Mark Sisson's Blog, page 184

The Language of Microbial Culture: Explaining Prebiotics, Probiotics, Synbiotics and Postbiotics

It’s no secret that it’s one of my favorite subjects—the burgeoning field of human gastrointestinal microbiology. I know…it’s easy to get caught up in the comparative excitement of it all.

The microbiota is familiar territory to most Primal types, but with time and research, we come to understand the nuances of the terrain a little better. New terms pop up. Novel discoveries grab our attention. Promising connections become apparent. It feels like a good day to go over a bit of the latest—to provide a little refresher for those who’ve joined us recently and most of all to offer some additional perspective on what we’re learning as studies branch into new depths. 

So without further ado, welcome to Biome 101.

The Cheat Sheet

Probiotics

Okay, most of you don’t need a refresher on this one. But for many, “probiotics” is simply a buzz word for something they vaguely remember is healthy…for some hazy, complicated reason. For those lost souls, here’s the quick and dirty.

The average human gut contains between 1000 and 1150 different species of bacteria and yeast, with the total population count numbering in the trillions—that for the most part, are either harmless or contributing valuable functions to your body and mind.

Competition for prime gut real estate encourages a healthy anti-pathogenic intestinal tract and sound immune function throughout. Essentially, it’s like a an old-growth forest ecosystem, whereby the natural competition of both indigenous plant and animal species works together to maintain a state of healthy equilibrium for the forest biome as a whole, preventing colonization by exotic (aka pathogenic) species. Some of the functions that play out include:

secretion of anti-microbial proteins that protect against pathogenic bacteria
maintaining and restoring intestinal homeostasis
interaction with our in-built immune receptors 
metabolizing indigestible compounds and extracting nutrients from the foods we eat

Modern science has thus far managed to create artificial cultures of around 40% of these beneficial gut bacterial strains. These cultures are, essentially, what we know to be probiotics—collections of known beneficial microorganisms that promote the re-colonization and maintenance of healthy gut populations.

And despite their comparatively recent rise to stardom, humans have been making probiotics for millennia. Yogurt, sauerkraut, kefir, kimchi, kvass, raw vinegar—basically any fermented food has the potential to be classed as a probiotic. That being said, not every product with “live cultures” is necessarily a probiotic. To be classed as such, that product needs to promote measurable health improvements in either the gut, oral cavity, vagina, or skin.

Nowadays, it’s all about the probiotic supplements that can guarantee the most CFUs (colony forming units). Call me old school, but I’m more of a quality over quantity kind of guy.

Prebiotics

This is where we start getting into less familiar territory for some folks, but it’s actually quite simple. Prebiotics are special plant fibers that nourish the good bacteria already living in your gut—essentially, a hearty meal for your beneficial bacteria. Prebiotics are indigestible fibers that can pass through the gastrointestinal tract and arrive in your gut relatively unscathed, where they’re feasted upon (aka fermented) by trillions of hungry mouths.

Big-name prebiotic sources include green bananas, jicama, raw leeks (I’ll take mine cooked, thanks), dandelion greens, raw garlic, onion, and raw asparagus. Prebiotics are often integrated into probiotic supplements to not only provide a vital food source for the new colonials, but to encourage continued growth of the existing gut flora.

Synbiotics

Which brings me very smoothly onto synbiotics. Essentially, this is a technical sounding label to describe products or treatments that combine both probiotics and prebiotics to create a super potion for your nether regions. In the words of the white coats, “because the word alludes to synergism, this term should be reserved for products in which the prebiotic compound selectively favors the probiotic compound.” Got that? No worries. Let’s just look at what it means for your morning supplement or dinner plate.

While you’ll have no trouble locating a good symbiotic (yes, as it happens, I can recommend one that I use every day), there’s also plenty of fermented food pairings that together create a powerful synergistic effect. Classic examples are yogurt and raw honey (yes, please), kefir and chia seeds, or pickled asparagus if you’re feeling more adventurous. Raw apple cider vinegar contains plenty of pectin (a prebiotic) and of course good levels of beneficial bacteria, making it a synbiotic option for those who choose it.

Postbiotics

The fourth and final term may be the least familiar concept in the microbiology realm. In a nutshell, post-biotics are the metabolic by-products of the bacteria living in your gut and other microbiomes of your body. Researchers found that these by-products can be utilized to lower blood glucose and therefore show promise as a treatment for prediabetes.

It’s an interesting concept and developing subfield. Because much of the immune-supporting and inflammation-lowering benefits of gut bacteria are actually derived from their metabolic by-products, it stands to reason that providing certain at-risk people with specific post-biotics would go a long way towards helping them. These kinds of applications may make for a powerful in-clinic treatment for certain disorders and gut dysbioses, but it can never replace the long-term maintenance and 24/7 protective powers that an active, healthy gut population can provide. 

Human Microbiome Research and What It Means for Primal Living

Researchers are increasingly discovering/re-discovering just how personalized our gut microbiomes really are. A 2013 study examined 252 fecal metagenomes from 207 individuals from both Europe and North America, detecting 10.3 million single nucleotide polymorphisms and 1051 structural variants. Researchers went on to conclude that “individual-specific strains are not easily replaced and that an individual might have a unique metagenomic genotype, which may be exploitable for personalized diet or drug intake.” We have ourselves an interesting finding here with promising suggestions for the future of the field: our gut populations are entirely individual, meaning that prebiotic, probiotic, and even postbiotic treatments might be personalized in order to achieve the most benefits. 

Next, the literature continues to emphasize just how important the gut microbiome is in the early stages of a person’s life. I’ve come across several studies that indicate necrotizing enterocolitis, a leading cause of neonatal morbidity, may respond well to prebiotic and postbiotic treatment. Notice that, for once, probiotics aren’t the hero of the bacterial hour, as it appears that prebiotics and postbiotics may be a safer and more effective method of treatment than probiotics in this circumstance.

When it comes to the normal course of things, however, probiotics still take center stage. Research shows that formula-fed infants have smaller, less productive thymus glands, while breast-fed babies are more likely to have healthy, normal-sized thymuses. The missing piece of the puzzle? Largely, the beneficial Bifidobacteria in mom’s breast milk. These probiotics also play a leading role in development of the child’s gut microbiome, while mothers fed probiotics during breastfeeding have been shown to offer increased immunoprotective properties in their breast milk. 

For those of us on the other side of the cradle, scientists have recently found a connection between post-diet weight gain and gut flora. Obese mice were placed on a mini-Weight Watchers diet and then transitioned back to a “normal” Western rodent style of eating. The formerly obese mice quickly surpassed their pre-diet weight, and the one major change that researchers observed was in their gut. Dr. Eran Elinav, head of the research team, noted that “following successful dieting and weight loss, the microbiome retains a ‘memory’ of previous obesity.”

The team began looking into resolutions, and came up with two options: first, to implant formerly obese mice with gut microbes from mice that had never been obese, and second, to supplement with post-biotics. Fecal transplantation is its own conversation, so we won’t go down that road, but the second treatment is an intriguing one. Scientists found that the formerly obese microbiome was degrading the flavonoids in their food at a far greater rate than the non-obese microbiota, which in turn was lowering energy expenditure and inhibiting fat metabolism. By adding flavonoids (a “post-biotic therapy”) to their water, the formerly obese mice didn’t gain any extra weight after returning to a regular diet.

For those with , inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) for years, post-biotics appear to offer a new course of promising treatment that might even be a better option than probiotics alone for some. One study published a few years back indicated that certain commonly-administered strains of probiotics can actually have an inflammatory effect on those suffering from IBD. Researchers concluded that “a potent post biotic can… downregulate ongoing inflammatory processes in IBD tissue.” 

On the subject of bowels…combined with a good prebiotic, we might just be onto a winning formula for those suffering from gastrointestinal issues. Another study found that prebiotics (in the form of galacto-oligosaccharides) improved both stool frequency and consistency in patients with functional constipation. When combined with a probiotic, however, the resultant synbiotic had an even bigger beneficial effect: significantly improved stool frequency, consistency and reduced transit time. There really is no “I” in team.

A similar synergistic effect has been shown to help with plenty of other aspects of our health, including immune function and oxidative stress.

A Primal Approach to Gut Health

Beyond all the personal details and medical interventions, there’s an underlying message for any avid Primal enthusiast: don’t ignore your gut microbiome. Considering how many different conditions have been linked to gut dysbiosis, there’s little hope for attaining long-term, comprehensive health without a healthy gut. 

