Mark Sisson's Blog, page 209

How to Accept Your Body After Significant Weight Loss

There are many meaningful reasons people go Primal: they want to improve their fitness, increase their longevity, feel younger, reverse lifestyle conditions, heal hormonal imbalances, enhance fertility, get off prescription medications, and lose fat. With regard to losing fat, some want to lose a good deal of it—to significantly alter their body composition. This goal, while it has the power to shift one’s entire health trajectory (not to mention life experience) may also be the most likely to come with unforeseen, even undesired results. I’m talking particularly about those who undergo dramatic transformations—the kind that can leave them feeling incredible, enjoying vitality, and (in particular) looking substantially different.

To be sure, there is much to celebrate when we meet body transformation goals: the impressive discipline, the new strength, the renewed health, the added energy, and so on. But for some people there can also be an uncomfortable gap between how they saw themselves before and how they have yet to see themselves post-goal. Once the major push to the objective is done and they relax into a new normal, the striking incongruence can bring up surprisingly ambivalent or even critical feelings. How can such extraordinary success become a Pandora’s box?

I’ve heard people describe this post-goal experience in terms of everything from emotional struggle to serious letdown, from identity crisis to reality check. Some people may feel unsettled by not fully recognizing the person in the mirror anymore, especially if they’ve not been close to their new body composition in a number of decades. Others may suddenly feel they’ve exchanged body image issues, losing the fat but now noticing stretch marks or loose skin.

Some people’s stress revolves more around the social response to their transformation. Being the topic of conversation or recipient of new attention and compliments can leave them feeling uncomfortably vulnerable. Still others may struggle with an unrelenting anxiety over regaining the weight or a self-conscious, even compulsive perfectionism around body image that drains the joy out of their success.

If we take the Primal call to thrive seriously, we likely want better than this for ourselves. But what can we do when major transformation leaves us anxious or ill-content? How can we move into acceptance when “after-effects” hit? What perspectives can help us counterbalance normal struggles so we can enjoy our achievements and the possibilities they open up in our lives?

Here are a few tips.

Recalibrate your expectations (after the fact).

Some of us go into major fat/weight loss anticipating it will be the panacea to all negative thoughts and patterns in our lives. We’ll finally like ourselves once we change our bodies. We’ll be better partners or feel more effective at work once we have our energy back. We’ll be grateful for our lives once the image in the mirror reflects what we want it to.

Physical transformation delivers many results, but it doesn’t deliver self-respect you never had. It doesn’t deliver a better marriage, particularly once the novelty of your change wears off. It doesn’t rewrite your job description or your work habits.

And it doesn’t guarantee physical perfection. You came into this world with a physical template based on a genetic formula. There’s a lot of flexibility in the end result, but most of us in our “best” condition will never and should never match what you’d find in a magazine.

To boot, we may forever live with the effects of our previous girth in the look of our skin, and there’s nothing wrong or abnormal about it. The most powerful objective, if we’re honest, was never about having the ideal body as much as it was about having a better life.

What are we going to do about that now?

If we attached unreasonable promises to body change, it might be time to change our attitude. While the choice and discipline we harness for physical transformation can open us to deeper mental shifts, what’s inner work is still inner work. Accept that maybe the outer change is just the first step in a bigger movement in your life—a journey toward greater well-being and deeper self-acceptance that you were able to conceptualize at the outset.

Understand that change always leaves us feeling displaced for a while.

The more we feel like things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be, the more discomfort we’ll feel. If we can accept the unsettledness for a while, we’ll eventually relax into the new conditions. Life will continually change us over the years—our identities and our bodies. There isn’t a time when we won’t be expected to shift, grow, and adapt. This experience now is simply one version of that call to adaptability, a Primal principle if there ever was one.

Find other people who get what you’re going through. Process it, but put it in perspective. Others have come to feel at home in themselves after transforming their bodies, and so will you with time.

Let go of what others think of you.

This truth goes for all of us at any time. The fact is, we’d all be more peaceful, grounded people if we gave up our careers in mind-reading and extracted our self-image from others’ perceptions.

This goes double, like it or not, when we’re feeling vulnerable or pressured by others’ commentary. Sure, it might not seem fair to have to be the ones to change more when the problem is other people, or so we think. The point isn’t who’s to “blame,” but what we want to feel. Do we want to feel good about our transformation rather than feel targeted by it? Then the onus is on us to detach.

Who we are has nothing to do with what others think. We can give away our self-identity to the social consensus if we really want to, but that’s a choice—and not a healthy one.

Practice feeling solid in yourself with some kind of meditative method that fits you. (And, yes, it is a practice that takes root over time rather than an intellectual realization that solves everything in the moment.) Harness the physical strength and resilience you’ve experienced in your fitness endeavors and imagine transferring them to emotional fortitude.

Love the person you were.

This might sound more sentimental than my usual commentary, but it’s worth saying. In fact, I wish it were said more often.

After a major body transformation, we may find ourselves liking our reflections more, fitting into clothes we never hoped to wear, enjoying compliments left and right, garnering attention from people who may have ignored us before. We suddenly have options, energy, cache we may not have felt (or embraced at least) when we were heavier. As a result, we might get the sense that Self 1.0 is something to disown, to forget, to hide even.

We put the old photos away, not wanting people to see them or not wanting the reminder ourselves. We eventually may not want to talk about the change at all, preferring to see ourselves solely as we are now. But that kind of renouncing doesn’t bode well for intact emotional well-being.

Ultimately, full spectrum acceptance may not be about leaving photos up of yourself at previous sizes, but it is about reflecting on your motivations when you take them down. It may not involve sharing your story, but it is about being forever proud of it. Others cared about you then. Others supported you in your process. You can likewise value yourself at all stages of life and health. You can value your story and find meaning in it. How we adjust to the hurdles of physical change and embrace the whole of our experience is without a doubt part of the Primal approach to living well.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Have you felt unexpected “kick-back” emotions following a significant transformation? What perspectives and actions made a difference for you? Share your experience, and have a great end to the week, everyone.

The post How to Accept Your Body After Significant Weight Loss appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

CRISPR: What Does Gene Editing Mean for the Future of Primal Living?

By now, you’ve no doubt heard of CRISPR, the latest gene-editing tool sweeping research labs across the globe. It was first discovered in certain strains of bacteria, who use it as an important weapon against dangerous viruses. In bacteria, CRISPR identifies a virus that poses a threat, records the virus’ genetic data and imprints it onto RNA molecules. An immune enzyme called Cas9 grabs one of the RNA molecules and goes exploring. When Cas9 encounters a virus that matches the data on the RNA molecule, it latches on and slices the virus in half to prevent it from replicating and posing any threat.

Researchers have co-opted the CRISPR/Cas9 mechanism to edit genes. Instead of copying dangerous viral DNA sequences onto the RNA molecules, they can copy over any sequence they want to edit. And instead of Cas9 destroying viruses, it makes precise cuts and removes specific bits of genetic data from the designated sequence. This allows researchers to target and edit specific gene sequences with genetic data of their choosing.

Are there risks?

“Off-target” events.

Although we know how to program Cas9 to make specific edits to genes, it’s not always accurate. Sometimes the wrong portion of the sequence is removed and replaced. Other times, Cas9 slices the right sequence but, once inside the cell, starts editing other sequences. Early CRISPR editing accuracy varied wildly, with some studies reporting many “off-target” events and others reporting very few. As you might imagine, editing the wrong genetic sequence defeats the purpose of CRISPR entirely and can even create new health conditions.

The latest updates to the CRISPR tech have made huge strides in accuracy. Using edited Cas9 enzymes from Strep. pyogenes, MIT and Harvard scientists have nearly abolished off-target events, as evidenced by a study from late last year.

Unforeseen “off-target” events.

Right now they use a composite human genome, a kind of “standard” or “template,” to map and avoid the potential off-target interactions. But in actual real people (or embryos), every genome is unique. No standardized genome map can account for that.  So the predictive model that works so well in the lab on a homogeneous sample might not play out the same in the real world.

Assuming those get ironed out, what’s the prospect of hyper-intelligent designer babies?

