perhaps this study only confirms what we all know anyway.

In my experience, for people to desire improvement, people need to perceive inadequacy, to a degree - or as Peter Senge termed it in The Fifth Discipline, awareness of a gap between the physical condition they would like to be in and the physical condition they perceive they are in. They need to believe they can close the gap between where they are and where they "should" be. They have to have a degree of hunger for improvement which exceeds their perception of how difficult it will be to improve. Those are necessary preconditions, but they are not sufficient to cause changes in behavior. There could be any number of other barriers which might inhibit a person's motive to become more fit. If you are that person, trying to get started on getting fit, you must identify the barriers and find ways to remove them or diminish their impact.

Consider, however, the person that is not in shape, but thinks that they are. What happens when that person is confronted with the reality of their condition? In other words, this article highlights the expression "the truth hurts."

If you've been struck by an upleasant truth lately as regards your health or fitness, the obvious question is "what do I do about it?"

First, use objective measures of truth - for weight, that means a scale and a tape, either one alone tells you much less than when they are used together. If you can only use one objective measure, use a tape of your waist.

Two - establish a motivating goal, and identify what portion of that goal you are willing to attempt to accomplish. For those in the throes of the full catastrophe of life, I do not recommend an attempt on Mount Everest.

Three - take action now towards accomplishing your goal

Four - mark and celebrate every accomplishment on the road to your goal

Five - continuously learn how to get yourself to work towards the outcomes you want. Read on the subject of interest, at least weekly. Find others with the same interest and work together.

Six - learn to identify and remove your unconscious inhibitions to change (like believing you cannot succeed based on prior attempts to change which were unsucessful).

Seven - seek out help. There is a burgeoning industry of what is termed a "life coach", and these are people who specialize in training the rest of us how to "manipulate ourselves." Can't quit eating pizza? Can't stop watching TV? Can't get yourself to workout for any consistent length of time? These folks help you deal with that sort of thing and more.

A an example I've heard of that captures the idea behind this approach to change describes the conscious mind as the elephant rider and the unconscious mind as they elephant. One has massive power but a dim perception of external reality. The other has a clearer perception of reality, but virtually no power to force the other to do anything. Learning how to guide the elephant with greater skill is worth learning for anyone that desires to be more than a passenger in life!

Classic Quote, Paterno

2011-11-02T21:45:00.002-05:00

"What counts in sports is not the victory, but the magnificence of the struggle."

- Joe Paterno

HT: www.crossfit.com

You Are What You Eat?

2011-11-01T06:00:00.019-05:00

Interesting statistics!
http://m.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/09/chart-this-is-what-you-eat-in-a-year-including-42-pounds-of-corn-syrup/244870/

Just remember, it's all that saturated fat that's making you fat and sick ...

Vitamin D, Asthema, Correlation

2011-11-01T06:00:00.016-05:00

Children with severe therapy-resistant asthma (STRA) may have poorer lung function and worse symptoms compared to children with moderate asthma, due to lower levels of vitamin D in their blood, according to researchers in London. Lower levels of vitamin D may cause structural changes in the airway muscles of children with STRA, making breathing more difficult. The study provides important new evidence for possible treatments for the condition.
The findings were published online ahead of the print edition of the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
“This study clearly demonstrates that low levels of vitamin D are associated with poorer lung function, increased use of medication, worse symptoms and an increase in the mass of airway smooth muscle in children with STRA,” said Atul Gupta, MRCPCH, M.D., a researcher from Royal Brompton Hospital and the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI) at Imperial College and King’s College London. “It is therefore plausible that the link between airway smooth muscle mass and lung function in severe asthma may be partly explained by low levels of vitamin D.”
While most children with asthma can be successfully treated with low doses of corticosteroids, about 5 to 10 percent of asthmatic children do not respond to standard treatment. These children have severe therapy-resistant asthma, or STRA, experience more asthma episodes and asthma-related illnesses, and require more healthcare services, than their treatment-receptive peers.

The article concludes:
“The determination of the exact mechanism between low vitamin D and airway changes that occur in STRA will require intervention studies,” Dr. Gupta said. “Hopefully, the results of this and future studies will help determine a new course of therapy that will be effective in treating these children.”
Link to original article: http://www.thoracic.org/media/press-releases/resources/blue-201107-1239oc.pdf
http://www.newswise.com/articles/vitamin-d-deficiency-linked-with-airway-changes-in-children-with-severe-asthma

This seems like another piece in the paleolithic perspective of human wellness. Take an organism that adapted over a long, long time to the various climates of the planet, and drastically change that organism's living conditions in a relatively short period of time, and there will be consequences. Since we generally don't get enough sun, it is estimated that 90% of us are vitamin D deficient.