For those dealing with chronic conditions and wondering about what else they might try, you can consider forking out for fecal genomic testing, work out what bacterial strains work best for you, and seek out optimal synbiotics that work best for your individual gut conditions with the help of a specialist.

For all of us, we can recognize that a well-rounded diet that provides plenty of probiotics and prebiotics will form the fundamental building blocks for optimum and resilient gut health.

Thanks for reading everyone. Have questions, comments, experiences to share? I’m all ears. Take care.

The post The Language of Microbial Culture: Explaining Prebiotics, Probiotics, Synbiotics and Postbiotics appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Dear Mark: Superfoods, Plants for Pollution, Raw Liver Danger, and Irradiated ‘tsticles

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m addressing four questions and comments from readers. First up, do I subscribe to the idea of superfoods? If so, what do I like? If no, what do I consider “super”? Next, we know that plants—house plants, garden plants, trees—can absorb pollution and release stress-lowering odors. Is there an optimal arrangement of flora to achieve these goals? After that, I address a reader comment about the dangers of eating raw liver, followed by an intrepid reader who found the reference for the sunbathing testicle study from last week.

Let’s go:

I would like to know what you think about super foods and/ or your favorite superfoods you use?

I don’t generally go for “superfoods.” The goji berries hand-picked by Tibetan lamas and placed in their armpits to salt-cure on a sweaty mountain ascent. The 110%-cacao cacao nibs, the raw maca root you gnaw and try to convince yourself is delicious, the heritage chia seeds cultivated from Moctezuma’s own personal stash.

It’s not that those foods don’t possess some interesting, helpful qualities. They’re generally very nutritious. But you’re not going to eat them that often (who else has a half dozen mostly-full bags of random Navitas Naturals produts in their pantry?), and eating them once in a blue moon won’t give you any superpowers.

I think many foods are super, though. Foods like wild salmon, egg yolks, liver, dark chocolate, purple potatoes, turmeric, fatty fish, aged cheese, various ferments are excellent “supplemental foods” (hat tip to Paul Jaminet)—foods with proven benefits and broad appeal in the kitchen. Even some common staples like garlic, onions, and ginger have incredible support in the scientific literature for their health benefits. These are the “superfoods” you should focus on because they’re time-tested, they’re easy to integrate into your diet, and they actually work. Don’t reject the goji berries and maca, mind you. Just don’t base your diet around them, and don’t think occasional consumption will supercharge your health.

Hi Mark, (not really nutrition, but paleo nonetheless) I would love your take on plants clearing pollution at home (and some details on the best combinations perhaps) and plants that give off plant odours that reduce stress.

This is a two parter. First, which plants reduce pollution?

The easy answer is: probably all of them. One way plants reduce pollution is by trapping it. I mean that quite literally. The major reason trees, grass, and other types of flora reduce airborne particulates is that the particulates attach themselves to the foliage. They become repositories for the pollution. This is different from metabolizing the pollution and rendering it inert. The pollution is still there. It’s just not getting to you.

A recent paper reviewed the determinants of how much particulate matter gets deposited:

Conifers can accept more deposits than deciduous trees.
Needles accept more than broad leaves.
Pine accepts more than yew and ivy, but less than juniper.
Leaves with more “hair” and wax accept more deposits.

When we’re talking about airborne chemicals like benzene, formaldehyde, trichloroethylene, xylene, toluene, and ammonia, certain plants actually filter them. Lucky for us, NASA did a comprehensive study to determine the specific detox abilities of various plants. Check the list and see what works for you.

As for the second question, once again, almost everything probably works.

The forest bathing research out of Japan suggests as much. Forest bathing lowers stress, reduces hypertension, improves immune function, and lowers blood sugar whether the forest is cedar, hiba, oak, or beech. And followup studies using cypress oil, cedar wood chips, cedar interior walls (which is relevant, as many Japanese homes are made of cedar) have all found similar effects. You could probably use a sack of cedar mulch from the nursery.

Those are trees, though. It’s not exactly feasible to grow a redwood or cedar tree in your house. What about house plants? This paper (PDF) found that geraniums, chrystanthemums, cyperus, and begonias were all potent sources of phytoncides—the stress-relieving plant odors. Other studies have shown that lavender and rosemary aroma can reduce cortisol and improve free radical scavenging, or that a combo of lavender, rosemary, clary sage, and peppermint aromas reduce perceived stress in university students.

The real key might be interacting with the plant—any plant. In one study, young adults found that simply transplanting house plants from one pot to another reduced physiological and subjective markers of stress by quieting the sympathetic nervous system.

Now, for some loose ends from last week.

Whenever the subject of raw liver consumption comes up, I want to shout THINK TWICE. I contracted campylobacteriosis from adding raw chicken liver to a smoothie. Yes, I’d been regularly consuming raw beef, lamb, and chicken liver for months with nothing but positive, energy-boosting results. Yes, I’d frozen this particular batch of fresh, localyl-sourced liver for a few weeks before consuming it, but this time, the bacteria survived the freeze. I, who hadn’t contracted so much as a cold in years, got very, very ill, and two courses of antibiotics were necessary to wipe out the infection. More than two years later, my digestion is still not 100 percent. Never again for me. Think twice.

Great comment. Thanks for writing it.

It is indeed a risk. While deep freezing is pretty good at killing parasites in fish, it’s mostly ineffective against pathogenic bacteria like e. coli or salmonella. Those are hardy bacteria.

I’ve never had an issue with raw liver. Then again, I don’t eat raw liver on a regular basis (I prefer it cooked), and I get it from the same place each time (a source I trust). For what it’s worth, if I didn’t know the provenance of my liver, I wouldn’t eat it raw.

Here’s the study that you were looking for, Mark:

“Ultraviolet Irradiation and Sex Hormones in the Male” by Abraham Myerson and Rudolph Neustadt

Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease: February 1940 – Volume 91 – Issue 2 – p228

That’s the one. Thank you!

That’s it for today, everyone. Take care, let me know what you think down below, and thanks for reading!

The post Dear Mark: Superfoods, Plants for Pollution, Raw Liver Danger, and Irradiated ‘tsticles appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Weekend Link Love – Edition 450

RESEARCH OF THE WEEK

Researchers figured out a way to extract and test ancient human DNA from cave dirt.

Via ghrelin, hunger may promote the growth of new brain cells.

Grandma’s optimal post-workout meal: salmon.

Vegetarianism is a risk factor for gallstone disease.

Human brains in the presence of urban environments can’t relax, even if the humans they’re attached to grew up in cities.

Homo naledi, a primitive hominid with ape-like features, co-existed with anatomically modern humans.

Colder weather promotes faster adaptations in organisms.

Professional male tennis players are more likely to buckle under pressure than female ones.

Stroke and dementia risk go up with diet soda consumption, according to a recent observational paper (which cannot establish causation).

NEW PRIMAL BLUEPRINT PODCASTS

Episode 166: JJ Virgin and Mark Sisson: I chat with JJ, a NY Times bestselling author, celebrity mindset expert, nutrition coach, and fitness trainer about healthy living, gaining strength from tragedy, and the importance of self-care.

Each week, select Mark’s Daily Apple blog posts are prepared as Primal Blueprint Podcasts. Need to catch up on reading, but don’t have the time? Prefer to listen to articles while on the go? Check out the new blog post podcasts below, and subscribe to the Primal Blueprint Podcast here so you never miss an episode.

INTERESTING BLOG POSTS

Babies know best.

People who eat more sodium and potassium than recommended have lower blood pressure.

MEDIA, SCHMEDIA

How gut bacteria orchestrate specific appetite.

A new paper exonerating saturated fat is triggering the usual suspects. 

Noakes: not guilty.

EVERYTHING ELSE

What we know so far about what’s in breastmilk.

A worm that eats plastic.

Edible CRISPR could replace antibiotics.

Artificial wombs are coming.

Maybe Otzi just froze to death.

New translations of ancient engravings at Turkey’s Gobekli Tepe reveal that comets struck the Earth around 11,000 BC and probably triggered a mini-ice age that changed the course of human history.

THINGS I’M UP TO AND INTERESTED IN

A list that makes me wish I had more time to read: The books that changed these 10 adventurers’ lives.