First, the most alluring traits are the hardest to edit. Want a smarter kid? Dozens of genes contribute to cognitive ability (PDF), none contributing more than a couple IQ points. Height? Hundreds of genes contribute to height. Personality? Thousands.

Second, preventing diseases is easier. Want to reduce your chance of Alzheimer’s? Modify your APOE gene. Improve your chances of avoiding breast cancer? Edit the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Cystic fibrosis depends heavily on a single gene, too.

I won’t go over every potentially beneficial edit we can make to our genes with CRISPR. You name a trait or disease and it can probably be modified with genetic editing. The environment and other epigenetic inputs matter too, of course, but genes underlie everything.

Okay.

Assuming we do figure it all out, identify all the SNPs that interact with the traits and conditions we want to edit, could CRISPR render Primal living, eating, and exercising moot?

After all, some people are just impervious to metabolic derangement. They’re set up for lifelong leanness, health, and longevity, mostly because of their genes. That can be replicated, assuming the technology works. If genetic editing turns every incoming human into that lucky jerk in your high school who sat around all day eating McDonald’s and never gained an ounce while dominating three varsity sports, many people will give up their gym memberships and stop shopping the produce aisle.

I’m sure, given enough time, scientists will figure out a way to edit genes so that we never have to exercise, watch what we eat, or worry about our health ever again. We’ll become superworkers, impervious to stress and able to function (and stay healthy) on three hours of sleep a night. We’ll have the option to become energy-wasting (eat all you want, whatever you want, never gain an ounce) or energy-conserving (thrive on a few hundred calories a day, never get hungry) organisms. We’ll be able to reduce our vitamin D requirements or enhance our vitamin D synthesis to the point where a minute of sunlight every week is plenty.

The foods, behaviors, exercises, and lifestyle factors that make us healthy aren’t purely utilitarian. And even if they are, we don’t see them that way. Evolutionary pressures work below the conscious level. The pleasure of sex incentivizes us to spread our genetic material. The spread of our genetic material is the proximate cause, but that’s not what motivates us in the moment. It’s the pleasure.

We may not have to practice “lots of slow moving,” but isn’t walking barefoot over grass or along the beach kinda nice?

We may never have to trail run through the redwoods, but damn if that isn’t a gorgeous, sacred way to spend an afternoon.

I don’t think those reactions to Primal practices go away.

If anything, people being able to ensure their health and fitness will allow them to focus on the pleasure, meaning, and fun the Primal lifestyle offers.

And there will be other edits we can make down the line that can enhance our quality of life and arguably make us even more Primal.

Like the myostatin gene, which regulates muscle growth. Scientists have successfully and reliably used CRISPR to produce myostatin knockout rabbits, cows, goats, mice, and pigs. They get enormous. Take a look at this myostatin knockout dog. Or this bull. Or these rabbits. Or the mice in this study (PDF; just scroll down).

In resource-limited environments, like our ancestral backdrop, it made sense to have myostatin. Extra muscle required extra calories. We didn’t need to look like Terminator-era Arnold to be effective hunter-gatherers. These days, we don’t have to hunt or forage for our food. We just walk down to the market and buy whatever we want. It’s cheaper than ever before. We can eat about as much as we want. We can enjoy big muscles even if we don’t really need them.

And why not? It may even improve the aging process.

I’m quite optimistic.

People tend to imagine the worst kind of dystopian cyberpunk future: genetic ubermensch striding around gleaming cityscapes doing calculus in their heads while the un-engineered lower classes battle over the scraps and rely on government-funded feed pellets and VR.

Yet the latest tech isn’t walled off from the middle and working classes. Take the smartphone for example. 20 years ago, only the likes of Zack Morris and Pablo Escobar (yeah, I know it’s from Narcos) had mobile phones. Today, there are nearly 3 billion smartphones in circulation worldwide and by 2020, there’ll be over 6 billion. That’s space-age technology—palm sized devices that contain all the world’s knowledge and wisdom and information—and it’s available to almost half the world, from Nigeria to Nice to New Zealand.

CRISPR itself is quite cost effective and accessible, and not just to research centers and universities. DIYers are putting together CRISPR labs at home for $1000 and using software to design custom genetic sequences. A recent Kickstarter offered CRISPR kits that fit on your kitchen table for under $200. I expect it’ll only get easier and cheaper.

We’re a long way away from in vivo genetic editing of large adult mammals. There are major hurdles to that, like that fact that you don’t immerse yourself in a CRISPR bath that permeates your tissues. You can’t swallow a “CRISPR pill” that modifies all your adult DNA. It doesn’t “know” where to go without you delivering it to the right tissues.

But editing human embryos shortly after conception is a viable way of altering the genetic makeup of an (eventual) adult. The Chinese are beginning trials in human embryos. Pretty soon, parents will be able to select the traits they desire in their children, or even send CRISPR-ized nanobots into the placenta with editing instructions. I fully expect the first human to break a 9 second 100m dash will be a CRISPRed Chinese guy.

Still, maybe the biggest hurdle of all is our incomplete knowledge. We need broader genetic datasets, incuding genomes from different ethnicities, to untangle and identify the SNPs that cause traits (especially complex ones) and conditions. At this point, we just don’t know if (or where) many “genes for” this condition or that trait exist.

We’ll get there. Or maybe the next generation will. Who knows?

Either way, I think it’s very cool and exciting.

What about you?

The post CRISPR: What Does Gene Editing Mean for the Future of Primal Living? appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

How Using Fat for Fuel Can Boost Athletic Performance

A few weeks back, I explored the potential benefits using fat as your primary fuel can have on cognitive function. While the strongest research centers on people dealing with age-related cognitive decline and other neurodegenerative diseases, and whether burning fat and ketones can boost cognitive function in healthy adults remains unconfirmed, the totality of the evidence suggests it can provide a benefit. Today, I’ll be discussing a related topic with more solid scientific footing: the effects of fat-adaptation on athletic performance.

Detractors of high-fat, low-carb diets often claim that they’re bad for physical performance. They may offer some help to people with certain forms of brain cancer, they can definitely help obese people lose weight quickly and easily, and the ketogenic diet is the gold standard treatment for epilepsy, but fat-adaptation severely hampers your ability to perform on the field, on the track, and at the gym.

Is this really true, though?

While the effect of fat adaptation on anaerobic performance is unclear, it can actually improve many other measures of physical performance. There may even be cause for anaerobic-centric athletes to get fat-adapted, if only for part of the time.

Let’s dig right into the benefits.

Your energy efficiency improves.

Fat-adaptation makes you better at burning fat and less reliant on muscle glycogen to fuel your efforts. Any amount of work you can accomplish by using mostly/all fat rather than mostly/all glycogen is evidence of efficiency. As the effort increases (with appropriate diet and training over time) and you can still do most of it burning fat, you spare glycogen for even greater efforts or for use far later in the event.

In one study, endurance athletes who’d been on the ketogenic diet for an average of 20 months burned 2.3 times more fat at peak oxidation, burned 59% more fat overall, and did so at higher intensities (70% of VO2max) than endurance athletes on “normal” diets, for whom fat oxidation dropped off and sugar-burning dominated at 54.9% of VO2max. This means that their anaerobic threshold was much higher than conventional athletes; they could go longer and harder using fat and ketones. Glycogen reserves were similar in both groups.

You can access your large reservoir of adipose tissue.

Glycogen’s great to have around for intense activity, but we can’t store much; the most muscle-bound man probably has the capacity for just 600 grams of glycogen in his liver and skeletal muscle tissue. That’s only 2400 calories. Even lean athletes without visible body fat possess tens of thousands of calories worth of clean-burning, reliable adipose tissue. Fat-adapted athletes can burn a greater proportion of body fat before dipping into the relatively scarce and precious pools of muscle and liver glycogen, thus preserving the latter for later use.

You’re not tethered to food.

Back when I was a sugar-burning athlete, I had to keep carbs on my person at all times. Yeah, yeah, I burned every last thing I ate, but I couldn’t go longer than a couple hours without eating. And it wasn’t just the physical burden of eating all the time that got to me. It was also the psychological burden of needing to eat all the time. I felt powerless.

That ended when I became a fat-burning beast. Now, I skip meals. Or the meals skip themselves because I’m just not hungry. When I get that early morning text from a buddy inviting me on a hike, I accept it without worrying about “carbing up” first or loading up my backpack with snacks.

