Kresser: B12

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)