Research I’m having trouble believing: The first humans to reach North America may have been Neanderthals or Denisovans 130,000 years ago.

I can relate: “Only after sixty my true life began.”

News I found interesting: Cremation of obese corpse starts funeral home fire.

I know a few people who could use this: Cartilage-mimicking hydrogel.

RECIPE CORNER



Beet hummus beats hummus.
Quick and easy coconut curry sauce that doesn’t taste quick or easy.



TIME CAPSULE

One year ago (Apr 30 – May 6)

How to Stop Using Food as a Drug – It’s just food.
Why Grok Didn’t Have to Floss but You Do – Toothpicks just won’t cut it these days.



COMMENT OF THE WEEK

“Awesome ideas…I extend my life by counting my birthdays in dog years!”

– I’ll add that to the next one, Pastor Dave.

The post Weekend Link Love – Edition 450 appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Green Goddess Chicken

A blend of heart-healthy avocado oil, vinegar, and zesty herbs and spices make PRIMAL KITCHEN® Green Goddess Dressing the perfect marinade for chicken. Chives, tarragon, parsley, savory and rosemary, plus black pepper and garlic, turn plain chicken breasts into a sensational meal. All you have to do is twist off the lid and pour on the flavor.

Green Goddess dressing isn’t the only secret weapon PRIMAL KITCHEN® is wielding against bland, dry chicken. The other secret ingredient in this marinade is PRIMAL KITCHEN® Mayo. Whisked into any chicken marinade, mayonnaise adds fat and flavor, two things that boneless, skinless chicken breasts can always use more of. Mayo coats the chicken, locking in flavor and moisture and turning out chicken breasts that are tender and flavorful.

For an easy lunch or dinner, slice this green goddess chicken over a salad and top with more PRIMAL KITCHEN® Green Goddess Dressing (of course!).

Servings: 4 to 6

Time in the Kitchen: 25 minutes to cook, plus at least 4 hours to marinate

Ingredients

3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts (1.4 kg)
½ cup PRIMAL KITCHEN® Green Goddess Dressing (120 ml)
¼ cup PRIMAL KITCHEN® Mayo (60 ml)

Instructions

Pound the chicken breasts to uniform thickness. The easiest way to do this is to put the chicken in a resealable plastic bag, then use a meat pounder or rolling pin to even out the thickness of the chicken. Aim to make the whole breast about ¾-inch thick.

Whisk together the PRIMAL KITCHEN® Green Goddess Dressing and Mayo. In the same resealable plastic bag used to pound the chicken, pour the marinade over the chicken. Seal the bag and marinate at least 4 hours and up to 12 hours.

Preheat oven to 450º F/232º C, or heat a grill (clean and oiled) to medium-high.

Take the chicken breasts out of the marinade and use a paper towel to blot excess marinade off the meat.

If grilling, cook the chicken for approximately 6 minutes per side, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the thigh registers 160º F/71º C to 165º F/74º C.

If baking, spread chicken out on a rimmed baking sheet. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the thigh registers 160º to 165°. To brown the outside, turn off the oven and turn on the broiler (placing the baking sheet directly below) for the last 5 to 7 minutes of cooking.

Let the breasts cool 10 minutes before slicing. Green Goddess chicken is delicious served warm or cold.

Lay the chicken over salad greens and pour PRIMAL KITCHEN® Green Goddess Dressing on top.

The post Green Goddess Chicken appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Success Story Follow-up: It’s about a Healthy, Real Life!

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. In fact, I have a contest going right now. So if you have a story to share, no matter how big or how small, you’ll be in the running to win a big prize. Read more here.

Back in 2014, I submitted and you published my Primal Blueprint Success Story. Today I’m celebrating 3 years of maintaining my 40 pound fat loss and reversing my Type 2 diabetes. Woohoo!

The power of the real food Primal lifestyle didn’t stop with better weight and glucose, it improved every area of my life. I’ve made new friends in my dance classes, commiserated, learned and taught primal concepts (able to help several people get healthy!) in social media groups, I’ve become more accepting of others and more confident in myself, my body has become its own bad-food-detector that I can trust, I’m physically able to do the outdoor play activities and explorations that hubs and I love, and I’m just happier.

Since statistically, it appears that those of us who lose weight and keep it off are in the minority, I thought your readers might be interested in my process.

Maintaining my weight & blood sugar losses post-success hasn’t been perfectly simple, but it has been a great learning experience. There were a few surprises along the way. I found that I began to regain weight, even eating 90% Primal, and my glucose numbers went up, without a bit of constraint. I also yearned to lose another 5-10 pounds, and get my glucose numbers well under ‘normal’ (they were slightly above).

So, with the help of the good people in my online food & exercise group, The F’nE Club (they’ve been integral to my journey, in terms of support, education, and accountability), who often joined me in ‘challenges’, I experimented with numerous versions of Primal to get to what works best as my life plan. I used myself as a guinea pig and tested ideas for a month at a time.

Here are some of the things I tried, and what I’ve decided on as my life plan:

Me Minus – I wrote about this in my first post. When the scale reached above the top of my range in my daily weigh-in, I’d cut out everything except meats, veggies & good fats. Although effective, this was so restrictive that I began to resent it, and to cheat.

So, I tried…

~ Cutting carbs – I got an app and tracked my carb intake, trying various numbers and combinations, with varying degrees of success.

~ Removing, adding, glucose-testing, combining, increasing &/or limiting certain Primal foods, such as starchy vegetables, chocolate, fruit, nuts, coconut products, red meat, fish, oils, sweeteners, dairy, etc.

~ Fasting, numerous options.

~ Various types and quantities of exercise. I bought an activity bracelet and synched it with a food tracking app for testing (tools I still use daily).

Many of these trials were successful, at least to a certain extent. A few produced no or even negative effects. I took parts and pieces of the best, and finally settled on this lifetime plan:

My ME Forever Plan:

I learned that my maintenance level of carbs is low, about 40/50 per day. But I can earn more carbs with exercise, without gain. I use a formula of 10 extra carbs for every 300 calories burned during workouts. I allow myself to choose any Primal foods within those limits, so I can spend it all on sweet potatoes, if I want. (I don’t, but I *could*. It’s very freeing, so I don’t feel resentment.)

It finally resonated that all sweeteners hurt me (stomach ache, inflammation, & raised glucose), so I quit eating them, even honey and stevia. (Trust me, as a former sugar addict, I had to hurt myself *a lot* to get this through my thick noggin!) Today I only eat the rare Paleo treat (once every few months) made with maple syrup, which doesn’t cause me pain. However I do tolerate a bit of 85% dark chocolate, which in itself is a health food, so I eat one small square daily.

Dairy proved itself to be a problem, gave me cold symptoms. I gave it all up, except raw cheese.

Carrots, tomatoes, onions, most fruits (with the exception of berries), wild rice, white (& to a lesser degree, sweet) potatoes, beets, and stuffing myself with even heathy foods, caused significant glucose rises in my tests, so I eat them sparingly.

Eating 2 meals a day within an 8 hour window is satisfying, convenient, and keeps my weight and blood sugar down. In addition, I fast for 36 hours once a week, broken by only one meal of 500 calories/15-20 carbs. Since becoming fat-adapted, this is not terribly difficult.

Getting on the scale every morning keeps me in line, because it’s very easy to fool myself. If my weight is up, choosing fish or shellfish and veggies will always drop it.

Once a month, I allow myself an unrestricted meal (which sometimes hurts me, but is mentally therapeutic! I’ve learned the hard way not to choose conventional sweets!).

I dance, taking 4 1-hour classes of HIIT Zumba & BollyX workouts per week (which include squats*, lunges, punches, light weights & leaps), during which I find myself singing and smiling like a fool (it’s ok, I’m not alone)! (*I once counted the number of squats we did in our one hour Zumba class, and was shocked that the count was 102!)

In addition hubs & I enjoy 3-4 hours of walking, hiking, swimming or kayak paddling per week, which qualifies as our play! I do push-ups after class twice a week (definitely not my idea of fun, but necessary).

Too much jumping hurts my heel tendons. Easy does it.

Most every morning, I spend 10-15 minutes under the sun in a pretty corner of my backyard, being mindful, grateful and forgiving. That little habit has helped me sleep better (usually 8 hours) and given me the gift of peace of mind.