I did a summer experiment to see what my non-augmented D level will be after a summer's worth of exposure way down here in Tennessee. Now that the sun's retreating and the days are short and my body will even more fully covered by clothese, it's time to supplement.

Kresser: Thyroid Matters

2011-10-29T06:00:00.011-05:00

What’s most important to understand about this condition is that, although it does involve low levels of T3 (the most active form of thyroid hormone), it is not caused by a problem with the thyroid gland. This is a crucial distinction and it’s what distinguishes Low T3 Syndrome from “garden-variety” hypothyroidism.
In this series we’re going to discuss 1) what causes Low T3 Syndrome, 2) it’s clinical significance, and 3) if it should be treated, and if so, how.

Regulation of thyroid metabolism can be broken down into the following five steps:

The hypothalamus (a pea-sized gland in the brain) monitors the levels of thyroid hormone in the body and produces thyrotropin releasing hormone (TRH).
TRH acts on the anterior pituitary (directly below the hypothalamus, but outside of the blood-brain barrier) to produce thyrotropin, a.k.a. thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH).
TSH acts on the thyroid gland, which produces thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3), the primary circulating thyroid hormones. The thyroid produces T4 in significantly greater quantities (in a ratio of 17:1) than T3, which is approximately 5x more biologically active than T4.
T4 is converted into the more active T3 by the deiodinase system (D1, D2, D3) in multiple tissues and organs, but especially in the liver, gut, skeletal muscle, brain and the thyroid gland itself. D3 converts T3 into an inactive form of thyroid hormone in the liver.
Transport proteins produced by the liver – thyroid binding globulin (TBG), transthretin and albumin – carry T4 and T3 to the tissues, where they are cleaved from their protein-carriers to become free T4 and free T3 and bind to thyroid hormone receptors (THRs) and exert their metabolic effect.

http://chriskresser.com/low-t3-syndrome-i-its-not-about-the-thyroid
A long series which answer "everything you ever wanted to know about your thyroid."

Kresser: B12

2011-10-28T06:00:00.000-05:00

B12 deficiency is often missed for two reasons. First, it’s not routinely tested by most physicians. Second, the low end of the laboratory reference range is too low. This is why most studies underestimate true levels of deficiency. Many B12 deficient people have so-called “normal” levels of B12.

Yet it is well-established in the scientific literature that people with B12 levels between 200 pg/mL and 350 pg/mL – levels considered “normal” in the U.S. – have clear B12 deficiency symptoms. Experts who specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of B12 deficiency, like Sally Pacholok R.N. and Jeffery Stewart D.O., suggest treating all patients that are symptomatic and have B12 levels less than 450 pg/mL. They also recommend treating patients with normal B12, but elevated urinary methylmalonic acid (MMA), homocysteine and/or holotranscobalamin (other markers of B12 deficiency).

http://chriskresser.com/b12-deficiency-a-silent-epidemic-with-serious-consequences

Read on to find out how to test your B12 level, why 50% of vegetarians and 80% of vegans are B12 deficient, and why you may also be deficient, even on a Paleo diet, due to meds or other irregularities.

Kresser: Stressed, Diabetic, Obese

2011-10-27T06:00:00.012-05:00

A huge – and I mean huge – amount of research over the past two decades shows that stress causes both obesity and diabetes in a variety of ways. Studies also show that stress makes it hard to lose weight.
When stress becomes chronic and prolonged, the hypothalamus is activated and triggers the adrenal glands to release a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol is normally released in a specific rhythm throughout the day. It should be high in the mornings when you wake up (this is what helps you get out of bed and start your day), and gradually taper off throughout the day (so you feel tired at bedtime and can fall asleep).
Recent research shows that chronic stress can not only increase absolute cortisol levels, but more importantly it disrupts the natural cortisol rhythm. And it’s this broken cortisol rhythm that wreaks so much havoc on your body. Among other effects, it:

raises your blood sugar
makes it harder for glucose to get into your cells ¹
makes you hungry and crave sugar
reduces your ability to burn fat
suppresses your HPA-axis, which causes hormonal imbalances
reduces your DHEA, testosterone, growth hormone and TSH levels ²
makes your cells less sensitive to insulin
increases your belly fat and makes your liver fatty
increases the rate at which you store fat
raises the level of fatty acids and triglycerides in your blood

