"That's a Big Calorie Burn"

Our metabolic conditioning workout yesterday was simple but brutal.

Row 500m, rest 2 minutes.
Repeat four times.

The impact of this type of work is very high.  A 500m row allows an athlete to exert 80-90% of maximal force for 90-140 seconds.  This kind of effort is the definition of "sucking wind".

The point of a workout like this is simple - let an athlete test and improve their maximal output in the glycolytic energy pathway, recover, and repeat.  It fits right into CrossFit's purpose of "improved work capacity across broad time and modal domains."  In this case, the modality is a Concept 2 rower, and the time domain is ~120s with a 120s recovery.  Competence at that output level for that duration translates well to nearly any sport or task you may wish to attempt.

After the workout, one of my clients commented on the calorie burn from the workout.  I didn't know what to say - I should have said "actually, no, the calorie burn is insignificant, and we don't design workouts for calorie burn anyway."  What I thought to myself was "didn't I already cover that?"

Burning calories in a workout is a waste of valuable time.  No workout we program is designed to burn calories - they are all designed to increase your performance!  We program to increase your performance across broad time and modal domains, which is to say we program for fitness.

The idea that working out to burn calories can lead to fat loss has a simple appeal, but when tested via science the results are anything but conclusive.  In short, the body is not a simple input/output machine, and causes of fat accumulation are multifactorial.

"But Paul, you went to Aviation Officer Candidate School, and you workout out all day, and lost fat, along with all your classmates." Yes, yes we did, but we had restricted food intake; we could eat three times per day and the amount of very limited.  Nor did we get dessert!  "In the wild", when a human gets hungry, it eats.  In the wild, when a human gets hungry it often eats whatever crap is most easily obtained.  In other words, inducing caloric deficit in everyday life is as likely to stimulate increased intake of food as it is to stimulate fat loss.

"But Paul you have lost 36 pounds over the last 7 years, and you do CrossFit 3-5 times per week, are you saying those things are not related?"

No.  Those two facts are related.  But the takeaway is simple - you cannot out train a bad diet.  When you eat like we recommend, and train, you will lose fat and feel freaking great doing it.  You will not be hungry.  That's why it is sustainable over time.

In Part II, I'll describe a model for why exercise in combination with the diet that made you fat in the first place will not make the majority of you lean.

An Oldie but Goldie

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/

For more on this topic, read this:
The Scientist and the Stairmaster
http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/

"Why sugar is worse than fat"

It was in the late '70s – in fact, there was a Senate commission, Senator McGovern, who actually looked at this issue and found that people who had very high levels of cholesterol tended to die early of heart disease. And there was also other studies that showed if you ate a diet high in fat, it raised your cholesterol. But those were two different studies. And they got really, really linked, not only by the Senate, but also in the scientific community and then by everybody else.

And what happened over the last 30 years, it got codified. It became the way that we eat low fat in this country. And nothing changed. In fact, things got worse. Cardiovascular disease remains the biggest killer of men and women. Diabetes rates are higher than ever before. Childhood obesity. So it didn't work. And I think that's what sort of prompted all this analysis.

I think there's two issues here. One is that fat doesn't get a free pass here. There's still some problems with it. It still raises cholesterol levels. That is associated with heart disease. The problem is that what we replaced fat with was sugar. And sugar may be more problematic, in some ways, for someone who's worried about heart disease than fat.

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2014/09/10/why-sugar-is-worse-than-fat/?hpt=hp_t3
 All true, and yet, Dr. Gupta goes on to show he still doesn't really get it. So here's my dare to the doctor - provide one intervention study that supports your concerns about saturated fat and heart disease.

It's hard not to point out that he's about 7 years late to the low carb dance ...

Eat Before You Train? Maybe.

Remember all those folks over the last 20 years that wrote or said it was critical that you eat a large portion of a blue whale before and after each workout so you could avoid muscle catabolism and thus becoming a girly man with tiny biceps?  And that you should eat at least one blue whale fin every 3 hours?  And that breakfast is the most important meal of the day?  
That advice was worth what you paid for it - if you got it for free.

