Mark Sisson's Blog, page 199

Can You Retrain Your Taste?

Following the switch to Primal eating, people often share curious observations about their shift in taste. After a lifetime of eating sugar, grains, artificial flavors and hydrogenated oils, they’re often taken by surprise at the way their tastebuds react to a low-sugar, whole foods-based diet.

Granted, it doesn’t happen overnight, but it happens. Many say the effect sneaks up on them over the course of several weeks until one day they realize their sense of taste has gone into hyperdrive.

Then they look across the cubicle aisle and watch their coworkers inhaling bags of chips or uninterestingly sucking away on sugary beverages. And it occurs to them: all those wasted years as their tastebuds languished in processed monotony.

It’s one of the unexpected upsides of the Primal Blueprint diet: learning/relearning the nuance of real food flavor. The experience doesn’t just reflect a psychological shift either. Taste acclimatization is a real, measurable thing.

What do we know about the process? Quite a bit actually. Some of it rather surprising….

Sugar consumption and your tastebuds

A 2016 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition examined the effect of reduced simple sugar intake on a group of “healthy” men and women. The study broke the participants up into two groups, with one group assigned a low-sugar diet and the other group continuing to eat their usual high-sugar diet. After 3 months of this, both groups were left to eat however they pleased for yet another month. Each month during the study, participants were asked to rate the sweetness and “pleasantness” of vanilla puddings and raspberry beverages that varied in sugar concentration.

After the third month of dieting, the low-sugar group rated the pudding to be around 40 percent sweeter than the control group, regardless of how much sugar the pudding contained. The conclusion was simple: “changes in consumption of simple sugars influence perceived sweet taste intensity.” Meaning that the less sugar you eat over the long term, the more things taste sweeter and, therefore, tastier.

The overall findings are important in that they indicate the inevitability of taste acclimatization, but they also demonstrate just how long this adjustment can take. Researchers found that the low-sugar group took on average two months for their tastebuds to recognize any difference in sweetness and pleasantness—and yet another month for that sweetness to intensify.

The takeaway here? A little patience will yield long-term dividends.

But what about salt addiction?

If you’re a bit of a salt junkie, you might be keen on learning how to break the habit. It’s a perfectly reasonable goal to have, particularly if you’ve been diagnosed with hypertension. (You might want to find out if you’re among the “salt-sensitive” in the population—about 50% of those with hypertension by some estimates— before chalking up your high blood pressure to salt intake.)

Similar to sugar, lowering intake of sodium-rich foods has been shown to decrease your reliance on salt. An impressively long 1-year study found that “reduction in sodium intake and excretion accompanied a shift in preference toward less salt.” Researchers surmised that the mechanisms behind this reduction in salt addiction were varied, and included physiological, behavioral, and context effects. Not the ultra-conclusive reasoning you were hoping for, but it looks as if particularly overzealous salt cravings should drop significantly when you switch to a naturally salt-moderated, low processed-food diet.

Still, let’s not neglect some stubborn truths.

While the health and scientific community continues to hate on salt, very few studies have examined the importance of salt for maintaining a healthy body. While these studies may be relatively few, evidence suggests that salt may play an essential role in excreting cortisol (the “stress hormone”) from the body, thereby improving recovery time from stressful events and situations. Possibly an important one to remember, when the in-laws descend for holiday dinner.

Salt has also been shown to decrease strain during exercise by increasing hydration. Studies indicate that knocking back a sodium-rich beverage prior to exercising increases plasma volume, which in turn reduces the strain on your body during exercise and helps you reach higher levels of performance.

And all those other clever uses…

And then there’s the point that salt just makes food taste better…. Just make a point of sticking with the good stuff—high quality sources like Himalayan pink salt, Real Salt, and Celtic sea salt. These natural, unrefined versions provide all of the taste of salt and, unlike table salt, still include all the essential minerals your body needs to rehydrate those cells and help to evenly distribute all that sodium.

The factors behind taste

There’s a lot more to taste than just your tastebuds themselves, which were designed to elicit appropriate feeding responses in an evolutionary environment—not the snack aisles of Costco.

If your body has been inundated with sugar-intensive processed foods for the last few years/decades, it may be a little confused as to what it actually wants to taste. Rewiring your tastebuds, then, is no small task for both your brain and your digestive system.

Luckily, all that’s required of you is to stay the course of good eating. That said, it’s helpful as always to understand the bigger picture.

Gut Health

There isn’t much it seems the gut isn’t involved in, and taste is no exception apparently. A team at the Department of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine discovered that the taste receptor T1R3 and the G protein gustducin are located in the gut, as well as the mouth. These taste receptors are essential to tasting sweetness in the foods we eat, and we now know that they play an important role in sensing glucose within our gastrointestinal tract.

This role goes far beyond simply “tasting” carbohydrates and other sugary or sweet foods within your gut. When you eat these foods, the sweet-sensing taste receptors in your large intestine activate the release of hormones that promote insulin secretion and regulate appetite. This means that if your gut health is lacking, its ability to sense carbs and produce insulin may be impaired.

Obesity

A 2012 study published in the British Medical Journal found that obese kids develop an insensitivity to taste. Researchers examined close to 200 children between the ages of 6 and 18, half of whom were a normal weight and half classified as obese. Each of the participants was asked to place 22 taste strips on their tongue, simulating each of the five levels of taste at varying intensities.

Obese children found it significantly more difficult to differentiate between the different taste sensations, and were particularly insensitive to salty, umami and bitter tastes. Children who were obese also gave lower intensity ratings to sweet foods, meaning they needed more sugar in foods to achieve the same sensation of sweetness.

The take-away is simple: the more weight we put on, the less likely we are to enjoy the food we eat or to recognize the mounting sugar or salt levels we likely take in for the same taste experience. There may be more of a lag time in rejuvenating full taste sensitivity if we’re reversing obesity as well as shifting our diets, but the end point is the same.

Eating environment and attention

In an interesting wrinkle, researchers at the University of Cornell found that noise generated by airplanes appeared to enhance umami taste while inhibiting sweet taste. Noise, which can reach upwards of 85 decibels inside your average passenger jet, has led many airlines to notice that people tend to gravitate towards savory foods like tomatoes, while straying away from sugary foods. Bloody Mary, anyone?

Beyond the physical adaptations that come over time, we can appreciate the power of attention (as well as quiet) in sensory experience. Do we blunt or confuse our senses by multitasking or watching the nightly news while we eat? Or do we bring our full consciousness to the meal?

Research into eating awareness shows that mindful practices might be powerful enough to help resolve even chronic disordered eating. Knowing that, what can it promise us as we make the transition to taste sensitization and a healthier relationship with food?

Thanks for reading, everybody. What has been your experience in shifting your personal taste as you’ve adopted a Primal diet? What helped you or challenged you? And when (if you’re already there) did you know you’d gotten over the hump?

The post Can You Retrain Your Taste? appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

2016 in Review: The Top 14 Developments in Ancestral Health

2016 is just about over. I’m not a big party animal, as you probably know. Instead of bashes and balls, what I look forward to most of all at the end of a year is the quiet reflection on what impacted me most. Which science developments, business achievements, and thought evolutions characterized my 2016 more than the rest?

Put another way, what were the most exciting developments of 2016 in the ancestral health world?

Let’s take a look (in no particular order):

1. Legumes went back on the menu, if you like them.

It’s become quite clear that legumes do not belong in the same category as grains, which is where they languished for over a decade. Legumes are rich in prebiotic fiber, provide many vitamins and minerals, and seem to improve glucose control, not worsen it.

