Mark Sisson's Blog, page 206

Turmeric & Kale Soup with Ground Lamb

You definitely don’t need a head cold or respiratory infection to enjoy this soup, but if you do have the sniffles (or feel them coming on), turmeric soup is a delicious alternative to chicken soup.

This soup is loaded with ingredients that can potentially ease the symptoms of the common cold, or give your immune system a little boost during cold and flu season. Failing that, this soup is just plain delicious. So you really can’t go wrong.

Turmeric, ginger, garlic, lemon and bone broth together make a soothing but lively soup broth. All have various healing powers. Turmeric, especially, boasts an array of potential pharmacological effects, including anti-inflammatory powers, cancer prevention and more. Plus, it just might relieve your cough and clear up excess mucus.

This turmeric soup also has kale for vitamin C and ground lamb for protein, essential amino acids, as well as vitamins and minerals. This is a soup bowl filled with everything you need.

Time in the Kitchen: 35 minutes

Servings: 4 to 6

Ingredients

2 tablespoons coconut oil (30 ml)
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh ginger (15 ml)
6 cloves garlic finely chopped
3/4 teaspoon powdered (ground) turmeric (3.7 ml)
2-inch/5 cm piece fresh turmeric, peeled and grated (use a microplane zester/grater)
3/4 pound ground lamb (340 g)
½ teaspoon ground coriander (2.5 ml)
¼ teaspoon cinnamon (a pinch)
1 teaspoon kosher salt (5 ml)
¼ teaspoon black pepper (a pinch) (1.2 ml)
¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro (60 ml)
6 cups chicken or beef bone broth (1.4 L)
4 kale leaves, ribs/stems removed, leaves cut into thin ribbons
Lemon slices, for garnish
Optional: ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper or 1 sliced hot pepper

Instructions

In a large pot or Dutch oven, saute onion in coconut oil over medium heat for 3 to 5 minutes.

Add the ginger and garlic. Sauté 1 to 2 minutes.

Add both types of turmeric. Cook 1 minute more.

Add ground meat, and season with coriander, cinnamon, salt, pepper and fresh cilantro. Break the meat up as it cooks. When it’s browned and mostly cooked through, add bone broth.

Bring to a simmer. Simmer 10 minutes.

Add kale right before serving. Add lemon slices, and cayenne/hot peppers as well, if desired.

The post Turmeric & Kale Soup with Ground Lamb appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

How Going Primal Helped Me Lose 30 Pounds, Eliminate Pain, and Stamp Out Bloating

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 name is Andrew Mencher. I live in Long Island, New York. I am 27 years old.

Starting the new year of 2016, like new years past, my then girlfriend, now fiancé, and I decided to begin the new year fresh with a healthy attitude.

This year was different, however. I was living with the love of my life, not alone, and little did she know at the time I had been planning to propose. Starting in January, with little research and only Conventional Wisdom to guide us, we began to eat less meat as a start. This failed for me, big time. I began to eat more grains and quick foods just to fill the gap in energy levels I felt. (Side note: I am lactose intolerant so cheese and milk and other delicious nutritious items that could have filled the gap is a no-go for me). I began to bloat more and feel tired and sluggish. I gave up on that after a month and began to eat animals again.

After giving up on the low meat diet I was undecided on what to do and just going about my diet as I had been before. Gastroenterologically lost, but with a hope to become healthy not just for the wedding but for the life I will spend with my future wife.

I was unhealthy, but not overly. I had no underlying medical issues, I was semi-active with martial arts and irregular gym visits, and I didn’t “over” indulge in desserts and junk daily. I had an interest in health but never applied it to my life. I was frequently bloated though, and I had random pains, not medically diagnosed. I am 6’3”, my heaviest weight was 265-270lbs, though at the time I began the Primal way, though I didn’t know it was “Primal” until months later, I was around 255lbs.

For me it started with podcasts. I listen mainly to comedy podcasts, and Joe Rogan is included. I had not listened to his conversation with Mark yet, but I had heard him ramble consistently on the ketogenic no-low carb diet he was experimenting with. That was the seed but not the catalyst. The real catalyst was listening to Robert Kelly’s You Know What Dude podcast. He’s a comedian who struggles with weight and in late February/early March 2016 he released an episode with a host of overweight comedians. At this time Bob Kelly was trying to lose weight and was also giving the no-low carb way a try. The whole episode was an ode to food. Listening to these overweight/obese comedians talk about food resonated with me on a very deep level, and that scared the daylights out of me.

The obsession/dependency on junk and the unwillingness to change because of apathy and resignation to the addiction was disturbing because I was able to relate to it so well. It was that point that I realized that I was not healthy not because of a lack of desire, or a lack of availability, but because I didn’t know what truly healthy was and never really wanted it enough to put forth an effort to change. I had/have such an emotional attachment to food stemming from childhood memories and being the basis on which I created friendships, that I looked at food (especially indulgent food) as a source of identity; I was a food-guy. After listening to that episode I swore never to be like a guest on that podcast. I also began to listen to health and exercise podcasts. I learned later my identity as the food-guy was just self-imposed. My friends, fortunately, are good friends and never really cared that I was the food-guy. They supported me and my decisions and suffered through my diatribes and monologues on the food changes I’d made.

The next day I swore off added sugar and processed carbs (with one “cheat meal” a weekend). No random candies in the office or baked goods from a co-worker. No ginger ale with dinner. No rice or pasta or bread or bagels or oatmeal or any carb I could think of. The following two weeks was met with light headedness and teeth gritting “hunger” (a.k.a. sugar and salt withdrawal). I have a constant hunger craving and I had to learn be OK with being hungry sometimes (this was the second hardest part of my change). I created my own breakfast (a banana mash which is a banana mashed with hemp seed, raw cacao, and a nut butter of choice) which I mostly stuck to with the occasional scrambled eggs with bacon if I forgot my banana at home. Lunches were salads topped with grilled chicken. Dinners were a bag of frozen veggies in a steam bag and some sort of meat/fish/poultry. It wasn’t easy and I had to creatively use spices to maintain variety, but I was/am determined to stick to it. What made it easier was changing my perspective from “I can’t eat that” to “I don’t eat that.”

The first two weeks I dropped 10 lbs and the weight kept sliding off.

Starting in May, after my body got used to the change in diet I kept a regular gym schedule. As time went on and I did more research Mark’s name was mentioned and it stuck with me. Rogan mentioned Mark’s book during another podcast and I bought it, and I signed up for the email newsletter. This led me hours down a rabbit hole of analyzing my food intake in terms of what was and was not natural/primal and tweaking what I could. I incorporate healthy fats and mostly removed corn and legumes. Peanut Butter was a hard one to drop, mainly because alternatives are expensive.

Now, at the end of September, 7 months later, I am down to 220-225 from 255ish (I try not to put too much emphasis on weight), I exercise regularly, and I feel great; no bloating or random pains.

