Mark Sisson's Blog, page 156

Feeling My Limitations Melt Away

It’s Friday, everyone! And that means another Primal Blueprint Real Life Story from a Mark’s Daily Apple reader. If you have your own success story and would like to share it with me and the Mark’s Daily Apple community please contact me here. I’ll continue to publish these each Friday as long as they keep coming in. Thank you for reading!

I called my sister after a backpacking trip last September to tell her I had felt amazing tromping around the picturesque Colorado wilderness with a heavy pack on for several days. I was overjoyed because I had not felt amazing backpacking or otherwise throughout most of my life. She responded by saying, “Isn’t it amazing to feel your limitations melt away?”

I have been an outdoor enthusiast my entire life. Throughout my teens I enthusiastically planned multi day backpacking trips, and as I moved into my 20s I started “bagging” the 14,000+ peaks in my home state of Colorado. However, despite my love of nature and outdoor adventures, these feats were always more challenging for me than my peers. This fact frustrated me and for a long time I thought I just needed to push myself more athletically. However, as I’ve learned over the past few years, I actually needed to change my diet.

Health issues related to inflammation and food sensitives have plagued me my entire life. As a young adult I suffered from severe back pain, headaches, and stomach issues. My health issues became worse as I entered my mid-twenties. My headaches turned into crippling migraines, and everything seems to bother my stomach. I lost a lot of weight because I could barely stomach food at the age of 24.

My sister’s life had been transformed by the paleo diet. She suggested that we likely shared many food intolerances. She helped guide me through a lot of these initial changes through her own experiences with food sensitives. However, it took me years to make the full switch to paleo. I told myself I didn’t like the label, but more likely I didn’t want to face what I thought was a strict and limiting diet at such a young age.

My dietary changes certainly made me feel better. No more migraines, back pain, severe indigestion and so forth. However, my athletic abilities did not improve significantly. I often found myself struggling to keep up with my friends on big hikes. The wall that seemed to keep me from improving athletically was still there.

I started to become more and more frustrated that my athletic abilities did not match the person I knew I was. In 2017 I finally started making bigger changes. My sister was again an excellent resource as I made the full transition to paleo. She turned me onto Mark’s Daily Apple and other paleo resources. I completed my first Whole30 that January, which was great because it gave me the confidence to cut out sugar and feel great without it. It also helped me make the switch to full paleo. However, I still felt my limitations were surrounding me, and I was not sure how to overcome them.

A good friend of mine had been trying the ketogenic diet, and she felt amazing. She suggested I try it as she thought my problem likely was that I had not fully embraced fat while eating really low carb and making myself miserable with that arrangement. I hesitated at first especially because of the lack of research about keto and women. However, feeling like I had nothing to lose, I went for it the first week of June. I did not notice much change the first two weeks likely because I had not overcome my fat aversion. However, I began to embrace it more and more, and I finally noticed changes.

Throughout the summer of 2017 I hiked more mountains than I ever had, and I felt amazing doing it. Waking up to hike a big mountain started to feel like Christmas morning. Finally, the barriers that had always surrounded me began to melt.

My diet has primarily been keto based for the last eight months. I eat healthy fats, grass fed meats, lots of green veggies, nuts, and berries. I’ve had a great time experimenting with many keto recipes and enjoy making fat bombs and other great on the go snacks. I also practice intermittent fasting and often only eat in an eight to ten hour time window each day. I often will eat more carbs around bigger athletic endeavors such as summiting a big mountain, but I typically keep my carbohydrates to less than 50 grams per day.

The entire experience has been very liberating. I finally feel free to follow my passions without feeling like there is some impenetrable barrier blocking me. Liberation from food has been amazing as well. I now can go for extended periods of time without having to think of my next meal. I often find myself forgetting when I last ate!

I have more physical energy than I ever recall having in my life. I finally feel liberated to be the person I always knew was inside but somehow struggled to get into the world. Finally, finding a relationship with food that works for me is the most liberating feeling of all.

Want to make fat loss easier?

Try the Definitive Guide for Troubleshooting Weight Loss for free here.

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Primal Reflection Point: Be Affluent

Habit #10: Be Affluent

We often talk of having affluence, but I think there’s something more powerful about being—embodying—that sense of abundance. Having suggests gaining, even measuring from the outside. Being or embodying, on the other hand, suggests an internal decision and process. An attitude, a choice that today I’m going to live abundantly.

To our ancestors, the concept of affluence, if it existed, was probably very different than what we think of today. For them, the ultimate commodities were time and leisure. Funny how those were so beneficial for evolutionary progress…

Compare time and leisure to what we’re encouraged to pursue and define our affluence from today—status and possessions. We often tether ourselves to them really. Even beyond the point at which our basic needs are met, the drive for accumulation and ascent takes over and can co-opt every other priority whether we even realize it or not. Sometimes we’re working so long and hard we don’t even see it creep into our consciousness. We don’t consider ourselves particularly materialistic people, let alone greedy, but somehow we get sucked into the cultural grooves.

What does abundance mean to you? While we don’t need to swear off the blessings of modern conveniences and novelty, it’s important to define our most deep-seated priorities. What values do you want to be the center of your life? What genuinely nourishes you at the physical level? What fills your intellectual, creative, social, emotional and spiritual dimensions, however you conceive of them?