Eat ’em if you want ’em.

2. A Primal ranch dressing finally came out.

You don’t know how many emails I got asking for a Primal-friendly ranch. Recipes have always been there, but a surprising number of ingredients go into ranch. Few people keep everything on hand required to make it right.

So I made one. It took months of development, but I made one.

Skeptical husbands, picky kids, vegetable haters will all lie prostrate before PRIMAL KITCHEN™ Ranch, see—nay, know—the error of their ways, and be welcomed into the fold.

3. Nina Teicholz was right.

In 2015, science and nutrition journalist Nina Teicholz penned an editorial in the British Medical Journal criticizing the failure of the USDA’s diet guidelines to “reflect much relevant scientific literature.” Establishment critics and academics went berserk, even going so far as to demand the BMJ retract her editorial.

Last week, after over a year of battles, independent reviewers finally gave Teicholz the win. The critics lost. Her editorial stands.

4. We settled the “meat problem,” if only until the next study comes out.

More than any other dietary component, meat has been the most consistently controversial. It clearly played an integral role in human evolution, particularly of our energy-hungry brain. It’s delicious, contains vital nutrients, provides the densest collection of essential amino acids, and yet hundreds of millions of people are convinced it will give you cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. How do we square these seemingly opposing factions? How much meat should we be eating? And how should we optimize our meat-eating?

5. The birth of Primal Health Coaching.

The PB Expert Certification was cool, but it wasn’t enough. Teaching is different than knowing. The latter is necessary but not sufficient to accomplish the former.

In June, I introduced the Primal Health Coach Program: an enhanced education course that teaches you the science behind the Primal Blueprint and gives you tools, tips, and tactics for disseminating that information to clients and for running a successful business.

6. Gluten sensitivity really is real.

The story of non-celiac gluten sensitivity has featured more twists and turns than your average long-running will-they, won’t-they relationship storyline of a late 90s sitcom. Skeptics claimed it was all just a collective delusion, and several studies seemed to suggest it might be psychological rather than physiological. Then in July, 2016, a new study confirmed what many people already knew to be true: gluten sensitivity is real, and those suffering from it have leaky guts and elevated systemic inflammation.

7. PRIMAL KITCHEN™ restaurants became real.

Although we have yet to break ground (that happens early next year), the first PRIMAL KITCHEN™ restaurant will be in Culver City, CA. I’ve signed the papers, hired contractors, drawn up plans. It’s going to happen. It’s real.

8. More HDL isn’t necessarily better.

HDL is “good” cholesterol, yet research shows that elevating it to extremely high levels results in greater cardiovascular disease. Instead of HDL actively “scavenging” damaged lipids, higher HDL levels may simply be a byproduct of healthy lifestyle practices, like eating more fat, exercising, and generally leading an anti-inflammatory way of life.

9. Recent ancestry matters.

On this blog, we’ve always looked at human ancestry from 30,000 feet. We are all humans with the same basic machinery. We all digest fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. We all secrete insulin (to varying degrees), require oxygen, and drink water. That’s all true, but recent research into human genetics shows that recent ancestry can determine how we metabolize nutrients.

Whether it’s fatty acid metabolism in the Inuit, the “thrifty gene” in Samoans, or vitamin D requirements, we’re beginning to understand and integrate the lessons of our recent ethnic ancestry.

10. Exercise is important for weight loss.

For years, I’ve said that weight loss is 90% diet. It’s true that how much and what you eat are the most important factors when losing weight, but exercise helps determine what kind of weight you lose. We’re not trying to lose muscle and bone. We want to lose fat while preserving muscle. If the net weight declines, so be it. But fat loss is the ultimate goal.

Exercise is really, really important for weight loss:

It empties out glycogen, giving us a place to store incoming glucose.

It improves sleep and glucose control, and makes stress less harmful.

Strength training prevents muscle loss during dieting—and can even promote muscle gain.

11. Men and women are different—and that’s awesome.

This isn’t a “new” development, of course, but its acknowledgment throughout the ancestral health community has certainly expanded. Back in May, I gave my 12 essential tips for Primal women, laying out the areas where men’s and women’s needs diverge a bit. There are plenty of others, too.

Stay tuned for more MDA articles geared toward women in the near future.

12. CRISPR looms.

I wrote about the implications of CRISPR, the gene-editing tool that researchers use to study genetics (and transhumanists hope to use to create super-humans). Now they’re even using it to target RNA in live cells, which could be huge for diseases like muscular dystrophy and neurodegeneration.

I’m cautiously excited about CRISPR.

13. Evolutionary biology may be getting an overhaul.

Earlier this year, evolutionary biologists descended upon London’s Royal Society to debate whether evolutionary biology needed reworking. Was the standard Modern Synthesis theory complete, with its focus on natural selection as the primary driver of evolution, or should it expand to include other mechanisms and inputs like plasticity, creativity, culture, and epigenetics?

14. We’re born to move.

This year, scientists strapped sensors onto Hadza hunter-gatherers and tracked them throughout their daily routines. Young, old, man, woman—it didn’t matter. Everyone studied engaged in at least 2 hours of moderate physical activity per day on average. Furthermore, even the eldest among them remained fit and healthy on into their 70s.

Sedentary living is often portrayed as a necessary consequence of success. When we no longer have to physically work for our livelihood, we move as little as possible. But the Hadza research shows that movement is in our DNA, and that we must resist the temptation to be still.

That’s it for me, folks. What were your biggest takeaways from 2016? What are you looking forward to most in 2017?

Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care and have a fantastic rest of the year!

The post 2016 in Review: The Top 14 Developments in Ancestral Health appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

8 Primal Things to Appreciate about the Winter Season

Winter has come. That means different things to people based on their climate, but I’m of the opinion that winter is relative. You’d be right that the “cold” I face isn’t as objectively dangerous or unpleasant as the cold people in New York, Ottawa, Chicago, Warsaw, or Stockholm face. What’s cold to me in Malibu is short-sleeve weather in my native Maine—but it’s still cold to me today! “Feeling cold” is the defining characteristic.

Today, I’m going to tell you why you should appreciate and enjoy the cold season.

1. Feeling uncomfortable

Discomfort is a good thing. Our ancestors were frequently uncomfortable. Discomfort weeded out the unfit and made us who we are today. Those with a beneficial response to physical discomfort were more likely to pass on their genes. We are the product of those people, and exposing ourselves to uncomfortable situations and sensations will probably improve our health and overall resilience, too.

Cold weather provides an easy opportunity for feeling uncomfortable. You just go outside in light clothing and wait for the chill.

The best part, besides making you tougher? Feeling uncomfortable makes comfort feel even better.

2. Having the wilderness all to yourself

People hate the cold. Use the fact that people hate the cold to your advantage. Every time I go for a hike in sub 50° weather, I’m mostly alone. People are by and large wimps. It’s great.

If you’re worried about being outside in the cold (and believe me, the wilderness takes away about 10°!), don’t be. Once you get moving, you quickly forget the temperature. Your body revs up, and you start sweating. You’ll probably start peeling off articles of clothing. Whatever you do, don’t dress to the ambient temperature. That quickly becomes irrelevant.