My martial arts has improved and I am definitely lighter and more energetic on my feet. I am looking forward to focusing on losing that last little bit of belly fat and toning up; optimizing my body to the best it can be. My biggest problem now is not having the budget to replace my oversized clothes. Thank goodness for belts.

Others have noticed the change. My office asked me to do a reoccurring discussion with co-workers on what I did to become healthier and lose the weight. I’m disseminating what I am learning to my family, my health conscious brother has taken note. I appreciate the scientific breakdown of why Mark decides what is and is not Primal, and that he is nuanced enough to change with new evidence and studies. Primal is great because it’s a series of broad suggestions which make the most sense rather than micromanaging food.

I’d call my experience being primal a success, but it’s not yet complete, and will never be. I’m still relatively new to the whole thing so I’m looking forward to the ongoing process and slow steady progress to come.

Andrew

The post How Going Primal Helped Me Lose 30 Pounds, Eliminate Pain, and Stamp Out Bloating appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

How Expressing Your Emotions—or Not—Affects Your Health

[image error]A little bird told me the other day that it might not be a bad time to talk about the impact of emotions on our health—particularly our choice to express or not express them. I’ve heard people around me share that they’re worn out lately—that emotions have imposed a toll regardless of how well they keep their own in check. It got me thinking. Increasingly, researchers uncover the remarkable imbrication of mental and physical well-being. How we nourish or neglect our physical selves affects how we feel psychologically. Likewise, the emotional terrain we traverse throughout a day, in turn, elicits its own physiological feedback. Yet in this culture, there’s a certain esteem for the stiff upper lip. We restrain ourselves for the sake of others—our perception of their comfort and/or of their opinion of us. But are we sacrificing something in doing so? When does the polite instinct to suppress our emotions benefit us, and when does it backfire?

It’s hard not to think of Grok in these instances, and this might offer one of the more entertaining hypothetical scenarios. In close-knit band society, idiosyncratic characters or strong personalities were likely tolerated if they didn’t kick up too much discord or impair the group’s ability to thrive. That said, loose cannons who chronically threw the group dynamic into chaos probably would have been a different story. They would have had the choice to assimilate (and simmer down) or find a better fit elsewhere (not likely). As a result, a certain emotional reserve would’ve paid off.

Yet, in all fairness, society was different then. There certainly were major stressors, but they were more episodic than chronic. The intimate structure and egalitarian ethos of band society offered a means for individuals to be heard and conflicts to be contained—and, when possible, resolved.

Today, our social networks are bigger (but less intimate), our work hours are more lengthy and our daily schedules are more structured. It could be argued we live with more choice but less power—the same propensity for dispute, but more depersonalized means for settlement. Not to discount the many benefits of contemporary existence, but we often live with more stress and less support than our ancestors.

In the face of all this, maybe we should cut ourselves some slack. Feeling frustration in a day isn’t bad in itself, right?

As long as we don’t act on our emotions, we’re still in the good graces of society. Except that those emotions are still acting on us.

Let’s look at the whole picture.

In terms of expression, research suggests our risk for heart attack rises substantially (up to 8.5 times higher in the couple hours following an angry outburst). Experts cite the long-term risk as clearer and more substantiated. The more often subjects erupted in anger, the greater their risk of heart attack (more than a three-fold risk) and stroke (almost a five-fold risk) over time. (1, 2) Not surprisingly, the more risk factors a person has, the analysis shows, the greater the chance anger will send their health over the edge.

Most telling, perhaps, could be study of an interesting subset researchers call “repressors”—people who employ repression as a regular coping mechanism rather than selective strategy. Assessments reveal that people who fit this category claim low or normal psychological perception of stress, but their bodies demonstrate substantial impact—at times stronger effects than those who report feeling stressed. This disconnect between physical reality and mental awareness potentially sets the board for more physical damage because these people’s recognition is so skewed or largely absent.

Multiple studies, for instance, show a correlation between repression and an increased risk for both cancer and cardiovascular disease. (1, 2) Subjects with higher anger and hostility measures, especially internalized anger expression, also have a greater risk for Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

Finally, for those of you who are partnered, a study of couples who stifle anger rather than express it indicates that those who hold their frustration in may be shortening their lifespan.

So, what’s the answer? Where do we go from here?

Should we express our negative emotions?

When is it helpful to vent? At what point is it a law of diminishing returns? And what do we do with the residual energy?

I’d argue there’s a more substantial issue here. As is usually the case in life, we have more choices than we imagine. Examining how we relate to our emotions cracks open the subject in far more interesting ways than simply asking “to express or not to express.”

And let me say this first. Sharing an emotion means something different than expressing it. When we intentionally share an emotion, we’re offering it to another person. How productive we are has everything to do with the way we communicate and the extent to which we take responsibility for our own feelings. (Hint: no one “makes” us feel a certain way.)

Are we managing our lives when we share how we feel, or are we merely shedding our emotional debris?

Expressing our emotions, however, can broaden the possibilities immensely (and may in some cases be the better bet). The intent to express (as opposed to share) our emotions suggests we’re looking for relief. Sometimes there is no solution to a particular situation, or expressing our emotion won’t be the catalyst that gets us there anyway.

It’s better in these cases to indulge the emotion in some therapeutic writing to experience a productive outlet or attempt some intensive exercise to burn off the excessive energy and flood the system with some feel-good inputs.

Alternatively, as I hinted at earlier, we can work with our relationship to our emotions. We can redefine our association with the feelings that threaten to overwhelm us and/or get us into hot water.

Minimizing the direct impact of our lesser angels isn’t about emotional bypassing, pretending to float above the natural but inconvenient and often unproductive responses we have to life with all its warts.

Mindfulness training, for example, teaches us to observe our emotions without identifying with them. It’s the difference between being with anger rather than simply being angry. We observe anger in our thoughts and in our body’s responses, but we situate ourselves as witness to those emotions rather than their captive source.

In doing so, we can own our responsibility for the psychological energy we steep ourselves in during any given hour and simultaneously loosen the choke hold it has on us. We learn to lightly hold our innate primordial volatility while also not taking it so darned seriously.

Thanks for reading today, everyone. Have you changed the way you express yourself as a result of prioritizing health and well-being? Share your thoughts, and have a great end to the week.

The post How Expressing Your Emotions—or Not—Affects Your Health appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Updating the Primal Stance on Vegetable Oils: High-Oleic Varieties

Many years ago (I initially wrote that in jest, but it has been almost seven years), I wrote a definitive guide to oils, covering the benefits and drawbacks of over a dozen of the most common edible oils. Seven years is plenty of time for new data to come out, new perspectives to develop, and even new oils to hit the market. How would I go back and update my previous recommendations?