Every ‘Monday Funday’ is all about eating out, a walk in the park or local trail, a movie, and sweetheart play time with my hubby.

Hubs and I travel often, camping in our little trailer, boating, road trips or the occasional cruise. We explore natural areas on foot or in our yaks wherever we go, and delight in finding Primal food everywhere. This is our bliss.

Remember those extra 5-10 pounds I said I yearned to lose? Yes I did it, and I liked how I looked. But it took near starvation, and that’s not worth it. I was hangry and no fun. So I’ve settled at the 40-pounds-off mark, just barely over the BMI ‘normal’ range for my height. I’m not skinny, but I am happy and healthy.

Getting my blood sugars well under the wire: yes, it can be done, but the carbs must be very low. I’ve settled for the just over the norm (100), most of the time. Still lower than I was 3 years ago, and dramatically less than a decade ago.

As you can see in my journal, back in 2008 both my weight and my fasting glucose were in the high 170’s (and that was on meds!). Today my weight ranges from 138-142, and my glucose (without medication of any kind) is often in double digits.

Sometimes I mess up. That makes me human. I don’t chastise myself anymore, I just dust off the dirt, get right back on the horse, and ride ’em, Primal cowgirl.

It’s not about perfection, it’s about a healthy, real life.

Must say, life is good. My hubby cured his own SIBO gut bacteria health issues with diet, supplements & vagus nerve stimulation (but that’s another story). He and I have each lost 40 pounds and maintained it. My glucose stays under control. We need no meds, and feel great, having more energy and enthusiasm at ages 61 & 66 than we did a decade, maybe even two, before.

We’re big proponents of The Primal Blueprint. We read MDA daily (and I often post your articles to my group or friends). Keep up the great work, Mark, you changed our lives!

The post Success Story Follow-up: It’s about a Healthy, Real Life! appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Natural Pain Relief During Labor: 7 Proven Techniques

Today’s guest post is offered up by a good friend of Mark’s Daily Apple—Genevieve Howland, aka Mama Natural.

Very few people embrace pain. Sure, we’ve all said “no pain no gain” at the gym. But, as humans, we have a primal, hardwired instinct to seek pleasure and avoid pain. And that’s what makes childbirth such a loaded experience. Because, yes, there is usually pain (some like to say discomfort) involved in childbirth.

And, unfortunately, the process of childbirth seems to be getting harder… or at least longer. Based on 140,000 childbirths, research shows that today’s moms labor an average of 2-3 hours longer than the mothers of 50 years ago. Births in the late 1950s and 60s were compared to births from 2002 to 2008. The study points out that moms are now heavier, older, and are more likely to use epidural anesthesia.

Why does childbirth last longer these days?

Two potential culprits:

Sedentary lifestyles. Our bodies weren’t made to sit in desk chairs for 40 hours a week or recline in a carseat for several hours a day. This is doubly true for pregnant women. Childbirth is a marathon event, and mama needs to train. Also, an active lifestyle encourages baby to assume a more optimal position for birth.
Epidurals. Epidurals increase the amount of time a mom spends laboring by at least two or three hours  according to a 2014 study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology. Epidurals can come with other side effects too, like longer recovery times and slower initiation of breastfeeding. Not to mention the discomfort of being confined to your bed during labor while hooked up to a catheter.

So, what’s a primal mama to do? Well, thankfully, there are many natural (and proven) ways to offset the pain of childbirth.

Here are 7 proven natural pain relief techniques during childbirth.

1. Hydrotherapy

Women are instinctively drawn to water during childbirth for the feeling of buoyancy and comfort it provides. And turns out, water birth can also be a great pain reliever.

In several studies, women who gave birth in water had less need for pain medication, and in some cases, no need at all.

Giving birth in water also reduced overall labor time by about 90 minutes per this study as well as this one.

Not only do water births result in less use of pain medication, women’s perceptions of pain are also significantly lower. In one study, women giving birth out of water ranked their pain score at nearly 7 on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the most painful). The moms who gave birth in water reported a pain score of only 3½.

2. Touch

Touch stimulates the release of oxytocin, an incredible hormone that stimulates uterine contractions, boosts mood and feelings of optimism and you guessed it, acts as a pain reliever. Have your partner hug or hold you in-between contractions to help ease the discomfort of labor. You could even employ a massage therapist.

In one study, laboring moms who received massage therapy had less pain, anxiety, and significantly shorter childbirths. These moms also suffered less from postpartum depression, too.

Another way to incorporate touch is with acupuncture or acupressure. Acupuncture is effective for chronic pain so it would make sense that pressing on certain acupuncture points may help during childbirth. (For example, focusing on the Urinary Bladder 60 point is often used to increase circulation and provide pain relief in the body.)

You can also have your partner or midwife apply counter pressure to your lower back and do a double hip squeeze to help manually open your pelvis during labor to get a stuck or stalled labor (and baby) moving!

3. Breath work

In any good childbirth education class, you’ll hear about “breathing” as a way to cope with the pain. I was a bit skeptical of this one, but I’ve been proven wrong by a boatload of medical research.

For example, a study from St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center found that women with painful conditions such as fibromyalgia experienced less pain when they focused on controlled breathing at a slow rate.

Why? Probably because focused breathing calms the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for—you guessed it—pain.

On the flip side, other studies have demonstrated that focused breathing actually increases our pain threshold.

Your breath has a rhythm that’s actually quite similar to a birth contraction. There’s a peak (the top of inhalation) and then a release (exhalation). If you can stay “on top of your breath”—that is, stay in charge of the pace of your breathing—then you’ve got a good shot that your labor will be more manageable.

While there are plenty of breath patterns you can learn about and research, I think simplest is best: steady inhale through your nose for a few seconds, followed by a calm and steady exhale for a few seconds.

4. Meditation

As you focus on deep breathing, you may want to drift into a meditative state. Just as your body will release stress hormones and adrenaline if you’re watching, say, a scary movie, it will release positive endorphins when you’re focused on gentle breathing or a peaceful image.

In one small study, participants with chronic pain who meditated reduced their discomfort by a whopping 44%! (In contrast, past research indicates that opioid morphine reduces physical pain by only 22%.) You can learn more about meditation with this great beginner guide.

5. Movement

As Mark has covered before, sitting is the new smoking. No doubt about it, the human body is not designed to sit from 9 to 5 in an office, and yet many pregnant moms (myself included) are in this camp during their first pregnancy. By moving regularly, we may encourage baby to position him or herself better in our womb.

You can try these desk sitting hacks or special pelvic exercises to keep your hips open and aligned. Regular acupuncture or chiropractic care may also help avoid baby resting in the “occiput posterior position,” otherwise known as a “sunny side up” presentation.

In studies, sunny side up births are associated with:

prolonged first and second stages of labor
oxytocin augmentation
use of epidural analgesia
chorioamnionitis
assisted vaginal delivery
third and fourth degree perineal lacerations
cesarean delivery
excessive blood loss
and postpartum infection

The remedy? Keep your body moving during pregnancy! Movement can encourage your baby to engage in a more favorable position for birth. It also lowers your risk for preeclampsia and gestational diabetes.

6. Special foods/beverages

Starting in the second trimester, moms can incorporate a few special foods to help with childbirth. While these items may not be natural pain relievers per se, they can help moms:

have a quicker birth with fewer interventions
reduce the length of discomfort during labor
plus reduce postpartum pain/healing time

Red Raspberry Tea FTW!

If you talk to any midwife, doula, or crunchy mama you’re practically guaranteed to hear about the importance of drinking red raspberry leaf tea during pregnancy. Known by herbalists for centuries as a uterine tonic, science is now backing up the benefits of this herbal tea.

According to a study from the Australian College of Midwives Journal, red raspberry leaf tea consumption during pregnancy, when compared with a control group, can:

decrease the likelihood of pre- and post-term gestation
make artificial rupture of membranes less likely
reduce the need for a Cesarean section, forceps, or vacuum birth

Perhaps even more convincing is the anecdotal evidence from countless moms who’ve relied on this herbal tea during preconception, pregnancy, and postpartum. Moms have used red raspberry leaf tea to:

reduce morning sickness
fortify the uterus in VBAC moms
strengthen the bags of water
balance postpartum hormones
and boost early milk production due to its high mineral content

It’s best to talk with your midwife or OB/GYN to see if RRL tea is right for you. The general protocol is to drink 1-2 cups daily starting in the second trimester.