Too often we wind ourselves around a distorted sense of our basic needs (e.g. food, shelter, security, upgrading our kitchen or car because our neighbors did) all while depriving ourselves of what we’d call our core priorities (e.g. time with family and close friends, volunteering, time and outlets for self-expression and creative development, etc.).

The fact is, our basic needs are simpler than we often think. And…our other, more nuanced needs, are more essential than we often think. How about embracing the idea that you get to have fulfillment on all levels? Seriously. What should it look like for you as an individual? (This is the real crux.) Be bold enough to create a vision for your life, however counter it is to our culture’s version of success or linear progression. Think about experience and satisfaction, about playing hard and sleeping well. There’s where living abundantly begins.

The central premise of The Primal Connection is that we can use the model of our ancestors to create not just a healthier physical existence but also a more balanced and fulfilling life. To be affluent is among the habits I call our inner dialogue—the assumptions, patterns, and narratives we can create or accept for ourselves. That dialogue has the power to limit or expand our lives. It will influence our potential to connect with the world and those around us. It will ultimately determine how successfully we live as modern hunter-gatherers but most importantly whether or not we will live the full measure of our Primal selves in this lifetime.

Thanks, everybody. I’d love to hear how you’re taking this into the weekend.

The post Primal Reflection Point: Be Affluent appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

The Role of Supplementation in Keto: What’s Uniquely Useful

Yesterday, I explained my rationale for supplementation in a Primal lifestyle. Today, I’m going to get a bit more specific and discuss the role of supplementation on a keto diet. As a diet founded upon the restriction of an entire class of macronutrients, keto seems like the perfect candidate for stringent supplement requirements. And if you go around the web asking other people, you’ll find plenty of opinions, lists, and recommendations for this or that supplement that you absolutely must take or face certain death and disfigurement.

I disagree.

Done well, keto needs no overt supplementation. That said, some supplements can be useful.

Most of yesterday’s post applies to anyone trying to cobble together a healthy diet in the 21st century. Everyone’s access to ancient wild plant foods is limited. Most people spend too much time indoors and need vitamin D to make up for it. We can all benefit from having a reliably healthy, convenient meal replacement on hand, and most people aren’t eating enough collagen. But what are the supplement considerations unique to keto dieting?

Creatine

For most people, keto seems to slightly compromise top-end glycolytic power—the type of energy you need to push high-volume, high-intensity efforts in the gym and in the world. We simply don’t carry around the same amount of glycogen as your standard carb-loader, and if you’re trying to do the same activities as the carb-loader, you may lose top-end power.

That’s where creatine comes in. By increasing muscle phosphocreatine content, it provides instant energy for intense movements. It doesn’t last long, but we can recycle it with a short rest. The best sources of creatine in the diet are meat and fish, which you’re probably eating. But a little extra creatine monohydrate works well.

MCT Oil

Medium chain triglycerides aren’t essential on keto. You can be perfectly ketogenic by burning and converting longer chained fatty acids, both dietary and endogenous. But MCTs are nice to have around because they boost ketone production directly and can really help someone during the transition. Lately, I’ve been whisking some of the powdered MCTs into a little hot whole milk or cream and adding that to my coffee. Placebo or not, I definitely notice an increase in mental alertness and focus.

Antioxidants

All the issues preventing people from getting adequate doses of phytonutrients in “regular” diets become compounded on keto diets for two simple reasons:

Some of the richest sources of antioxidants are too high carb for keto dieters to eat on a regular basis. I’m thinking of purple sweet potatoes,

Many keto dieters mistakenly assume that all plant foods are off limits. This eliminates the best sources of antioxidants, like low-sugar berries and non-starchy vegetables.

You can avoid much of this by accepting that unlimited leafy green vegetables and moderate doses of berries like blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries are okay on keto, but a dedicated antioxidant supplement providing a broad spectrum of phytonutrients drawn from the entire plant kingdom is a nice buffer. I recommend Primal Master Formula, but then again, I’m biased. Whatever you choose, take on an irregular basis. Much of the benefit we get from these plant compounds is hormetic, and taking it every day can reduce the effectiveness.

Sodium

Early on in the process of keto adaptation, you’re losing a ton of sodium. You’re losing water as you expend glycogen, which flushes out sodium. Your insulin levels are low, which further reduces sodium retention. As readers of this blog, you’re probably training, which expends even more sodium through sweat. And since you’re not eating any more pre-cooked processed junk food, which tends to contain a lot of salt, you’re probably eating less sodium than before.

The symptoms of low sodium include fatigue, headaches, extreme thirst, and a reduced ability to tolerate physical activity, especially in hot weather.

Salting your food to taste and drinking salty bone broth should be enough for most people, but I sometimes find it helpful to have some sparkling water with lime juice and a generous pinch of sea salt in the morning.

Potassium

In order to maintain proper sodium-potassium balance, the body responds to declining sodium by shedding potassium. This is critical, because potassium is one of the basic electrolytes our cells need to perform basic functions. I don’t know about you, but I like my cells to function.

Some of the best sources of potassium include bananas, potatoes, and other starchy foods that are off-limits to most keto eaters. You can make up for it with avocados and leafy greens, but in the early days, when sodium is low and potassium drops to balance it, some extra potassium can really help.

Magnesium

Some keto diehards question the relevance of magnesium, seeing as its most famous physiological role is in preserving and maintaining glucose tolerance and reducing insulin resistance. If you’re not eating much glucose, what’s the point of all that magnesium?

