Mark Sisson's Blog, page 216
July 10, 2016
Weekend Link Love – Edition 408
Research of the Week
Omega-6 fats hinder incorporation of omega-3s into red blood cells. Saturated fats augment it.
Performing “light physical activity” while working or studying increases productivity, mood, and focus.
Receiving real-time bite-count feedback throughout a meal reduces overall food intake.
Researchers just discovered a fatal flaw in fMRI software that invalidates almost every brain imaging study ever done.
Texting on your phone provokes a novel rhythm in your brain waves.
New (and Old) Primal Blueprint Podcasts
Episode 106: Bethany Hamilton — This episode from the archives features an inspiring discussing between host Elle Russ and surfing champion Bethany Hamilton. Despite loosing her arm to a 14-foot tiger shark at age 13, Bethany was back in the water a month after and took home her first national surfing title a little over a year later. Get yourself a daily dose of inspiration and give this episode a listen.
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.
Why Fear May Be Blocking Your Primal Path? (and How to Overcome It)
10 Reasons You Should Be Eating More Monounsaturated Fat
Interesting Blog Posts
We’re all tired of hearing how much better the French are at eating, but these are some decent rules.
Media, Schmedia
In physical culture, what’s old is new again.
Everything Else
Maybe black really doesn’t crack. Black don’t crack, retains more water, prevents microbial incursions with a lower surface pH, and forms a more cohesive barrier against environmental toxins.
This dog can sniff out antibiotic-resistant bacteria in hospitals.
Man punches bear (and wins).
The Vatican’s full of winos.
Before your next deadlift session, listen to the Icelandic soccer team’s Viking war chant.
The bears of Brook Falls, Alaska, are loving the salmon run. Watch them transport large amounts of EPA and DHA to their red blood cells on live video.
Stone-age shamans had elaborate funerals.
Recipe Corner
Take that baby octopus home, throw it in a pot, add some broth, a little mirin, some doenjang. Baby, you’ve got a Korean octopus stew going!
The Greeks are best known for their lamb, but their pork tenderloin ain’t too shabby.
Time Capsule
One year ago (Jul 10 – Jul 16)
5 Ways to Get the Most Bang for Your Workout Buck – How to be efficient.
Take the 1000 Day Challenge – You’re about a third of the way through. How you doing?
Comment of the Week
“How about a combination of adventurous tasks? Spelunking while eating ghost pepper-marinated gizzards and yodeling? If that doesn’t bring forth new perspectival horizons, I don’t know what will.”
– Agreed. That is a legitimate example of adventure, Alex.
Like This Blog Post? Subscribe to the Mark's Daily Apple Newsletter and Get 10 eBooks and More Delivered to Your Inbox for FREE
Weekend Link Love – Edition 407
Research of the Week
Omega-6 fats hinder incorporation of omega-3s into red blood cells. Saturated fats augment it.
Performing “light physical activity” while working or studying increases productivity, mood, and focus.
Receiving real-time bite-count feedback throughout a meal reduces overall food intake.
Researchers just discovered a fatal flaw in fMRI software that invalidates almost every brain imaging study ever done.
Texting on your phone provokes a novel rhythm in your brain waves.
New (and Old) Primal Blueprint Podcasts
Episode 106: Bethany Hamilton — This episode from the archives features an inspiring discussing between host Elle Russ and surfing champion Bethany Hamilton. Despite loosing her arm to a 14-foot tiger shark at age 13, Bethany was back in the water a month after and took home her first national surfing title a little over a year later. Get yourself a daily dose of inspiration and give this episode a listen.
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.
Why Fear May Be Blocking Your Primal Path? (and How to Overcome It)
10 Reasons You Should Be Eating More Monounsaturated Fat
Interesting Blog Posts
We’re all tired of hearing how much better the French are at eating, but these are some decent rules.
Media, Schmedia
In physical culture, what’s old is new again.
Everything Else
Maybe black really doesn’t crack. Black don’t crack, retains more water, prevents microbial incursions with a lower surface pH, and forms a more cohesive barrier against environmental toxins.
This dog can sniff out antibiotic-resistant bacteria in hospitals.
Man punches bear (and wins).
The Vatican’s full of winos.
Before your next deadlift session, listen to the Icelandic soccer team’s Viking war chant.
The bears of Brook Falls, Alaska, are loving the salmon run. Watch them transport large amounts of EPA and DHA to their red blood cells on live video.
Stone-age shamans had elaborate funerals.