This also means you won’t have to carry several pounds of glucose goo just to make it through a race.

Aerobic exercise “feels easier.”

Since you need less oxygen to do a given amount of work when you are fat adapted, burning fat for fuel makes aerobic activity feel easier. You could be matching or even beating your best times and feel great doing it. If you’re at all like those long-term keto endurance athletes, you might get to the point where close to 70% of VO2max feels downright comfy. This gives you a mental edge. Rather than grit your teeth and power through a grueling session, you can actually enjoy your training.

Plus, if your “discomfort threshold” goes up, you can handle a lot more work before pain and suffering set in.

You’ll build more mitochondria.

Mitochondria are the power plants of our cells. They turn caloric energy—fat, carbs, ketones—into real-world energy, or ATP. The more mitochondria you have, the more ATP you have at your disposal. The best way to spur the creation of new mitochondria is through AMPK activation. AMPK increases in states of energy deprivation. Low-calorie or low-carb diets, low glycogen levels, starvation, ketosis, and certain types of exercise all increase AMPK. Anything that reduces the calories coming in and/or increases the calories going out will probably increase AMPK.

When excess energy overloads the mitochondria’s capacity to convert it in ATP, bad things happen: insulin resistance, generation of reactive oxygen species, and oxidative stress. Having more mitochondria increases your conversion capacity; you can actually handle more energy coming in. And you get more usable energy for fun and important stuff like running sprints or marathons, lifting weights or toddlers, reading books or emails, and being productive at work.

Train low, race high.

Fat isn’t an instant performance boost. No one’s eating a stick of butter before the race and claiming superpowers. Fat-adaptation for athletic performance is a long game: by improving substrate utilization, building new mitochondria, increasing metabolic flexibility, and increasing the amount of fat burned for a given intensity, athletes enjoy a bigger engine.

This is the “train low, race high” paradigm gaining prominence in the endurance world. By training with low glycogen levels, you get better at functioning without glycogen. When race time rolls around, you carb up and get the best of both worlds: enhanced fat oxidation and plenty of glycogen.

That’s how Zach Bitter, a fat-adapted ultramarathoner, trains. He spends most of his training time on a high-fat diet, but carbs up for and during races. Seems to be working okay for him, if you consider running 7-minute miles for 12 hours straight and beating the US 100 mile world record “okay.”

Note the distinction between training and competition. I’m not suggesting that Lebron James go on an epilepsy-worthy keto diet during the NBA Finals or that Michael Phelps fast before an Olympics relay. I am suggesting—and James would probably agree, as he’s gone low-carb paleo to drop body weight during off seasons—that athletes can benefit from training while fat-adapted and low in glycogen even if they intend to “race” while high in glycogen.

Okay, getting fat-adapted can clearly benefit endurance athletes, but what about maximal intensity—anaerobic activity that demands carbohydrate? It remains to be seen. While we haven’t seen many NBA point guards, NFL running backs, CrossFit Games runners-up, or Grand Slam winners going ketogenic during the season, wait for it. I’ve heard some very interesting things from top-level athletes and the people who work with them about high-end power and intensity on long-term high-fat diets. No studies (yet), just whispers.

We do have studies where fat-adapted athletes beat sugar-burning athletes at high-intensity intervals due to their increased ability to burn fat and retain glycogen. Critics might say the intensity of those intervals wasn’t quite high enough—six 4-minute intervals on an incline treadmill with two minute rest in between—but that’s moving the goalposts.

In another study, trained adults followed a normal diet (moderate carbs, moderate fat, moderate protein) for seven days followed by a low-carb diet (54% fat, 5% carb, 35% protein) for seven days. After both arms, the researchers subjected participants to a series of physical tests: handgrip strength, max rep bench press, 1 rep max in squat and bench, vertical leap, and Wingate test. These were legitimate tests of maximal strength and power output. The Wingate test, for example, consists of 4 x 30 second all-out sprints on a stationary bike set to the highest resistance. Puke buckets are standard protocol. Yet despite losing more body weight after the low-carb arm, the participants suffered no hits to their performance. 

We know that elite gymnasts can live and train on a high-protein, high-fat ketogenic diet for 30 days, lose body fat and body weight, gain lean mass, and maintain their physical performance.

I know I feel great playing my Ultimate games, usually on an empty stomach, sometimes with a scoop of Primal Fuel, occasionally with some exogenous ketones, always fat-adapted. Three hours of slower, steadier movement punctuated with bursts of all-out sprints aren’t a problem.

Most of you folks have different priorities. Training to compete isn’t your day job. You want to get stronger, faster, fitter, and look better naked. You want to be more physically capable. You want to keep up with your kids or grandkids. How can fat-adapted training help non-elites?

It’ll build up some extra mitochondria to take the load off your body, reduce oxidative stress and insulin resistance, and improve your capacity to burn energy.

It’ll make those weekend bike rides/climbs/Ultimate games a lot easier—and more enjoyable.

You won’t have to pack two pounds of trail mix just to finish a hike.

It’ll help you burn some more body fat.

You’ll conserve glycogen for when you really need it.

The physical performance of every human being on this planet, from elite athletes to hobbling grandpas, can benefit from spending some time and exercising in a fat-adapted, glycogen-depleted state. Why don’t you give it a try?

If you want to get really good at this stuff, check out Primal Endurance.

Thanks for reading, everyone. I’d love to hear about your experiences with fat-adaptation down below. How has it impacted your training and performance?

Prefer listening to reading? Get an audio recording of this blog post, and subscribe to the Primal Blueprint Podcast on iTunes for instant access to all past, present and future episodes here.

Save

The post How Using Fat for Fuel Can Boost Athletic Performance appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Dear Mark: Did Three New Studies Debunk the Primal Blueprint?

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering three questions that at first glance appear to cast doubt on some of the founding tenets of the Primal Blueprint. First, did a recent study show that low-carb dieting is no better—and perhaps worse—than low-fat dieting at helping you lose body fat? The second is a two-parter: are we hypocrites for “ignoring” the insulinogenic effects of protein, and does a paleo diet actually abolish the beneficial effects of CrossFit?  And third, a new study found evidence of cereal grain consumption in a group of European hunter-gatherers. What gives?

Let’s go:

Dear Mark,

I am a long time follower of your site, and have been eating some sort of “primal blueprint-ish” for roughly 10 years. This lifestyle suits me, I am effortlessly lean and energetic despite pushing 40 and having a small boy and not exercising as much as I should. I like your site above the others, because of your scientific take (I am an engineer ;), always linking to the study you quote. I believe in you, and I believe that YOU believe in the primal blueprint – IMO you are not just a sales person trying to get rich.

However, lately I read a lot on the internet about the Nusi trials, I am sure you heard about it; proving that low carbs is no better than low fat in fat loss (not adressing all the other benefits of low carb). Could you adress this in a post? I would like to hear your comments on this.

Best regards,

Liv Vinter

Thanks for the kind words, Liv. I try to live up to your impression of me every day.

Ah, yes, the NuSi studies. Though you didn’t specify which study concerns you, I can guess.

It’s the most recent one, called “Energy expenditure and body composition changes after an isocaloric ketogenic diet in overweight and obese men.”

They put a bunch of people on an high-carb diet for four weeks, then moved them over to a low-carb, high-fat ketogenic diet for another four. Both diets were isocaloric, meaning they each provided the same number of calories, and were meant to keep their weight stable. These weren’t weight loss diets. They tracked energy expenditure, fat loss, and all the regular body composition markers you’d expect. Turns out that after going keto, fat loss slowed, energy expenditure increased, protein oxidation increased, and they lost a bit of lean mass. Fat loss picked up by the end but it was a wash.

From what I can see, they didn’t exercise. While that helps isolate the effect of the diet, it’s not how most people improve their body composition. Strength training in the absence of any other dietary intervention increases lean mass retention. You can diet anyway you want—low-carb, keto, low-fat, low-calorie, high-protein—but you’d better lift some heavy things if you want to keep your muscle. These people didn’t even lift, so it’s no wonder they lost a little lean mass on the keto diet.