Magnesium does a lot more than help you process glucose, though. It’s important for bone health, nerve and muscle function, immunity. It also helps preserve potassium, which many keto dieters can miss out on.

We can get it from plenty of low-carb foods, like almonds and pumpkin seeds, but those come with a hefty dose of omega-6 fatty acids. There’s nothing inherently wrong with eating some whole food omega-6 fat. It’s just that eating pumpkin seeds to hit your magnesium requirements means you’ll go way over your omega-6 limits.

Choline

A keto diet is a high-fat diet. Most people who go keto are coming from a decidedly lower-fat diet. Maybe not a low-fat diet, but a lower-fat diet. In order to process all that fat, your liver needs to be equipped with the nutritional tools it requires to function. Choline is first and foremost a powerful regulator of hepatic fat metabolism. In order to manufacture the very low density lipoprotein particles that transport fat from the liver, we need choline. Without it, the liver accumulates fat.

This isn’t just true in “normal” diets deficient in choline. Mice on a strict keto diet deficient in choline manage to lose weight, but gain significant liver fat.  The higher the fat intake, the higher the choline requirements. The more fat you eat in a choline-deficient state, the more fat your liver will store. Saturated fat seems to require more choline than other types of fats, which has particular relevance for the Primal keto dieter.

And another thing: If you’re watching protein intake—as many keto dieters find they must do—you may be eating less methionine, an amino acid found in meat, eggs, and dairy that can offset the choline requirement. Lower protein from meat and other animal foods, lower methionine, higher choline requirements.

The average man, woman, and child already eats too little choline. Keto dieters, whose choline requirements are probably higher than the average person, will need even more.

For liver health, basic choline bitartrate is fine.

Prebiotics

Yesterday, I explained why prebiotics are so useful. They feed and support your healthy gut bacteria. Their metabolism by said gut bacteria create beneficial short chain fatty acids that feed your gut cells, improve the health of your gut, and have nice systemic effects like improved glucose tolerance and a lower risk of colon cancer. They can help counter diarrhea and/or constipation, depending on what’s ailing you.

If you don’t know what you’re doing, they can be tough to get on keto. Truly green (unripe) bananas are probably safe sources of resistant starch, a potent prebiotic. Leeks, garlic, and Jerusalem artichokes are great sources of inulin, another potent prebiotic. And all the miscellaneous produce that you eat on keto, from leafy greens to raspberries to broccoli to cabbage, will provide prebiotic fodder for your gut bacteria.

A really quick and easy way to get prebiotics is with raw potato starch (for resistant starch) and inulin powder. There’s also a good amount of inulin in Primal Fuel (along with MCTs from the coconut milk).

And, yes, you don’t need any of these things in supplement form.

You can get MCTs from coconut fat, or you can just make your ketones from your own body fat and dietary fat exclusively.
You can get antioxidants from non-starchy veggies and low-sugar berries and fruits.
You can get creatine from red meat and fish.
You can get enough sodium by salting your food to taste, or maybe drinking some salty bone broth.
You can get potassium by upping the intake of avocados, leafy greens, and pretty much any other low-carb plant food.
You can get magnesium from almonds, seeds, and leafy greens.
You can get choline from liver and egg yolks.
You can get low-carb prebiotics from green bananas, leeks, and garlic.

It’s just that having some supplements on hand can really help, particularly during the transition as you get the hang of this new way of eating.

That’s what I’ve got. Now I’d like to hear from you.

What supplements do you consider most useful on a keto diet?

Thanks for reading.

Want to make fat loss easier?

Try the Definitive Guide for Troubleshooting Weight Loss for free here.

The post The Role of Supplementation in Keto: What’s Uniquely Useful appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Primal Action Point: Sit Better (When You Have To Sit)

“Sitting on a tucked-under pelvis places constant pressure on the sacrum (the triangular bone at the base of the spine) that can negatively impact the health of the pelvis, pelvic floor (the muscles that fill in the bottom of your pelvis and are, essentially the basement of your entire torso), and spine. Adjusting your pelvis instantly changes the mechanical environment of your sacroiliac (SI) joint, your pelvis, and your lumbar spine.”

For improved sitting posture:

Use a flat-seated chair (like a kitchen chair), or fill in your car’s bucket seat or desk chair with a rolled towel.
Sit close to the edge of a chair. This rolls your pelvis forward, lifting the bone away from the chair.

Source: Don’t Just Sit There by Katy Bowman

The post Primal Action Point: Sit Better (When You Have To Sit) appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Grok Didn’t Take Supplements, So Why Should I? (and a Giveaway)

The main objective of following the Primal Blueprint is to extract the healthiest, happiest, longest and most productive life possible from our bodies – and to look and feel good in the process.

Our 10,000-year-old Primal genes expect us to emulate the way our ancestors ate and moved; and the Primal Blueprint says we should do exactly as they expect. While there are many things we can do (or eat) today that very closely approximate what Grok did to trigger positive gene expression, there are also a number of obstacles that can thwart our attempts to be as Primal as possible. Artificial light prompts us to stay up too late and sleep too little. Electronic entertainment competes for our time when we should be out walking and basking in sunlight. We don’t always have access to ideal foods. We shower too much in water that’s too hot. We use medicines to mask our symptoms instead of allowing our bodies to deal directly with the problem. You get my point. You can’t go back to the paleolithic.