In previous installments, I’ve discussed the powerful effect of fasting on weight loss, particularly with respect toadipose tissue. I’ve explained how intermittent bouts of going without food have been shown to increase cancer survival and resistance and improve patient and tumor response to chemotherapy, and I went over the considerable evidence suggesting that fasting can provide thelife extending benefits of caloric restriction without the pain of restricting your calories day in, day out. And last week, I highlighted how fasting may have protective and therapeutic benefits to the brain.

As such you might be thinking that I only recommend fasting to the sedentary, the aged, and the infirm. Surely I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend to the active, the athletic, and the jacked that they engage in vigorous physical activity without having eaten a solid square meal beforehand – right? I mean, no good can come of a fasted training session, as the gym bros with the sweet ‘ceps are so quick to intone.

So, Sisson, what’s the deal? Can we exercise in the fasted state and live to tell the tale?

Yes. And there may even be benefits to doing it.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/fasting-exercise-workout-recovery/#axzz3BbffMh79

Better Late Then Never, NIH Figures It Out

Results: Sixty participants (82%) in the low-fat group and 59 (79%) in the low-carbohydrate group completed the intervention. At 12 months, participants on the low-carbohydrate diet had greater decreases in weight (mean difference in change, −3.5 kg [95% CI, −5.6 to −1.4 kg]; P = 0.002), fat mass (mean difference in change, −1.5% [CI, −2.6% to −0.4%]; P = 0.011), ratio of total–high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (mean difference in change, −0.44 [CI, −0.71 to −0.16]; P = 0.002), and triglyceride level (mean difference in change, −0.16 mmol/L [−14.1 mg/dL] [CI, −0.31 to −0.01 mmol/L {−27.4 to −0.8 mg/dL}]; P = 0.038) and greater increases in HDL cholesterol level (mean difference in change, 0.18 mmol/L [7.0 mg/dL] [CI, 0.08 to 0.28 mmol/L {3.0 to 11.0 mg/dL}]; P < 0.001) than those on the low-fat diet.

Limitation: Lack of clinical cardiovascular disease end points.

Conclusion: The low-carbohydrate diet was more effective for weight loss and cardiovascular risk factor reduction than the low-fat diet. Restricting carbohydrate may be an option for persons seeking to lose weight and reduce cardiovascular risk factors.

Primary Funding Source: National Institutes of Health.

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1900694

I'm glad they finally got around to doing this since it's too obvious for anyone to still ignore, but they could have done this 40 years ago.  And they should have.

Personal Paleo Code - Eat Real Food

You might be thinking a multivitamin can prevent nutrient deficiency, but supplemental nutrients do not have the same effect on the body as nutrients gotten form food.  Humans have evolved to get their nutrients from whole foods - not supplements.  Most nutrients require specific enzymes and other substances to be properly absorbed.  While these are naturally present in foods, they are often not included in synthetic vitamins and isolated nutrients.  This may explain why several trials have shown that adding antioxidant supplements to a typical American diet not only doesn't prevent people from getting heart disease and cancer but may actually increase their risk.  While supplements can (and should) be used for therapeutic effect in specific health conditions or to replace certain nutrients that are difficult to obtain from food, they should never be used to replace nutrients that can be found in a  nutrient-dense diet.
Chris Kresser, Your Personal Paleo Code

This is as good as it gets for learning how to eat for health, including how to address your specific issues of health and wellness.

Cramps from Dehydration and Loss of Electrolytes? "Who Knows"

A fantastic review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine looks at the available research evidence, and argues that dehydration and salt loss are unlikely to have anything to do with exercise-induced muscle cramps.

For example, several recent studies have examined electrolyte levels among crampers and non-crampers following endurance events. They found no differences in electrolyte concentrations between the two groups, and electrolyte levels did not change when the cramps disappeared. Similarly, cramping athletes are not any more dehydrated than their non-cramping counterparts. It’s also worth noting that “heat cramps” have been observed in cool environments, such as swimming in cold water (conversely, cooling hot a person does not make their cramps go away).  Core temperature does not seem related to cramping either.

http://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea/2014/06/12/sorry-everyone-lebrons-muscle-cramps-were-not-caused-by-dehydration-or-salt-loss/

As Dr. W Edwards Deming used to say, "We know so much that isn't so."

The article goes on to suggest that fatigue is the cause of cramping, vice heat, dehydration or electrolyte imbalance.