Their protein intake was rather low. If you’re going to try a ketogenic diet without weight training, you’d better increase your protein intake.

They failed to give the diets in a randomized sequence, going from high-carb to low-carb.  We all know those first four weeks of a diet (any diet) are the best. The weight just flies off. After the first few weeks, though, weight loss slows down. These people transitioned to keto just as they were coming off the rapid fat loss. They’d exhausted their “newbie gains.” They’d already lost a good amount of weight, whereas they hadn’t lost any weight going into the high-carb period. If you flipped the timeline and had subjects go low-carb before going low-fat, you’d likely see the reverse happen: quicker weight loss on low-carb, slower weight loss on low-fat. I would have liked to see half the subjects start on low-fat and half start on low-carb.

The diets weren’t weight-loss diets and this wasn’t a fat loss study.

They were isocaloric weight maintenance diets. The primary objective of the study was to track any variation in energy expenditure between the two diets. Body composition changes were secondary outcomes. And since this wasn’t a fat loss study, it wasn’t designed to draw accurate conclusions about fat loss as the primary point of investigation. If it were, then there would/should have been different procedural methods in place.

One obvious confounding factor? There was inadequate time for fat-burning machinery to ramp up. Going from a high-carb (and high-sugar—almost 25% of calories) diet to a ketogenic diet isn’t seamless. It takes time to adapt. That’s why fat loss slowed for the first leg of the keto portion, only picking up speed after a couple weeks. It also explains the increased protein oxidation and loss of lean mass reported in the first leg of the keto arm: they had to sacrifice lean tissue to convert into glucose via gluconeogenesis until they achieved full ketoadapation and glucose homeostasis.

Coming into the keto diet fully carb-loaded is great for physcial performance, but impairs fat loss. You’ll burn off most of that glycogen before dipping into endogenous fat stores.

It’s a cool study, just not the utter demolition of low-carb people are claiming.

This article appeared on my newsfeed today on my phone and really messed me up mentally. Would love for your wise insights. This turned everything I know upside down. ahhhhh!

Jennifer

There are two parts to this article.

The first deals with the insulinogenic effects of dietary protein. Ignoring  the strawman the author lays out (“paleo people all say insulin is the root of all evil so why do they eat five pounds of insulinogenic animal flesh a day?”), I’ll address the insulin stuff.

Yeah, dietary protein increases insulin. So what? Insulin isn’t evil. I’ve never said that (remember the strawman thing?). Insulin helps drive glycogen and protein into muscles. Those are extremely important tasks.

And there is a ton of evidence that the most insulinogenic protein of all—whey—improves metabolic health and body composition.

For instance:

It spikes insulin initially but reduces the area under the curve, improving glucose tolerance in type 2 diabetics.

It reduces fasting insulin in overweight and obese adults. Every minute of elevated fasting insulin inhibits your ability to burn fat.

The second part is also laughable: the claim that a paleo diet nullifies the beneficial effects of doing CrossFit.

First of all, they were “asked” to follow an ad-libitum paleo diet. They weren’t monitored in a metabolic ward. The researchers didn’t prepare and deliver paleo meals to the subjects. There wasn’t a control group. It was a total slapdash affair—give them a few rough guidelines and hope for the best. That’s understandable, given that health major undergrads putting together a thesis rarely have access to the funding necessary for human randomized controlled trials.

Second, about those “deleterious changes” to blood lipids. Take a look at Dr. Andro’s take on the study. Pay close attention to the nifty charts he made.

Those with high HDL at the start lowered theirs. LDL and non-HDL cholesterol also increased a bit by study’s end. That’s it. Those are the “deleterious” (what a powerful word, that) changes. Oh, and subjects who had normal HDL at the start of the study increased their HDL by the end.

Some of the most vital and widely cited benefits of CrossFit are the improvements to physical fitness and body composition. Since paleo clearly “abolishes” CrossFit benefits, those must have taken a real beating. Right?

Actually, subjects lost an average of six pounds and 4% body fat while improving VO2max.

I’m not worried about a few minor changes to controversial biomarkers like LDL and HDL (that may actually be transient responses to weight loss) if it means improvements to the markers that we know have strong connections to health and heart disease risk—body fat, body weight, and physical fitness. What about you?

The REAL Paleo diet included bread: Ancient dental plaque reveals crops were on the menu in the Balkans 8,600 years ago.

Here they go again.

Mark

Indeed. Okay, okay.

Of course some hunter-gatherers ate grains. They had to. Someone had to.

It’s not as if one day every single hunter-gatherer across the world unstrung their bows, developed a healthy fear of animal protein and artery-clogging saturated fat, converted their spears to shovels, and began planting wheat, barley, and various other cereals. It was a transition happening all over the globe at different rates. That’s why you see folks in what’s now Israel experimenting with growing plants as early as 23000 years ago, legit-yet-nascent agriculture in the Levant by 10000 BC, wheat reaching the British Isles by 8000 BC, Arctic peoples subsisting almost exclusively on sea creatures and tundra animals until a hundred or so years ago, and small pockets of foragers still living as full-fledged hunter-gatherers today.

And that’s exactly what this group of Balkan hunter-gatherers was: a transition between the foraging hunter-gatherer lifestyle and the neolithic agricultural lifestyle. They’ve even got an era that describes this transition. The Mesolithic (middle or intermediate stone) era was the transition between the Paleolithic era (old stone) and Neolithic era (new stone). That’s precisely when many hunter gatherers were transitioning (there’s that word again) into new ways of life, experimenting with new food sources like grains and legumes, and figuring out how to raise them as crops. So this news doesn’t negate anything. It’s exciting, actually. We know this transition happened, and now we get to examine a group of people in the middle of it.

That’s it for today, everyone. Thanks for reading!

The post Dear Mark: Did Three New Studies Debunk the Primal Blueprint? appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Weekend Link Love – Edition 417

Research of the Week

Vitamin D may reduce asthma attacks.

Nibbling your nuts linked to lower inflammation.

Human brains are particularly blood-thirsty.

Antibiotic prescriptions linked to food allergies in kids. Parents: if you’re faced with giving your kid antibiotics, read this.

The majority of your brain’s structure was inherited from your parents.

Caffeine may keep cognitive decline at bay.

“Leisure-time physical activity,” or play, also protects against cognitive decline.

Among males with a genetic predisposition, exposure to first-trimester ultrasound may increase the severity of autism.

Foam rolling one limb affects the other.

Now appearing in human brains near you: toxic nanoparticles from air pollution.

Minor dehydration impairs cognitive ability.

To improve frailty scores (and other reasons, too), seniors should be eating a bare minimum of 1 g/kg protein.

In obese European-American and African-American women, a low-carb diet improved GERD.

New Primal Blueprint Podcasts

Episode 134: Domini Kemp and Patricia Daly: Two cancer survivors who used ketogenic dieting to beat the disease visit the podcast to chat about their new ketogenic cookbook, how various diet strategies affect cancer, and much more.

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.

How to Deal with Chronic Pain: Psychological Causes and Treatments
The Dangers of People Pleasing in the Modern World (and What to Do About It)
10 Primal-Friendly Tips from Wise People Throughout History
The Genetics of Obesity: Are You Destined to Be Fat?

Interesting Blog Posts

Maybe kids should play with sharp things.

We aren’t perceiving objective reality, and it’s probably for the best.

Media, Schmedia

Our gut bacteria contain microbiomes made up of viruses.

The possible evolutionary role of loneliness.

Good riddance.

Everything Else

Sometimes organic is a scam.

Awesome libraries.

Maldives sinking, Schmaldives schminking: climate change could make coffee go extinct.

Got cats? Make ’em work for their food.

Haven’t these scientists ever watched Them!?

The Chuck Yeager fitness regimen (e-book out soon?).

Recipe Corner

A simple, spicy grass-fed beef curry with green beans you make in your slow cooker.
Speaking of curries, how about banana skin curry? Why not.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Sep 11 – Sep 17)

Why These 10 Famous Thinkers Napped – How siestas were integral to their achievements.
The Primal Laws: 7 More Honorable Mentions – What else almost made it in?

Comment of the Week

“Love the new look: cleaner, brighter, bigger and well organized!”