One of my tasks is to find the shortcuts—the easy ways to get the same genetic expression benefits Grok got—but by using 21st century technology or just plain old common sense. Working out in Vibram Fivefingers to simulate going barefoot is an example. Or learning how to spend time in the sun without sunscreen AND without burning. Getting more from a 20-minute full-body exercise routine than from a 3-hour cardio workout is yet another example. And given the lack of certain critical nutrients in even the healthiest diets, finding the best supplements is another.

Here are a few of the best categories of supplements I can recommend to just about everyone:

1. Antioxidant Booster

Some people claim exogenous antioxidants are useless or even harmful because we already have our three main internal “onboard” antioxidant systems that take care of most of the normal oxidative damage when we are healthy, unstressed and eating well (catalase, superoxide dismutase and glutathione). But these systems can come up short when we are under stress (who isn’t), eating too many sugars and other carbs, trans and hydrogenated fats, or drinking alcohol, or when we are exercising inappropriately. Theoretically, that still ought to be no problem, because our bodies were designed to get additional antioxidant support—and hormetic stimulus— from the foods we eat.

Unfortunately, many of our historically healthy sources of dietary antioxidants have gone extinct or have been rendered impotent by today’s aggressive factory farming techniques. In the fruit industry, for example, obtaining the highest possible sugar content has replaced antioxidants as the focus. Fruit is bred for sugar and durability, rather than nutrient content.

That’s one reason why I’ve always emphasized and encouraged the consumption of non-starchy veggies and brightly colored berries—they’re some of the most antioxidant-rich produce around. But I believe that we also need a broader mix of different antioxidants in order to emulate the wide variety of wild plant foods we evolved consuming. That means taking a supplement to obtain hard-to-get nutrients like full spectrum vitamin E (not just alpha tocopherol), mixed carotenoids (not just beta carotene), tocotrienols, NAC, alpha lipoic acid, curcumin, resveratrol, milk thistle, CoQ10 and quercetin to name a few. Now, you could make sure to eat all the foods that contain those nutrients, and in an ideal world I’d prefer you do that. But not everyone can, or even wants to. The convenience of modern technology is a reality, a tool that can be used to good effect.

Of course, too much of any one single antioxidant (in the absence of others) has been shown to have potentially negative effects. But when you take a good broad-spectrum antioxidant formula, all these antioxidants can work synergistically to mitigate oxidative damage and then help each other recycle back to their potent antioxidant form after donating an electron to the antioxidant effort. For that reason, I take a high-potency multi-vitamin loaded with extra antioxidants on an irregular basis.

Irregular? Huh?

Nowadays, I’ve got my health dialed in. I eat right, move correctly, sleep well, and kinda-sorta handle stress adequately. I don’t need to take an antioxidant supplement on a daily basis, so I take it intermittently. One pill after breakfast one day, three the next day, and none for half a week. Then I’ll take it every other day at varying dosages, then back off for another half week. That’s just an example, not a prescription. I jump around, basically. What’s funny is that because I’m fairly healthy, taking Master Formula every day could conceivably offer diminishing, or even negative returns. The same negative effects you see bandied about. Taking it the way I do now has a hormetic effect, the phenomenon whereby a moderate stressor upregulates your own antioxidant mechanisms to make you healthier and more robust.

2. Probiotics

Grok ate dirt. All day, every day. Hey, when you never wash your hands or your food (or anything for that matter) you pretty much can’t avoid it. But with all that soil came billions of soil-based organisms (mostly bacteria and yeast) that entered his mouth daily and populated his gut. Most were “friendly” bacteria that actually helped him better digest food and ward off infections. In fact, much of Grok’s (and our) immune system evolved to depend on these healthy gut bacteria living in us symbiotically. Grok also ate the occasional “unfriendly” organisms that had the potential to cause illness, but as long as the healthy flora well-outnumbered the bad guys, all was well. Several trillion bacteria live symbiotically in our gut today – some good and some bad. Much of your health depends on which of the two is winning the war.

The problem today is that we don’t eat dirt; we wash everything. Of course, given the crap that’s in and on the dirt around us, it’s probably best that we do wash it all. But in the process we never get a chance to ingest the healthy bacteria that our genes expect us to. In most healthy people this doesn’t usually present a problem. As long as there are some healthy gut bacteria present, as long as we don’t get too stressed out (stress hormones wreck the gut), too sick (diarrhea and vomiting are ways the body purges bad bacteria – but it purges good bacteria with them), or take antibiotics (antibiotics tend to kill both pathogenic and beneficial bacteria), and as long as we are eating well, those healthy bacteria can flourish and keep us well.

Unfortunately, we live in a time when stress is everywhere, where we do tend to get sick or take antibiotics, where certain processed foods support the growth of unhealthy bacteria and yeast forms while choking out the healthy flora. Many people whose diets include daily doses of yogurt or acidophilus are able to maintain healthy gut flora, but these sources aren’t always reliable (pasteurizing and added sugars can reduce their effectiveness), and not everyone can tolerate dairy that well.

For that reason, I think it’s wise to take probiotic supplements on occasion. Not necessarily every day, since once these “seeds” have been planted in a healthy gut, they tend to multiply and flourish easily on their own, especially if you feed them (see the next section). I’d certainly take extra probiotics under times of great stress or when you’ve been sick or are taking (or have just taken) a course of antibiotics. The reversal of fortune from a few days of taking probiotics can be dramatic. Better than eating dirt, I always say.