Each one of these consequences alone could make you fat and diabetic, but when added together they’re almost a perfect recipe for diabesity.
http://chriskresser.com/10-ways-stress-makes-you-fat-and-diabetic

So, just get rid of stress, problem solved, right? R-I-G-H-T!!
Best concept of stress management available is here:
http://activinsight.com/
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-myth-stress/201004/the-myth-stress-revealed
http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcbabej/2011/06/02/the-myth-of-stress-a-concept-worth-reading-about/
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Stress-Really-Happier-Healthier/dp/1439159459

Kresser: Diabesity

2011-10-26T06:00:00.001-05:00

Obesity, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes have reached epidemic proportions. There’s not a person reading this article who isn’t affected by these conditions, either directly or indirectly. Yet as common as these conditions are, few people understand how closely they’re related to one another.
It is now clear that not only do these conditions share the same underlying causes – and thus require the same treatment – they are 100% preventable and, in some cases, entirely reversible.
Because of these similarities, Dr. Francine Kaufman coined the term diabesity (diabesity + obesity) to describe them. Diabesity can be defined as a metabolic dysfunction that ranges from mild blood sugar imbalance to full-fledged type 2 diabetes. Diabesity is a constellation of signs that includes:

abdominal obesity (i.e. “spare tire” syndrome);
dyslipidemia (low HDL, high LDL and high triglycerides);
high blood pressure;
high blood sugar (fasting above 100 mg/dL, Hb1Ac above 5.5);
systemic inflammation; and,
a tendency to form blood clots
http://chriskresser.com/diabesity

This isn't just a US problem, it is worldwide, and affects an astronomical number of people. We sell a lot of drugs to a lot of folks to offer treatment of the symptoms. Strangely, those drugs are totally un-needed - because the disease is a dietary disease, and all of the symptoms can be treated by un-frocking one's diet. But our government, inexplicably, recommends a diet which does not help with diabesity and for most, makes it worse. The Brit government has one upped that, and made statins available over the counter. It sometimes feels like reverso world.

Kresser: Statins

2011-10-25T06:00:00.005-05:00

Statins are the most popular drugs in history. Drug companies made $26 billion selling statins alone in 2008. 25 million Americans take them, and the number is growing each year.

One reason why statins are the best-selling drug category by far is that 92% of people taking them are healthy. The FDA has approved the prescription of statins to people at low risk for heart disease and stroke, who don’t even have high cholesterol. Two years ago the American Academy of Pediatricians recommended that statins be prescribed for kids as young as eight years old.
With sales statistics like this, you’d think statins are wonder drugs. But when you look closely at the research, a different story emerges. Statins have never been shown to be effective for women of any age, men over 65, or men without pre-existing heart disease. Early studies did suggest that statins are effective for men under 65 with pre-existing heart disease, but later, more rigorous clinical trials has not confirmed this benefit.
In addition, statins have been shown to have serious side effects and complications in up to 30% of people who take them. Studies have also shown that the majority of these adverse events go unreported, because doctors are largely unaware of the risks of statins.
http://chriskresser.com/the-hidden-truth-about-statins

Plain truth, which I think even doctors would agree with - if you can get healthy by eating smarter, and stop using statins, it is an all win case for virtually any of us.

Kresser on Minger

2011-10-24T06:00:00.002-05:00

This is the beginning of the Kresser Week. It goes without saying that I don't see everything the same as Chris, but that's never mattered. What matters is how much clear thought and good information you can get from his site.
Usually I direct those folks to Chris Masterjohn’s excellent critique of the China Study. Now, however, I’ll be sending them over to read Denise Minger’s freshly published China Study smackdown.
http://chriskresser.com/rest-in-peace-china-study
Denise got hold of the raw study data and took it apart with a fine-toothed comb. And what she found is that the claims Campbell made in his China Study book are not supported by the data. She also found important data points Campbell never bothered to mention in the book because they didn’t support his vegan agenda.
For example, Campbell conveniently fails to mention the county of Tuoli in China. The folks in Tuoli ate 45% of their diet as fat, 134 grams of animal protein each day (twice as much as the average American), and rarely ate vegetables or other plant foods. Yet, according to the China Study data, they were extremely healthy with low rates of cancer and heart disease; healthier, in fact, than many of the counties that were nearly vegan.
You can read more – and I mean a lot more – over at Denise’s blog. I recommend starting with her article China Study: Fact or Fallacy? For many of you, it will be more than enough. But if you’re interested in this stuff, she has written several other articles worth reading.
There are also reviews of Denise’s article at Free the Animal, Whole Health Source, Robb Wolf and PaNu.