Sugar and Government Joined at the Hip

The industry's tactics—similar to those used by Big Tobacco in downplaying the adverse health effects of smoking—were explored by Gary Taubes and Cristin Kearns Couzens in the 2012Mother Jones investigation "Big Sugar's Sweet Little Lies." But this latest report draws on some newly released documentssubmitted as evidence in a recent federal court case involving the two biggest players in the sweetener industry: the Sugar Association and the Corn Refiners Association (the trade group for manufacturers of high fructose corn syrup). 

The report details companies' plans to bury data and to convince consumers that sugar is "fine in moderation." It also shows how trade groups hired independent scientists to cast doubt on studies that show the adverse affects of sugar consumption—and strategized to intimidate scientists and organizations who didn't tow the industry line.

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/06/sugar-industry-tactics-to-make-your-food-unhealthy

Examples of their "fine work" follow in the article.

What the sugar industry did is almost as bad as what the federal government has done - first they empowered these groups by putting them on government working groups as "expert witnesses."  Second, they pushed the shoddy science of low fat.  

What's the difference?  If you do the work you could figure out that the sugar industry and the government are doing us wrong, but because the government is over-reaching, the sugar industry was able to employ the government to do its dirty work.  Further, the government used its power to remove funding to force all kinds of institutions to comply with it's faux guidelines.  We could escape the sugar industry's deceptions if not for the coercive influence of the government.

So are the sugar guys guilty?  Of course.  Almost as guilty as the government, which is not going to play the other side of the fence and act outraged - OUTRAGED I TELL YOU - as it prosecutes the sugar industry for ... working with the government.

Next thing you know, the government will sue the diabetics that are wrecking the health care system for eating what the government said they should.

The Reporter Probably Knows Less About Cholesterol Than ....

"Studies showed us that high cholesterol levels were one of the most important risk factors for the development of heart attack and stroke, and we had evidence that lowering cholesterol lowers the risk of heart attack and stroke," Ridker says. "You can't say that about most everything else."

But looking at just one number doesn't provide a detailed-enough picture to precisely assess risk, because it doesn't account for the interplay among LDL, HDL and triglycerides, or the fact that each of these affects risk in a different way, Mozaffarian says.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/you-probably-know-less-about-cholesterol-than-you-think-you-do-heres-some-help/2014/06/16/d9fa9350-e4fa-11e3-8f90-73e071f3d637_story.html

The headline was "you probably know less about cholesterol than you think you do."

The irony is killing me!  The scientific and medical community went a non-scientific lark for 30 years and they think "we" don't know much about cholesterol?  Expletive deleted here.

The first line of the article refers to a cardiologist who has to re-teach everyone what they should know about cholesterol - because his profession has been butchering this stuff for years.  Shame on them.  A money quote:

"There's a lot of confusion and controversy around cholesterol," says Mozaffarian, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Harvard Medical School. "There is even confusion among the scientists who study it."

Of course there is.  That is why the scientific method is needed.  The problem was, folks used their power and positions of authority to spread conjectures about the science of cholesterol as if it were scientifically proven truth.  Why?

 "Studies showed us that high cholesterol levels were one of the most important risk factors for the development of heart attack and stroke, and we had evidence that lowering cholesterol lowers the risk of heart attack and stroke," Ridker says. "You can't say that about most everything else."

Translation: There's a weak correlation between high total cholesterol and CVD, and there's limited evidence, very little, that shows lowering cholesterol can reduce the incidence of CVD.  But there was never strong evidence that lowering blood cholesterol - either total or LDL - could be used for primary prevention of CVD.  

The author goes on to describe various results of epidemiological studies, all of which have been "shown by studies" to be junk.

To make sure the irony levels in your blood are high enough, the author dives right into unproven speculation about how to "reduce your risk" (aka how folks who do epidemiology assess risk via mathematics, which has nothing to do with actually determining how these behaviors affect live people via intervention study), by doing this, that or the other to change the numbers reflected on your lipid panel.  Which is to say - the author just continues the cycle of confusing speculation based on expert opinion, immature science and ..... bovine excrement.