Most of it stands. The fatty acid breakdown and overall assessment of each oil remain valid and sound. Olive oil is still olive oil (unless it’s not). 2016 peanut oil is identical to 2010 peanut oil. If you’re interested in the basics or want to see my 2010 take on edible oils, go ahead and read through the Definitive Guide to Oils.

The reason for my recommendation that people avoid making most oils a large part of their diet also stands: they contain too much linoleic acid, a fragile fatty acid that becomes inflammatory when exposed to heat and creates oxidative stress when incorporated into our cell membranes and lipoproteins. The historic human diet contained very little linoleic acid; the modern industrial diet contains excessive amounts, mostly thanks to our reliance on these oils.

Everything compelling us to avoid vegetable oils lies downstream of the linoleic acid issue.

Rancidity: Higher PUFA oils are more prone to rancidity. Unless they were pressed yesterday into amber-colored bottles and shipped in cold storage, most high-PUFA vegetable oils arrive with some degree of rancidity.

Fragility: Linoleic acid has a bad tendency to oxidize when exposed to heat. Since these oils are being used in deep-fryers, sauté pans, and processed (cooked) food all over the world, the majority of the linoleic acid people consume has been partially oxidized.

Lack of historical precedent: Our current levels of linoleic acid are without precedent. Before industrialization, we had neither the means nor the need to extract edible oils from soybeans, canola, and other high-linoleic seeds. In 1909, we got about 2.7% of our calories from linoleic acid. By 1999, it was 7.2%. I have to imagine it’s even higher today.

Even the supposed benefits to heart health linoleic acid provides haven’t held up to close scrutiny. Uncovered data from the ancient studies used to support this idea show that replacing saturated fat with linoleic acid-rich oils give no benefit. If anything, it’s actually worse, reducing cholesterol (“good”) and increasing mortality (unequivocally bad).

And so when we talk about “limiting vegetable oils,” our main beef is with the linoleic acid content. It’s too fragile, it’s too ubiquitous, and it fails to deliver the promised benefits.

What if vegetable oils weren’t so high in linoleic acid? Producers are increasingly breeding “high-oleic, lower-PUFA” versions of many oil seeds, including canola, soybean, sunflower, safflower, peanut, and even corn. These newer varieties have more monounsaturated fat and far less polyunsaturated fat than the standard oils. Some have fatty acid profiles rivaling olive and avocado oil.

Does it matter? Are these oils actually healthier than their high-linoleic counterparts?

Corn oil: Compared to others oils, high-oleic corn oil produced the fewest polar compounds (a measure of lipid oxidation) in response to 20 hours of frying at 190 °C.

Canola oil: Humans who eat high-oleic canola oil have more oleic acid in their LDL particles. More oleic acid in your LDL particles means greater resistance to oxidation (and presumably greater resistance to heart disease).

Soybean oil: The only human study I found showed that compared to other types of soybean oil, high-oleic soybean oil results in greater increases in HDL. Whatever you want to say about the reliability of using lipid numbers to divine health status, higher HDL is pretty much always a good thing.

Sunflower oil: High-oleic sunflower oil is extremely stable in frying conditions, with any instability being attributed to its linoleic acid content.

Safflower oil: Remember what I’ve written about the colorectal carcinogenicity of high-PUFA seed oils? Compared to rats given high-linoleic safflower oil, rats eating high-oleic safflower oil were protected from colon cancer.

Peanut oil: Eating high-oleic peanuts improves cognitive and cardiovascular function in overweight adults. It wasn’t the isolated oil, so other peanut components could have played a role.

Now, these aren’t healthy oils. These are still refined oils largely depleted of the phytonutrients that naturally occur in the seeds, and they’ll still be used to create shelf-stable junk food and deep-fried fare. But at least they’re no longer actively unhealthy. They can become neutral cooking vehicles to be used for good or evil. All in all, I think widespread replacement of high-PUFA oils with high-oleic versions will bring huge benefits to everyone:

If you replaced the high-PUFA corn and soybeans given to pigs and chickens with high-oleic version, we’d see huge improvements in poultry and pork fatty acid composition. One study found that adding high-oleic sunflower oil to pig feed produced lard that was more resistant to oxidation. Another found the same thing happens in chickens given high-oleic sunflower feed.

Restaurant food wouldn’t be so bad. You could actually enjoy McDonald’s fries again as a treat.

People who can’t afford (or don’t know the difference) healthier food won’t be jamming so much oxidized linoleic acid into their mitochondrial membranes.

College kids grabbing a burger and fries at 2 am after the party lets out won’t be flooding their ethanol-compromised livers with linoleic acid that makes the hepatic situation worse.

Pregnant women who can’t stomach anything but processed junk in the first trimester won’t be constructing their future children out of rancid vegetable oil.

Folks who can’t drop $25 on a skinny pastured chicken can pick up a standard-issue fryer for $10, roast it, eat the crispy skin, and use the drippings to cook root veggies without worrying about their LDL particles filling up with linoleic acid and oxidizing.

Can these high-oleic oils replace high-oleic stalwarts like olive oil, mac nut oil, or avocado oil?

Definitely not.

There is far more to olive, mac nut, and avocado oil than the superior fatty acid profiles. They come from internationally renown, time-tested whole foods with incredible health benefits. They’re rich in phytonutrients. They taste great. They’ve undergone extensive vetting in the scientific literature.

And many of the high-oleic seed oils, like corn, soy, canola, sunflower, and safflower, tend to be highly processed. Whereas you can crush an olive or smash up some coconut flesh and get plenty of oil, extracting oil from something like corn or soy requires extensive processing and unpleasant solvents.

Certain produces have figured out how to make cold-pressed sunflower, safflower, and canola oils, but I don’t really get the point. Oils are often refined for a reason: the unrefined oil tastes terrible (or at least unremarkable) and contains unwanted compounds, like canola oil’s erucic acid.

These aren’t prized for their phytonutrient constituents. No one’s dipping their crusty French bread into virgin canola or going to safflower oil tastings. They were chosen simply as a cheap source of (somewhat) edible fatty acids. Going high-oleic doesn’t change this.

But it’s undoubtedly a positive development. Let’s hope the food and agricultural industries take note and adopt the high-oleic varieties.

For now, speak out. Ask your local restauranteurs if they know about high-oleic oils. Email the chains. Talk to the chicken guy at the farmer’s market—what’s he feeding his flock? Express interest.

Thanks for reading, everyone.

The post Updating the Primal Stance on Vegetable Oils: High-Oleic Varieties appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

The Definitive Guide to Wine

For years, wine was my stress reliever at the end of a long day. Having given up grains and grain-based beverages over a decade ago, I swapped beer for wine. It was my frequent dinner companion. Grilled grass-fed ribeye wasn’t grilled grass-fed ribeye without a glass of California Cab. And then I suspected my 1-2 glass a night habit was impairing my gut health and affecting my sleep. I ran a quick experiment, determined that the nightly wine indeed was having bad effects, and stopped drinking altogether.