The China Study is a fascinating phenomenon, first that they did it, and second, how it became the Holy Grail of those who want to prove that eating animals will kills you, and now - as an example of why peer review is considered a cornerstone of science. It's also pointing at a truth - professional journals are no longer either necessary, or useful, in the peer review process, since they have to compete with highly motivated and brilliant investigators like Ms. Minger.
And for the record, again, I don't care if you don't want to eat animals. I don't, however, want you to use fraud or the force of the government to keep me from eating animals. I have as much right to eat animals as tigers, fish and sharks do. Take that back - animals don't have rights and shouldn't. I am a human and I have rights as I should.
Politics of food and science and such aside, the China Study was a massive observational study. The value of observational studies in science is that they allow detection of corellation, so that the correlations may be further investigated in order to determine causality. In my opinion, we already have far more observational studies than we can use as regards diet and health. We need to spend a bazillion dollars for an outrageously expensive, long term intervention study that will be almost impossible to execute well - or just hang up our "spurs." There really is little more to be learned from observational studies of generalized diet and health matters.
One thing we have learned is that the China Study never meant what it was purported to mean.
Nevermind what any of the observational studies say - eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, no sugar/wheat so that your body will manage your glucose, your lipid profile will reflect the health that is your homo sapien birthright, and you will therefore have the best chance to enjoy your days and maximize your purpose.

The Dark Side of Mercola

2011-10-21T15:35:00.000-05:00

This is the sort of speculation and faux judgement disguised as insight and wisdom, up with which, I will not put (with apologies to Sir Winston C): http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/10/21/seeing-red-over-pink-the-dark-side-of-breast-cancer-awareness-month.aspx

I have plenty in common with the good doc on the idea of carb restriction, and frequently enjoy his articles. The ill logic in this article does not inspire confidence in the doctor's commitment to truth.

First, he quotes some organization that finds that blaming any victim is wrong, even if the victim is to blame. "Truth" anyone?
"Imperial Chemical Industries has supported the cancer establishment's blame-the-victim attitude toward the causes of breast and other cancers. This theory attributes escalating cancer rates to heredity and faulty lifestyle, rather than avoidable exposures to industrial carcinogens contaminating air, water, food, consumer products, and the workplace."
~ Cancer Prevention Coalition

Next, he delivers this pablum:
The primary causes of breast cancer: nutritional deficiencies, exposure to environmental toxicity, inflammation, estrogen dominance and the resultant breakdown in genetic integrity and immune surveillance, are entirely overlooked by this fixation on drug therapy and its would-be "magic bullets" and the completely dumbed down and pseudo-scientific concept that "genes cause disease."
This logic is as circular as the arguments which is critiques. Sure, genetic susceptibilities determine how the neolithic lifestyle will be expressed as disease, but they do not seem to be the cause of disease itself. That said, there's still no evidence, despite years of protestation to the contrary, that "environmental toxicity" is a special driver of disease. If you are a greenie, though, industry sure is a convenient target.

This is another absolute jewel of logic:
On first account, a pharmaceutical "cure" is as unlikely as it is oxymoronic. Drugs do not cure disease anymore than bullets cure war.
First off, if you have enough bullets, the other guys are not likely to make war on you in the first place as our history demonstrates fairly convincingly. Secondarily, if there's a war, bullets are a essential to ending it. We can argue to the semantics of whether or not ending a war is a "cure" - but unless the analogy implies that we have to get rid of every weapon every rock, every pointed stick to "cure" war, this is as meaningless a slogan as JFK's signature "Ask not what your country can do for you" line. Pure propaganda.