6 Dates a Day?

Another potentially beneficial (and quite delicious) food particularly for childbirth is dates during pregnancy.

According to this study, women who ate 6 dates a day for the four weeks leading up to their due date were significantly more dilated and more likely to:

Have intact membranes upon admission to the hospital
Go into labor spontaneously
Avoid Pitocin
And have a shorter first phase of labor

Pretty awesome for just eating some dates, huh?

Researchers have found that date fruit has an oxytocin-like effect on the body, leading to increased sensitivity of the uterus. It also helps stimulate uterine contractions, and reduces postpartum hemorrhage the way oxytocin does. They also found that it contains many nutritional benefits for pregnant mamas.

“Date fruit contains saturated and unsaturated fatty acids such as oleic, linoleic, and linolenic acids, which are involved in saving and supplying energy and construction of prostaglandins. In addition, serotonin, tannin, and calcium in date fruit contribute to the contraction of smooth muscles of the uterus. Date fruit also has a laxative effect, which stimulates uterine contractions.”

Of course these studies are limited, but there’s no real harm in eating dates during pregnancy, so why not give it a try?

It’s best to consume your 6 dates a day with protein or fat rich foods like nuts, aged cheese, or coconut flakes. If you have blood sugar issues or gestational diabetes, talk to your midwife or doctor.

7. Doulas

Where you give birth is important, since around 6% of birth centers and home births end in cesarean versus the national average of 33%. But who is on your birth team is equally if not more important.

Midwife practices have lower intervention rates across the board, but they also tend to attract low-risk women. Birth doulas, on the other hand, can be employed by high risk, hospital birthing moms who want to have more natural births.

The word doula comes from the ancient Greek and means “a woman who serves.” A birth doula is a trained professional who gives continuous physical (non-medical), emotional, and informational support to expectant mamas, laboring moms, and postpartum mothers and families.

A 2012 Cochrane review showed that women who had continuous support, especially from a doula, were:

more likely to have a spontaneous vaginal birth
less likely to have any pain medication, epidurals, vacuum or forceps-assisted births, C-sections, or negative feelings about childbirth

Other documented benefits include:

higher breastfeeding success rate
better maternal self-esteem
lower blood pressure during labor
and less pain experienced

So yes, natural pain relief during labor is possible

When you find the right support and follow some of the strategies here, you have a great chance of perceiving less pain during childbirth. There’s also a good chance you’ll experience fewer medical interventions, have easier healing postpartum, and enjoy more positive feelings about your birth.

Go, mama, go!

Want to help change the birth culture in our country?

It starts by getting informed. I’ve just published the world’s first week-by-week pregnancy guide from a natural perspective. Featuring insights from a certified nurse midwife (who happened to deliver both of my children), as well as a registered nurse and doula, the book is packed with helpful info on:

Natural remedies for common pregnancy symptoms
When to get an ultrasound (and when not to)
Sex during pregnancy
The truth about epidurals
How to naturalize a surgical birth
Natural pain relief during labor
What to do during every stage of labor
How to recover naturally
And so much more

This book is evidence-based, empowering and entertaining. ? (No boring text books over here!)  If pregnancy is in your future, or if you know anyone who’s pregnant, please consider picking up a copy.

Even if you aren’t pregnant…

Consider purchasing the book and…

Donating to your local library
Giving to your ob-gyn at your next wellness visit
Passing along at a La Leche meeting or baby carrying group
Sharing with a pre-med student
Keeping in your home library to loan out as needed

This will help us get the word out and change the face of birth in the U.S.!

Best wishes to all the future mamas out there!

I hope every mama out there gets the support and resources she needs to have an empowered and grace-filled birth.

Thanks to Genevieve Howland, aka Mama Natural.for today’s guest post. Have you or someone you know used natural birth supports? Have questions, comments, stories, or suggestions? Share them on the comment board, and have a great end to your week, everybody.

The post Natural Pain Relief During Labor: 7 Proven Techniques appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

5 Unconventional Ways to Extend Your Life

I’ve written about extending your life by slowing down the apparent passage of time. I’ve written about some interesting predictors—but not necessarily causes—of longevity, and the common characteristics of centenarians. Today, I’m going to describe several unconventional causal means of extending your life.

I’m talking about cold, hard days, weeks, and months. Ticks on a clock. Objective measurements of time. Not just the perception of time, although that matters too.

How to do it?

Live somewhere green, or grow a bunch of plants and trees in your yard.

We’re built to live in nature, amongst trees, rivers, meadows, wildflowers, beaches, and other trappings of wilderness. It’s where we come from. On a fundamental, genetic level, nature is home. That’s why spending brief interludes in forests can reduce stress, improve glucose tolerance, and boost anti-cancer activity. That’s why spending time in green space can make us more creative and less anxious. It’s why even seeing pictures of nature scenes or smelling the organic compounds that trees give off can have effects similar to the real thing. It’s a reset.

What if you were to live in a place like that? Maybe living in a forest isn’t feasible for most people, but having a garden, living near a park, getting a ton of houseplants, or choosing a tree-lined street rather than a desolate one isn’t so unreasonable. Turns out that women who live near greenness (parks, forests, gardens) live longer than those who don’t. The longer they live near the green, the lower their mortality risk.

Yes, it’s observational. But consider that we have the potential mechanisms outlined in the first paragraph and described in full in this post. We have the observation that chronic exposure to greenness predicts lower mortality risks among women even when you control for socioeconomic status, race, and any other variable that could throw off the findings. I think we’ve got a solid strategy for life extension, folks.

Follow your life’s purpose.

Most people have a voice in their heads telling them to take this risk, start that business, pursue this dream, go to school for this subject. Whether you call that your conscience (with or without a cartoon cricket embodying it), a direct mainline to your deity, your higher self, or whatever, that voice is trying to tell you something about your life’s purpose. Having a life’s purpose, and pursuing it, is a very strong predictor of “allostatic load”—the amount of physiological and psychological wear and tear a person displays. Higher loads mean shorter lives, and people with a purpose have lower loads.

If you don’t have a purpose, conjuring one up might not work. But the good news is that everyone in my experience has a purpose. It’s just that most people ignore it, fear it, or doubt their own ability to realize it. Just don’t lie to yourself. Search within and follow your honest calling, not what you think you’re supposed to be doing.

Eat a lot of collagen.

First, glycine, the primary amino acid in collagen, is anti-inflammatory. It counters the potentially negative effects excess methionine has on lifespan. It balances out the muscle meat we eat. In one recent study, people with low glycine levels and high meat intakes were more likely to have diabetes, while heavy meat eaters with higher glycine levels were protected from diabetes. Another study found that low circulating levels of glycine predicted diabetes risk. Indeed, a lack of glycine may be responsible for the oft-cited (and criticized) link between meat consumption and various diseases.

All this is why I make a point of emphasizing collagen my own diet—and why I offer a product to help anyone (myself included) boost their collagen intake. (Did I mention there’s a chocolate version now?)

Second, collagen is good for the skin. In middle-aged Korean women, 6 grams of collagen per day reduced skin cracking and increased serum collagen, collagen peptides reduced wrinkling in another study, and collagen has also been shown to improve skin elasticity.

Why does this matter for longevity? Having “youthful-looking skin” isn’t just cosmetic. It indicates the health and longevity of the person who possesses it. Apparent age of face actually predicts longevity better than many objective markers. If collagen improves skin quality and strength, reduces wrinkles, and makes you look younger, it might actually make you younger.

Get really, really cold and really, really hot on a regular basis.

People are crazy about cold exposure. It has many benefits and, perhaps most importantly, it takes a lot of guts and toughness to submerge yourself in really, really cold water. The simple act of facing that fear and bearing the shock is rewarding and signals the type of person you are. At least in animals, it also seems to improve longevity.

Don’t forget about getting really, really hot. It might be easier. It might be downright pleasurable. But there’s considerable evidence that it, too, can extend lifespan—in humans. A recent paper looked at sauna usage and mortality. Those who used saunas the most on a regular basis had the lowest chance of dying from all causes. This supports the recent study where exposing flies to heat activated heat shock proteins—hormetic pathways that sauna usage and other types of heat exposure trigger in humans—extended their lifespan.

Keep your spouse as healthy as you are.