3. Prebiotics

For most of human history (and prehistory), carbohydrates were different. Rather than refined grains, white sugar, and white rice, we had wild tubers. There’s something to understand about the wild tuber: They generally don’t turn into creamy smooth starchy goodness when baked. They’re tough, fibrous things that provide a fraction of the usable energy modern cultivars provide (PDF). Whereas your typical kilogram of potato offers over 1000 calories, a kilo of many wild tuber varieties hover at around 300 calories. Eating these would have provided a moderate dose of glucose – akin to, perhaps, butternut squash—plus a load of prebiotic fiber for the gut bacteria.

That’s very important. Prebiotics are carbohydrates that we cannot digest. When we eat them, they pass through to the colon where our gut bacteria consume them. In doing so, they create short chain fatty acids like butyrate and propionate, which have a host of health benefits. This is in addition to supporting the growth and stability of our healthy gut bacteria.

We get a lot of prebiotics through foods like garlic, onions, leafy greens, and other plant matter. But it’s often easier and more reliable and more commensurate to the doses our ancestors commonly ate to take prebiotic supplements like inulin and raw potato starch (a source of a particularly potent prebiotic, resistant starch).

5. Fish Oil

In Grok’s day, virtually every animal he consumed was a decent source of vital Omega 3 fatty acids. The fish he caught had eaten algae to produce Omega 3 fatty acids rich in EPA and DHA (which helped build the larger human brain over a few hundred thousand years). The animals he hunted grazed on plants that generated high levels of Omega 3 in these meats. Even the vegetation Grok consumed provided higher levels Omega 3s than today’s vegetables. In Grok’s diet, the ratio of pro-inflammatory (bad) Omega 6 to anti-inflammatory (good and healthful) Omega 3 was close to 1:1.

Unfortunately, most people with a typical American diet today get way too much Omega 6 from seed oils and way too little Omega 3 from seafood and pastured meat, and that unhealthy ratio tends to keep many of us in a constant state of systemic inflammation. Since Omega 3 oils are found in fewer and fewer modern foods (fish being one of the few, but fresh fish also being impractical to eat regularly due to heavy-metal content) the single easiest way to overcome this serious deficit and rebalance your Omegas is to take highly purified Omega 3 fish oil supplements. The research on fish oils is extraordinary, showing benefits across the board from decreased risk for heart disease and cancer to lowering triglycerides, improving joint mobility, decreasing insulin resistance and improving brain function and mood. The drug companies are even starting to recognize the power of this “natural” medicine and have begun promoting prescription fish oil (at four times the normal price, of course!).

Nobody “needs” fish oil. But not everyone’s willing to eat seafood on a regular basis and avoid seed oils high in omega-6 fats/

6. Meal Replacement

The reality of modern life means that sometimes there just isn’t enough to time to lovingly cook a real Primal meal. Sometimes you need something quick, easy, and nourishing. To fit these requirements, I created Primal Fuel. It combines coconut milk (for healthy saturated fats, including medium chain triglycerides for easy ketone production), whey protein isolate (single most bioavailable protein around), and prebiotic fiber for a low-carb, moderate-fat, high-protein meal. Add a few ice cubes, a cup of water, maybe some greens or berries, blend it all together, and you’ve got yourself a legitimate meal in a cup. The coconut milk provides creaminess and texture, so it tastes almost exactly like a milk shake.

I’m a busy guy, though. That’s why I needed something like this to have on hand. I just find it useful to have something quick and shelf-stable that doesn’t compromise my eating regimen or health. Eating low carb often means being at a loss as to what to have for a snack or a small meal. We are so used to reaching for the bagel, a few pieces of fruit or something sweet as a snack. On the other hand, there are also times when we just don’t feel like fixing a full meal or we are strapped for time.

7.  Collagen Powder

In a world full of shrinkwrapped steaks, roasts, ground meat, and other examples of lean muscle meat, people often forget that about half of a cow is “other stuff.” That other stuff includes marrow, liver, kidney, heart, and other organs, but the vast majority of the other stuff is bone and connective tissues like tendons, ligaments, and cartilage.

These days, the bones and connective tissue usually go into pet food, glue, and other industrial products. But for millions of years, right up until your grandparents’ time, hominids consumed as much of the animal as possible. They made soups, stocks, broths, aspics, head cheese. They ate the tendons straight up. They gnawed the gristly bits at the end of bones. In other words, they consumed a lot of collagen along with the muscle meat.

Most modern people eat only the muscle meat, and this is significant. Muscle meat has a totally different amino acid profile than collagen. Meat is rich in methionine. Collagen is rich in glycine. Methionine metabolism requires and depletes glycine. In animal studies, diets high in methionine lower lifespan and cause a range of health issues—unless the diet is also balanced with glycine. We see glimpses of this occurring in humans, too.

To skirt around it, and to reduce the need to spend all my time making bone broth (which I still do, just not enough), I take collagen powder.

8. Vitamin D3

For tens of thousands of years, we lived and worked “outside.” This was the situation because, for all intents and purposes, “inside” didn’t exist. Now, we spend all day inside. Many of us simply can’t get the amount of sunlight our genes expect because of where we live, like the Toronto transplant whose ancestors evolved along the equator. For many, it’s a rare treat to see the sun, feel its rays, and make some vitamin D the old fashioned way, yet our bodies are set up to obtain vitamin D from sun exposure. It’s safer that way—we only produce as much as we need. It’s more enjoyable that way—we make endogenous opioids in response to sun exposure.