Billions of dollars are raised and funneled towards drug research, when the lowly turmeric plant, the humble cabbage and the unassuming bowl of miso soup may offer far more promise in the prevention and treatment of breast cancer than all the toximolecular drugs on the market put together.
Hey, I have my own frustrations with the focus on creating powerful drugs to fix that which neolithic diets break. But there's an easy solution here - find someone to fund a big intervention study to test this conjecture, and until then, quit whining.
Which brings us to this fabulous display of the complete abandoment of logic and scientific proof as regards advancing the understanding of the cause of disease:
Have we really come to the point where the common sense consumption of fruits and vegetables in the prevention of disease can so matter-of-factly be called into question? Do we really need randomized, double-blind and placebo controlled clinical trials to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that our bodies can benefit from the phytonutrients and antioxidants in fruits and vegetables in the prevention of cancer?
Well, heck no, let's use strongly held belief and years of vegetarian propaganda as proof instead!!! I've looked and can still find no reason to believe that fruits and vegetables, organic or otherwise, are a magic bullet for health. Do you need some fruit and veg? Sure, have some. Do they taste good? Heck yes, I love to eat them. Are they less harmful than twinkies? Sure seems like it to me, since they don't flood the body with sugar and omega 6 fats and transfats. Are they essential to good health? Nope. And that's a good thing because there's nothing more destructive or toxic to the environment than industrial scale production of fruits and vegetables.
You can find populations who rarely if ever ate fruits and veggies and they looked and lived about as well as the paleo populations who had full (if seasonal) access to fruits and veggies.
What it seems to boil down is that the fruitnicks have said "fruits and veggies are health's magic bullets!" so many times and for so long that the masses have bought into that strongly held belief as strongly as they bought into the low fat nonsense.
Just when I'm ready to boycott the Mercola site once and for all, this article delivers this stunner:
GrassrootsHealth is changing the current Breast Cancer Awareness Month to Breast Cancer Prevention Month with a focus on taking action to prevent breast cancer with vitamin D testing and education.

"It's time to take action, women are already fully aware of breast cancer and its consequences," says Carole Baggerly, director of GrassrootsHealth. "When you can project that fully 75 percent of breast cancer could be prevented with higher vitamin D serum levels, there is no justification for waiting to take preventive measures such as getting one's vitamin D level up to the recommended range of 40-60 ng/ml (100-150 nmol/L)."

According to Dr. Cedric F. Garland of the Moores Cancer Center and the UCSD School of Medicine:

"This will potentially be the most important action ever conducted toward prevention of breast cancer. The more women who participate in this study, the greater the chance that we will defeat breast cancer within our lifetimes."

Women across the world are invited to enroll in a 5-year Breast Cancer Prevention Study initiated by GrassrootsHealth. To be eligible to enroll, you must be at least 60 years of age and have no current cancer. A free vitamin D home test kit will be provided for the first 1,000 women to enroll. The study aims to fully demonstrate health outcomes of vitamin D serum levels in the range of 40-60 ng/ml (100-150 nmol/L) and will examine the occurrence of breast cancer among a population of women 60 and over who achieve and maintain a targeted vitamin D serum level in the bloodstream. In addition to breast cancer prevention, short-term effects of vitamin D such as hypertension, falls, colds and flu will also be tracked. More information can be found at www.grassrootshealth.net.

Brilliant!

Right When Wrong

2011-10-20T14:55:00.001-05:00

I received another email about the topic of running from Mike Boyle -

http://www.FunctionalStrengthCoach3.com

http://www.OnlineBodyByBoyle.com -

and enjoyed it, even though I think he's wrong.

How to help an athlete run faster is a concern for any coach and/or parent of an athlete (would be athlete?). In every game I watch my kids play, the athlete with the most speed generally makes the most impact - not always, but it evident what they say is true, "there is no substitute for speed."

There is also no shortage of strongly held beliefs about running and how to run faster. There are any number of tools designed for the purpose - ladders, dot drills, mini barricades, jump ropes, etc. What's interesting is how little data there is to validate any particular method. I consider this something of an indictment against exercise science. How many years will take until they define what running is a devise a way to measure where it comes from and why?

You don't need scientists in a university lab to figure out how to make people faster, though. Barry Ross has impressive athletes, and he focuses on deadlifts (to the tune of 130 pound teen aged female athletes deadlifting over 400 pounds?!) and additional core training, and hard, short sprinting. Louie Simmons reports he can take an accomplished collegiate football player and reduce the athlete's 40 yard sprint time with a combination of strength and power training and with no sprinting. Obviously, Mike Boyle agrees with these two about where speed comes from:

It is not how fast the feet move, but rather how much force goes into the ground. This is basic action-reaction physics. Force into the ground equals forward motion. This is why the athletes with the best vertical jumps are most often the fastest. It comes down to force production. Often coaches will argue the vertical vs. horizontal argument and say the vertical jump doesn't correspond to horizontal speed, but years of data from the NFL Combine begs to differ.