Recipe Corner
Take that baby octopus home, throw it in a pot, add some broth, a little mirin, some doenjang. Baby, you’ve got a Korean octopus stew going!
The Greeks are best known for their lamb, but their pork tenderloin ain’t too shabby.
Time Capsule
One year ago (Jul 10 – Jul 16)
5 Ways to Get the Most Bang for Your Workout Buck – How to be efficient.
Take the 1000 Day Challenge – You’re about a third of the way through. How you doing?
Comment of the Week
“How about a combination of adventurous tasks? Spelunking while eating ghost pepper-marinated gizzards and yodeling? If that doesn’t bring forth new perspectival horizons, I don’t know what will.”
– Agreed. That is a legitimate example of adventure, Alex.
Like This Blog Post? Subscribe to the Mark's Daily Apple Newsletter and Get 10 eBooks and More Delivered to Your Inbox for FREE
July 9, 2016
Pork Belly with Sweet Potatoes and Fried Eggs
This is not your typical breakfast of eggs, potatoes and bacon. Instead, we’re talking about braised pork belly (the same cut that bacon comes from), sweet potatoes roasted with smoked paprika butter, and the runny yolk from a fried egg drenching the whole thing.
First, the pork belly. This is a cut of pork with a huge amount of flavor for a relatively low cost. Succulent and fatty, it’s one of the easiest cuts of pork to cook into mouth-watering tenderness. It takes several hours to braise pork belly, so plan to start this recipe the day before (and if you want more leftovers, plan to buy 3 pounds of pork belly, instead of 2).
Next, the sweet potatoes. They’re roasted whole, then sliced and roasted again with paprika-scented butter. Sweet, salty, smoky and delicious. The crowing glory of this feast is a fried egg on each plate, crispy around the edges and soft and runny in the middle.
Servings: 4
Time in the Kitchen: 45 minutes, plus 3 hours to braise pork belly
Ingredients:
2 pounds pork belly (either skin on, or off, is fine) (1 kg)
1 onion, thinly sliced
4 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
2 celery stalks, chopped
6 sprigs parsley
1 teaspoon fennel seeds (5 ml)
1 bay leaf
3 cups chicken stock, or enough to just barely cover the pork belly (700 ml)
2 large sweet potatoes or yams, scrubbed clean
1/4 cup salted butter, melted (60 g)
3/4 teaspoon smoked paprika (2.5 ml)
1 egg for each person
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 325 °F/163 °C.
Use the tip of sharp knife to cut a cross-hatch pattern through the layer of fat (and/or skin) on one side of the pork belly. Cut deep enough to score the fat or skin, but not all the way through to the flesh. Season with salt and pepper on both sides, rubbing the seasoning in with your hands. Cut the pork belly into two pieces.
In a Dutch oven over medium-high heat, brown the pork belly, about 5 minutes per side (watch out for splattering fat when you flip it over.) Take the pork out of the pot and pour off most of the fat. Add onion, garlic and celery, sauté 3 to 5 minutes.
Put the pork back in the Dutch oven (fatty side up) and add the parsley, fennel seeds, bay leaf and stock.
Bring to a simmer. Cover and transfer to the oven. Braise the pork belly for 2 hours, remove lid, and braise 1 hour more.
When the pork belly goes into the oven, the sweet potatoes can also go in. Use a fork to poke holes in the sweet potatoes. Wrap each in foil, place on a baking sheet, and roast in the oven until very tender, about 1 hour. Unwrap from the foil and let cool.
Note: The pork belly and sweet potatoes can be cooked up to this point the day before making the dish. Cool both (remove the pork belly from the Dutch oven) then refrigerate.
Preheat oven to 450 °F/232 °C.
Slice each sweet potato into 1-inch/25 mm thick slices, spread out on a rimmed baking sheet.
Mix together melted butter and paprika. Brush each slice of sweet potato with the butter. Set any extra butter aside. Roast the sweet potato slices 20 minutes. Remove the potatoes from the oven and brush with any remaining butter.
Turn the oven broiler on.
To reheat the pork belly, place in a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Cook for just a few minutes, then put the pork belly under the broiler—not too close, about 8 inches away. Broil for about 2 minutes, until the top is browned and crisp. Cut into bite-sized pieces.
In a frying pan, fry an egg for each person.
On each plate, place several slices of sweet potato. Top with pork belly and a fried egg.
Save
July 8, 2016
From Fat and Sick to Fit and Healthy: How Chrohn’s Disease Is No Longer Ruining My Life!