3. The abundance of cold plunge opportunities

Everyone should cold plunge on a regular basis. I’ve been doing it every night for several years now, and I don’t think I could manage without them. It’d be pretty hard to give up:

The enhanced recovery. After a day of particularly vigorous training or playing, I’m ready to go the next day—as long as I cold plunge.
Reduced DOMS, even after a heavy day.
Less joint pain. My arthritis is a thing of the past, but the lingering, nagging pains I’d still suffer from time to time have completely disappeared.
Better sleep. A cold plunge at night drops my body temperature and gets me ready for bed.

Any body of water you encounter will be cold. Outdoor swimming pools usually have the heaters off in winter—jump in! The cold water in your shower will be far colder during the winter than at any other time—time to try a contrast shower! Heck, you can turn on a garden hose, strip down to your skivvies, and douse yourself in a reliably cold stream of water if it’s winter.

4. Improvements to your waistline

Winter is famously bad for the waistline. You bounce from Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas, pounding various permutations of grain dust, sugar, and oil. Some evidence suggests that we gain more weight during the holidays than any other time of the year. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Cold exposure activates brown fat, the metabolically active adipose tissue that increases energy expenditure in order to keep you warm. Brown fat is like keeping a burner on low. It won’t heat you up enough to sweat, but it will provide a low level of adaptation to the cold and help you replace indoor heating, the use of which seems to parallel the increase in obesity.

According to one study, exposing yourself to cool weather (60°F) for just 2 hours a day for six weeks while wearing light clothing increases energy expenditure and reduces overall body fatness. That’s really easy to do. Leave the heat off. Skip the jacket when you go outside. Run shirtless through the woods. It’s not even that cold. 

My favorite way to expose myself to ambient cold is to go for shirtless walks or hikes. I don’t have any weight to lose, but it feels great—and I bet shirtless or tanktopped walks would do wonders for those of you who do have extra weight.

5. Hyggeing it up

The Nordic countries might get the most attention for their fantastic social outcomes, impressive education systems, and profound mythology, but I’m partial to the Danish concept of hygge.

Hygge doesn’t have a perfect corollary in English. It means wintry coziness, togetherness, group-based comfiness. Hygge is drinking hot cocoa around a fire. It’s snuggling in with a good book. It’s most similar to our idea of “holiday cheer,” only it lasts all year long.

I’m calling it now: Hygge can be huge.

6. Winter sports

I go snowboarding every year. But I have to travel to do it. It’s a pain, but I still make it happen. That’s how much I cherish skimming across the snow while standing on a board.

Winter sports are more than sheer fun. They’re exciting and a little dangerous (controlled danger is good for you).

People who live an Uber ride away from the slopes don’t know how good they have it. I’m really, truly jealous. Don’t squander your good fortune.

Snowball fights/angels/men/women

I don’t get snow much anymore. Living in Malibu, I’m lucky to see my breath. But growing up in New England, my buddies and I would get into the most epic snowball fights around. This was before helicopter parenting became a thing, back when you had the freedom to wage entire season-spanning campaigns against the kids across town.

Snowplay unlocks something deep within. Find it again.

7. Stews and soups

Man, there’s nothing like a big brothy bowl of falling-apart meat and hearty vegetables on a cold day. It’s a day-long endeavor that drip-drop rewards you with smells, anticipation, and, finally, sustenance.

That same meal might taste good enough in August, but it doesn’t hit you in the heart like it does in December. It satisfies your belly, not your soul.

8. Stokes purple sweet potatoes

You can get purple Okinawan sweet potatoes from the Asian markets—they’re okay, just not as good as eating them fresh from Hawaii—but my favorite purple potato as of late has been the Stokes purple sweet potato. It’s moister than the Okinawans and drier than your standard orange Garnet sweet potato. I like them two ways:

Bake at 400 until soft, mix with coconut oil, salt, and cinnamon.

Bake at 400 until soft, mix with 85% dark chocolate and sea salt.

Once November rolls around, I know they’ll be coming soon to Whole Foods.

That’s why I love cold weather. What about you? What are you appreciating about winter these days? Thanks for reading, everybody.

The post 8 Primal Things to Appreciate about the Winter Season appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Dear Mark: Right Leg Balance Issues, Plastic Wrap Flattened Meat, Vaporizing Cannabis

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering several rapid fire questions. I’ll be concise and clear. I’ll be quick. First, what can someone do if they can balance on the left leg but not the right? What might be responsible? Second, am I worried about Martha Stewart pounding on turkey breast laid between two pieces of Saran Wrap? Third, what’s different about vaporizing cannabis? Is it better than smoking it?

Let’s go:

Great work! Thanks for sharing with us. from last year, i am facing issues with balancing with my right leg. Can you give some suggestion regarding it?

Balance often comes down to one major thing: strength of the lower limbs. In seniors, strength is one of the best predictors of balance and future fall risk, and resistance training is generally better at improving balance than cardio because it both strengthens and balances.

I strongly suspect one leg is stronger than the other.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? Don’t think of balance as emanating from your head. It’s “in” there, too, but it’s also all about the muscles working together to keep you standing. Feel the muscles that fail just before you lose balance. Which was it? Where are you going wrong? Do those same muscles on the other leg falter, too?

Everything’s involved. Think about “grasping” the floor with your bare foot, even if you’re wearing shoes. Give your knee a slight bend and stand tall and erect. 

You have to get that leg stronger. It has to catch up. Do some single leg training in addition to two leg training. Reverse lunges (way better than normal walking lunges), single leg deadlifts. Work mobility of the ankles and hips. Build strength in the calves, feet (go barefoot!), quads, hamstrings, “stabilizers.” 

Kcup bone broth sounds like more of a sales gimmick than anything else. I agree about the hot liquid passing through plastic not being a great idea. Speaking of plastic, last night on a PBS channel I watched Martha Stewart vigorously pounding out a turkey breast between two sheets of plastic wrap. It undoubtedly keeps the work surface cleaner, but I couldn’t help wondering if microscopic pieces of the plastic wrap were becoming embedded in the meat.

There isn’t any published research I could find on the specific situation, but I’m in the same boat as you. Some of that plastic is likely ending up in the meat, or it’s at least donating an estrogenic compound or two. Despite all that, I’m not going to freak out. I accept plastic as a necessary and unavoidable presence in the world. I won’t seek it out, and I’ll actively choose glass or metal over plastic when possible, but I know it’s out there. We can limit and mitigate it, not avoid it altogether.

Would I use plastic wrap to pound meat? No. I find good wax or butcher paper works just as well without the looming prospect of dietary plastic. But if Martha Stewart is making me flattened turkey, I’m not turning her down just because her turkey has a little plastic residue.

Nothing to worry about for a meal or two. Just don’t make flattened meat a staple (and use wax paper if you can).

What do you think about vaping vs. smoking?

There seem to be real benefits for vapers.

Vaping is certainly easier on the lungs. Smoking produces a lot of carbon monoxide and tar. Vaping produces very little. Accordingly, cannabis vapers have fewer respiratory issues than cannabis smokers.

You have more control over what you’re consuming when you vape. The various constituents of cannabis vaporize at different temperatures. Modern vaporizers often have temperature controls, giving you control over which constituents are vaporized and released, and which are not.

Vaping is more efficient. Vaping cannabis at both 200 and 230°C extracts more cannabinoids and fewer “byproducts” than does smoking it. You get more cannabinoids from the product. 

Which appears to be wholly positive but may not be. Some people claim that those “byproducts” are psychoactive—whether by exerting positive physiological effects, reducing negative symptoms, or improving or enhancing the high itself. The two methods certainly produce different subjective effects, so we know something is going on. 