It worked. My gut health and sleep improved. Yet I still missed wine. I missed pitting the crunch of an aged Gouda’s tyrosine crystals against a big red, lingering over a glass with an old friend, clinking glasses, giving toasts. I missed what Hemingway called “one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things in the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection.” But I didn’t miss the poor sleep and gut disturbances.

Then I met Todd White of Dry Farm Wines at the Bulletproof Conference. He introduced me to “natural wines” which use organic, dry-farmed grapes, interesting varietals, and ancient, low-input fermentation methods to produce lower-alcohol wines with greater complexity and fewer adulterants than mass-market wines. When I drank some of the wines Todd suggested, I experienced none of the gut or sleep disturbances. Wine was back.

Still, I was cowed. I’d been guilty of doing what I’ve always recommended against: blindly accepting wine without doing due diligence.

So let’s do that due diligence today. What’s so good about wine?

In a word: polyphenols.

I’ve spoken at length about polyphenols, the colorful plant compounds that reduce inflammation, prevent oxidation, and provoke beneficial hormetic responses from our bodies. Grapes are already rich in polyphenols, and the fermentation process creates even more.

Red wine is far higher in polyphenols than white wine, as most of them reside in the skin pigments. So much that red wine extract protects lipids against against oxidative damage, while white wine extract does not.

You can make white wine more like red by letting the skins steep awhile before removing them and adding more alcohol, which increases polyphenol extraction, but most white wine is far lower in polyphenols. That’s okay—”lower” isn’t zero and the alcohol itself has some benefit in low doses—and shouldn’t prevent you from enjoying white wine. If you want to try a red-esque white, go for something like this “skin ferment” Roussanne.

But red wine is undoubtedly more polyphenol-dense. If many of the health benefits associated with wine consumption come from the polyphenols, red wine is the clearly superior choice.

What are the health effects of wine consumption—positive and negative?

A vast amount of observational evidence suggests that wine consumption is good for us. These types of studies cannot establish causality, but plausible mechanisms exist which strengthen the associations.

Cardiovascular disease: Wine consumption has a J-curve relationship to cardiovascular disease. One study found that 150 mL (5 ounces) of wine per day is better than none, while high intakes are worse for mortality. 1-2 glasses per day for men and 1 per day for women as optimal.

Stroke: Wine consumption is linked to a lower risk of ischemic stroke.

Diabetes: Light or moderate wine consumption is linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes.

Wine versus other alcohol: Compared to other types of alcohol including beer and hard liquor, red wine has the strongest and most consistent relationship to health benefits. That may indicate there’s something different about wine, or something different about wine drinkers.

What do interventional studies show?

Red wine reduces postprandial inflammation. When people drink red wine with their meals, the meal gets healthier:

Their LDL particles become more resistant to oxidation and their inflammatory genes turn off. In regular wine drinkers, anti-oxidized LDL antibodies—a class of immune molecules the body dispatches to protect LDL particles vulnerable to oxidation—drop, indicating wine reduces the threat of oxidative damage and the need for protective antibodies (cigarette smoking, meanwhile, increases anti-oxidized LDL antibodies).

Red wine can even inhibit the postprandial oxidative damage to blood lipids and inflammatory gene expression you get after a trip to McDonald’s.

And as I’ve mentioned before, these anti-oxidative effects extend to cooking with wine. Using wine in a marinade or braise reduces the formation of carcinogenic compounds and inhibits oxidation of fats in the food.

One study compared grape extract to red wine made with the same types of grapes, finding that red wine provided benefits the grape extract did not. The researchers suggest this was wholly due to the alcohol content, but I think they’re overlooking the importance of the unique polyphenols that form during wine fermentation.

One way to see how wine affects people is the “initiation of red wine drinking” study. They take people who hadn’t been drinking wine, have them “initiate” wine drinking, and follow them and their biomarkers for several months.

Blood pressure: In people with (but not without) a genetic propensity toward efficient or “fast” alcohol metabolism, drinking red wine at dinner seems to lower blood pressure.

Type 2 diabetics: Type 2 diabetics who initiate red wine drinking at dinner see reduced signs of metabolic syndrome, including moderately improved glycemic control and blood lipids. Another benefit that surprised me was the improvement in sleep quality compared to the “just water” group. Another study found that while initiating red wine consumption while dieting doesn’t improve fat loss, it also doesn’t hinder it for type 2 diabetics.

Inflammation: A study found that non-drinkers who begin regularly drinking moderate amounts of Sicilian red wine enjoy reduced inflammatory markers and improved blood lipids.

Now, the negatives.

The alcohol is the major problem. Ethanol is a poison. Let’s just face it. Alcohol:

Depletes glutathione—the master antioxidant—from the liver. Once glutathione runs out, liver damage sets in.

Damages your liver. Alcohol puts your liver through a lot of stress. Full blown cirrhosis of the liver takes a long time and a lot of liquor to reach, but smaller amounts can still do damage.

Gives hangovers. Nothing worse than feeling depressed, anxious, confused, and sleepy with a massive headache while trying to piece together what happened the night before.

Can be addictive. According to this study, alcohol is less addictive than nicotine, crystal meth, and crack, but more addictive than heroin, intranasal amphetamine, cocaine, and caffeine. Most people who drink don’t develop it, but alcohol dependence is a real problem for those vulnerable to it. Nothing should own you. 

Is linked to depression. While moderate drinking is linked to a reduced risk of depression, higher intakes may increase the risk.

Those are dangers of alcohol in general. Wine may mitigate some of the risks, but high intakes of even the most polyphenol-rich wine won’t negate the damage of all that ethanol.

Wine is usually healthier than other types of liquor, but there are some unique components that may give you trouble.

Pesticides. Being delectable little balls of sugar water that pests can’t resist, grapes use a lot of pesticides. In France for example, wine grapes account for 3.7%  of the nation’s agricultural acreage but 20% of the pesticides used. A recent study found that the majority of French wines tested had detectable (under 10 ppm) and/or measurable (over 10 ppm) levels of pesticides. Organic wines and wines from certain regions (Cotes du Rhone, Languedoc) had lower levels than other regions.

Wetter regions will generally have more fungus and other pests and require that grows use more pesticides. Absent detailed pesticide residue data, aim for wines grown in drier regions. Wines from the dry areas of Argentina, Chile, and California should in theory have lower levels of pesticides; one study of wines from Italy found very low levels of pesticide residue.

But pesticides are used in every wine industry. You can usually snoop around and find pesticide use data by county, city, state, and country. You can’t really glean much actionable info from this data, but the point is clear: wine growers use pesticides.

Does it even matter? These are relatively minute amounts of pesticides.

While we don’t have many quality studies on pesticides in wine, I always err on the side of “fewer pesticides are better.” Call me a Luddite. Call me anti-science.