Example:  Should you try to raise your HDL by medications or some magic pill (niacin, for example)?  No, that has been proved not to work, and may be harmful.  In other words, folks with high HDL generally are healthier, but if you take a sick person and manipulate their HDL it does not help.

A lovely understatement, for those who appreciate understatement:
"But there is some disagreement over which dietary changes are best for heart health, says Roger Blumenthal, director of the Ciccarone Center."
Translation:  "We don't have a freaking clue."

""For most people, cholesterol from food isn't a contributor to their cholesterol levels," Blumenthal says."
And for those whose blood cholesterol levels are affected by their dietary cholesterol intake, they have no idea whether that matters at all in the cause of CVD.

"High-fat foods, such as cheese and chocolate, have also been regarded as verboten, yet "the evidence for this may not be as strong as we once thought," he says."
Translation:  "We didn't have a freaking clue, but were unable to keep our mouths shut."

 So, in the face of all of the mis-information in just this one article, much less the rest of the web, what a guy or gal to do?

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

Make your belly smaller, increase your muscle mass, learn more each day about how to eat for health and performance.

Jimmy Moore on Time Article

As for the Time column by Walsh, he did an amazing job of explaining that there was never any science that proved any of the gloom and doom predictions about fat's impact on our health. We grew up on fat-free and low-fat everything because the United States government decided to start meddling in the nutritional affairs of Americans by offering up dietary advice based on propaganda and not on any solid science. Once that happened in earnest beginning in 1980, the fat-phobia was underway and we're still living under those auspices in 2014. Food companies attempted to cash in on this new trend and pumped out more and more products that have been stripped of fat. Did we get healthier as a result? You already know the answer.

The statistics Walsh cites are mind boggling. We think we have a healthcare crisis, but what we have is a preventative disease epidemic that a low-carb, high-fat diet could help with. My Cholesterol Clarity and Keto Clarity coauthor Dr. Eric Westman was quoted in this story explaining that "the studies to support (low-carb, high-fat diets) do exist." There was a hope that when people cut their saturated fat intake that they would replace those foods with more fruits and vegetables. That didn't happen. Instead, they ate more carbohydrates, grains, sugar and other sweeteners than ever before!

http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/commentary-time-magazine-pushes-fat-myths-offers-mea-culpa-in-2014/22899

The day is coming when folks will snicker under their breath "that health care professional still thinks saturated fat is bad for you."

The Livin' La Vida Low-Carb Show With Jimmy Moore

Check out this cool episode: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/livin-la-vida-low-carb-show/id324601605?mt=2&i=313777331

Have a listen to podcast 823 in which Nina Teicholz lays it out about how we came to think saturated fat was bad, how polyunsaturates were a sickening substitute, and how vegetable oils can make your uniform spontaneously combust.  Unbelievable.

Jimmy Reviews Nina T - It's a Hit

But what Teicholz does so brilliantly throughout her book is offer up illustrations and actual statistical data that underscores why Keys was wrong, how he got it so inexplicably wrong, and why the mistakes he made in his research never got corrected despite the fact it is well-known that he omitted statistical data that disproved his theory. It’s quite the sordid tale that is worth the price of this book just to get that history behind the worldwide launch of the low-fat diet fad. This should be required reading for every doctor, dietitian and nutritional health researcher so they don’t go down the same path that Keys did.

But Teicholz goes beyond the story of Ancel Keys and turns her attention to what actually happened (the unintended consequences) as a result of what he promoted as fact a half century ago. The low-fat lie became deeply entrenched into every fiber of our being as an absolute, unassailable truth and yet there was never one iota of solid research (randomized, controlled, clinical trials are the gold standard for making claims in science) ever conducted. But when you repeat an untruth over and over and over again so many times, even the perpetrator of the lie can become convinced it’s actually true. And that’s exactly where we are with saturated fat today.

http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/book-review-the-big-fat-surprise-by-nina-teicholz/22762?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LivinLaVidaLowCarbBlog+%28Jimmy+Moore%27s+Livin%27+La+Vida+Low+Carb+Blog%29

Eades on Big Fat Surprise, 3

The story of how these scientists, using Keys’ bogus data from Crete (which in and of itself is a unbelievable story), teamed up with what amounted to a PR firm for the olive oil industry to seduce scores of American scientists and food writers is one of more fascinating parts of BFS. It was a perfect storm. The scientists and food writers were ripe to be lured into spending time on the Mediterranean coast, imbibing wine and eating the food. These all expense paid trips were ostensibly medical conferences, but in reality, they were marketing ploys. Food writers and journalists were looking for something new and exciting to write about. The masses, wearied of their tasteless low-fat fare, were ready to start adding fat back into their diets, even if it was in the form of olive oil. And the olive oil industry was more than ready to oblige. And to fund.