– Thanks, Susan. It’s amazing what a new dress suit can do. Oh, you mean the site? Yeah, I’m digging the new look, too.

The post Weekend Link Love – Edition 417 appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Sweet Potato Chili Fries

Look up the definition of “gut bomb” and you just might see a photo of chili fries. But not these chili fries. Primal sweet potato chili fries are made from sweet potato fries baked in avocado oil and topped with your favorite chili, plus a light sprinkle of high-quality sharp cheddar cheese and a drizzle of chipotle cashew cream. The method used here for sweet potatoes fries–steam first, then bake–is a great method to use any time you bake cut sweet potatoes (or regular potatoes).

It creates a soft, creamy center and the fries hold their shape. Want crispier baked fries? The leave the potato skin on. For Primal sweet potato chili fries, use your favorite chili recipe, or the quick and simple chili recipe below. These chili fries are also really, really good with lamb chili.

Time in the Kitchen: 1.5 hours

Servings: 4

Ingredients:

Chili

1 tablespoon PRIMAL KITCHEN™ Avocado Oil (15 ml)
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 red or green bell pepper, finely chopped
1 pound ground beef (450 g)
1 tablespoon chili powder (15 ml)
1 teaspoon ground cumin (5 ml)
1 teaspoon ground coriander (5 ml)
½ teaspoon dried oregano (2.5 ml)
1 28-ounce can diced or crushed tomatoes (794 g)
1 cup water or stock (240 ml)

Optional Garnishes: Grated cheddar cheese, chopped green onions, chopped cilantro

Sweet Potato Fries

4 large sweet potatoes, cut into 1/2-inch wide wedges, 2 to 3 inches long (13 mm x 5 cm – 7.6 cm)
2 tablespoons avocado oil (30 ml)
Salt
Chipotle cashew cream
1 cup raw, unsalted cashews (soaked in water 4 hours, or overnight) (150 g)
1/2 teaspoon salt (2.5 ml)
1 roasted red pepper, chopped
1 chipotle chili in adobo (or ½ of the chipotle chili, for a less spicy sauce)

½ teaspoon smoked paprika (2.5 ml)

Instructions:

Chili

Heat oil in heavy pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add onions, garlic and bell pepper. Sauté until onions are soft and translucent, about 8 minutes. Add beef and spices (chili powder, cumin, coriander, oregano, plus a generous sprinkle of salt). Sauté until the meat is browned, breaking up the meat as it cooks.

Mix in crushed tomatoes and water. Bring to a low simmer, cover partially, and simmer 1 hour.

Fries

Preheat oven to 500 °F/260 °C. Using a steamer, or steaming tray over a pot of boiling water, steam the potato wedges until just tender enough to pierce with a fork, 10 minutes. (Don’t let the potatoes get too soft, or they’ll fall apart.) Pat the potatoes dry. In a bowl, gently toss the steamed fries with avocado oil. Transfer the potatoes to a parchment-lined baking sheet, leaving excess oil that has dripped off the fries in the bowl. Lay the fries out so they’re evenly spaced and not touching. Bake about 15 minutes, turning once halfway through, until the potatoes are nicely browned. Remove from the oven and season with salt.

Chipotle Cashew Cream

Process cashews in food processor, until the texture is very smooth and creamy, scraping down sides as needed. Add the roasted red pepper, chipotle in adobo, salt and smoked paprika and process again until smooth.

To make the sauce warm and pourable, whisk together ½ cup of the chipotle cashew cream with up to ¼ cup boiling water.

Assemble

Pile sweet potato fries on a platter or individual serving plates. Spoon the chili over the fries. Top with grated cheddar cheese and/or chipotle cashew cream. Garnish with chopped green onions and/or cilantro.

The post Sweet Potato Chili Fries appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Paleo Thyroid Solution Success Story: Morgan Buehler

It’s Friday, everyone! And that means another Primal Blueprint Real Life Story from a Mark’s Daily Apple reader. This week’s featured testimonial is one of many success stories spurred by Primal Blueprint Publishing’s upcoming release, The Paleo Thyroid Solution, by Elle Russ.

If you have your own success story and would like to share it with me and the Mark’s Daily Apple community please contact me here. I’ll continue to publish these each Friday as long as they keep coming in. Thank you for reading!

The winter of 2012, when I was twenty-eight, I started to notice changes in my digestion: feeling super bloated every night and just generally sick after I ate. I was going to the bathroom less and less. And the constipation…ugh! Awful. I was freezing all the time, cold hands and feet. I’d lay in bed, and my butt would literally be cold to the touch. It was bizarre! I was working from home at the time, and I remember not wanting to get out of bed, I was that cold. I’d work from my bed until eleven, which was ridiculous because I live in Los Angeles and grew up in Chicago; 60 °F should have seemed warm to me! I was napping every afternoon. I’m not a sleepy or lazy person: I work out every day, eat very clean, and surf three to four times a week. But during this point in my life, I was really exhausted all the time, especially at 3:00 p.m.

A few things happened right around the same time these symptoms started showing up. I gave myself a Christmas gift of an appointment with a naturopathic doctor in San Diego and had complete panels done on everything you can imagine: stool test for parasites, blood work for micronutrients, DNA analysis, etc. I took a quiz on thyroid from a book on different health conditions one may have, and concluded, I’m definitely hypothyroid.

I got my blood drawn in February, read the book in March and self-diagnosed hypothyroidism, waited a few months to get my blood work taken, do the stool test, get my blood work results back, and schedule a follow-up appointment with my ND. She confirmed my suspicion.

The values for T4 and T3 above are not “free” results because I didn’t know at the time what the better tests were. You can still see that all of the results are below the range.

During this three- to four-month period, I was super stressed out, commuting three hours a day (ninety minutes each way), I gained 8 lbs in three months (which is about 8% of my body weight because I’m only 5’0”), and was getting depressed. I was eating super clean, low-carbohydrate, and so forth, but the weight would not budge. A group of my high school friends came into town for a mutual friend’s bachelorette party when I was at my lowest: I didn’t want to be social (which is not like me at all; I am very outgoing), and I fell asleep during their visit and woke up four hours later. Something was wrong; I am the most social person I know.

I started on 1 grain of Nature-Throid in June. By July, I quit my job. About five weeks after starting Nature-Throid and one week after quitting my job, I lost 5 pounds in one week without trying. Over the course of the next month or so, I got back to my natural maintenance weight of 99–113 lbs and I remained there effortlessly for three months. I started having bowel movements, anxiety went away, and I didn’t feel stressed. I started looking good and feeling good about life.

These results only after two months on 1 grain of natural desiccated thyroid (NDT)—I got the “frees” tested at this point, you can see the TSH getting suppressed and the Free T3 and Free T4 are moving up. I am starting to feel better at this point.

In the early months of 2015, I got lazy again. I was unsure my Nature-Throid was doing anything for me, and I stopped taking it to embark on a personal experiment to see if my own thyroid would kick back in and do its job. Really, I just didn’t want to schedule an appointment and pay for more labs. And I’d switched doctors and had a bad experience with insurance. So I procrastinated over dealing with it. Simultaneously, in an attempt to get “really fit” and sculpt my arms, I started following the advice of bodybuilder trainer. I started eating carbohydrates. Well, it took all of three months and 10 lbs for me to throw my hands up in the air, text Elle, and get myself back on track. I hadn’t been this heavy since my beer-guzzling, gluten-eating college days. I was distraught and my body wouldn’t budge. I was constipated again, and when I did manage to go, my stool was like rock-hard pellets. Elle guided me through my options and advised me on which panels she thought I should test; lo and behold, my thyroid hormone levels were at the bottom of their ranges. So in June 2015, I went back on Nature-Throid, but this time, I started with ½ grain and then increased to 1 grain in six weeks.

Honestly, I don’t think any doctor ever had my thyroid optimized. I learned a lot in my “experiment,” comparing how I feel when I’m not on Nature-Throid to how I feel when I’m on thyroid hormone replacement. There are considerable changes in almost every aspect of my life.