I just feel better drinking the “natural” wines.

Maybe it’s not even the lack of pesticides that do it; it could be any number of things, including the lower alcohol content, the lack of other chemical inputs, the increased polyphenol content from not over-watering the grape.

Headaches. The red wine headache is a real thing, even if the proximate cause remains unknown. Could be the tannins. Could be the ethanol. Could be the sulfites. Could be the tyramine increasing histamine release. We just know it happens in a significant number of people.

How can we maximize the benefits and minimize the negatives?

Water your wine. The Greeks and Romans added water to their wine in a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio, considering those who drank it undiluted to be barbarians. While the barbarians eventually triumphed, diluting one’s wine is an easy way to stave off dehydration, and even improve flavor. I prefer using sparkling mineral water, specifically Gerolsteiner (a German brand with high calcium and magnesium content). Yes, even with red.

Drink it with food. Wine is meant to be consumed with food. Not only does drinking wine with food improve your sensory experience of both and reduce postprandial oxidative stress, having food in your stomach slows alcohol absorption and gives your body more time to deal with it.

Drink it with tea. Fortifying alcoholic drinks with tea upregulated antioxidant production and protected binge-drinking mice from liver injury. If you go to one of those bespoke cocktail bars tended by guys in suspenders and mustaches, you’ll probably find a tea-based cocktail (for $16).

Know your genetic risk. Some genetic variants speed up alcohol metabolism, while others slow it down. A common variant in East Asian populations inhibits the detoxification of acetaldehyde, a toxic metabolite of ethanol; people with this variant who drink alcohol are more likely to get bad hangovers, experience negative symptoms, and even develop certain cancers. If you don’t have your genetic data handy, the presence of “flushing” when you drink alcohol is a good indicator that you have a deleterious variant. Alcohol addiction is often hereditary, too, so exercise caution if you have a family history of alcoholism.

Drink “natural” wines. Watch for these terms: natural, organic, biodynamic, dry-farmed, low-sulfite. They all indicate less human input and a greater expression of the grape’s grapeness. Coincidentally, these types of wines are often the most interesting. I personally drink Dry Farm Wines, since they meet all of these specifications. If you’re a wine drinker and want a steady supply, I recommend them as a go-to.

Gird your liver. If you’re going to drink enough to feel the effects, preparing your liver can assist alcohol detoxification and even prevent a hangover. Staying away from omega-6 fatty acids (saturated and monounsaturated fats can prevent ethanol-induced liver damage), eating polyphenol rich foods (ginger, turmeric, and dark chocolate are all excellent), eating some collagen (glycine helps form glutathione), taking NAC (NAC helps form glutathione), exercising, and getting good sleep the day of your drinking session are all integral parts of any effective alcohol prehab program.

Avoid cheap wine. Inexpensive wine is fine and often quite tasty. But truly cheap wine may harbor unwanted contaminants like arsenic.

Wine can be a beautiful thing. Moderate consumption (1-2 glasses a day) appears to reduce the risk of certain diseases, and it almost certainly makes a given meal healthier and less inflammatory. Is it necessary? No. If you don’t like wine, should you pick up a habit? Absolutely not.

But as long as you’re not experiencing direct negative effects (bad sleep, gut health, headaches, hangovers, a glass or two of the good stuff several times a week is probably fine, and possibly good for you.

What’s your favorite wine? How has it impacted your life?

Thanks for reading, everyone.

The post The Definitive Guide to Wine appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Dear Mark: Ground Meat Amino Acid Balance, Casein and Albumin, Heart and CoQ10, and Probiotics

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering four questions. First, are ground meats actually better for your glycine:methionine ratio, seeing as they contain all sorts of weird bits? Next, are the dairy proteins casein and albumin worth including in one’s protein arsenal? Third, is eating beef heart for its CoQ10 content another example of “eat like for like”? And finally, what’s my take on a recent article in the Atlantic about the futility of commonly-available probiotics?

Let’s go:

I’m curious about the collagen/gelatin/glycine content of ground meats vs. their wholesome counterparts. Since ground beef, for example, usually contains connective tissue (etc.), could it be considered a more well-balanced source of various proteins (assuming it’s the grass-fed, well-educated, impeccably-mannered stuff, of course)?

Alisa

Yes. If you break beef products down by glycine to methionine ratio, after pure suet and thymus, ground beef has the most favorable numbers. Specifically, 70/30 ground beef is the best, followed by 75/25, and so on. For whatever reason, Nutrition Data doesn’t include any gelatinous beef parts like oxtails or cheeks which would probably outpace the ground beef. 

Still, I don’t think a diet of burgers will get you to the glycine promised land. You’d want to include some nearly pure sources of glycine like pig ears.

And yes, make sure your ground meats come from animals with at least some postgraduate education.

What do you think about casein and albumin? Casein has many drawbacks, it seems.

Beto

The dairy protein casein’s gotten a bad rap ever since T. Colin Campbell (of China Study fame) cited a study that found 20% purified casein diets led to increased rates of liver cancer in rats compared to a 5% casein diet. Sounds horrible. No one wants liver cancer. Except, as Chris Masterjohn lays out in an older post, the rats on a 20% casein diet lived longer than the rats on a 5% casein diet.

Here’s how it went. Rats were placed on one of the two diets and given a small dose of aflatoxin each day. Aflatoxin is a fungal toxin found in improperly stored grains and legumes, and it’s been shown to reliably induce cancer.

The rats on the low-casein diet were more vulnerable to acute aflatoxin toxicity—they were more likely to die right away from aflatoxin poisoning than the high-casein rats. Their growth was severely stunted, reaching just half the normal adult body weight. They developed severely fatty livers. And when another group of young rats on normal feed were placed on the low-casein diet, they stopped growing altogether. But yes, they didn’t die from liver cancer like the others.

The rats on the high-casein diet lived longer—long enough to develop liver cancer, which eventually killed them. But they grew well, developing into full-fledged adult rats. They were far more resistant to acute aflatoxin toxicity. And, believe it or not, they were actually more resistant to getting cancer in the first place. Once they got cancer, casein worsened the prognosis. But higher casein intakes protected against cancer initiation.

That’s not to suggest there aren’t issues with casein. There’s the A1 vs A2 debate, the dairy protein intolerance problem. But I wouldn’t say casein is “bad.” It can be useful, especially if you’re lifting heavy things. I wouldn’t get all of your protein from casein (which would be impossible without purified casein powder). But as part of a balanced intake of various protein sources? Yeah, eat some dairy.

So, it’s really up to you.

Albumin is another protein found in dairy. Raw albumin, from raw dairy, contains a rare chain of amino acids that increase glutathione synthesis when consumed in their raw, undenatured state. Raw dairy proteins like albumin may be responsible for the improved immune systems seen in kids who drink raw dairy from an early age. Pasteurization destroys a majority of albumin.