A handful of researchers started working on studies of the Mediterranean Diet, but there really wasn’t a Mediterranean Diet. There were a lot of people around the Mediterranean eating diverse diets, but no single Mediterranean Diet. So each research group basically created its own idea of the Mediterranean Diet and studied it.

To say you will be surprised to learn not only the structures of these various Mediterranean Diets but the outcome of the studies is a vast understatement.

I’m forever being accosted at parties and other events with questions about diet. When I explain what I do, I can’t tell you how many people then tell me they eat a Mediterranean Diet or that their doctor put them on a Mediterranean Diet. Even doctors believe the Mediterranean diet is the one diet that has stood the test of vigorous scientific investigation.

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-diets/big-fat-surprise/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+drmikenutritionblog+%28The+Blog+of+Michael+R.+Eades%2C+M.D.%29

Eades Quoting "Big Fat Surprise"

Meanwhile the Native Americans of the Southwest were observed between 1898 and 1905 by the physician-turned-anthropologist Aleš Hrdlička, who wrote up his observations in a 460-page report for the Smithsonian Institute. The Native Americans he visited were eating a diet predominantly of meat, mainly from buffalo, yet, as Hrdlička observed, they seemed to be spectacularly healthy and live to a ripe old age. The incidence of centenarians among these Native Americans was, according to the 1900 US Census, 224 per million men and 254 per million women, compared to only 3 and 6 per million among men and women in the white population. Although Hrdlička noted that these numbers were probably not wholly accurate, he wrote that “no error could account for the extreme disproportion of centenarians observed.” Among the elderly he met of age ninety and up, “not one of those was either much demented or helpless.”

Hrdlička was further struck by the complete absence of chronic disease among the entire Indian population he saw. “Malignant disease,” he wrote, “if they exist at all — that they do would be difficult to doubt — must be extremely rare.” He was told of ‘tumors’ and saw several cases of the fibroid variety, but never came across a clear case of any one kind of tumor, nor any cancer. Hrdlička wrote that he saw only three cases of heart disease among more than two thousand Native Americans examined, and “not one pronounced instance” of atherosclerosis. Varicose veins were rare. Nor did he observe cases of appendicitis, peritonitis, ulcer of the stomach, nor any “grave disease” of the liver. Although we cannot assume that eating meat was responsible for their good health and long life, it would be logical to conclude that a dependence on meat in no way impaired good health. [My italics]

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-diets/big-fat-surprise/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+drmikenutritionblog+%28The+Blog+of+Michael+R.+Eades%2C+M.D.%29

Gluten Sensitivity a Myth? Part 1

"So what we have here is s failure to communicate." BLUF: overly smug writer with limited understanding of the topic writes a cute story but misses the point.

"In one of the best examples of science working, a researcher who provided key evidence of (non-celiac disease) gluten sensitivity recently published follow-up papers that show the opposite."

"The first follow-up paper came out last year in the journal Gastroenterology. Here's the backstory that makes us cheer:

"The study was a follow up on a 2011 experiment in the lab of Peter Gibson at Monash University. The scientifically sound — but small — study found that gluten-containing diets can cause gastrointestinal distress in people without celiac disease, a well-known autoimmune disorder triggered by gluten.

"They called this non-celiac gluten sensitivity."

"For a follow-up paper, 37 self-identified gluten-sensitive patients were tested. According to Real Clear Science's Newton Blog, here's how the experiment went:

Subjects would be provided with every single meal for the duration of the trial. Any and all potential dietary triggers for gastrointestinal symptoms would be removed, including lactose (from milk products), certain preservatives like benzoates, propionate, sulfites, and nitrites, and fermentable, poorly absorbed short-chain carbohydrates, also known asFODMAPs. And last, but not least, nine days worth of urine and fecal matter would be collected. With this new study, Gibson wasn't messing around.