Everyone knows someone, maybe a grandparent, who lost their spouse of many decades to illness and then died soon after themselves. This isn’t just anecdote. Study after study shows that mortality risk sharply increases after the death of a spouse. That’s true if you look at cardiovascular disease, infection, cancer, or almost any other cause—losing a spouse increases the chance that you’ll lose your own life. There are many factors, including the long-term cascade of stress-induced changes. But at the heart of the increased mortality is the initial death of a dearly loved one.

You can’t prevent people from dying of course. You can enlist them in your path to health. You can convince them to work out with you. You can go for walks after dinner, hikes on the weekends, eat a salad instead of that pizza. Your life may depend on it.

If I could bottle all this up in a single ridiculous package, here’s what I’d do:

Pursue to the ends of the earth the animal parts with the highest concentration of gelatin—the Achilles tendons of Himalayan mountain sheep, Turkish water buffalo tails, domestic-turned-feral hog ears from the bogs of the southern U.S., emu feet—and make it your life’s purpose to produce the world’s most gelatinous bone broth. Serve this broth to your spouse, whom you’ve placed in a protective bubble that filters airborne pollutants and infectious microbes and can withstand extreme trauma, including gunshots. Get into a sauna that can accommodate you and the bubble, crank up the heat, and place in the scent diffuser a golf ball-sized chunk of resin derived from five hectares of Oregon rainforest, creating a vapor that provides the same amount of volatile organic compounds you’d be exposed to living in a forest for a year. After that, hop in the shower and turn on the cold water for 15 seconds.

As for me, I’m trying to boil all that down to a supplement. Hopefully by next year.

Jokes aside, these are 5 legit methods I’m confident have a strong chance of extending your life by at least a little. They won’t make you a centenarian if you’re not genetically disposed. They won’t cure disease or add five, ten, fifteen years. They may do nothing, in fact; these are just my educated guesses and extrapolations. There are no guarantees. But at the very least, following these suggestions will result in more exposure to nature, more delicious soups and sauces, better cold and heat tolerance, a reason to live, and more time with your spouse.

That’s pretty good. Sounds like a good life regardless of years.

What do you think, folks? What are you doing in the hopes of living a little longer?

Thanks for reading. Take care.

The post 5 Unconventional Ways to Extend Your Life appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

10 Tips, Suggestions, and Projects for Improving Your Mastery Over Nature

Humankind’s home is in the wild. It’s where we spent our formative years. Even today, well after the advent of civilization, industrialization, and computerization, almost half of humanity still lives in rural areas. That close relationship to the land is probably why green and blue spaces offer so many health benefits, like lower stress and improved immunity. Going for a hike or picnicking on the beach is much like going home.

Yet we don’t simply exist in nature. We shape it. We’ve always shaped it, from ancient Amazonians building food forests to Neanderthals offing entire herds of mammoths at a time. We start fires, systematically hunt and consume its inhabitants. We make gardens—blends of nature and culture. In effect, we impose our will.

Imposing one’s will on the great outdoors has an understandably bad connotation. Sometimes our interactions with nature result in waste and abuse on either a personal and expansive scale. Nothing irks me more than seeing heaps of trash left behind at campsites or photos of the 19th century American buffalo massacres. But the human agenda can also be thoughtful, inspired, even fruitful. Without humans imposing their will on nature, we wouldn’t have the National Parks (thanks, Teddy and Woodrow), stable animal populations (thanks, hunters), or the millions of miles of hiking trails across the world. You can argue the subject for years and never come to a consensus, but it’s pretty clear that a ton of high quality wilderness, both touched and untouched, exists for our enjoyment thanks to some of the more visionary choices within human intervention.

I’ve suggested you camp in the past. I’ve encouraged you to hike. I’ve even told you how best to optimize your hiking. I’ve described the myriad benefits of spending time in nature. Today, I’m going to discuss how to interact with nature without destroying it. How to dig into it, meet it Grok-style. How to feel at home in your true home.

Subscribe to Primitive Technology on YouTube.

Always shirtless and slightly grey from clay residue, the anonymous star of the Primitive Technology YouTube channel has been making huts, tiles, tools, weapons, ovens and other technology using handmade tools and natural materials gathered in the Australian bush for several years. His instructional videos are well-shot, with no talking and no music. Enable closed captions for added details. He even figured out how to make iron last year.

It’s best to try some of the things he makes, but you can also tune in for inspiration with other, less primitive things using modern, store-bought tools. The display of human ingenuity is worth watching.

Get good at chopping wood.

Wood chopping is the perfect example of an effective imposition of human will on nature. You’re taking an unrefined, raw resource and making it more useful without changing its essence or chemical composition.

This is a good all-around axe for chopping wood.

It also turns out to boost testosterone. Carrying water is optional.

Figure out how you prefer to build a fire.

The last thing you want to do when tasked with starting the fire is vacillate between fire-building methods. It should be second nature. You should operate on pure muscle memory. If that’s not the case, it’s time you figure out how you prefer to build a fire.

The basic method is the tipi: building a small tipi of kindling surrounded by tipis made of progressively larger pieces of wood.

My favorite method is the roofless log cabin. You need a big fire pit to do this, and it consumes a lot of wood, but it really creates a hot flame and, if you plan on cooking over it (see the next section), great embers in a short amount of time. Start with two large pieces across from each other. Stack two more across the top on the other sides, forming a square. Continue until you’ve got a 1-2 foot structure. Then, place a small tipi inside the “cabin” and light it.

Some people build a roof of logs to contain the flames and provide more fuel, but I love the visual of flames spilling out the top. It also burns quicker this way, which is good if you need embers for cooking.

Practice building fires and figure out which way works best for you and your goals. Then get really good at building them.

Learn about foraging, then go foraging.

A little knowledge turns wild plants into human food. It might not be totally accurate, but you’ll at least feel like you could handle yourself alone in the wild.

Go on foraging trips with local experts. I guarantee they’re out there wherever you are.

Check the bulletin board at the local outdoor store.

Look for foraging groups on Meetup or Google.

Grab some foraging books from the library or Amazon. Be sure they apply to your area.

Be careful, of course. But don’t let caution paralyze you. I suspect we won’t see very many more Christopher McCandlesses. The breadth of and access to wild food knowledge is too great.

Cook outside over fire.

When we’re cold, we can turn on the heat. When we want to cook something, we can use the microwave, turn a knob and get the perfect flame, or set the oven to a specific temperature. If we need light at night, we flip a switch. We don’t need raw fire for these things anymore. Today, fire is a luxury, a frivolity.

We can certainly get by without direct exposure to fire, but I don’t think we should. Fire burns within us, and I’d argue within our very DNA. It’s why fire engrosses us and the campfire can coax stories and good conversations from those who gaze into it. Cooking is the most powerful and primal way to interact with fire.

Most people mistakenly assume camp fare has to be substandard. They’ll eat canned pasta, freeze-dried meals, garbage breakfast cereal. Even Primal folks aren’t immune; all of a sudden they revert back to the Standard American Diet just because there’s no stove or refrigerator. Nonsense. Cooking in the wilderness is the best.

Get comfortable with the tempestuousness of fire.

Cooking over a wood fire is more art than science, and you have to embrace that.

It won’t be the same each time.  You can’t reliably attain “medium high heat” or “425° F.” Open fire doesn’t work like that. Hold your hand over the embers. If you can only manage one second or less, that’s “high heat.” 

But even that’s more a guideline than a rule. The key is that you have to practice. You have to get out there and actually cook over fire to learn how fire works. You’ll burn some stuff. You’ll ruin a few meals. That’s okay. Experience is the only teacher that matters.

Don’t fly by the seat of your pants, though.

Cooking over a wood fire is still cooking. Planning matters, especially if you’re doing your wood fire cooking away from home.

Know what you’re going to make for each meal and assemble everything you need the day before.

Prep the ingredients back at home—or not. There is something rustic and gratifying about doing meal prep at camp, fire crackling beside you, chopping veggies directly on the wooden table.

Get (or chop) firewood before you reach the sticks. It’ll be more expensive if you buy on site, and gathering wood is usually illegal. Hop on Craigslist or Yelp to find a vendor that sells in bulk and fill a trunk. I like almond wood for cooking.

Get yourself some cast iron.

For my money, cast iron is the only way to cook outdoors. It’s impervious to heat damage. It holds heat incredibly well. It looks gorgeous gleaming black against a raging fire or glowing embers. There’s no material better for searing a steak.