The best solution to slow feet is to get stronger legs. Feet don't matter. Legs matter. Think about it this way: If you stand at the starting line and take a quick first step but fail to push with the back leg, you don't go anywhere. The reality is that a quick first step is actually the result of a powerful first push. We should change the buzzwords and start to say "that kid has a great first push." Lower body strength is the real cure for slow feet and the real key to speed and to agility. The essence of developing quick feet lies in single-leg strength and single-leg stability work… landing skills. If you cannot decelerate, you cannot accelerate, at least not more than once.

The reality is it comes down to horsepower and the nervous system, two areas that change slowly over time.

How do we develop speed, quickness and agility? Unfortunately, we need to do it the slow, old-fashioned way. You can play with ladders and bungee cords all you want, but that is like putting mag wheels on an Escort.

...development of speed, agility and quickness simply comes down to good training. We need to work on lower body strength and lower body power and we need to do it on one leg.

I subscribe more to the idea that speed comes from gravity, vice the idea that it comes from a leg propelling us forward, but will again note: there is a distinct lack of proof in this arena, which is why there's so much argument! In the "speed comes from gravity" idea as advanced most notably by Dr. Nicholas Romanov (http://www.posetech.com/), running is the process of falling forward under the influence of gravity. In this model, the ability to change support the fastest (support being the leg underneath you that prevents gravity from pulling you all the way down to the ground) will result in the fastest runner. The ability to change support more rapidly seems to result from the ability to generate force against the ground - quickly.

The interesting thing, by the way, once you start looking at running this way, is how many ways you can interfere with the process of falling. "As easy as falling off of a log?" Yes, but not as simple.

But suppose for a moment, that Mike Boyle and others are correct in the prescription for speed - suppose strength and power development is the "secret" to running, not because it allows one to propel oneself with a leg, but because he with the most ability to exert force can change legs faster, and therefore sustain a greater angle of body lean (to be clear, body lean is the angle between the point of support and the point where the center of gravity is found, meaning the "lean" will not be obvious; we're not talking about head and shoulders "leaning" ahead of the body like a tree falling), which would allow gravity to better accelerate the runner in question.

If this bit of conjecture is true, then Boyle could right (about how to train) even though he is wrong (about why to train that way).

Why do you care? For one thing, it is true that the best runners run like Dr. Romanov prescribes, and this is a skill that can be taught. You may not be able to transform yourself into Usain Bolt by "learning how to run" but you can run with less effort, more speed, and less destruction of your joints by running in way the body was designed to run. From what I can tell in my fledgling efforts to do so, running with skill also feels very good.
(Minor edits December 5, 2011)

Magnesium and Inflammation

2011-10-17T06:00:00.002-05:00

Summary : To evaluate the association between severe hypomagnesemia and the low-grade inflammatory response in subjects with metabolic syndrome (MetS), ninety-eight individuals with new diagnosis of MetS were enrolled in a cross-sectional study. Pregnancy, smoking, alcohol intake, renal damage, hepatic disorders, infectious or chronic inflammatory diseases, malignancy, use of diuretics, statins, calcium antagonist, antioxidants, vitamins, anti-inflammatory drugs, or previous oral magnesium supplementation were exclusion criteria. According serum magnesium levels, participants were assigned to the following groups: 1) severe hypomagnesemia (≤1.2 mg/dL)\; 2) hypomagnesemia (>1.2≤1.8 mg/dL)\; 3) Normal serum magnesium levels (>1.8 mg/dL). The low-grade inflammatory response was defined by elevation of serum levels of (CRP;1.0 ≤10.0 mg/L) or TNF-alpha (TNF-α ≥3.5 pg/mL). Severe hypomagnesemia, hypomagnesemia, and normomagnesemia were identified in 21 (21.4%), 38 (38.8%), and 39 (39.8%) individuals. The ORs, adjusted by WC, showed that severe hypomagnesemia (OR: 8.1\; CI 95%: 3.6-19.4 and OR: 3.7\; CI 95%: 1.1-12.1), but not hypomagnesemia (OR: 1.8\; CI 95%: 0.9-15.5 and OR: 1.6\; CI 95%: 0.7-3.6), was strongly associated with elevated CRP and TNF-α levels, and that normomagnesemia exhibited a protective role (OR: 0.32\; CI 95%: 0.1-0.7 and OR: 0.28\; CI 95%: 0.1-0.6) for elevation of CRP and TNF-α. Results of this study show that, in subjects with MetS, severe hypomagnesemia, but not hypomagnesemia, is associated with elevated concentrations of CRP and TNF-α.
http://www.jle.com/en/revues/bio_rech/mrh/e-docs/00/04/69/2E/resume.phtml