When I’m on Nature-Throid, my weight is naturally stable and in my maintenance range. Before going back on meds in June, my weight was going up and up and up with no end in sight, no matter how much I surfed, how cleanly I ate, or how many strength-training sessions I did during the week. As soon as I started treating my hypothyroidism, the upward spiral turned around and my weight started to come back down again. I feel more like myself. I’m a light-hearted, free-spirited goofball again. Four weeks after I started on Nature-Throid again, I was thinking, “This is the regular Morgan!” So much lighter and more fun! I’m sure less anxiety and depression have something to do with it. My sex drive was virtually non-existent when I was off thyroid hormones, but it came back—thank God! And I no longer nap. I have energy all day.

My diet hasn’t changed, my workout routine hasn’t changed, my boyfriend hasn’t changed. I have a lot more energy to last the entire day than I ever did pre-diagnosis; I’m getting older, yet my energy level is increasing. I have experimented with different dosages, with my doctor, and as of right now, my current NDT dose is .75 grains, which I take first thing in the morning. Thank you, Elle, for The Paleo Thyroid Solution; you are my “Thyroid Hero!”

A year later, on .75 grains of NDT. My TSH is more suppressed, and my Free T3 moved up. I am feeling good, yet I plan on experimenting with my doctor by moving from .75 grains to 1 grain of NDT. I am back to my normal weight though and feel pretty darn good!

Morgan

The post Paleo Thyroid Solution Success Story: Morgan Buehler appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Introducing The Paleo Thyroid Solution! Order Today and Receive Five Free Bonuses!

I couldn’t be more pleased to announce Primal Blueprint Publishing’s newest release, The Paleo Thyroid Solution, by our own Primal Blueprint Podcast host, Elle Russ. This groundbreaking book targets the largest demographic out there–every human being! Every human being has a thyroid gland (unless it was surgically removed) and every human being’s fat-burning metabolism is heavily influenced by this tiny, often overlooked piece of biological machinery. While there are many thyroid books floating in the ether, this is the first book connecting primal/paleo/ancestral health principles with optimal thyroid hormone function and metabolism.

When Elle joined the Primal Blueprint family in 2012, she had already solved a second bout of hypothyroidism in a decade through the use of thyroid hormone replacement. But she struggled to lose the excess fat and weight gained during her illness (no matter how hard she exercised and cut calories). But after adopting a primal/paleo lifestyle, she not only experienced success with fat loss, but discovered a myriad of revolutionary connections between thyroid health and the principles behind living an evolutionarily-aligned lifestyle.

And then this issue hit me personally…

Just after Elle pitched me her idea for a thyroid book, a few of our employees and a couple of my family members experienced thyroid issues–and Elle came to the rescue on all fronts. I myself, for example, was told by a doctor that based on one of my thyroid test results (the TSH test) that I should be concerned about my thyroid, even though I have never exhibited a symptom of thyroid dysfunction in my 63 years of life. After sharing this with Elle and having her evaluate my blood work, she explained that the doctor who was concerned about my thyroid was probably basing his suspicions on a 1973 outdated blood test no longer used by informed doctors to diagnose and treat thyroid issues.

I knew something was amiss here, and I wanted to delve further into this topic. I knew Elle was onto something special, and her passion for this project was undeniable.

After all, I was once a victim of outdated, misguided, conventional wisdom regarding diet and exercise (we all were) until I discovered the truth and was able to spread the word via The Primal Blueprint. In the same vein, outdated and misguided conventional thyroid wisdom is still rampant, which can keep patients hypothyroid, fat, and in a state of disease that can ultimately lead to more health issues. Undiagnosed or mistreated hypothyroidism can put people at risk for serious conditions, such as depression, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, gynecological issues (infertility/miscarriages/fibroids/PCOS, etc.), hormonal imbalances, adrenal fatigue, anemia, and more.

The Paleo Thyroid Solution not only details Elle’s personal journey with successfully treating two bouts of thyroid dysfunction on her own, but also features the success stories of others (including before and after photos).

While most thyroid books give a rudimentary, undetailed look at thyroid health, The Paleo Thyroid Solution offers an incredibly comprehensive, in-depth look at a health problem affecting 200 million people worldwide, and over 20 million people in the United States. 60% of cases go undiagnosed and many cases are mismanaged, which leaves patients in a hypothyroid, symptomatic state despite the administration of thyroid hormone replacement. The Paleo Thyroid Solution includes before and after blood work examples, detailed suggestions on thyroid hormone dosing, an enlightening Q&A with Primal Doctor and integrative physician, Gary E. Foresman, MD…and much more!

This book is a must-have for everyone seeking to optimize their fat-burning metabolism and for those who are struggling with thyroid dysfunction wanting to correct it once and for all!

I am thrilled to have this impeccably written, beautifully designed, information dense book in my hands. I never once doubted Elle’s conviction for this endeavor and I’m thrilled to share it with you all today. As no surprise to me, The Paleo Thyroid Solution is already seeing rave reviews from VIPs that received early release copies, and many patients have already benefitted from Elle’s guidance and coaching.

So, when you grab a copy of this book, what can you expect?

In The Paleo Thyroid Solution, you will learn:

Primal/paleo protocols for naturally optimizing and even possibly reversing low thyroid function
How to work with your doctor to get the correct blood tests to diagnose hypothyroidism and accurately interpret results
How to work with your doctor to optimally treat hypothyroidism with thyroid hormone replacement
How to find a good doctor or work with your current one to diagnose and treat Reverse T3 issues (including T3-only treatment)
How to lose the insidious fat and weight gained from hypothyroidism
An MD’s perspective on why and how some doctors are uninformed and still practicing outdated thyroid protocols (in-depth commentary from integrative physician Dr. Gary E. Foresman, MD)

Finally, per Mark’s Daily Apple tradition, I’ve put together an exciting limited-time offer for this book release.

Order one or more copies of The Paleo Thyroid Solution from Amazon.com in either Kindle or paperback format by Sept. 14, then fill out this form, and you’ll get all five of the following bonus items for free:

$10 Gift Certificate to PrimalBlueprint.com

You can use this $10 gift certificate to purchase any non-digital item at PrimalBlueprint.com when you spend $50 or more. Might I suggest Primal Probiotics, Primal Omegas, or Primal Sun—all incredibly important for thyroid health? This $10 gift certificate essentially covers the majority of the cost of the book!

Live Q&A webinar with The Paleo Thyroid Solution author, Elle Russ

It’s one thing to read the book, but it’s another to get personal, real-time access to the expert herself! Want to go beyond the pages of The Paleo Thyroid Solution and receive a chance to have your personal thyroid questions answered by an authority? Purchase your copy of The Paleo Thyroid Solution by September 14th and gain exclusive access to a live online Q&A with Elle Russ.

3 Free eBooks

You’ll get digital downloads of The Primal Blueprint Quick & Easy Meals, The Primal Blueprint 90-Day Journal, and The Primal Blueprint Definitive Guide to Sun Exposure and Vitamin D Health.

How’s that for a bonus bundle?

Five great bonus items, all for free when you grab a copy of The Paleo Thyroid Solution by September 14th.

Just submit your purchase receipt using this form and we’ll email you all of the freebies in no time. Don’t miss out!

But really, if you or anyone you know is suffering from thyroid dysfunction, you’ll want to grab your copy ASAP. There’s no reason people should be suffering from misinformation any longer. It’s time to change lives.

Take care!

Promo offer details:

This special bonus offer ends at 11:59 pm, Sept. 14, 2016 (PDT).
All receipts must be received by 11:59 pm, Sept. 15, 2016 (PDT). The forms will stop working on Sept. 16, so be sure to fill out the form and submit your pre-Sept. 15 receipt(s) by then.
On an iPhone? You won’t be able to upload your receipt from it, unfortunately. You’ll have to use a computer.
You will receive access to the webinar details, the 3 free eBooks, and your PrimalBlueprint.com gift certificate via email within 24 hours of submitting your receipt.
Pre-orders will be honored for all bonus offers.
Both orders placed online (from any source) and in brick and mortar retail locations will be honored.
Both domestic (U.S.) and international orders are eligible for the bonuses.

Eligible book formats include physical books and digital versions (e.g. Kindle).
The PrimalBlueprint.com gift certificate expires on October 12, 2016, and is valid for a single use on orders valued at $10.01 or more (coupon does not apply to digital products).