I think vaping is probably safer and more cost-effective overall.

That’s it for this week, folks. Take care and let me know what you think down below!

Do you notice a difference in between-leg balance? Are you worried about pounding meat surrounded by plastic wrap? If you partake, do you prefer vaporizing or smoking?

The post Dear Mark: Right Leg Balance Issues, Plastic Wrap Flattened Meat, Vaporizing Cannabis appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Weekend Link Love – Edition 431

Research of the Week

Researchers reverse aging in mice and human cells. I’d take an immortal pet mouse. Why not?

Flickering light could help Alzheimer’s patients.

Spanish tapas, circa 1.2 million years ago.

Eccentric training (lowering the weight) increases flexibility by decreasing muscle stiffness and increasing tendon stiffness.

Resistance training in a low-oxygen environment enhances strength gains.

Eating more than a serving of red meat per day still isn’t associated with cardiovascular disease.

New Primal Blueprint Podcasts

 

Episode 147: Stuart Tomc: Host Elle Russ hangs out with Stuart Tomc, a science expert with extensive experience working with natural health supplement companies. He’s currently with CVSciences, the makers of a new CBD oil product. Today, Stuart fills us in on the emerging science of non-psychoactive CBD oil.

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.

14 Weird Plant Bits and Where to Find Them: Foraging Ethnic Markets
The Importance of Balance—and 15 Ways to Enhance and Preserve It
How to Encode Better Choices

Interesting Blog Posts

What separates “bad” from “good” dietitians?

This Australian guy ate just potatoes for a year. You’ll never guess what happened next. No, really, you might be surprised.

Media, Schmedia

The reason we see so many hexagons everywhere.

People don’t want healthy Pepsi products, they want chips and soda.

Everything Else

Incredible to think that the guy from The Social Network is the pinnacle of human evolution.

Surprised to see Scientific American engaging in Star Wars viral marketing.

Is self-control really just empathy for your future self?

How to identify a happy rat.

Things I’m Up to and Interested In

Article I’m pondering: Should we “hack” Stoicism? Hell yes. I detect a modicum of envy that Ryan Holiday has been so effective in packaging and making actionable an obscure ancient philosophy.

Post that I liked: The one where some guy from Malibu asked “Are you a fat-adapter or sugar-burner?”

News I’m happy to share: Men’s Fitness just named the PRIMAL KITCHEN™ Coconut Cashew Bar the #1 protein bar of 2017.

Resource I have to share: A very special issue of Nutrients in which we all share a few cries, have a few laughs, and learn an important lesson about the health benefits of eggs.

Recent food technology that can’t possibly have unforeseen consequences: A new way to hydrogenate soybean oil without producing trans-fat.

Photos that struck a chord: Evolutionary wonders.

Recipe Corner

Turmeric sweet potato mash can actually double as dessert.
It’s the holidays, so people want sweets. Make low-carb 3-ingredient fudge to offset some of the damage.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Dec 19 – Dec 25)

8 Reasons Why Low-Carb Diets Actually Work – overlooked mechanisms
The Power of Food Rituals – pleasure meets mindfulness
Do You Have Something to Look Forward To? – the gift of intention

Comment of the Week

“Kimchi is super easy to make. I use Napa cabbage, diakon radish, and leeks. Chop the cabbage, use a peeler for the radish, and strip cut the leeks. Chop off the green and save for stock. With the base intact, run a knife up front the base to where the greens were in 1/4 inch strips. Put the whole lot in a large bowl and rinse several times. When drained mix it all together with a table spoon of fine sea salt. Pack it as tightly as possible in a mason jar with an air lock. I use dried alleppo pepper to give it the authentic red color because my Asian market does not carry the authentic Korean peppers. If I want it spicy I add siracha when serving. Not when preparing because the preservatives in siracha will inhibit the ferment.”

– Sounds lovely, Jack Lea Mason. One question, though: What is alleppo?

The post Weekend Link Love – Edition 431 appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Rosemary and Garlic Pork Loin in Caul Fat

Pork tenderloin cooks quickly and can be an easy weeknight meal, but the fear of ending up with a dry and flavorless dinner is real. Pork tenderloin is a lean cut, and the lack of fat makes it an unforgiving cut of meat. But when pork tenderloin is cooked right, it’s a succulent, mouthwatering meal that can be on the table in no time.

This recipe takes a three-pronged approach to cooking perfect pork tenderloin. One, rub it down with a flavorful marinade. Two, wrap it in fat. Three, sear it in the same hot skillet that it roasts in.

The marinade here—garlic, rosemary, mustard and salt—is a tried-and-true flavor combination for pork. The fat wrapped around the tenderloin, however, is a little less commonplace. Instead of bacon, this tenderloin is wrapped in pork caul fat, a paper-thin fatty membrane that lines the stomach cavity of pigs. Caul fat looks like a lacey spider web, although it’s not nearly as delicate as it looks. It can easily be stretched, pulled and snugly wrapped around just about anything. The caul fat melts into the meat as it cooks, adding juicy fat and flavor.

Plan ahead, because caul fat usually needs to be special ordered from a butcher. You’re likely to end up with more than you need for just this pork tenderloin, but that’s a good thing. Caul fat can also be wrapped around sausage patties, meatballs, meatloaf and any type of roast. Extra caul fat can be frozen, and defrosted in the refrigerator before using.

Time in the Kitchen: 45 minutes

Servings: 4

Ingredients

4 garlic gloves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon finely chopped rosemary, plus a few extra sprigs (15 ml)
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt (3.7 ml)
1 tablespoon grainy mustard (15 ml)
1 tablespoon avocado oil (15 ml)
1 ¼ to 1 ½ pound pork tenderloin (565 g to 680 g)
Approximately 2 ounces/56 g caul fat (although it’s unlikely to find packages of caul fat for sale that are less than 8 ounces/230 g—ask your local butcher)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 425 F/218 C. Place a cast iron skillet in the oven while it heats.

In a small bowl, mix together garlic, rosemary, salt and oil. Pat the pork dry. Rub the marinade all over the pork tenderloin. Do this at least 15 minutes before cooking the pork. Or, rub the roast down in the morning and refrigerate up to 8 hours before cooking.

Wrap the roast snugly in one layer of caul fat.

Put the pork in the hot skillet. Roast 10 minutes.

Turn the oven temp down to 375 F/190. Flip the loin and roast 5 to 10 minutes more—or until the thickest part reaches 140 to 145 F/60 C. The caul fat will help keep the meat moist, so even if the internal temp goes higher, the meat should still be moist and flavorful.

Remove from the oven and let rest 10 minutes before slicing.

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Finally Off the Sugar Roller Coaster!

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.

 My life-changing Primal journey began seven years ago when I discovered Mark’s blog and read his book, The Primal Blueprint. Back then, I was about 25 pounds heavier than I wanted to be, completely addicted to sugar, experiencing food cravings or food comas almost constantly, and living in my head where daily battles occurred regarding the food that I had eaten or wanted to eat.

At that time, I was 42 and had spent my years since age 15 obsessing over food. Nutrition and fitness had fascinated me in a healthy way during this time, but a powerful sweet tooth combined with a persistent vulnerability to self-sabotage caused my twenties and much of my thirties to be mostly wasted.