And what about eating heart for a source of coQ10?

Coccinelle

Another good example of “eat like for like.”

Animal heart is probably the best source of CoQ10 in the diet, and research shows that CoQ10 is extremely important for heart health:

Heart failure patients who take CoQ10 have better survival rates and fewer cardiovascular events.

Statin-takers who take CoQ10 experience fewer side effects (statins actually deplete CoQ10 from muscle tissue).

It’s not just good for the heart, of course. CoQ10 is an “essential nutrient.” Plus, remember that CoQ10 isn’t some synthetic aberration cooked up in the lab. We produce it naturally (that’s why animal hearts and other tissues have it). It’s an important contributor to energy production in the mitochondria, and you know how vital those things are.

Thoughts?

“A Probiotic That Actually Lasts”

David

The way the article talks about probiotics is misleading. Not everyone is under the illusion that yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, and probiotic supplements will confer strains that take up permanent residence in the gut. Finding strains that can stay put, replace missing bacteria (say, from an antibiotics course) and improve health without having to keep re-dosing is certainly a worthy goal—and the Atlantic article you’ve linked explains the progress made on that front—but it’s not the only reason to take probiotics or eat fermented foods.

Probiotics do lots.

They can improve IBS symptoms and other GI issues. They can help the lactose intolerant tolerate it. They can improve rheumatoid arthritis symptoms and reduce the incidence of upper respiratory tract infections. They can increase gut barrier stability. 

Fermented foods are great, too. I’ve written entire posts extolling the virtues and benefits of yogurt, sauerkraut, cheese, and other fermented foods.

The short of it? Just because they may not take up permanent residence, getting your probiotics through supplementation and eating fermented foods is still a worthwhile endeavor.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care.

The post Dear Mark: Ground Meat Amino Acid Balance, Casein and Albumin, Heart and CoQ10, and Probiotics appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Weekend Link Love – Edition 421

I talked at length about lessons learned in my endurance career on the Tri Swim Coach Podcast.

RESEARCH OF THE WEEK

80% of Chinese clinical trials use falsified data.

Copper doorknobs fight infections.

Dogs and humans share genes for socializing (and social disorders).

Older women who consume more than 261 mg caffeine per day (2-3 cups of coffee, 5-6 cups of tea) have a lower risk of dementia.

A new study spanning 42 European countries finds no association between saturated fat and cardiovascular disease, the lowest risk among those eating the most fat and animal protein, and the highest risk among those eating the most refined carbs. Huh.

Bees just made the endangered species list for the first time ever. Congratulations!

People with a history of acne have longer telomeres.

NEW PRIMAL BLUEPRINT PODCASTS

Episode 137: Brant Cortright: Host Elle Russ chats with Dr. Brant Cortright, author of The Neurogenesis Diet and Lifestyle: Upgrade Your Brain, Upgrade Your Life, about how we can and why we should take steps to build new brain cells.

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.

7 Ways to Deal with Food Anxiety
How Should You Balance Your Fat Intake?
10 Ways to Optimize Your Meat Consumption

INTERESTING BLOG POSTS

Aging might not be inevitable. Or maybe it is.

Do statins really work?

Tom Naughton thinks the statin evangelists will lose.

MEDIA, SCHMEDIA

Why big brained animals have big yawns.

Theranos is pulling out of the blood test game.

EVERYTHING ELSE

Ancient myths contain truths about the history of human migration.

South African poachers contend with sky-diving anti-poacher dogs.

Placenta Fitbits.

A mix of good intentions and sneaky marketing has produced an overmedicated population.

The next generation of bike helmets will have airbags.

A Zika vaccine is in the works.

Things I’m Up to and Interested In

Business buzz of the week: I’m excited to announce that The Paleo Primer: A Second Helping is now available for purchase. To celebrate, I thought I’d throw in a couple bonuses when you snag a copy.

The podcast that caught my attention most: Dennis McKenna (ethnopharmacologist and brother to deceased psychedelic bard Terence) visited Robb Wolf’s podcast for a chat about psychedelics and society.

A quote I found worth pondering: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”—Upton Sinclair.

The article that most piqued my interest: “The Harsh, Hidden Lessons of Tree School”—Trees are screaming pretty much all the time. You just can’t hear it.

My favorite fun fact of the week: Front squats for basketball players, hip thrusts for footballers.

RECIPE CORNER

Dig into these Thai mussels.
Some fresh Butter Lettuce Wrapped Shrimp Tacos from Kelly LeVeque.
I’d accept eternal damnation if it meant easy access to eggs in hell.

TIME CAPSULE

One year ago (Oct 9 – Oct 15)

Health Perspective for Every Stage of Life: Part 1 – How should youngsters approach health?
Top 7 Emerging Paleo Trends – What’s coming?

COMMENT OF THE WEEK

This articles make sense; eat multiple sources of protein similar to the way one would eat a variety of veggies. I just have to find where to buy tiger penis…

– I know a guy, Kyle.

The post Weekend Link Love – Edition 421 appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Primal Chocolate Cake

Go ahead and get rid of all those other gluten-free, Paleo-friendly chocolate cake recipes. This is the only one you need. Why? The intense dark chocolate flavor, the smooth, rich texture, and the simple list of ingredients make this cake a winner. This chocolate cake is dense in the middle, and has a brownie-like chewiness around the edges. The “flour” is made from unsweetened cocoa powder and raw almonds blended together.  The moist, dense texture comes from melted dark chocolate, coconut oil, and a secret ingredient…PRIMAL KITCHEN™ Mayo.

Using mayonnaise as an ingredient in chocolate cake is not as strange as you might think. Made mainly from eggs and oil, mayonnaise keeps cake moist and tender. PRIMAL KITCHEN™ Mayo, made from organic eggs and avocado oil, is free of sugar, gluten, dairy, soy & canola oil. So, it keeps this cake in the category of “healthy indulgences.”

Time in the Kitchen: 25 minutes, plus 50 minutes to bake

Servings: 6

Ingredients:

¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder (30 g)
1 cup raw, unsalted almonds (150 g)
½ teaspoon salt (2.5 ml)
5 to 6 ounces bittersweet or dark chocolate, 70% cacao or higher, finely chopped (140 to 170 g)
½ cup honey (120 ml)
¼ cup PRIMAL KITCHEN™ Mayo (60 ml)
¼ cup coconut oil (60 ml)
4 eggs, separated
¼ teaspoon cream of tartar (2.5 ml)

Instructions

Lightly oil an 8 ½ x 4 ½” loaf pan. Preheat oven to 325 °F.

In a food processor, blend cocoa powder, almonds and salt until very finely ground, about 1 minute. Set aside.

Microwave chocolate in 25 seconds intervals, stirring in-between, until chocolate is melted. Stir in honey. Set aside and let cool.

In a large bowl, whisk together PRIMAL KITCHEN™ Mayo, coconut oil and egg yolks until smooth. Set aside.

Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites and cream of tartar until stiff peaks form, about 3 minutes.

Pour the ground almond mixture and the melted chocolate mixture into the large bowl with the PRIMAL KITCHEN™ Mayo. Use a spatula to gently mix everything together.

In two batches, gently fold the egg whites into the batter. Each time you add the egg whites, gently fold them in until completely incorporated into the batter, but don’t mix too vigorously, as you want the egg whites to stay as light and airy as possible.

Pour the batter into the loaf pan. Bake 50 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out almost completely clean. Set the loaf pan on a wire rack to cool for 20 minutes, then turn the cake out onto the rack to cool completely.

Top with whipped cream or whipped coconut cream before serving.

The post Primal Chocolate Cake appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

How Primal Gave Me Freedom from Depression, Pain, and Discomfort

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.

You know that Texas Style Toast?! It’s thick, white, and usually comes with mouthwatering butter spread across it?! Or even better, the French Toast version of Texas Style Toast? If you do you know it, you know it tastes amazing. *Mouth begins to water* Bet you never thought you would read the words TOAST on MDA. That’s okay, I would have never expected it either, but this is where my story semi-begins.

I honestly never felt good growing up. I always had a stomachache and without fail was continually bloated. I have pictures around the age of 9 where you can tell I have something wrapped around my stomach. I laugh now but my nine-year-old self would self-prescribe and wrap those hot pads you buy from the drugstore to relieve the pain. Even then I sensed something wasn’t right.

My anxieties throughout my childhood were crippling. I struggled to be happy yet I had every reason to be happy. I had amazing parents, a great life, but my little kid brain didn’t see it that way. It was like I couldn’t help but feel scared all the time. I hated it.

I was involved in the sport of gymnastics for about 12 years. And even though it was great, and taught me more than anything ever has, I would write in my journal how I wished I could be less scared and criticize myself less for being too tired during practice. I wanted to feel like all the other kids. But again I was too young to pinpoint what was wrong. I just didn’t know and lacked the knowledge to look toward what I was eating.

In high school, I tried doing cross-country. I loved running and the way I felt afterward. Suffering from anxieties and depression, the running ‘high’ would give me a little relief and I was grateful for it, but then I would proceed to sleep for hours after that. Looks started to become super important to me. It was nothing abnormal for a high-school girl, but I started noticing how no matter how hard I ran, I still gained weight. This didn’t help with my confidence and depression. Again, the red flags were popping up and I was noticing.

I remember I was traveling with friends for a high school event and we ate at Texas Roadhouse. By this time I was eating “healthy,” or what I thought was healthy. I was eating a lot of fruit, dairy, and processed carbs. But this specific time I decided to have the glorious smelling Texas Toast, and almost immediately, I felt super sick. My stomach hurt, I felt like I was going to puke. My friend exclaimed, “Kristina, how come you always feel sick?!” Ding!

Oh and here’s another interesting point, maybe a little TMI, but I still hadn’t gotten my period yet. RED FLAG.

Now that I think back, maybe it was all the stress I was putting myself under (obviously I hadn’t discovered ADRENAL FATIGUE lol). But either way, I wanted to feel as confident as I knew I was capable of being. Gymnastics had already given me the reality to know I could be strong.

Fast forward. I went off to college for my freshman year. I thought I was eating well. Lots of fruit and dairy from the dining hall, and had done enough self-reflection to know that bread was not sitting well with me. I went gluten-free but not completely and considered gluten-free processed food good for me. I wanted more and more to feel good. By the time summer break came along I had hit my breaking point. I wasn’t doing as well as I would have liked at school. I would keep to myself in my dorm room because of my social anxieties and would binge on all that gluten-free processed food and sugar.

(Side note; I had been to doctors throughout high school who put me on Synthroid and told me to workout more. I was the typical story you hear on StopTheThyroidMadness.com. I love this website, by the way.)

My mom, that summer, brought me to a functional doctor who turned my whole life around from the first appointment. I broke down crying in front of my doctor. I wanted change. She put me on a non-processed foods diet. Higher protein, low-carb and no sugar. I didn’t question her, I was desperate. I’m not joking when I say that I felt like a whole new person within five days. I honestly did not realize how fast I was improving. People asked me if it was hard and I replied with, “You know what, it really wasn’t because nothing was as hard as how badly I had been feeling.”

And I think that was the key and what kept me so consistent with never going back to my old habits. Hard was not being able to be fun around my friends. Hard was feeling sick and tired all the time. Hard was being unable to believe in myself. Hard was not feeling like I couldn’t physically doing things people my age were.

Within two weeks my acne cleared up, my period came, my bloating went away, no stomach aches, and the depression lifted. I had morphed into the person I knew I had always been. The person I had always wanted to feel like. It sounds too good be true, but oh my gosh I couldn’t be more honest here. The shift was so evident I knew I never wanted to EVER go back. I loved myself enough to know that this was worth the effort.

That week I started researching a real food diet and stumbled upon Mark’s Daily Apple. Never before this point had I realized the impact food had on me and could have on others. It’s been almost six years since that point. I still struggle but nothing like before. The knowledge saved my life. And continues to do so.

My mom has been a huge lifeline for me and always believed in me from day one. I still struggle with bouts of flares from Hashimoto’s, but nothing like they could be. I have the knowledge now to know better and help me through. Plus podcasts have been such a helpful way for me to discover more. MDA podcasts are GREAT!

A lot of the success stories involve pictures of weight loss and mine included weight loss too. When I was first going through this, I thought weight loss was the best part. Weight loss was the success I needed to see at that point to continue. But that was not the best product in the end.

I can get up in front of a large group of people and talk. I can hang out with my family and friends and smile. I cook a lot now and rarely feel sick.

I have been coaching gymnastics and the gymnastics and CrossFit correlation has been so fun getting to learn!

I love everything that this lifestyle has given to me and continues to do so.

P.S. A bit of advice from my 9-year-old self: If you are a parent please look into the food your family is eating. It has the ability to change your whole world around in the most positive way!

6 Reasons Why Mistakes Are Important for Success

Ask a hundred people you meet this week what instances spurred their biggest growth in life (any dimension of it) and I’ll wager most of those stories will fall under the umbrella of “mistakes.” And the bigger the flub, you’ll find, the more learning (and benefit) they probably received in the long-term. You’d think that knowing this we’d welcome the missteps and embrace them as the natural, productive, and highly potent opportunities they are. But not so much. Instead, we live in fear of them, try to circumvent them, endeavor to hide them even when they inevitably happen. We get thrown off by a skewed perception (social media and otherwise driven) that others magically operate out of perfection. We fall prey to the idea that when we make a mistake, we have a problem instead of an opening. It’s too bad really—because in doing so we cut ourselves off from perhaps our most effective catalysts for change…and success.