You’ll want a Dutch oven for stews, chilis, and soups. Enameled works great if you’re worried about getting too much iron from acidic foods.

You’ll want a portable grill. This portable Tuscan grill is the best widely-available option I’ve seen. It’s a 14×14 cast iron grill with legs that screw on. You can plunk this thing down directly over embers, or remove the legs and lay it across an existing grate. Buy two or more to boost your cooking surface.

You’ll want a large cast iron pan. Francis Mallmann, an Argentine chef featured in Netflix’s Chef’s Table (watch the trailer of his episode, then go watch the actual episode), suggests a chapa—a large cast iron surface about 30 inches by 30 inches set on legs for placing directly over embers. Get one of those if you can. You’ll likely have better luck finding extra-large cast iron griddles.

Mallmann also roasts whole lambs and pigs on the Patagonian cross, a 6 foot tall vertical piece of iron with two parallel crossbars and a sharpened end that sticks into the ground in front of the fire. If you’re really gung-ho, find a metal shop near you, draw up some plans, and have them build exactly what you want.

Try cooking over embers, not flames.

Manning the grill as flames lick up and char your food is a romantic image, but it’s not the best way to cook with wood. Embers are far hotter and produce less smoke and more reliable heat.

Start your fire early. Give your embers time to develop. Start your fire no less than an hour before you plan on cooking.

Bury your treasure.

Once you’ve got a nice fire going and embers and ash are accumulating, move a blend of hot ash and embers to the side of the fire and bury your thick skinned vegetables. Don’t wrap them in anything. They can take it. Winter squash, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, onions. I’ve even buried a pineapple—rind on—to great effect. Just throw it in and come back in an hour.

You don’t have to backpack for five days through untamed wilderness to explore these concepts, although you should make a point to get away as often as it’s feasible. Most of these can be practiced and enjoyed in your own backyard. After all, nature is everywhere. There’s no escaping it, so get out there and embrace it.

How do you embrace and tame—or at least attempt to tame—nature? Got any tips or suggestions? Has anyone else out there got the wood fire cooking bug like me? Something about it that just feels right… Take care, everyone.

The post 10 Tips, Suggestions, and Projects for Improving Your Mastery Over Nature appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

10 Tips, Suggestions, and Projects For Improving Your Mastery Over Nature

Humankind’s home is in the wild. It’s where we spent our formative years. Even today, well after the advent of civilization, industrialization, and computerization, almost half of humanity still lives in rural areas. That close relationship to the land is probably why green and blue spaces offer so many health benefits, like lower stress and improved immunity. Going for a hike or picnicking on the beach is much like going home.

Yet we don’t simply exist in nature. We shape it. We’ve always shaped it, from ancient Amazonians building food forests to Neanderthals offing entire herds of mammoths at a time. We start fires, systematically hunt and consume its inhabitants. We make gardens—blends of nature and culture. In effect, we impose our will.

Imposing one’s will on the great outdoors has an understandably bad connotation. Sometimes our interactions with nature result in waste and abuse on either a personal and expansive scale. Nothing irks me more than seeing heaps of trash left behind at campsites or photos of the 19th century American buffalo massacres. But the human agenda can also be thoughtful, inspired, even fruitful. Without humans imposing their will on nature, we wouldn’t have the National Parks (thanks, Teddy and Woodrow), stable animal populations (thanks, hunters), or the millions of miles of hiking trails across the world. You can argue the subject for years and never come to a consensus, but it’s pretty clear that a ton of high quality wilderness, both touched and untouched, exists for our enjoyment thanks to some of the more visionary choices within human intervention.

I’ve suggested you camp in the past. I’ve encouraged you to hike. I’ve even told you how best to optimize your hiking. I’ve described the myriad benefits of spending time in nature. Today, I’m going to discuss how to interact with nature without destroying it. How to dig into it, meet it Grok-style. How to feel at home in your true home.

Subscribe to Primitive Technology on YouTube.

Always shirtless and slightly grey from clay residue, the anonymous star of the Primitive Technology YouTube channel has been making huts, tiles, tools, weapons, ovens and other technology using handmade tools and natural materials gathered in the Australian bush for several years. His instructional videos are well-shot, with no talking and no music. Enable closed captions for added details. He even figured out how to make iron last year.

It’s best to try some of the things he makes, but you can also tune in for inspiration with other, less primitive things using modern, store-bought tools. The display of human ingenuity is worth watching.

Get good at chopping wood.

Wood chopping is the perfect example of an effective imposition of human will on nature. You’re taking an unrefined, raw resource and making it more useful without changing its essence or chemical composition.

This is a good all-around axe for chopping wood.

It also turns out to boost testosterone. Carrying water is optional.

Figure out how you prefer to build a fire.

The last thing you want to do when tasked with starting the fire is vacillate between fire-building methods. It should be second nature. You should operate on pure muscle memory. If that’s not the case, it’s time you figure out how you prefer to build a fire.

The basic method is the tipi: building a small tipi of kindling surrounded by tipis made of progressively larger pieces of wood.

My favorite method is the roofless log cabin. You need a big fire pit to do this, and it consumes a lot of wood, but it really creates a hot flame and, if you plan on cooking over it (see the next section), great embers in a short amount of time. Start with two large pieces across from each other. Stack two more across the top on the other sides, forming a square. Continue until you’ve got a 1-2 foot structure. Then, place a small tipi inside the “cabin” and light it.

Some people build a roof of logs to contain the flames and provide more fuel, but I love the visual of flames spilling out the top. It also burns quicker this way, which is good if you need embers for cooking.

Practice building fires and figure out which way works best for you and your goals. Then get really good at building them.

Learn about foraging, then go foraging.

A little knowledge turns wild plants into human food. It might not be totally accurate, but you’ll at least feel like you could handle yourself alone in the wild.

Go on foraging trips with local experts. I guarantee they’re out there wherever you are.

Check the bulletin board at the local outdoor store.

Look for foraging groups on Meetup or Google.

Grab some foraging books from the library or Amazon. Be sure they apply to your area.

Be careful, of course. But don’t let caution paralyze you. I suspect we won’t see very many more Christopher McCandlesses. The breadth of and access to wild food knowledge is too great.

Cook outside over fire.

When we’re cold, we can turn on the heat. When we want to cook something, we can use the microwave, turn a knob and get the perfect flame, or set the oven to a specific temperature. If we need light at night, we flip a switch. We don’t need raw fire for these things anymore. Today, fire is a luxury, a frivolity.

We can certainly get by without direct exposure to fire, but I don’t think we should. Fire burns within us, and I’d argue within our very DNA. It’s why fire engrosses us and the campfire can coax stories and good conversations from those who gaze into it. Cooking is the most powerful and primal way to interact with fire.

Most people mistakenly assume camp fare has to be substandard. They’ll eat canned pasta, freeze-dried meals, garbage breakfast cereal. Even Primal folks aren’t immune; all of a sudden they revert back to the Standard American Diet just because there’s no stove or refrigerator. Nonsense. Cooking in the wilderness is the best.

Get comfortable with the tempestuousness of fire.

Cooking over a wood fire is more art than science, and you have to embrace that.

It won’t be the same each time.  You can’t reliably attain “medium high heat” or “425° F.” Open fire doesn’t work like that. Hold your hand over the embers. If you can only manage one second or less, that’s “high heat.” 

But even that’s more a guideline than a rule. The key is that you have to practice. You have to get out there and actually cook over fire to learn how fire works. You’ll burn some stuff. You’ll ruin a few meals. That’s okay. Experience is the only teacher that matters.

Don’t fly by the seat of your pants, though.

Cooking over a wood fire is still cooking. Planning matters, especially if you’re doing your wood fire cooking away from home.

Know what you’re going to make for each meal and assemble everything you need the day before.

Prep the ingredients back at home—or not. There is something rustic and gratifying about doing meal prep at camp, fire crackling beside you, chopping veggies directly on the wooden table.

Get (or chop) firewood before you reach the sticks. It’ll be more expensive if you buy on site, and gathering wood is usually illegal. Hop on Craigslist or Yelp to find a vendor that sells in bulk and fill a trunk. I like almond wood for cooking.

Get yourself some cast iron.

For my money, cast iron is the only way to cook outdoors. It’s impervious to heat damage. It holds heat incredibly well. It looks gorgeous gleaming black against a raging fire or glowing embers. There’s no material better for searing a steak.