At different points during this time, depression and bingeing caused me to live in a bubble. I kept people at arms-length and let very few people into my world. At my lowest point, when friends would ask me to come out with them socially, I would lie and say that I already had plans even though my “plans” consisted of buying a lot of unhealthy food and eating it – stuffing all the feelings that had come up during the day — and then wallowing in my self-hatred. My overeating was so out of control that I attended Overeaters Anonymous meetings. And even though alcohol has never been a problem for me, I attended one Alcoholics Anonymous meeting out of curiosity just to see how similar it might be to my problem. It seemed exactly the same; I used food as a drug in the same way that alcoholics used alcohol.

Thankfully, therapy and anti-depressants helped me get over the worst of these behaviors so that I could feel pretty happy and healthy by my mid-thirties. But I still remained between 10 and 25 pounds heavier than I wanted to be. And years of excess sugar had deposited a heavy layer of fat on my thighs that I was self-conscious about. Fortunately, as an athletic person with an outdoorsy lifestyle, I exercised frequently which helped prevent greater weight gain.

Fast forward to April 2009, age 42. A stressful job and ineffective coping mechanisms translated into this being another High Sugar Era. Fortunately, I was exercising enough to keep me from being depressed, but I remember lots of sugar-highs and Red Bull to help pull me out of the sugar-lows. I know now that on top of the job stress, all the Red Bull was stressing my body out further and exhausting it with excess cortisol. It pains me to think of the abuse that I put my body through! But the miraculous human body can tolerate a lot of mistreatment, often without obvious side effects if you’re as out of touch with your body as I was.

Anyway, at this time, a friend pointed me toward markdailyapple.com (thank you, Jen C!) and The Primal Blueprint. I’m sorry for the cliché, but here it is: reading the book changed my life. It made perfect sense. Until then, I had probably tried ten different diets. Since reading the book, none. Diets don’t interest me anymore. The Primal way of eating feels right for me.

The last seven years have been a slow but steady journey of two steps forward, one step back, over and over again until now, when I can finally look back and see how far I’ve come. With my sugar-addiction and history of compulsive, emotional overeating, I had a lot of deep-seated, unhealthy habits to break, but here are just a few that I’ve finally broken:

Emotional eating
Eating more food than my body needed at almost every meal
Mindless snacking
Sweets – multiple times a day
Dessert after lunch, dinner and sometimes breakfast!
Out of touch with my satiety signals – truly having no idea when to stop eating
Often snacked after dinner or before bed

And I’ve developed many new healthy habits:

My taste buds have changed dramatically: I have learned to LOVE veggies and natural, whole foods
I recognize and respect my body’s hunger and satiety signals
I exercise regularly and love it, without doing it to excess
I happily take the stairs at work (I work on the 7th floor)
I ride my bike to work seven months a year
I bring my lunch to work, ensuring that it’s healthy while also saving money and avoiding temptations
I use a stand-up desk at work (raising and lowering it throughout the day)
I fast once in a while, with little-to-no suffering
I go to bed early because getting enough sleep is a priority

Now, at age 50, because of the Primal Blueprint and the Primal lifestyle “laws,” I feel healthier, fitter and stronger than I’ve ever been, including high school when I was thin, healthy and played sports all year. My energy is off-the-charts—not in a hyper, bouncing-off-the-walls way but just feeling incredibly clear-headed and alert. No more brain fog! I feel like a machine running on the cleanest fuel, like there’s no sludge in my veins, and everything I eat is being put to good use. I look forward to and enjoy working out.  I’ve finally gotten rid of the excess fat that made me feel self-conscious for my entire adult life. My moods are steady, and I feel peaceful. I face my problems now rather than stuffing them with food. And, most importantly, I don’t live in my head anymore. The daily internal battles are gone, freeing up my thoughts so that I can actually engage with and enjoy other people.

When my eating was at its worst, I remember thinking that I’d never have the willpower to eat well consistently. But I’m grateful to have discovered that once you get in the habit of eating well, your body adjusts and no longer craves the crappy stuff. So it’s not a matter of willpower, it’s the chemical properties of the food you’re eating! Your body is smart enough to tell you what it wants, but most of us don’t hear the messages because the communication lines are clogged with junk food. After having wasted so many years living inside my own food-obsessed, self-hating head, I finally feel free to live a normal life, with the extra bonus of feeling healthier and more energetic than I’ve ever been.

I’m sure there will be food and exercise slumps in my future, but I won’t worry about them; they’ll just be food and exercise “vacations,” from which I will always come home. I’ve been happy with eating Primally as my foundation for the past seven years, and I know it will remain my foundation for the rest of my life. (By “foundation,” I mean I’ll be mostly Primal but not 100% all the time.) It’s not something to start and then finish; it’s forever for me.

Until now, I’ve told very few people about the extent of my eating issues; I’ve felt ashamed of how much they ruled and nearly ruined my life. So it’s difficult for me to reveal such personal information to such a wide audience. But since Mark Sisson has helped me so much, I share my story with him and MDA with the hope that it might help others.

Thank you, Mark, for helping me turn my life around and for all the work you to do improve people’s health.

Gratefully,

Jean

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14 Weird Plant Bits and Where to Find Them: Foraging Ethnic Markets

Five years ago, I wrote about all the odd animal bits one can find at ethnic markets. I procured and photographed the blood, the guts, the tendon, the tripe, the tails and heads and feet and all the other weird things you can and should eat—meaty bits you won’t find in the local Whole Foods.

Today, I’m going to talk about the weird plant bits available in ethnic markets—spices, greens, roots, noodles, and fermented things.

But first, a few reasons why everyone should probably hightail it to the nearest Asian, Middle Eastern, African, or Mexican market.

Asian supermarkets exist outside of the normal supply chain typical markets use. They get different produce, in many cases fresher produce, and lower prices. A recent article in Saveur explains why: “Chinatown’s 80-plus produce markets are cheap because they are connected to a web of small farms and wholesalers that operate independently of the network supplying most mainstream supermarkets.” I don’t know that this applies to Asian markets in other cities, or other types of ethnic markets, but it’s a good bet. 

Going to an ethnic market is a little like traveling: you enter an unfamiliar situation with different sights, smells, and languages. Travel purists will scoff, but I maintain that this is a decent way to “tour.” We can’t all drop everything to go backpack through Southeast Asia for half a year. This is better than nothing.

What should you look for?

Red palm oil—West African markets

We’ve all shelled out the $15 for a smallish jar of sustainably-grown red palm oil pressed from palm fruits hand-and-foot-picked by entrepreneurial orangutans, probably after reading about its incredible nutrient content on MDA or some other blog. But there’s another place to get really great orangutan-free red palm oil: your local West African market. West African countries like Ghana and Nigeria have a long history of using red palm oil as a staple fat, whereas the places most people get their palm oil—Malaysia and Indonesia—do not. I trust tradition.

The red palm oil I’ve bought from African shops is the real deal. It’s unfiltered. It’s deep red, rather than orange. It often comes unlabeled in mason jars.

Sichuan/Szechuan peppercorns—Asian markets

I don’t know if these things are “superfoods” or anything. One small study found that sichuan peppercorn compounds inhibit cancer growth while having no affect on growth of normal cells, but I wouldn’t hang my hat on that.

No, the real reason I love Sichuan peppercorns is their provision of a totally unique flavor sensation—tingling. I find it goes best with lamb alongside cumin and something slightly sweet.

Natto—Japanese markets

I won’t linger on natto, my favorite soy food. I’ve spoken up about it many times before. Natto is the single-best source of vitamin K2 in the diet, a nutrient solely lacking in most modern diets.