When we think of success, our minds naturally zero in on the desired outcome. Success is the ultimate goal, the end product, the final result we wanted all along. While successfully attaining an individual outcome is gratifying, there’s the whole process from desire to result that we tend to gloss over, not to mention the bigger perspective we get on what’s possible to desire (and achieve). Mistakes are an essential part of any transformation. Not only do they underscore the whole fallible humanity we’re working with, but they bust open the entire process of transformation, helping us break through into deeper dimensions of commitment while redirecting us toward more constructive pathways.

The challenge is to learn to accept the messiness of change—health change, career change, family change, lifestyle change. We can, of course, take a lesson from history here. Life is and has always been trial and error. Human—and all of—evolution was one massive set of false starts and broken lines with only a few (and their progeny) getting out alive. There’s perspective on the five pounds you gained over the summer.

It’s simple really. If we can just accept the patchy, errant nature of progress, we have a better chance of using our mistakes to propel rather than sink our success. Here are a few thoughts on that.

1. Mistakes move us to learn

Sure, failure smarts, but when the sting wears off, we find ourselves more open to the feedback of the experience (hence the saying, “There is no failure, only feedback.”) Mistakes knock us off our rigid axis, freeing us from the delusion that the way were doing it was the best way, let alone the only way. Although we of course knew this intellectually, mistakes help us absorb this truth very quickly.

We land in a place of teachability, a place in which we’re more receptive to new influences and perspectives. Call it necessity or humble pie.

Maybe we’ve been stuck in a fitness routine that served us well in our 30s and 40s that doesn’t meet our needs in later decades, and it took an injury to finally realize it. Maybe we thought after five years of being gluten free that eating a stack of pancakes wouldn’t be a big deal for our IBS. The feedback makes a grand statement we won’t soon forget.

After the inevitable regret, the point here is that we become willing to learn, willing to do it a different way, willing to build resolve. We’re motivated to avoid injury. We’re committed to give up foods or stressors that don’t serve us. Our brains themselves are even supercharging these efforts, operating at heightened sensitivity. Research shows we have a unique form of memory known as error memory, which helps us perform motor tasks differently. Likewise, serious food reactions can result in instinctual aversion. Far from mere avoidance learning, we can take on a mindset that makes the whole blunder feel like a positive move when we put it in context or see how we can use the information to move our health forward.

A saying I’ve heard attributed to a few people is “I never lose. I either win or learn.” Make this your mantra, and be willing to always ask what the lesson is.

2. Mistakes give rise to healthy self-compassion

It’s a truth that’s unfortunately lost on too many people. In contrast to the stereotypical drill sergeant model of continual butt kicking, showing ourselves self-compassion is a key motivator to keep progressing toward our goals. Research confirms that compassionate acceptance of our own mistakes enhances our enthusiasm and determination to move forward toward our goals.

A junk food binge won’t, in fact, help you improve your health or lose weight. But stressing about or abusing yourself over it won’t either. Use the chance to detach from the choices, offer up compassion, and take a nonjudgmental but discerning look at what set the chain in motion and what the real effect was. (It probably wasn’t as enjoyable as you thought when it was all said and done.) What did you need that you weren’t getting? What reserves (of patience, of self-care, of sleep/rest, of solitude, of activity) were running low? How can you take better care of yourself next time? A bit of kindness goes a long way in making the best of a situation and applying it for your benefit in the future.

3. Mistakes free us from sabotaging fears and help us take more positive risks

It’s amazing the number fear can do on our health efforts. When we fear a certain outcome (e.g. regaining the weight, injuring ourselves, not training adequately for a race, coming in last with something, doing anything we felt pressured to take on, etc.), we give it energy and attention. Our mind at times can even compulsively get wound around it. We become so entranced with trying desperately to tread the edge that we end up falling right in.

And then it’s done. Having hit up against the thing we have feared the most, there’s a certain relief. The biggest bogey isn’t trying to break down the psychic door. It’s here on the couch sitting next to us. And suddenly, it doesn’t seem like such a catastrophe to live with. Not our first choice, but not the complete disaster we stressed so much about averting.

There’s a certain fearlessness that comes with “failure”—as in multiple failures, time and time and time again. It’s one way elite athletes actually build resilience and hone discipline. Because the more fearless we are, the less inhibited we are, and this opens up major possibilities.

The cliche (but still insightful) question goes, “What would you attempt if you knew you couldn’t fail?” A better version might be, “What would you attempt if you realized that failure didn’t matter and wouldn’t be the last word?”

Because if we’re not making mistakes, we’re not taking big enough risks…

4. Mistakes reboot our motivation

It might seem counterintuitive. What knocks us on our duff is what’s going to help us win the race? With a little resilience, yes. We admit we haven’t been living up to our healthy ideals, and it’s taken a toll. Even when we’ve been chugging along in the usual routine, it’s easy to get complacent, easy to check out. We might have discipline to keep going with whatever healthy behaviors we’ve put into place, but we can drift away from the core of what we’re doing.

Hitting a major snag changes that. Suddenly, we’re not operating on autopilot anymore. We have to think once again about what we’re doing. We have to be solution-minded, and to do that we reinvest.

If we find ourselves in the midst of a panic attack because we’ve let our stress levels skyrocket, if we take a spill on the treadmill because we’re overtired from staying up late too many nights, if we realize our waistline has crept up because we’re trying to eat the way we did a decade ago when hormonal reality was different, we’re going to have to get creative and commit.

5. Mistakes move us from an improvement mindset to an expansion mindset

This is big. And maybe the point people most commonly miss.

Mistakes move us out of the small view of success as honing a skill to (supposed) perfection and into a enlarging perspective that embraces success as living into encompassing actualization and fulfillment. To move on from them, we view mistakes against the larger backdrop of the vision we have for our lives. Doing so helps us see them in right proportion (i.e. not a big deal in the grand scheme). We surrender the loss, in other words, to re-affirm the vision and gather ourselves to keep pushing forward.

Success can be bench pressing a particular amount, but that’s a situational, limited view. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a performance goal, but it focuses on a skill, not a life.

Most of us want a successful life.

That means not just improving what already exists, what we’re already operating out of. Mistakes keep us nimble and creative, open to a larger picture, focused on expansion rather than perfection. They might disappoint us in the moment but ultimately remind us of the overarching design we’re aiming for.

6. Mistakes remind us that it’s all a grand experiment

Finally, mistakes oblige us to remember that all of our efforts, whatever they come to or don’t come to, are how we meet the game of life each day. The more passionately we play, the more we get out of it. But that invariably means more, not fewer, screw-ups and even some errors of colossal proportion.

Mistakes keep us flexible and attentive. Engaged with life rather than with routine. And which life would you rather have?

Thanks for reading today, everyone. Share your thoughts on mistakes, failure and rebooting below.

The post 6 Reasons Why Mistakes Are Important for Success appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.