You’ll want a Dutch oven for stews, chilis, and soups. Enameled works great if you’re worried about getting too much iron from acidic foods.

You’ll want a portable grill. This portable Tuscan grill is the best widely-available option I’ve seen. It’s a 14×14 cast iron grill with legs that screw on. You can plunk this thing down directly over embers, or remove the legs and lay it across an existing grate. Buy two or more to boost your cooking surface.

You’ll want a large cast iron pan. Francis Mallmann, an Argentine chef featured in Netflix’s Chef’s Table (watch the trailer of his episode, then go watch the actual episode), suggests a chapa—a large cast iron surface about 30 inches by 30 inches set on legs for placing directly over embers. Get one of those if you can. You’ll likely have better luck finding extra-large cast iron griddles.

Mallmann also roasts whole lambs and pigs on the Patagonian cross, a 6 foot tall vertical piece of iron with two parallel crossbars and a sharpened end that sticks into the ground in front of the fire. If you’re really gung-ho, find a metal shop near you, draw up some plans, and have them build exactly what you want.

Try cooking over embers, not flames.

Manning the grill as flames lick up and char your food is a romantic image, but it’s not the best way to cook with wood. Embers are far hotter and produce less smoke and more reliable heat.

Start your fire early. Give your embers time to develop. Start your fire no less than an hour before you plan on cooking.

Bury your treasure.

Once you’ve got a nice fire going and embers and ash are accumulating, move a blend of hot ash and embers to the side of the fire and bury your thick skinned vegetables. Don’t wrap them in anything. They can take it. Winter squash, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, onions. I’ve even buried a pineapple—rind on—to great effect. Just throw it in and come back in an hour.

You don’t have to backpack for five days through untamed wilderness to explore these concepts, although you should make a point to get away as often as it’s feasible. Most of these can be practiced and enjoyed in your own backyard. After all, nature is everywhere. There’s no escaping it, so get out there and embrace it.

How do you embrace and tame—or at least attempt to tame—nature? Got any tips or suggestions? Has anyone else out there got the wood fire cooking bug like me? Something about it that just feels right… Take care, everyone.

The post 10 Tips, Suggestions, and Projects For Improving Your Mastery Over Nature appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Dear Mark: Hiking and Body Composition, Hiding Liver, Unconventional Testosterone Boosters, Cooked/Cooled/Reheated Potatoes, and Sirtuins

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering five questions from readers. First up, why isn’t hiking giving one reader the shifts in body comp they expected? Two, is there actually a way to mask the flavor of liver? Then I discuss a few unconventional testosterone boosters, followed by a brief treatment of the cooked, then cooled, then reheated potato. And finally, are there any dietary activators of sirtuin proteins?

Let’s go:

I’d like to see an article on the benefits of walking/hiking daily. I live in Colorado and average about 25 miles a week of walking. I know that it’s doing good things for my mind and body, but I don’t see any noticeable changes in my physique. Is there anything I can do to up the toning factor of my walks, besides seeking out hills? Thanks!

This is a hard one to grasp for people, especially since we talk so much about the benefits of walking, but I think it’s crucial.

Don’t think of hiking or walking as exercise. Just don’t. Not because it isn’t good exercise—it is—but because that mindset subtly alters how we act.

When something is “exercise,” it requires a reward. Our subconscious response to anything difficult is a hedonic reward, a “treat.” We “earned it,” after all. This works without you even knowing it’s happening. That’s why, in my experience, hikers are the biggest consumers of junk food around. I’m struck by the amount of snacking that goes on. Folks are always pausing on the trail to dig through their backpacks for trail mix, dried apricots, granola bars, and the like. You’re probably not doing this consciously, if you’re doing it.

When we treat hiking like “exercise,” it bleeds into our real training. “Oh, I hiked yesterday. I’ll skip CrossFit today.” No. Hiking and walking days are active rest days. Unless you’re climbing hills for six miles, you shouldn’t treat them like a hard session demanding post-haste refueling and carb loading.

Beginners to hiking and walking will find a few miles incredibly taxing. For them, it is exercise. But then you adapt, and it becomes easy and relaxing. That’s where I suspect you are. Twenty-five miles a week is excellent activity, but it’s a breeze.

I’d like to see more recipes that hide the taste of liver. I’m not a fan of the taste, but i’d really like to find ways to incorporate it into my diet.

At some point, you’re gonna taste some liver. It’s unavoidable.

Don’t overcook it. Overcooking liver heightens its bad qualities and depresses its good ones. When you overcook liver, you destroy all the sweetness—the glycogen—that makes good liver so good (or at least tolerable). When you overcook liver, it becomes a crumbly, chalky, bitter mess. Leave it pink inside.

Eat it as fresh as possible. Liver is repository of sweet glycogen, but glycogen is fleeting. The longer liver sits, the more glycogen depletes. If you’re thawing your liver, eat it soon after.

Frozen liver thaws quicker than you think. Most of my liver comes frozen—it’s fresher than the “fresh” I can get—and I’ll just start preparing it when it’s half-thawed. Easier to slice clean that way.

Try chicken liver. Chicken liver is far milder than ruminant livers. Plus, chicken liver is actually higher in iron and folate than ruminant livers. It’s also lower in vitamin A, so you can arguably eat it more often than beef or lamb.

Make raw liver smoothies. I find a few ounces of incredibly fresh liver in some fresh squeezed orange juice to be not just tolerable, but downright tasty. Try it. You’ll be surprised. And the liver makes the acute dosing of fructose worth it.

I have heard that the two best exercises for increasing testosterone in men are chopping wood and soccer. Is there any evidence or truth behind this claim? If so, why? The two activities do not seem very similar.

Both increase testosterone, yes. They’ve actually pitted the two against each other, finding that chopping firewood is a bigger booster than playing soccer among the Tsimane horticulturalists of Bolivia. Wood choppers saw testosterone rise by an average of 46.8%, irrespective of age.

The key distinction seems to be that chopping wood is an essential life skill. It’s the kind of “exercise” that serves a vital purpose: providing warmth, warding off predators, and allowing us to cook. The meaning comes baked in.

Depending on where you grow up, soccer might be an essential life skill, too. Even people watching their national soccer team play and win experience an increase in testosterone (and cortisol, because it’s so nerve-wracking).

Hunting does it, too. One study tested the testosterone of Tsimane hunters after a successful hunt. Ranging in age from 18 to 82 (yes, 82), the successful hunters all experienced significant increases in testosterone levels independent of age.

My favorite unconventional way to increase testosterone is solar irradiation of the scrotum. I swear I read this in an old journal years ago but can no longer find the reference. Can anyone help? It’s plausible, seeing as how taking vitamin D to correct a deficiency can increase testosterone levels. There’s no better way to get vitamin D to your testes than with the application of direct sunlight.

I know this topic has been discussed plenty. But just a quick question on “cooked and cooled potatoes”. Can these cooked and cooled potatoes then be reheated? Does it negate any benefits? I do not enjoy cold mashed potatoes but I do enjoy pan frying left over potatoes in coconut oil. Some clarification would be wonderful.

Yes. You can reheat cooked and cooled potatoes without negating the resistant starch. You may even increase it further, if what happens to cooked and cooled and reheated bread and pasta happens to potatoes.

Would love to know more about interaction of diet and sirtuins!

There are seven types of sirtuins, and most of them seem to be involved in protection against oxidative stress and aging or the maintenance of fat and glucose metabolism. Older people tend to have higher levels of sirtuin 1 to compensate for the higher levels of oxidative stress they endure, for example. In non-mammals, activating sirtuin 1 increases lifespan. In mammals, it’s sirtuin 6. Generally, sirtuins are “good.”

Dietarily, the two most reliable ways to activate sirtuin are reducing calories and eating phytonutrients like resveratrol (wine) or curcumin (turmeric).

Since things that increase sirtuin expression, like exercise, eating less, and eating colorful fruits and veggies and spices are already known to be healthy, I feel comfortable recommending that you increase sirtuin expression.

That’s it for this week, folks. Take care and be sure to chime in down below with your own input!

The post Dear Mark: Hiking and Body Composition, Hiding Liver, Unconventional Testosterone Boosters, Cooked/Cooled/Reheated Potatoes, and Sirtuins appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.