Eat it with sardines and a bit of soy sauce.

Prepared kimchi—Korean markets

Most Asian market refrigerated sections will have good kimchi in jars. It’s standard stuff—napa cabbage and whatnot. I’m talking about the many varieties of kimchi available in Korean market deli sections. You can find pickled cucumbers, mustard leaf, radish, and even a white kimchi that’s flavorful without being spicy.

Chinese broccoli/gai lan—Asian markets

Gai lan is a member of the brassica family, alongside broccoli, kale, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts. As such, it’s probably going to improve your resistance to and excretion of various carcinogens, toxins, and other things you don’t want.

My favorite way of cooking it is to separate the thick stalks from the florets, steam the stalks for 3 minutes, then add the flowers for another 2 minutes. Toss in the sauce/fat of your choice.

They’re also good quickly charred over flames or on a hot cast iron skillet. Toss with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

Fava greens—Asian markets

Most people haven’t eaten fava greens. They’re seasonal, available in the spring and early summer. If you like fava beans but don’t do legumes, fava greens taste a bit like them. You can eat them raw in a salad or sautéd, though I prefer the heartier-than-spinach leaves cooked a bit. Personally, I’m a fan of wilting a bowl of fava greens by placing a hot steak directly on top.

Also excellent with Chianti and liver (not human).

Purple sweet potatoes—Asian markets

The fabled purple sweet potato has begun appearing in Whole Foods, but for the longest time the best and often only place to get one was the local Asian market. It’s still a good spot.

Don’t worry too much about organic vs. non-organic. Sweet potatoes are hardy plants that show very little pesticide residue and consistently place in the “clean 15.”

Sweet potato greens—Asian markets

After reading about the nutrient density of sweet potato greens back when I wrote the sweet potato post, I had to try them. They’re really high in magnesium, that elusive nutrient. And they actually taste good.

Treat them like spinach or chard.

Young coconuts—Asian markets

Forget canned coconut water. Every Asian market I’ve ever visited sells young Thai coconuts wrapped in plastic for about a buck fifty—the same exact coconuts (same label!) upscale markets sell for three times the price. You get about a pint of the best coconut water you’ve ever tasted, plus a cup of sweet coconut meat. I recommend a machete or really strong cleaver. I’ve ruined at least two cheapo kitchen knives hacking away at these things.

Look for pure white/cream-colored coconuts. Avoid any hint of pinkness, as that indicates spoilage.

Buy a case for your next party and wow guests.

Shirataki noodles—Asian markets

You want prebiotic fiber? You want a low-carb noodle alternative? Try shirataki noodles, also known as konjac noodles or yam noodles.

Konjac root is mostly glucomannan, a prebiotic fiber that encourages the growth of butyrate-producing gut bacteria in human subjects on a low fiber diet. As we know from past posts, butyrate appears to improve insulin sensitivity and blood lipids, and decrease intestinal permeability. 

Dosa batter—Indian markets

Being fermented rice and lentil pancakes, dosas aren’t quite Primal, but they’ve got a lot of things going for them. They’re fermented. They’re gluten-free (rice and lentils). And they often contain interesting spices, like fenugreek, turmeric, and ginger in the batter.

Next time the kids are clamoring for something pancake-adjacent and you don’t feel like whipping out the GF pancake mix, having a container of dosa batter will save the day.

Tulsi (holy basil)—Indian markets

I’ve never cooked with tulsi, and I’m not sure it’s really a thing, but it makes a fine tea. Animal studies indicate that tulsi provides a real boost to testosterone levels.

It comes in bags of dried whole or powdered leaves and is considerably cheaper than the tea bags you find online. Try simmering a tablespoon of dry leaves in a cup of water with a teaspoon of coconut oil.

Ashwagandha—Indian markets

Ashwagandha is an Ayurvedic herb that most Western consumers have only seen in pill form. If you go to an Indian market, you can get whole dried ashwagandha root. It may not be a standardized extract with consistent levels of active compounds, but you will be getting the “extraneous” compounds that the purified extracts omit.

Tastes a bit musty, honestly. Suffer through the tea or toss a root in with your next batch of bone broth.

Spices in general—any market

My Indian friends always tell me the spices you get in places like Whole Foods or Amazon simply don’t compare to the ones you get in the local Indian market. The turmeric is more pungent, the cumin is more intense, the cardamom pods are more fragrant, and so on. It appears to be true for other spices in other ethnic markets, too.

Next time you need to restock your spice cabinet, head down to the local ethnic market and see how they compare.

That’s just a small taste of the available edible plant bits you’ll find at ethnic markets. These are my favorites. How about yours? What did I miss? What should I try?

Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care!

The post 14 Weird Plant Bits and Where to Find Them: Foraging Ethnic Markets appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

The Importance of Balance—and 15 Ways to Enhance and Preserve It

Everything in the world is conspiring to make you fall over. The ground can be slippery, slick, and studded with protrusions. The earth can move under your feet. The discarded banana peel is an ever present threat. Gravity itself exerts a constant downward pull, and any tissue straying from perpendicularity with the ground feels the pull that much more. That we manage to stay upright at all is impressive.

Not all of us do.

For youngsters, balance is something you actively practice in certain situations: it’s what you do when walking along the top of the monkey bars or ride a surfboard/skateboard/snowboard. You only think about balance when you decide to test it. Good balance enhances your ability to move through and interact with the world. It’s essential for all of us—and especially for athletes whose feats put them at regular odds with the forces that threaten to throw us off balance.

The older you get, the more the world challenges your balance. And when you’re pushing 80+ and a slight miscalculation can shatter your hip, balance is everything. Good balance lowers the incidence of those miscalculations. It’s essential for staying intact into old age.

It’s good to note that we integrate data from several different systems of the body to “balance”:

Vision—Our visual input provides a overview of the physical surroundings.

Vestibular System—The fluid in our inner ears acts as a kind of level, telling us where our bodies are in space.

Somatosensory System—The nerves in our muscles and connective tissues relay information about our position in the surroundings.

Right off the bat, we see why older people lose balance as they age. Their vision degrades and their muscles atrophy, effectively severing or severely weakening two of three systems required for good balance.

Why should I care?

First, falls and fractures. Oldsters have weaker bones. The loss of bone itself may not increase fall risk, but it does increase the risk of fractures in the event of a fall. Weak bones make balance even more crucial.

Bone loss typically accompanies menopause, which is why over 70% of hip fractures in seniors occur in women. If you’re unlucky enough to suffer a hip fracture after the age of 50, you have a 24% chance of dying within a year.

Measuring balance in the elderly is even an effective predictor of their fall risk. Better balance, less risk.

Younger, more active people who want to enhance their quality of life and performance—athletes, weekend warriors, most people reading now—also benefit from better balance. After all, balance isn’t just standing on one foot on a stable surface. It’s also maintaining your posture and technique while moving, running, or jumping quickly—dynamic balance.

Balance predicts fall and injury risk in athletes, too, especially if they have a history of injuries, and balance training reduces the risk of injuries in volleyball and soccer players with prior history of injuries.

Okay. I’m sold, Sisson. What can I do to improve my balance?

Get enough sleep.

I don’t care if you’re sick of hearing me crow about sleep. It’s that important, and I’m going to continue to detail the many facets of life affected by poor sleep.

The day after a night of sleep deprivation, your dynamic balance suffers. Your ability to integrate sensorimotor function with visual input to control posture drops. Your postural stability gets wonky. If you keep it up at a chronic level, even missing “just a few hours” each night, you impair postural control.