The post Introducing The Paleo Thyroid Solution! Order Today and Receive Five Free Bonuses! appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Welcome to Mark’s Daily Apple 3.0! (Plus a Contest)

I’m sure all of you have noticed something different today. I wrote recently about the changes coming to Mark’s Daily Apple, and today’s the big unveiling! Based on all of your helpful feedback and tips, I’ve worked with my team to develop the best version of Mark’s Daily Apple yet. We’ve made a lot of cosmetic and functional changes to the site, but this update also includes a commitment to continue to publish daily articles that challenge conventional wisdom and help people achieve optimal health and wellness. I’ll talk more about that later. But first, I’d like to talk a bit about how far we’ve come and walk you through some of the new features.

Since I first started posting my daily musings just shy of ten years ago, Mark’s Daily Apple has undergone a number of updates. Back in 2006, when I was just getting my blogging bearings, this is what MDA looked like:

Good stuff, huh? What seemed cutting edge for the time looked a bit like a museum piece only a few years later. So back in 2009, with hundreds of additional posts under my belt, my team and I decided it was time for a facelift. This is the MDA we’ve all been familiar with since then:

The time for change has come once again. Last year, I decided it was time to make some adjustments to meet the growing ambitions of the Primal movement. And that’s how we arrived at what you see today. Take a look around and I think you’ll agree that the new site is better than ever!

To help you get better acquainted, let me go over a few of the changes.

First, most of you are used to accessing the most recent blog post directly on the homepage. But since I started writing this blog ten years ago, the Primal movement and the number of projects in our Primal community has grown vastly. So, to give you and everyone else a more comprehensive, bird’s eye view of all the happenings in the Primal sphere, we’ve created an expansive homepage that features recent recipes, Primal Blueprint podcast episodes, updates on PRIMAL KITCHEN™, recent blog posts, Success Stories, and more!

Now, all you have to do is click “Blog” at the top of the new, stylish, all-in-one homepage to get straight to your daily posts. Or, if you’re a regular reader and you’d prefer to bypass the homepage altogether, go ahead and bookmark the blog at the link above to give yourself a shortcut. But do check the homepage from time to time. The latest and greatest announcements, events, products, special offers and more will all be featured there.

Finding What You’re Looking For

With thousands of published articles, Mark’s Daily Apple has become a repository of useful information for a whole variety of topics. And since the large library of posts has gotten so hefty, I wanted to make it easier than ever to help you browse topics and find what you’re looking for. Here are few examples of some of those improvements:

Use the search bar to find what your looking for, and then sort your search results by major topics to refine your results.
Success Stories are now searchable by Age, Sex and Story Topic, so you can find stories written by males or females, within a particular age range, and about a particular health topic (Weight Loss, or Diabetes, or Digestion, for example). Just hover over “Success Stories” at the top of the page to see the options.
Click the category icons (e.g. Diet & Nutrition, Fitness, Primal Lifestyle, etc.) found at the top of blog posts to view other articles in that category.
Click tags (e.g. Mobility, Gluten, Coffee, Menopause, etc.) at the end of articles to discover related articles.

Between these and other navigation improvements it should make finding your way around the site a much better experience.

Recipes

Looking for that perfect vegetable-laden lunch recipe? What about a savory chicken soup (since, after all, it’s your mom’s favorite)? Or how about a Primal-friendly appetizer for that seafood-loving friend of yours? With our new recipes section, finding the perfect Primal dish for any occasion has never been easier.

Success Stories

Looking for a shining example of someone who’s conquered struggles similar to yours? As mentioned above, now you can look up Success Stories by age, sex, and common types of topics. I almost guarantee there’s a story there you can identify with. And if there isn’t, I’d love for you to create one as an example for others! Remember, I’m always looking for Success Story submissions from Mark’s Daily Apple readers who have changed their lives by going Primal. So if you have one brewing, even if you’re a work in progress (aren’t we all?), submit your story here.

New Topics on the Horizon

But here’s the thing. I haven’t only decided to update the blog’s look and functionality. I also want to take this time to reflect on some of the major (and not so major) changes that have taken place in the Primal movement since it began. Some things that were once considered taboo have now made their way gingerly into the Primal lives of many MDA readers. Ten years is a long time to read, learn, and collectively evolve. New studies have emerged. New opinions have been voiced. And new conclusions have been drawn. So over the next several months, I’ll be writing articles that evaluate some of the biggest questions, updates, and changes that have cropped up since I laid out the essentials in The Primal Blueprint.

But that’s not all.

Besides revisiting and updating some of the essential principles and concepts outlined years ago, I thought it’d be fun to cover some of the upcoming, cutting edge trends percolating in the ancestral health sphere. I’m talking about all the hot topics that are sure to be arriving at your doorstep (if some of them haven’t already). There are more than a couple topics that have some interesting implications for Primal living in the years to come, so I figured I might as well start covering them tout de suite!

And, last but not least…

Remember that contest a month back? Congratulations, Jared, you’re the winner! I’ll be getting in contact soon to send off your prize package.

But to kick off this new version of Mark’s Daily Apple, I thought I’d give everyone else another shot at the prize.

The Contest

“What are some of the most important things you’ve learned and accomplished by going Primal?”

Just pop your answer in the comments section below. Or, to double your chances of winning, “like” the Mark’s Daily Facebook page and leave your comment there, too.

A winner will be chosen at random. So have at it!

The Prize

A PRIMAL KITCHEN™ prize package containing the following:

1 Jar of Original Mayo
1 Jar of Chipotle Lime Mayo
6-Pack of Dark Chocolate Almond Bars
1 Bottle of the new Extra Virgin Avocado Oil
1 Bottle of Honey Mustard Vinaigrette
1 Bottle of Greek Vinaigrette

The Deadline

September 7th at midnight (PDT)!

Who’s Eligible

Everyone. We’ll ship this prize package anywhere in the world!

A heartfelt thanks to all of you, my readers and Primal compatriots. You guys make this blog what it is. And I’m so excited for what the future has in store for all of us!

The post Welcome to Mark’s Daily Apple 3.0! (Plus a Contest) appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

How to Deal with Chronic Pain: Psychological Causes and Treatments

We like instant gratification. Who doesn’t? You desire a thing, you want it as soon as possible. This is entirely rational. The food looks good, you’re (relatively) hungry, so let’s eat. That gadget would be fun to play with, you’ve got the money (or credit) for it, so let’s buy it. This is why we sign up for and can never relinquish our Amazon Prime same-day shipping, why we demand antibiotics for viral infections, and why we can purchase and collect entire buckets of fried chicken without ever leaving our cars. We don’t like to wait if we don’t have to. And we rarely have to wait. This extends to how we deal with physical pain: my arm hurts, I want this pain to go away right now, so I’ll take a painkiller.

The problem with this approach to pain is that the quick solutions rarely work like they do for other physiological messages. Hunger is simple. You put something in your mouth, chew, and swallow. Hunger gone. But pain is complex. Pain is communication. When something hurts, your nervous system is telling you that something is wrong with your body (that stove is hot, your ankle is sprained, you pulled your hamstring) and you should fix it (pull your hand away, elevate and stay off your ankle, warm-up before you sprint next time). People born without the ability to feel pain are extremely vulnerable to death and dismemberment. It might sound cool to live without pain, but we desperately need it to survive.

Acute pain can usually be trusted. Chronic pain is trickier. There may have been initial tissue damage, but instead of decreasing the pain as the damage healed, it increased: chronic pain usually gets worse, not better.

How does the conventional medical system deal with most chronic pain?

Strong drugs: Opioid painkillers don’t work. Well, they “work,” but a little too well. You have to keep taking them to keep the pain at bay in increasingly larger doses, which increases the risk of addiction. They don’t actually help you heal or resolve the pain, and if anything, they increase your sensitivity to chronic pain. Dulling the pain or killing it with strong drugs usually doesn’t fix the underlying problem. Especially for chronic pain—the kind of pain that lingers and follows you through life—magic bullets don’t really exist. It’s no wonder that millions of Americans are addicted to prescription opioids like oxycodone.