We can get vitamin D from foods, but it’s tough. Unless you want to exist entirely on a diet of sockeye salmon (there are worse things to eat, I guess) and cod liver oil, you won’t get enough vitamin D from your diet.

It’s true that sun itself carries some unique benefits separate from vitamin D. We should strive to get moderate sun exposure. But vitamin D is the most important benefit of sun exposure, and it’s coincidentally a really easy—and incredibly important—one to replace with supplementation.

9. Vitamin K2

We can eat it in natto (a sticky, gooey fermented soybean from Japan), aged gouda (my preferred method), goose liver (I always grab goose paté when I see it), and some other foods—see here for a comprehensive database—but the most reliable way to obtain this scarce yet vital nutrient is through supplementation.

Why do we care so much?

Vitamin K2 essentially directs calcium to the right spots. If you have good vitamin K2 status, calcium goes to teeth and bones. If you have bad vitamin K2 status, calcium may go to the arteries, leading to calcification.

10. Primal Calm

Instead of facing the kinds of chronic “made-up” stress we have today—like jobs we hate, traffic we hate more, and other trappings of modern society—our early ancestors faced acute stress—like encounters with dangerous animals or enemy tribes and intense hunting sessions. That’s the environment in which we evolved: big spikes in stress followed by long valleys. The environment we have now: constant elevations in stress with very little respite. The situations have flipped. Our bodies are set up to deal with acute stressors and woefully unequipped to deal with chronic stressors. That’s where supplementation can come in.

Phosphatidylserine is the lead ingredient in Primal Calm, a custom formulation that blunts the spike of cortisol in the bloodstream in response to stress. As I mentioned in yesterday’s video, my old training partner Brad and I used PS for over 20 years to help speed recovery from our crazy training binges, but PS and the supportive ingredients in Primal Calm are also effective against routine modern life stressors like jet travel, hectic daily routines, work stress, compromised sleep, and so on. 

While I don’t categorize this as a daily supplement (long-term anyway), it wouldn’t be unsafe to use Primal Calm that way if that fits your needs (just check with your doctor if you have a health condition or take any medications—standard suggestions for any supplement protocol). Personally, I’ve benefited from using Primal Calm as a “situational” supplement—taking a few capsules when my body and/or emotions are under extra stress.

Now for the Giveaway…

For one randomly chosen commenter on today’s post, I’m giving away a bottle of Primal Damage Control, a Primal Essentials Kit (Primal Omegas, Primal Sun, and Primal Probiotics) and a package of my unflavored Collagen Peptides. It’s a full Primal arsenal of nutritional support for your health and performance.

Just tell me what questions you have about supplementation. Are you wondering about specific nutrients? Special circumstances or health conditions? Particular uses or formulations? Don’t be shy.

*Be sure to comment before midnight tonight (1/24/18 PST) to be eligible to win.

I hope this post opens up the conversation to a topic I feel quite strongly about. If you have any questions or comments please drop me a line in the comment board.

The post Grok Didn’t Take Supplements, So Why Should I? (and a Giveaway) appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Primal Action Point: Upgrade Your Pantry

Often the first action people take at the start of the new year is to clean out their kitchen. Personally, I highly recommend it. There’s something gratifying about creating space for a new habit—and the foods that will support it. Yet, I know some folks hang onto previous food purchases to “cycle through” what they have on hand and gradually introduce the new into their cooking routines.

For those ready to overhaul their kitchens—or for anyone interested in fine-tuning how they stock up for Primal eating, I wanted to point out an article I offered up just a few years ago that is as relevant now as it was then: “Top 50 Essential Paleo Pantry Foods.”

With everything from canned food suggestions to appropriate snack options to Primal/paleo baking supplies (several of you have asked about these lists this month), it’s an easy way to make sure you have everything you need on hand for good, Primal eating every day.

More to come today, everyone! Thanks for stopping by.

Want to make fat loss easier?

Try the Definitive Guide for Troubleshooting Weight Loss for free here.

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The Anti-Stress Tool I’ve Used For 20 Years (and a Giveaway)

I haven’t talked much about stress this month, and I don’t want to give it short shrift. Yes, there’s a lot to take apart with food and exercise, both of which can feel more “actionable” at times. But stress can be a major roadblock to success. How we deal with emotional and physical stress will invariably impact our health, well-being and performance. Until we dial it in, we’ll compromise the results of all our other Primal efforts.

I’ve said in the past that stress has been one of the hardest aspects I’ve struggled with—and continue to now and then. Living Primally means I’m running on full rather than empty to be sure, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world always conforms to logic or sanity, let alone my preferences. And emotional tension aside, I like to push myself periodically in the gym or on an outdoor adventure, which means I’m dealing with physical stressors, too.

Here’s one thing I’ve done for twenty years to counter both emotional and physical stress.

Recently, I sat down with Brad Kearns to talk about one of the best kept secrets in performance nutrition—a potent anti-stress agent called Phosphatidylserine (PS).

PS is the lead ingredient in Primal Calm, a custom formulation that has been proven to help blunt the spike of cortisol in the bloodstream in response to stress. Old time endurance athletes like Brad and I have been using PS for over 20 years to help speed recovery from crazy training binges, but PS and the supportive ingredients in Primal Calm are also effective against routine modern life stressors like jet travel, hectic daily routines, compromised sleep, and so on.

We talk in the video about the physiology of stress and the best ways to use PS or Primal Calm—with more specific recommendations for bouts of heavy stress or training.