Stop aging.

Aging worsens the effects of sleep deprivation on balance. Aging weakens muscles and bones, making you more prone to falls and bone breaks when you do. So stop it.

I’m kidding, kinda. Everyone progresses through space-time. We all “get older.” But your biological age—the health and resilience of your tissues, organs, and abilities—is more malleable. You can’t turn back time, but you can compress morbidity. You can live long and drop dead:

Stop eating so often. Fast occasionally. Limit snacking.
Eat only as many carbs as you earn. Don’t “carb up” if you’re only using a hundred grams of glycogen per day.
Get sunlight on your skin and in your eyes.
Eat the right amount of protein for your needs.
Stay active. Walk a ton. Lift something heavy a couple times a week.
Limit stress. Don’t get hung up on what you can’t change.

Get strong.

Balance isn’t all in the head. You don’t think yourself to stability. You must ultimately use your muscles to stabilize yourself. And while you don’t need to add 30 pounds of muscle and squat 3x your bodyweight to improve balance, getting stronger does help.

Get a slackline (and use it).

The slackline is the most obvious, immediately apparent way to improve balance. You hop on one, experience the leg wobbles that seem impossible to overcome, and in a few sessions you can handle yourself with relative grace and aplomb. This is real feedback that you’ve improved your balance.

Some of the studies bear this out. Slacking improves balance and postural control in female basketball players, for example, but doesn’t seem to confer non-specific balance (non-slackline) to everyone.

Research aside? After spending several years with my slackline, I’m comfortable on just about any surface. If I see a thin log spanning a creek while hiking, I’ll walk it.

Unless it spans some ravine with hungry crocodiles waiting below.

Get some 2×4 or 2×3 beams.

Head down to the hardware store and get one in each size. They won’t cost much more than $15, and you’ll have a quick, easy balance beam to practice on.

Don’t just walk on them. Slow bear crawling on a balance beam is an incredible test of balance.

Move deliberately.

Don’t rush through movements all the time. Move slooooowly and really feel the motion. Maintain control across the whole span.

I really like different plank variations, including contralateral and side planks, for the slow yet strong stress they place on your balance capacity.

Incorporate single leg lifts.

Single leg deadlifts and single leg squats (pistols, skater squats) all require incredible balance. Furthermore, because you’re balancing under load, you’ll strengthen the musculature and prepare the connective tissue required for balancing.

Spend more time barefoot.

An older study (which I can’t seem to dig up anymore; sorry) examining the effect of ankle taping on balance used people in bare feet as the control group because their balance was so superior. It’s obvious why to anyone with barefoot experience. You can “grip” the ground, rather than balance on a flat rubber sole. You’re no longer blunting the thousands of nerve endings lining the bottom of our feet; they can actually transmit valuable information to the “balance fund.”

Do dynamic movements and balance training.

Dynamic balance—the kind most important to athletes, the ability to maintain posture, position, and control throughout a movement—requires dynamic movements. You’re just not going to develop it without actually doing it.

One study had female athletes do either a plyometrics program (dozens of exercises involving broad jumps, vertical jumps, squat jumps, barrier jumps, wall jumps, drop jumps, tuck jumps—basically just a ton of jumping, focusing on maximal effort along with cutting movements with quick reactions) or a program designed to train dynamic balance and stability (jumping, with a focus on landing softly and avoiding knee valgus; balancing and lifting weights on both stable and unstable surfaces like BOSU balls and swiss balls; single leg exercises; stability and balance exercises as someone perturbs their center of gravity). Then they measured the effect on strength, power, stability (how much sway after jumping laterally), and impact force (how hard you land). Both programs improved each measure, only differing on impact force, with the balance program having a stronger effect on the dominant leg’s ability to land softly. In the end, the researchers conclude that doing a mix of both is probably best.

Another study in children supports their conclusion, finding that a combination of plyometrics and balance training improved sprint performance better than plyometrics alone.

Work balance into the day.

Stand on one leg while you wait for coffee.

Walk along the back side of a park bench.

Climb a tree and walk around on horizontal branches.

Walk along the curb.

Have fun with it.

Maintain a neutral spine.

Balance is about maintaining a stable, neutral spine amidst whatever gravity and life throws at you. So always focus on the spine.

Keep your shoulders back and chest up.

Keep your feet, ankles, knees, and hips mobile, lubed up, and primed for activity.

Watch knee valgus (knee sliding inward) during movements like squats.

This is basic posture, but it’s so important. If your head juts forward and your shoulders roll forward, you’re out of position. You’ve just committed 11 pounds of skull, flesh, and brain to a bad position where gravity can yank down on it.

Now imagine running, jumping, or even just walking down the street with that big head lolling around upsetting your balance.

Focus on closed kinetic chain movements over open chain ones.

Closed kinetic chain movements have you act on the ground to move a weight. Your hands or feet are touching the ground or other immoveable surface and do not move. Think squats, deadlifts, pushups, pullups. These require a cohesive, balanced kinetic chain and target every tissue and joint along the chain.

Open kinetic chain movements have you act on the weight itself. Your hands or feet touch the weight and move. Think leg extensions, hamstring curls, bench presses, lat pulldowns.

Studies show that closed kinetic chain exercises have a better effect on balance.

Do basic balance progressions.

The simplest way is to stand on one foot while doing slow, deliberate leg sweeps. Spice it up by closing your eyes and switching legs. This kind of simple balance training improves balance and, maybe most importantly, reduces the fear of falling in older adults. Less fear lowers the barrier to exercising, staying active, and enjoying life. That’s huge.

Bounce.

Most research has focused on mini-trampoline training’s positive effect on balance, but I’m confident larger trampolines are even more effective. I recently found myself on a 15 foot trampoline. The difference between jumping and landing with a neutral, aligned spine and jumping and landing even slightly hunched over was jarring. The former felt fluid and powerful and right. The latter felt all wrong, and I only jumped about half as high. Trampolines reward good balance. I imagine they enhance it, too.

Bounce houses work, too. The toddler-strewn floors add an element of dynamism.

Jump.

Jumping—and landing—is perhaps the single best test of balance. You’re flying through the air. You’re landing. Your body wants to keep going and you need to prevent that without tearing anything or falling over. There’s a lot going on, too much to intellectualize.

That’s why actually getting out and jumping is so important for balance. Keep the basics in mind—land softly on the balls of your feet, then the heels; land with hip flexion, absorb the impact with your quads, glutes, and hamstrings; don’t let your knees drift inward (valgus); maintain that neutral spine. You do it, you land it, you do it again, you improve, you learn. Start small, and the body will take care of the rest.

Senior with creaky knees? Try small hops.

Like lunges? Try Russian lunges (no weight necessary, necessarily).

Bored of broad jumps? Try 180° jumps, 90° jumps, or 180/90° jumps onto a park table.

That’s about it for today, folks.

How’s your balance? How has balance affected your life, your performance, and your injury risk? How do you train it?

Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care.

The post The Importance of Balance—and 15 Ways to Enhance and Preserve It appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

How to Encode Better Choices

Quick check-in: what’s the hardest habit you’ve had to break in going Primal? Something you’re currently looking to change? What have been the challenges?

While I don’t consider Primal living particularly difficult, I think any behavioral shift can be tricky. It’s human nature to stick with what’s known. There’s a certain comfort in routine, however ill-advised our customary patterns are. And, let’s face it, some habits stick more than others. If only we were a more logical species, we might imagine, one able to simply encode the choices we know are good for us… Thankfully, our psychological blueprints are more complex than our gadgets, but that doesn’t mean we can’t optimize our settings and establish some tactical redirects.