The subjects cycled through high-gluten, low-gluten, and no-gluten (placebo) diets, without knowing which diet plan they were on at any given time. In the end, all of the treatment diets — even the placebo diet — caused pain, bloating, nausea, and gas to a similar degree. It didn't matter if the diet contained gluten. (Read more about the study.)

The somewhat snarky conclusion:

"You can go ahead and smell your bread and eat it too. Science. It works."

But did it, in this case?  A better analysis follows in 2 days, or you can cruise over to marksdailyapple.com and read his response. 

In my view, the weakness of the study is much like a study that tested what diets worked best for aviator performance - high fat, high carb or high protein.  The answer - high fat.  However, the findings would have been even stronger in that case had the high fat group been allowed to adapt to high fat for three weeks.  Instead they were cycled weekly or so through the different diets.

This group (in the gluten study) were handled likewise - but many folks with gluten issues will tell you it's not just the meal that leaves them feeling bad, it's a long hangover in the gut that lasts after gluten exposure.  This could be due to permeable gut issues or other issues with wheat/gluten ingestion.  The point to me is that it takes most folks 30 days of elimination to notice the difference after removing offensive foods, and this study seems not to have allowed for that.  (Minor grammar edits 5/26/2014).

Protein Power Review of "Big Fat Surprise"

Nina Teicholz is a married mother of two living in New York City. She is an investigative journalist and food writer by trade. When she first moved to New York, she was following a low-fat, USDA Food Pyramid style diet. Her life changed when she began writing restaurant reviews. She ate whatever the chefs she was reviewing sent out, which was often “paté, beef of every cut prepared in every imaginable way, cream sauces, cream soups, foie gras – all the foods [she] had avoided [her] entire life.”

She ate an enormous amount of fatty food, and despite her worries to the contrary, her cholesterol numbers didn’t go through the roof. But best of all, she lost the ten pounds she had been struggling to shed.

Her editor at Gourmet asked her to write an article about trans fats. The article ended up getting her a book contract, and the research she did for it launched her on her Herculean task of researching and writing The Big Fat Surprise (BFS). She tells the story of how we Americans went from eating enormous amounts of saturated fat (all the while suffering virtually no heart disease) to now eating fats in restaurants that, when heated, throw off a shellac-like substance so toxic it requires workers in hazmat gear to clean up after them.

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-diets/big-fat-surprise/

In another couple of years, no one will bat an eye at these books, as the Ship of Lowfatisbad will have completed the turn, and sugar will be the recipient of all of saturated fat's hate - except for a few true believers who love animals and thus can't get with saturated animal fats under any circumstance. It is taking a long time, but the light may be seen at the end of the tunnel.

Shout out to Gary Taubes, the first science writer/researcher to get this topic back on the scope of legitimate scientific inquiry!

How to Make Doctors Irrelevant - The Daily Beast

Now she is conducting clinical trials in MS patients to prove this wasn't a fluke, and the studies are going very well. In addition, she uses a nutritional approach at the VA with her traumatic brain injury patients, as well as those in her therapeutic lifestyle clinic. She finds that all kinds of people get better—even those with difficult-to-treat conditions like Parkinson's, fibromyalgia, obesity and other autoimmune conditions. "The first thing that happens [to patients in my clinic] is they have decreased pain, better mental clarity, and more energy," Dr. Wahls said. "The women say the weight is falling off and the men say that their love lives are better."   http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/23/how-to-make-doctors-irrelevant.html 

People who make predictions about the future are people who choose to feel certain in the face of evidence that 99+% of predictions are wrong.  I predict this is a very good picture of what medicine will become in the future.  You and I both will be better off if I'm right.

Saturated Fat Is Your Friend

A very nicely written summary of why:
-Saturated fats were never proven to be unhealthy, and why other foods we've been substituting for sat fats may be "really" unhealthy
-Why polyunsaturated oils, recommended for years for their cholesterol lowering qualities, may be much worse for you than sat fats, especially when hydrogenated
-Why carbs are problematic as substitutes for fat in the diet, and have been a part of making us fat, sick and diabetic
-Why women in particular need to think about cholesterol levels differently than we've all been told

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

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303678404579533760760481486?mod=WSJ_hppMIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303678404579533760760481486.html%3Fmod%3DWSJ_hppMIDDLENex

Butter Back, But Where's the Apology?

