Mercola On Sleep

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/10/02/secrets-to-a-good-night-sleep.aspx
If I wouldn't agree with all of these, I don't think any are dead wrong.  What's it worth to maximize your sleep?  Knowing what we know about health and the hormonal disruption that accompanies lack of sleep, isn't it worth some work to find out how to sleep to maximal effect?
I think you could boil health down to three essential factors - glycemic control  (sustaining moderate to low blood sugars), adequate fat soluble vitamins, and getting enough quality sleep.  These factors impact everything else about health, even each other.

Sleep Is For the Dark

"Keeping a light on at night could change your eating schedule, and the result could be extra pounds. Mice exposed to a dim light at night gained 50 percent more weight over an eight-week period than mice that slept in total darkness.

"The findings held up even when the amount of food and the physical activity of the mice were held constant, and the results could apply to people who eat meals late at night."

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/10/28/sleeping-with-the-lights-on-could-cause-weight-gain.aspx?aid=CD1057

One of the tests reported in "Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival" noted that all it took to interrupt the sleep hormone cycle was to shine a dim light on the back of a sleeper's leg.  Sleeping in complete darkness is cheap and worth the experiment to see if you notice a difference.
I also think it's worth noting that sleeping in anything other than darkness wasn't frequently an option before about 100 years ago.

Dr. Davis Cures Heart Disease, No Meds

http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-track-your-plaque-record.html
"At the start, Freddie has disastrous lipid values:
LDL cholesterol 263 mg/dl
HDL 26 mg/dl
Triglycerides 323 mg/dl
Total cholesterol 354 mg/dl
Lipoproteins (NMR) were worse:
LDL particle number 3360 nmol/L
Small LDL 2677 nmol/L
Heart scan score: 732
Interestingly, Freddie had virtually no vitamin D in his body, with a 25-hydroxy vitamin D level that was unmeasurable.
Freddie was miserably intolerant to statin drugs, with even the smallest dose resulting in intolerable muscle aches. That's when his doctor sent him to me.
Because I felt that the dominant abnormality in Freddie's lipids and lipoproteins was small LDL particles, representing 80% of total LDL particle number, we focused his program on correcting this parameter. Freddie's program was therefore focused elimination of wheat, cornstarch, oats, and sugars, along with an eventual vitamin D dose of 20,000 units to finally achieve a 25-hydroxy vitamin D level of 66 ng/ml. No statin drug in sight.
43 lbs of weight loss and 18 months later, a second heart scan score: 183--a 75% reduction.
While the rest of the world continues to insist that coronary calcium (heart scan) scores cannot be reduced, I am seeing records being broken. I add Freddie's experience to the rapidly growing list of people who have not just stopped coronary plaque from growing, but are seizing control and reducing it, sometimes to dramatic degrees."