What's the story here? Since you don't get magnesium in your water any longer, you likely need to supplement. Good news? It's easy and cheap to do! http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=natural+calm
The 16oz bottle lasts months. The Eades and Robb Wolf advocate supplementing this mineral, with the recommendation that it be taken before bedtime as a natural "calming" or "soothing" effect. However, beware, too much will create the Milk of Magnesia effect, go easy at first, and add more to discovery how much you can tolerate.

Jaminets on LLVC

2011-10-14T11:54:00.001-05:00

This is a long, detailed post by the Jaminets, and not necessary for the average guy or gal to understand in order to be healthy on a paleo prescription. However, for those geeks wanting to delve into the workings of the human body, it's highly explanatory:

Brain and nerves typically consume about 480 calories per day of glucose. Ketones can displace up to perhaps 60% of this, but ketones do not diffuse well into cortical areas of the brain and the brain always requires some glucose.
After 3 days of fasting, when the brain’s glucose consumption has been roughly halved by ketosis and the rest of the body is conserving glucose, the body’s rate of glucose manufacture in liver and kidneys is about 600 calories per day. [1]
Two things to note:

Even in fasting, peripheral utilization of glucose exceeds the brain’s.
The fasting level of glucose utilization is likely to be suboptimal for health: fasting invokes glucose-and-protein-conservation measures which evolved to make us more likely to survive famine, but almost certainly have a cost in long-term health. (The logic is similar to Bruce Ames’s triage theory [2].)

This fasting level of glucose production of about 600 calories per day is a key number: the body must obtain glucose at at least this level, either through diet or endogenous production, if it is to avoid a glucose deficiency.
When not fasting, the body’s glucose utilization is somewhat higher – say, 800 to 1000 calories per day for a sedentary person. Glucose needs are slightly reduced by some endogenous sources of glucose, such as from glycerol released from lipolysis of triglycerides or phospholipids. So the body’s net glucose needs are on the order of 600 to 800 calories per day.
http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/paul-jaminets-response-to-the-critics-of-his-safe-starches-concept/11920
What's the bottom line? Nearly all the players in the low carb arena point out a break point at about 100 to 120 grams per day of carb consumption, because at this level, your body has to produce enough carbohydrate to fully meet your carb needs. That means you will not be giving your body an excess glucose problem to solve (assuming the ~120g is mostly "good" carbs!).

There are folks who need to eat fewer carbs to maintain health and weight loss, and I do well on less than 100g/day. For example, since January of 2007 when I weighed 225, I've sustained a 15 pound weight loss, which put my under 15% body fat, which is easily in a safe, functional range. In the last few months, I've reduced my weight by another 10 pounds, by combining intermittent fasting with carb restriction. I'm within about five pounds of matching my body weight as a 22 year old. That's nothing special, but doing that without counting or even considering caloric intake, or hunger, while eliminating a compulsive sweet tooth, and generating good numbers on every objective health measure, and competing at a reasonably high level in CrossFit, whilst working against a poor genetic back ground (as regards weight gain on the SAD), is an endorsement of a paleo oriented carb restriction - in my humble as ever opinion.

Muscle Mass Is A Bonus for Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome

2011-10-12T06:00:00.001-05:00

Abstract

Context: Insulin resistance, the basis of type 2 diabetes, is rapidly increasing in prevalence; very low muscle mass is a risk factor for insulin resistance.

Objective: The aim was to determine whether increases in muscle mass at average and above average levels are associated with improved glucose regulation.

Design: We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III data.

Participants: Data from 13,644 subjects in a national study were evaluated.

Outcome Measurements: We measured homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), blood glycosylated hemoglobin level, prevalence of transitional/pre- or overt diabetes (PDM), and prevalence of overt diabetes mellitus.