Julia Child, goddess of fat, is beaming somewhere. Butter is back, and when you’re looking for a few chunks of pork for a stew, you can resume searching for the best pieces — the ones with the most fat. Eventually, your friends will stop glaring at you as if you’re trying to kill them.

That the worm is turning became increasingly evident a couple of weeks ago, when a meta-analysis published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine found that there’s just no evidence to support the notion that saturated fat increases the risk of heart disease. (In fact, there’s some evidence that a lack of saturated fat may be damaging.) The researchers looked at 72 different studies and, as usual, said more work — including more clinical studies — is needed. For sure. But the days of skinless chicken breasts and tubs of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter may finally be drawing to a close.

The tip of this iceberg has been visible for years, and we’re finally beginning to see the base. Of course, no study is perfect and few are definitive. But the real villains in our diet — sugar and ultra-processed foods — are becoming increasingly apparent. You can go back to eating butter, if you haven’t already.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/26/opinion/bittman-butter-is-back.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0&referrer=

Bittman recently called Dean Ornish one of the most knowledgeable men in the world about heart disease (or something like that), an unabashed kiss of the derriere, so for him to come up with a column like this is noteworthy.

The rest of the article is a good read, but I could beat up every line from one angle or another.  Mostly, I wonder "where's the apology?"  Bittman participated with the government and all the hip wannabe scientists to pretend they knew that saturated fat was bad for us, and the in process had a bunch of eating truly wretched levels of sugar and grains and processed foods laden with industrially produced "vegetable oils" - and that crap has been killing people.  More people than wars, more people than drugs.  As this huge super-tanker full of tortured dietary science makes it's long turn away from the saturated fat scare, few will admit to what they did to their fellow humans based on their arrogance and willingness to bank on immature and incomplete science.  Some days that has me boiling mad.

And I think I'm just going to have to get over it.

Jogging Delusion?

Okay, here's my justification behind that insensitive comment that got everyone's panties in a wad. While gender is biologically determined, the concept of masculinity is a socially constructed notion. And while the idea of masculinity varies somewhat from era to era and from one region of the world to another, masculinity is usually associated with superior strength, muscularity, speed, and power. The human body, as it turns out, isn't a very good multi-tasker when it comes to "S.A.I.D." (specific adaptation to imposed demand). It prefers to be either big and strong, or small and weak, (albeit with good endurance). True, some guys can manage to have it both ways, but if you find it challenging to gain muscle or strength, you're not one of them.

Jogging, as the bulk of studies have repeatedly shown, reduces, or at the very least, makes it more difficult to maintain or develop all of the masculine traits I just described. This is why national and World-level powerlifters and weightlifters - most of whom are jaw-droppingly jacked and three times stronger than you are - rarely jog or do anything resembling it. Maybe you're willing to risk minimizing your manhood to obtain the supposed benefits of jogging.

http://www.t-nation.com/training/jogging-delusion

Interesting topic!

The Pro: it's both cheap and easy to "jog" or engage in running for endurance training.  I think running is in our DNA - there's a case to be made that we differentiated ourselves as hot summer running scavengers, in which we could reach the dead animals on the savannah faster than other predators since we have the best cooling system in the animal planet.

I ran for fun and fitness all over the planet for many years.  I didn't log huge miles, and I didn't often get to be very "fast" at running.  My life was always better as a runner than when I didn't run.

If you are a foot soldier, you must be able to run long and slow.

Running is better than nothing and in terms of being able to do work, better than walking - if you don't take it too far.

The Con:  He's right, taken too far endurance running makes most of us weak and frail.  Running confers no special benefit to heart health, it does not help most people sustain a fat loss, and it is not a boost to performance for most sport.  Which is to say, if you play soccer, lacrosse, football, baseball, basketball, or other sports which place a premium on top end speed and explosive power, you'd be far better off skipping the long running sessions and focusing on speed and explosive power training.

If you like to run - cool!  I hope you enjoy the heck out of it.  I also hope you are not doing it because you think it's the bees knees for fat loss, heart health or sports performance.