Model for Sugar/Carb Addiction, Part 2

The normal paleolithic metabolism was most likely based on running most of your body's cells via fat oxidation, thus sparing glucose for the brain/CNS/hemoglobin cells (and for emergency action when glycolysis would be needed to sustain high physical outputs).  How would I know this?  Mainly because before the advent of agriculture, there was no means to eat high carb foods all day every day.  Glucose rich foods would have been in short supply for much of the year, which is why humans are perfectly capable of making all the glucose we need from protein we ingest, via gluco-neogenisis.  Not only that, we have an additional back up system which allows us to convert stored fat into a glucose substitute, ketones.  Take note - glucose is a critical piece of your metabolism, perhaps second only to respiration, and the body has two systems which will allow us to function quite well without eating any glucose (sugars) at all.
How then, do we become sugar addicts?  First, we habitually eat a lot of high sugar foods (which includes most so called complex carbohydrates such as potatoes, corn, rice, and wheat/grains).  This sets us up for 'reactive hypo glycemia.'  Sugar is a very potent fuel, which is why the body uses it for the CNS and for very high output physical activity, but it is also toxic when it exceeds the 'design specifications' for the human body.  Your body is a capacity to use and store at any one time about 5 grams of sugar.  When you eat a potato or banana, with 15-30 grams of carbohydrate (all of which is converted to glucuse in the gut before transport to the blood stream), you put your body into an emergency glucose disposal scenario. 
Insulin is the body's emergency tool for dealing with excess blood glucose. However, since this is an emergency system, vice a standard operating procedure, and there's no room for the body to under-respond, the body will frequently over-produce insulin.  Insulin in high levels both signals the body to store glucose (and almost everything else, too) in the cells, and shuts down the process by which we can metabolize fat as fuel.  This makes sense - if you have too much glucose, it will help solve this crisis if your body switches to sugar burning vice fat burning.  This brings us to the problem - if you are consuming sugar/carbs in quantities that are very normal for the SAD, you are rourtinely, several times per day, giving your body a sugar disposal emergency, which will result in:
1.  Plummeting glucose levels
2.  No access to stored fat for a fuel source
3.  Very low levels of fat metabolizing enzymes at the cellular level (these enzymes are a use or lose proposition like almost every bodily system)
4.  Increasing insulin resistance, which accelerates the whole process. 
You end up only being able to support adequate glucose levels by eating glucose containing or generating foods, regularly, in either very small amounts (uncommon), or to excess.  Ultimately, this cycle results in metabolic syndrome, and skyrocketing risks for all the illnesses you don't want
OK, back to the addiction model.  Supposing you are at the stage in this cycle in which your body disposed of its overdose of glucose, leaving you with low blood glucose.  Ironically, this is an emergency too.  If your glucose gets too low, you fall over, and if glucose goes lower still, you die.  Suffice to say, low glucose leaves you feeling bad - hungry, irritable, low energy, difficulty concentrating - and relief of low glucose comes most rapidly when you eat a very digestible carb source.  Like the smoker who takes a puff of smoke and finds immediate relief from nicotine withdrawal, the carb addict learns which foods provide quick relief from their hypo-glycemia and keeps them handy!  Then, after repeating the glucose binge/crash cycle a hundred times, the addict powerfully associates sugar with relief of physiological pain.  At that point, the sugary foods equal "PLEASURE" in the addict's unconscious mind, and no amount of conscious mind rationalizing will help to reprogram that association.  No amount of shame resulting from one's lack of control will help to change the sugar addict's behavior.  No amount of fear from one's growing waistline will help one to stop eating the 'nasty' stuff.  When it comes down to you versus your unconscious mind, you will lose every time.
So, lose the shame, put the frustration behind you, and let's dig into how you might be able to enlist your unconscious mind's aid in putting you on the path to health and wellness. 
But we'll do that next time.

A Deal with the Devil

Model for Sugar/Carb Addiction

Smoking seems to have had a severe negative effect on two my grandparents - I grew up believing smoking wrecked their health, depriving them of their ability to live and love.  Both lived into their 80s, but their last 20 years of life were vastly diminished by their illness and pain - heart disease, stroke, depression, the works.  In addition to the damage from smoking, they ate a pretty typical SAD for much of their adult lives.  

Due to their smoking illnesses, I become interested in anything I could find about smoking.  The addiction cycle I found to be particularly interesting.  First of all, the smoker's nicotine levels rise with each puff, then they begin to fall as the nicotine is processed through the urine and out of the body.  For the addict, as the blood nicotine levels fall, physiological distress increases.  As physiological distress increases, the body produces urine faster (you know what it's like when you are really nervous and have to 'go' more often, right?), which increases the speed at which blood nicotine levels fall.  In other words, there are reinforcing loops built into the post smoking nicotine drop, all of which makes it feel more and more urgent for the addict.  Imagine the distress if the smoker has to go past their schedule - and the subsequent relief of distress with the first puff ... finally!

Repeat that cycle thousands of times - pain, pain, pain, then "puff"= pain relief.  Smokers will tell you that smoking relaxes them - and it's clearly true.  First, though, it creates significant physiological distress, leading to anxiety and emotional distress.  In other words, it has to make you feel bad first, then it feels good when the pain goes away.  Damned right smoking relaxes you!  But it has to make you feel like crap first!

There's a similar model for sugar addiction, which we can go through tomorrow.

Heart Attack in Neon

I title my basic nutrition lecture "That Stuff Will Kill You", and considering the fare at this establishment (frozen yogurt, toasted bagels, smoothies, etc), I don't think there's anything that won't kill you on their menu.  Can't tell you how many of these I ate back in my low fat eating days - that was right about the time I blimped up two pants sizes and decided I had to figure the nutrition situation out.  I've maintained my college pants size ever since I discovered "The Zone" in 1996.

I've been able to spend the last three days hunting in northern Utah, and shot a nice buck this morning.  Wild game is the ultimate in quality food.  I can't wait to get it back home, add in some grass fed beef and/or pork suet, and grind this into sausage.  It'll keep us in breakfast meals for many months!

CrossFit is the perfect preparation for hunting.  Walking around the mountains at 6,000 feel MSL, hauling a downed animal, dressing the animal, hauling the cooler, suitcase and rifle through the airport ... one must have a balanced fitness, with competence in all energy pathways, strength and stamina, balance, coordination, agility, and the skill to apply those attributes in lifting/moving irregular objects in unpredictable terrain.

This is the point of fitness - to be able to enjoy doing what one enjoys doing.