The goal isn’t to blunt the edge that can sharpen your focus or performance. It’s to achieve an evenness or, in some cases, a mellowness rather than the amped-up fight or flight response. I could easily write more, but check out my talk with Brad, and let me know what you think.

Now For the Giveaway…

I don’t think I give enough attention to Primal Calm on the blog, but today I’m going big. I’d like to give one random commenter a year’s supply of Primal Calm (12 bottles).

Just tell me what questions you have about stress—emotional stress, training related stress, etc.—or what stress-related topics you’d like me to write about on MDA.

Be sure to comment before midnight tonight (1/23/18 PST) to be eligible to win. (And be sure to use a functional email address when you comment. We’ve had to choose alternate winners on a few occasions this month because emails were undeliverable to the listed addresses.)

Thanks for stopping by today, everybody. Take care.

The post The Anti-Stress Tool I’ve Used For 20 Years (and a Giveaway) appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Primal Challenge Point: Starting From the “Bottom”

In all my years talking with clients and readers, I’ve heard people often say they’re starting from zero, from rock bottom, with no baseline at all. I understand where they were coming from. Everyone is beginning this journey with a different level of fitness and health. I get that. Yet, I let me tell you this: never in my entire career have I met anyone starting with nothing. The concept defies physiological reality.

You might be in the worst shape of your life. You might be tipping the scale at an all-time high. You might be fighting a serious health condition you never dreamed you’d be dealing with. You may have battled disordered eating. You might not remember when/if you ever had a good self-image.

You might get winded walking up half a flight of stairs. You may have lost significant muscle mass. You might struggle to simply sit with (let alone carry) around the extra 50, 75, or 100+ pounds you’ve put on. However, your body is still made to move. It still craves it. It likely feels harder to train, sure, but—make no mistake—living and breathing within you is that pure physical force you and everyone else was born with. Choosing to live Primally—with the right fuel, the expected movement, the necessary sleep and sun—simply allows you to live out the full measure of that vital potential.

And let me say something else about one’s “baseline.” When beginning a journey like this, baseline is about much more than VO2 max, mile time, bench press weight, or lipid profile. Numbers don’t tell your story, and they don’t determine your prospects for success.

Think for a minute about what else you bring to your personal resolution. What about the motivational power? What about the emotional stamina? What about the social strength of friends, family, and Primal community? What about the force of full-on personal investment or raw will? Those count for something. In fact, those often count for everything. Your physical baseline determines the particular level you start from, but it doesn’t define the trajectory of your journey or the fulfillment of your experience along the way.

Along these lines, let me offer a few suggestions and invite each and every one of our readers to give their own perspective and encouragement.

Invest in Support

As you begin the Challenge, make sure you’re taking full advantage of the support system you have. Not everyone in your life is on board with the Primal Blueprint, it’s true. Regardless, look to those in your life who bring a Primally sympathetic or just open mindset. Some friends, even if they can’t understand why you’re eating so much fat, will support you because they want to simply celebrate any investment you make in your health and happiness. Embrace that. Open yourself to the support of folks in this community. Participate in the comment boards, join the Mark’s Daily Apple Facebook Group, and you’ll see what I mean. Finally, if you feel like past issues like disordered eating still have a grip on you, enlist the professional help you need and deserve.

Develop Big Picture Perspective

Sometimes people get caught up in a particular goal and lose sight of the full process. Embrace daily Primal living and not just your long-range goal. Going Primal will get you to the destination you have in mind, but it’s not the deprivation-focused, white-knuckle experience you might be used to. Use this year to transform your life as well as you physiology. Relish the myriad of benefits going Primal offers. It’s more than the weight loss and lean muscle mass. Notice the better quality sleep, the more even mood, the sharper focus, the more consistent energy in your day. On that note…

Prioritize Feeling Good (Primally Speaking) Every Day

You’re making a point of eating real, ancestral-worthy food, of adding an exercise regimen. Rest assured, you’re remaking your physiology in the process. You will absolutely reap the benefits long before the first couple months of the year is over. But also make a point of doing something (or several things) that make you feel good today. These healthy “indulgences” can help get you through a rough day of low carb flu or unexpected stress. Relax in the sun. Relish turning in early for a full night’s sleep. (Remember what that feels like?) Share a walk with a good friend you haven’t talked to in a while. Play. Enjoy an old hobby. Take a personal retreat. Make a masterpiece dinner and savor it in real ambiance. In other words, let yourself enjoy the process. Make your Primal lifestyle a continual experience of “good life” indulgence as well as a powerful investment in your health.

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Dear Mark: Exercise Rapid Fire, Hunting, Pull-ups, Type 1 Diabetes

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering four questions from readers. The first question is actually 5 questions, so it’s closer to 8 questions overall. Good deal. First, I answer 5 questions about exercise, jumping jacks, aerobic base building, and weighted hiking. Next, what’s my take on hunting? After that, I discuss a few different ways to approach pull-ups. And finally, what is my quick and dirty advice for those with type 1 diabetes trying to go Primal?

Let’s go:

Chad asked:

Very interesting read, lot to chew over with this one. As far as what I would like to see in future posts or books: what alternative exercises could you do for aerobic base-building efforts per Primal Endurance guidelines?

Is running in place better than jumping jacks? Does the elliptical have a place? How often is too often for hiking with a weight vest? And how much lower can you go under your 180-age before you need to worry about *not* getting an adequate training effect.