Surgery: Though it’s great for acute tissue damage, surgical interventions for chronic pain have mixed results. Back fusion surgery outcomes are generally inferior to non-surgical interventions, and failed back surgeries have the potential to increase chronic pain and dysfunction. That a condition called “failed back surgery syndrome” even exists is telling. And research pitting knee surgery against placebo knee surgery suggest that arthoscopic knee surgery may not be required to “fix” chronic degenerative meniscus tears.

Pain is an output from the brain, not an input from the body.

When tissue is threatened/damaged/burned/lacerated/sprained, peripheral nerves called nociceptors send alarm signals to the brain, but the brain must interpret those signals and decide if you should “feel pain” or not. Utility determines pain: you’ll feel it if it’s helpful. The basketball player who sprains his ankle in the 2nd quarter of a pre-season game will immediately feel it, because his brain wants him to rest instead of finishing out the game. If that same injury occurred in game six of the NBA finals, his brain might “allow” him to continue playing because the stakes are so high. The soldier whose leg was mangled by a grenade probably won’t feel pain commensurate with the damage done, because his brain wants him to drag himself to safety.

Physical damage doesn’t always cause pain, and you don’t even need to possess the supposedly painful tissue to feel pain in the tissue. Consider phantom limb pain, where amputees still feel pain in the missing limb. There’s no limb to hurt, no nerves to send or receive signals, yet it still hurts. Thank the brain.

First off, I’m no doctor. Like anything involving the brain, chronic pain can be incredibly complicated. What I can offer are a few low-impact, non-interventional Primal ideas for improving your pain situation. I won’t be telling you how to adjust your own spine or anything like that. In fact, I’ll save the physical interventions for another post. Today is all about the psychological causes and fixes for physical chronic pain.

What are some things to consider?

Try the Sarno Method

A doctor of rehabilitation, for years Dr. John Sarno had seen back pain patients treated the conventional way. Throw ’em in the imaging machine, identify bulging discs or other trauma, and go from there. Sometimes it was surgery, sometimes physical therapy. It rarely worked. Then he realized something wild: while almost everyone had some sort of physical trauma to their back, the pain they felt didn’t always correlate to the site of the trauma. Someone might have a bulging disc at the L1/L2 but feel pain higher up, or vice versa. Furthermore, back surgery to fix the trauma rarely reduces pain. And acute back injuries, like a crushed disc hurt like hell but usually stop hurting after a few weeks, just like a broken leg. What Sarno discovered is that a lot of chronic back pain stems from bottled up stress, anger, or repressed emotions. The psychological pain becomes physical. Sarno dubbed this tension myositis syndrome, or TMS.

The Sarno method has two phases:

The patient must address the psychological causes of the pain.  They didn’t necessarily have to fix the problems causing the stress and emotional turmoil, but they do have to acknowledge their existence and confront them head on.
Since the root cause is psychological, not physical, the patient must resume physical activity. This is crucial. You have to “prove” to your brain that your body isn’t suffering from physical trauma that would restrict movement.

A 2007 study confirmed it: the Sarno method works for back pain patients without specific structural pathologies, especially those with chronic pain. Many patients find that merely reading Sarno’s book, even just the introduction, reduces their chronic back pain. They aren’t medical references, but check out the gushing reviews on Amazon for Sarno’s book. Just becoming aware of the psychological origin of the pain is often enough to fix it.

Learn about pain science

A funny trick about pain is that merely learning about how it works can often reduce it. This may have happened just a few paragraphs back when you read about the brain interpreting signals from the nerves and deciding whether or not to send pain back.

First of all, everyone can learn and understand it. Doctors may think it’s too confusing for most patients, but in 2003 they actually tested this. Chronic pain patients with inaccurate conceptions of pain science were able to understand the neurophysiology of pain when it was properly and accurately explained (even the doctors improved their knowledge of pain science).

Second, learning about pain neuroscience can reduce chronic pain. An older systematic review of the literature concluded that educating chronic pain sufferers about pain neurophysiology and neurobiology has a “positive effect on pain, disability, catastrophization, and physical performance”; a 2016 review came to the same conclusion.

To learn more abut pain science (and hopefully improve your own chronic pain), look no further than Todd Hargrove, whose book and blog offer great insight into the physiological origins of—and potential solutions for—all types of pain.

Deal with, or at least acknowledge, the major stressors in your life

This isn’t an easy or even simple solution. Stress is hard and the things that cause stress are numerous and unending!

But if there are any obvious ones, any real whoppers, take them on.

Bad relationship? Address it. Try counseling. Try a “we need to talk.” Don’t ignore the issues and tell yourself it’s okay. Your brain knows it’s not okay, even if you’re trying desperately to convince it otherwise.

Hate your job? No one should spend 40+ hours a week doing something they loathe. It’s not healthy. And research out of the US shows that people who hate their job are more likely to progress from acute to chronic pain. Chronic pain is more common among dissatisfied workers in Japan, too.

Plagued by a perpetually messy house? Don’t just walk by those dirty dishes for the tenth time this week. Clean them, go minimalist, or hire a de-clutterer. Or all three.

It’s different for everyone—I can’t anticipate every stressor in everyone’s life—but this all boils down to “don’t run away from your problems.” You must at least acknowledge them (remember the Sarno method?).

Understand that fear may be holding you back and making the pain worse

Pain needs fear to work. When you touch that hot stove or prod that wasp nest, the pain you receive scares you away from repeating the mistake in the future. As a response to acute pain, fear-avoidance works—it prevents future instances of pain. As a response to chronic pain, fear-avoidance worsens outcomes and hastens the progression to disability. Research has found that among people with chronic pain, those exhibiting more fear-avoidance are more likely to become disabled, to miss work, and to avoid normal daily activities.

But pain-avoidance doesn’t just predict bad outcomes; it also has real effects. The more they avoid the activities they assume will cause pain, the worse they get. Their muscles atrophy. They actually get more sensitive to pain. In one controlled trial of patients with chronic low back pain, inducing “pain anticipation” before a behavioral test reduced performance and increased pain. As some pain researchers put it, the fear of the pain is more disabling than the pain itself.

Consider how being scared of your pain goes down: you live in a constant state of anxiety, worried that one wrong turn or miscalculated twist of the body will send you reeling to the floor.

In the end, it’s no different than being wracked with physical agony. You’re scared to move. You think about pain all day. You curtail your normal existence. Your fear of pain has disabled you.

Increase the stakes of painful movements

Recall how the NBA player turning his ankle in a pre-season game is more likely to feel it and take a couple weeks off than if he were to turn it in a playoff game. Pain is a negotiation, it’s the culmination of the brain deciding whether the stakes are high enough for you to keep doing the activity that triggered the nerves to send the “pain request” signal. You can control the stakes and thus affect the negotiations.

Get some competition in your life or join a team sport; if people are counting on you or you’re up against your arch nemesis, your brain is more likely to turn down the chronic pain to let you participate. If you’re walking ten miles to raise funds for cancer research, maybe your foot or back or knee won’t hurt so much.

Live the good life

A big part of the pain response comes from the brain’s assessment of your overall situation: if things in general are bad, it’s more likely to err on the side of causing pain. Research into the psychosocial causes of non-specific chronic low back pain in Japanese adults finds that anxiety, life dissatisfaction, and feeling underappreciated at work have the most predictive power. Sound familiar?

Do things that make you happy. Take warm baths at night with a good book. Hang out with friends; don’t be a hermit. Get some midday sun, work on that promotion, build that business you’ve been milling over for years. Improve the quality of your life. Avoid regret. There are innumerable ways to improve your life and increase happiness.

Know that it’s not “all in your head”

Pain comes from the brain, true. It’s the result of the brain’s deliberation over the situation, true. The brain decides if you feel pain or not, true. But the pain is real. You’re not crazy, you’re not “imagining” the pain. The brain isn’t conjuring pain without reason. You may not agree with the reason, and the physical damage to the tissue may not warrant the amount of pain you currently feel, but there’s still a there there.

That’s it for now, folks. Next time I’ll discuss some “physical” causes of and treatments for chronic pain, but for now be sure to direct any comments and questions down below.

Do you experience chronic pain? Does any of this ring true for you?

Thanks for reading!

The post How to Deal with Chronic Pain: Psychological Causes and Treatments appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.