I’ll admit I have my own “whenever I” scenarios – those situations for which I have established go-to strategies that help me stick with a healthy choice I’ve made for myself. At this point, the substitution has become pretty automatic for me: if this impulse, then that response. The automation makes life easier. It spares me the energy and hand-wringing that would otherwise go into fending off the original inclination or wondering in the moment what I should do to get my mind off of it.

The Anatomy of Human Decision-Making

Not surprisingly, the issue of “automation” is pretty key when experts talk about behavior change and decision making. Whenever we need to make a decision, it seems, we put together a cognitive representation that allows us to simplify the problem/choice at hand. Humans participate in two types of thinking when they mentally assemble that simplified model and make the final decision from there.

The more arduous and taxing of the two is deliberation, that consciously reasoning mode of problem solving we’d apply to figuring out our taxes or warding off tempting impulses. As most of us can attest to, our capacity for this kind of thinking is inherently limited.

The other mode of thinking that comes into play is automatic thinking, which we use much more often that we assume. It’s the stuff of analyzing facial expressions in a fraction of a second, of understanding language or other familiar symbols, of knowing which way to turn to drive home. Unlike deliberative thinking, we have considerable capacity for automatic thinking.

Although there’s interaction between the two modes, automatic thinking actually makes up the majority of our cognitive work – and even our cognitive selves.

Where It Fails

In the midst (or at the end) of a long day, we’re not terribly good at thinking through all of the considerations and arriving by reason at the most beneficial decision. In-the-moment reasoning, as handy as it is, can rarely get us where we want to go long-term. For better or worse, that’s how human behavior manifests in the real world.

Thus, as much as we can operate on automatic, the better off we are—provided our routines, assumptions and self-talk (which we can change using reason) encourage positive selections. So, what can we do to help ourselves in that regard?

We have three main options really for shifting our decision-making processes to maximize our likelihood of making good choices.

1. We can simplify our lives and choice environments.

2. We can hone the ways we judge (or redirect) options.

3. We can cultivate the associations with these choices.

The question for these proposals becomes—how?

Simplifying As Much As Possible (a.k.a. Box yourself into good choices.)

I’ve written before about selection fatigue. The more choices we have in making a decision, the more mental resources we use. It’s why a variety of options don’t always make us happier but just add more static to the day. Simplifying our choices means simplifying our choice environments—cutting out as much of that extraneous static as possible.

Likewise, the more decisions we make in a day, the more mental resources we use. The more we do in a day (particularly if we attempt to multi-task), the more run down we’ll be.

The key is to conserve mental energy by establishing rules, times, and parameters. Not everything needs to be nailed down, but if every day of the week has too many moving parts, you’re probably never going to feel in possession of your time or life.

Let’s say you’re trying to encode better choices around sleep because you’re a workaholic and can’t seem to turn off the impulse to do more—to take care of more. The work—whether job, home or family—just never feels done.

Simplifying your choice environment in this case can mean setting hard and fast parameters around your evening. Set an alarm for bedtime. But also set another for the end of all work time—maybe an hour to an hour and a half before bed. After that point, your computer and T.V. are done for the night as is your smart phone. You won’t so much as pick up a shirt off the floor or put a dish in the dishwasher. If you have to further simplify (avoid distraction) by sequestering yourself in the bedroom for that last hour to keep yourself from working or doing chores, do it. (After a couple nights of going crazy, you’ll begin to get more efficient and/or resourceful during your “active” evening hours.)

Now let’s say you’re trying to eat better. Simplifying your choice environment might mean shopping at smaller stores/markets or minimizing actual shopping trips by ordering from direct-to-consumer farms or from online stores like Thrive (you can save a “favorites” list). It can mean packing your lunch and bringing more or less the same thing every day. It can mean scheduling time each week to make a few large meals you eat as leftovers for lunches/dinners.

In short, it’s deciding ahead of time to reduce the number of choices you perceive yourself as having—and making it easier to choose what is already in front of you.

Changing the Way We Judge Our Options (a.k.a. checking in with our values)

We can simplify our way out of a lot of choices each day, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be faced with temptation. When we do need to make a decision, we’re remarkably good at homing in on seemingly random elements (e.g. excuses) or present bias (e.g. now matters more than later). Because we can’t possibly consider each and every facet and angle, we automatically narrow our considerations to a few pieces that feel “salient” in the moment. Unfortunately, these often have nothing to do with our values.

Instead of giving into the limited thinking of the moment, why not check in with your values. I’m not suggested depending on your reasoning process here. In the thick of the moment, our minds aren’t always to be trusted.

I’m reminded of the H.A.L.T. acronym (hungry, angry, lonely, tired). When we’re any of these, it’s time to stop (halt) and check-in. I’d suggest checking in with feelings first. Are you hungry, angry, lonely or tired? I’d add bored, anxious or procrastinating to that list as well—all feelings that can spur poor choices in my experience. That covered, now check in with values. For this, I believe in the power of visual aids.

Get out a sheet of paper (not in one of those moments but in preparation for them), and draw a simple grid. Across the top write your values – the main elements that make up your sense of personal health integrity, your concept of vitality, etc. On the left hand side from top to bottom, write your biggest excuses or stumbling blocks. Then use the grid to fill in the individual scenario boxes to come up with intentions for how to live your health integrity. Put this on your fridge. Keep it at work. Put it in your car. Consult it. Accept it as your automatic guide.

Still, I know there are scenarios that require or can be met with an even simpler action. This is your contingency plan. If this, then that. Think of your five biggest challenges right now, and create a contingency plan for each. The contingency will be your automatic response for that scenario – a single, simple substitution (no moralizing here) that will get you to the other side of an impulse without too much damage.

Cultivating Associations (a.k.a manipulating how you really feel about it)

Finally, we need to accept that our deep down impressions or associations about certain behaviors/activities/foods/etc. influence our willingness to make certain choices. If we grew up hating exercise, we need to accept that we’ll need to unwind that association over time and replace it with better connections. We’re rewiring ourselves at this point. This is a longer term process, but we can make our efforts count.

We need to identify what assumptions or associations might be unconsciously and automatically turning us off from practicing certain behaviors even if reason tells us we should. Get them out of your system to a degree by journaling, talking it through with someone. Whatever your gripe or “story” about yourself is, voice it so you can find a way to move on. Do your best to consciously put it to bed.

Then invest time and effort in creating new and genuine enjoyment of what you’ve been subconsciously resisting. If you want to eat more vegetables (but grew up eating 3 kinds of canned mush), ask around for some great vegetarian restaurants to get ideas for vegetables dishes you’d never think of. If you’re a vegan in recovery looking to expand your meat variety, spend some time at a quality butcher getting schooled in the finer points of preparing all manner of cuts.

If you’re looking to get beyond a lifelong aversion to fitness, let yourself have some fun experimenting by taking field trips to different kinds of classes, gyms centers, leagues and clubs. Rent bikes, skiis, boats and other equipment that might interest you. Document your adventures with photos and other visuals – of you actually enjoying the habits you’re trying to take on. With every step, you’re creating new associations and rewiring yourself toward choices that serve you better.

Thanks for reading today, everybody. Now for your thoughts. How have you encoded new behaviors using the techniques above or others? Have a great week.

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