These could all be dedicated posts, as you mention. But I’ll do some quick rapid fire responses.

Literally any activity that keeps you under or at a heart rate of 180 minus age is building your aerobic base. The question is finding one that you enjoy doing, but not so much that you get carried away and turn it into an intense session. The real fun lies in doing nothing but “easy” movement and watching your aerobic threshold rise.
Jumping jacks are better than running in place. They’re enough to augment bone mass in both kids and adults. Jumping jacks really get short changed.
The elliptical has a place. I like it for high intensity intervals, rather than long, slow aerobic work. If your joints can’t handle the hard impacts of running or sprinting, ellipticals are a decent option.
Depends on the amount of weight in the vest, the grade of the climb, your experience hiking with weight. In my experience, the hardest part about rucking/hiking with weight has always been the downhill portion. That’s where the leg cramping sets in, especially if you’ve been going for miles or days. If you’re going with a nice 20-35 pounds, I’d say you could go as often as you would without a vest. That’s like carrying a toddler around—which many unfit people already do—only the weight is more evenly distributed and thus easier to bear.
It’s a long tail. There’s probably some area under the curve that would suggest time X heart rate equals workload. The point would be that you still get some amount of significant training from a four-hour hike at a heart rate significantly below your MAF. However, the training would not serve you necessarily as much if you were training for, say, an elite level marathon.

Brad Kearns has a great analogy he uses to talk about the effectiveness of low-low intensity movement. Imagine a cruise ship with 12 engines. Going 25 knots in the open sea, all 12 engines are going full blast. To putter around the harbor, it might only use 2 of those engines at half-speed—but those 2 engines are still being used, still being “trained.”

Patrick wondered:

At age 30 I just took my hunter safety course and am excited to begin my own hunting practice. I think a deep primal exploration of our hunting roots would help bridge the gap for many who haven’t considered our ancestral connection to hunting and the outdoors. Basically, it’s a meaty topic that I’d deerly like to hear Mark and the gang’s opinion on.

Check out this older post. I’ll try to get something more fresh up in the coming weeks or months.

Kerri requested:

I would love to see an article about alternate ways to do pull/ups

You’ve got pull-ups—palms facing forward. A little more lat-centric.

You’ve got chin-ups—palms facing behind you. A little more bicep-centric.

You’ve got neutral grip pull-ups—palms facing each other. Easier on the shoulders, good for people with poor shoulder flexibility.

You’ve got fingertip pull-ups—a training staple of climbers.

One of my favorite ways to do pull-ups (any kind) is with ladders. Start with 2 pull-ups. Wait 30 seconds. Do 3. Wait 30 seconds. Do 4. Wait 30 seconds. Start the ladder over again. Make sure each rep feels crisp; you don’t want to grind out the steps of the ladder. I’ve seen people who can maybe do 5-6 pull-ups in a row do three rounds of this ladder without much problem. This allows you to accumulate great volume, really grease the groove of the movement, get stronger, increase max reps, and reduce the risk of overtraining or straining. If 2-3-4 ladders are too easy, you can step it up to 3-4-5. Too hard? 1-2-3.

Suzanne said:

I would love more HIIT/primal tips for type 1 diabetics. Thanks Mark

Everything Primal applies, just more so.

Ditch gluten. And I mean all of it. Gluten-free diets have been shown to reduce T1D-related antibodies and lower gut inflammation in those with type 1 diabetes. If you’re young enough, you might even be able to halt and reverse the degeneration of your pancreatic beta cells and get off insulin altogether with a gluten-free diet, if this case report is anything to go on.

Vitamin D, strength training, micronutrient intake, and all the other pro-bone stuff become more critical, as people with type 1 diabetes already have an increased risk of low bone density.

Sleep is everything; impaired insulin sensitivity is a common T1D response to deranged circadian rhythms and inadequate sleep.

As for HIIT, less is more. Interval training has the tendency to raise blood sugar in people with type 1 diabetes. In one study, moderate cycling lowered blood glucose, while adding a quick 10-second all out sprint increased it. They even proposed using these 10-second sprints as alternative modifiers of blood glucose. Interesting stuff.

The bulk of your training should be strength training, lots of walking, and a ton of easy movement. Keep the intense sprints/HIIT for special occasions.

Oh, and consider going keto, or at least just low-carb. This should be a no-brainer, and many doctors are embracing it for their patients with type 1 diabetes, but you may have to push the issue with your doctor. Be sure to keep him or her in the loop.

That’s it for today, folks. Thanks for asking, thanks for reading, and thanks for chiming in below with your own input for today’s round of questions.

Take care.

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Primal Challenge Point: Embrace the Pleasure Principle

A lot of people come to the Primal Blueprint having felt lousy for many years. It might be because of excess weight, medical issues, or general lack of energy.

The point is, many of these folks have forgotten how to feel—let alone cultivate—basic physical pleasure in their lives. When you live with constant pain or fatigue, it can be hard to imagine the other side of the spectrum, and that’s okay. Just take action to move yourself there—each and every day.

In other words, take the time and effort to feel good again on a daily basis. Living Primally will do its work in easing the physiological issues, but it’s important to inject pleasure into your lifestyle (e.g. get a massage, take a better bath, relish really good food, feel the sun on your face, tune into the sensory elements of your day).

The idea here is to reorient your experience of your body. Find ways to feel good, and you’ll be motivated to live a life that supports pleasure as a dimension of full well-being.

For more on the pleasure principle, continue reading here.

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