Results: All four outcomes decreased from the lowest quartile to the highest quartile of skeletal muscle index (SMI), the ratio of total skeletal muscle mass (estimated by bioelectrical impedance) to total body weight. After adjusting for age, ethnicity, sex, and generalized and central obesity, each 10% increase in SMI was associated with 11% relative reduction in HOMA-IR (95% confidence interval, 6–15%) and 12% relative reduction in PDM prevalence (95% CI, 1–21%). In nondiabetics, SMI associations with HOMA-IR and PDM prevalence were stronger.

Conclusions: Across the full range, higher muscle mass (relative to body size) is associated with better insulin sensitivity and lower risk of PDM. Further research is needed to examine the effect of appropriate exercise interventions designed to increase muscle mass on incidence of diabetes.
http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/96/9/2898.abstract

The second half of this study would be to determine if increasing muscle mass will in fact result in increased insulin sensitivity, or if the correlation is just the result of the some other causative agent. For example, it is highly likely that those with better insulin sensitivity will be that way because they eat better food, with a lower carb content, and as a result, feel better and are more active.

Jobs - Inspired, Inspiring

2011-10-11T06:00:00.001-05:00

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

"When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: ‘If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right.' It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been ‘No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/10/09/dr-nicholas-gonzalez-on-steve-jobs.aspx?e_cid=20111009_SNL_Art_1

Easy to say, hard to do. Persevere.

Work On Your Weakness!! Sort of ...

2011-10-10T06:00:00.009-05:00

Just then he stopped me and said something I’ll never forget: “That’s exactly your problem.”
As we turned onto the Interstate, I sat there thinking that Louie was out of his mind. How could being strong in the gym be a bad thing?
How can being strong as hell in the gym be a bad thing?
“You know what you need, Dave?” Louie continued. “You need to do those things you suck at. You’re at a point where your weaknesses are killing you, and you’re doing nothing to address them. Your legs and upper back can easily squat a grand, but your abs and lower back can’t squat 860 pounds. Which do you think you’ll squat, 1000 or 860?
http://articles.elitefts.com/articles/training-articles/the-vault-do-the-stuff-you-suck-at/

This is one of the most complex and simple subjects in life, not to mention fitness. If you are a detail guy, you won't be successful working on inspiration and charm - but you better be doing something to round these skills out. If you are at your best in a dynamic event where you get to keep a bunch of balls in play but don't have to worry for days on end about details, awesome, but you better have some activity in your life that allows you to, demands that you, work on the details. I've seen this play out a number of times - the best on the planet routinely fail when they ride their competence into an arena in which their competence is no longer enough to meet all the demands they face. Presidents, football coaches, naval officers, fitness professionals, you see them all finding out what Napoleon found out at Waterloo.

As for the powerlifter's tale above - he says he needs to work on the thing he sucks at, but I'll bet he did not actually do that. He sucks at anything with a duration greater than about 10 seconds. What he worked on was making his torso strength better in the less than 10s arena that powerlifters specialize in. IOW, he working on an attribute that was weak relative to some aspect of his competence, but he stayed within his area of competence - developing incredible amounts of force for a very short time. Should he have been on a bike or rower instead, seeking to enhance his ability to generate very little force for a very long amount of time? Nope, not to be a champion powerlifter - but yes, to be a healthier and more functional human being.

CrossFit advocates working on weaknesses in a different perspective, but I even have trouble with that. For example, if I can run now as fast as I could when just about all I did was run, but I don't run much, I see little virtue in spending more time running. The real challenge becomes in how to assess your weakness - which is really, relative weakness. I know there are many athletes that are better than I in every arena, so I could be considered weak in all aspects. What I need to know is - in which arena is my relative ability the least? For a CrossFit athlete, accurate assessment of weakness is critical information which, if addressed effectively, will provide the best return on training time.

For most non-competitive and non-CrossFitters, the best advice is "just do something". Any training you will do is good. If you are looking for training considerations, I would recommend to anyone that learning how to squat properly is fundamental to a good life, and keeping oneself out of a nursing home. In other words, if you did ten squats to your best depth (at least parallel) every day, you would never have to fear being too weak or immobile to cart yourself around. The exception to that is if your mind goes, but then you won't care whether you are in a nursing home anyway.

USDA Helps and Hurts

2011-10-07T11:44:00.000-05:00

Fascinating angle on the interaction between crony politics and weight gain. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/22/new-report-links-agricultural-subsidies-to-childhood-obesity/#ixzz1ZHq1YPBG

But the real problem is the fact that the USDA insists on weighing in about what foods are or are not healthy, but lacks to science to back up their assertions.