It’s Friday, everyone! And that means another Primal Blueprint Real Life Story from a Mark’s Daily Apple reader. If you have your own success story and would like to share it with me and the Mark’s Daily Apple community please contact me here. I’ll continue to publish these each Friday as long as they keep coming in. Thank you for reading!
It’s been almost two years now since I said goodbye to the symptoms of my Crohn’s Disease.
I sometimes reflect on how I suffered day to day and cannot believe the changes in my life.
I had constant day-to-day diarrhea and suffered from extreme urgency. I could be speaking to you and mid-conversation I would suddenly have to run off. I could be anywhere. I remember that for the two years that my illness was at it’s worst, I barely listened to anyone. When they were talking I was always thinking about where the nearest toilet was.
This happened up to fifteen times a day. Anti-diarrhea medication barely touched it. And once I was on the toilet I was often dragged back a second or third time in quick succession.
This meant I had great difficulty traveling anywhere as I needed to know where the toilet bowls were on my journey. There was no way I could fly. I just didn’t have the luxury of being able to ‘queue for the loo’ once that seat belt sign went off.
I became a bathroom expert. I knew where every toilet was and when they closed. It was an even worse problem at my job since my work dictated I be out of the office. I had to be smart and plan my routes.
I even thought once that I should start a competition for the best-kept bathrooms; we could have an evening gala prize giving event, like The Brownlows, and people could get prizes for the quality of their toilet paper or handwash. I certainly knew them all.
I also suffered from Reflux Disease and without medication, Nexium, a PPI (or Proton Pump Inhibitor), I simply couldn’t function or sleep.
I rattled with medication.
On top of that, I suffered joint pain, especially my knees and neck and shoulders and used to pop painkillers like lollies to get through the day.
When I finally took the dive, driven by my wife, to look into changing my lifestyle, I had hit rock bottom.
I was the heaviest I had ever been, 5’8” with a 40” waist and I looked and felt terrible. Some of this was diet and some was caused by the medication I was taking. I looked old. I looked frumpy. I looked ill.
Obviously, being romantic when you feel like this was never on the top of the agenda. I was also always tired, moody and probably clinically depressed. I felt like a social leper and like a millstone around my family’s necks.
I had been told that diet did not affect Crohn’s and with my medication, I could basically eat what I like as it would not change my symptoms. So I did eat what I liked.
I liked fast food. Lots of it. I liked chocolate. Oh and pies and sausage rolls. I also liked alcohol and wasn’t fussy about what I drank. After all, it wouldn’t change my symptoms. It numbed me and allowed me to sleep. Sometimes.
When I finally got on board my Paleo lifestyle I was staggered about just how quickly my poor little body fought back. Cutting out wheat and sugar at first, the weight simply dropped off me. Within two weeks my symptoms just stopped. I started to sleep well and started to feel so much better.
At first, I was still taking all the same meds. I felt well enough to start to exercise and this spurred me on to do more. I lost two trouser sizes very quickly. Then I lost two more. I was always buying new clothes.
I then went hard and did a ten-week detox program and cut out all alcohol, caffeine, wheat, sugar, dairy, legumes and processed food. My wife didn’t think I’d be able to lose the alcohol (neither did I). But I did it. And this ten-week plan saw me lose even more body fat and come off all my medication.
The reflux had simply gone. Diarrhea had gone and the aches and pains had gone. Completely.
I began to exercise to a much higher standard and started to really research nutrition. I bought every book on the subject and stopped watching tv and started to read. And read.
My bibles were Nora Gedgaudes’ Primal Body, Primal Mind and Mark Sisson’s The Primal Blueprint. These books have been read back to front and back again several times and they just clicked with me. I loved the whole idea of “Grok.”
I tried to replicate his lifestyle in this modern world we live in and it just all made sense.
I exercise like a child nowadays, playing tag, swinging on monkey bars and I do high-intensity workouts using just body weight and do occasional sprint sets too, which I love.
I realized that Crohn’s WAS affected massively by diet despite what the so-called experts thought. I realized that PPI’s suppress the body’s ability to make acid to digest food. How wrong was this? We need the acid to be strong enough to digest our food and not cause digestive stress! But for so long I’d just been prescribed a “safe” drug so I could just carry on eating what I liked!
Then I found out the side effects of PPI’s were headaches, nausea, diarrhea, abdominal pain, fatigue, and dizziness! So they were potentially making the Crohn’s symptoms worse!
I have now been totally med-free for approaching two years. I mean totally med-free. Not even a paracetamol has passed my lips.
I had my 50th birthday not long ago and I am fitter, stronger, healthier and feel better than I did when I was 25. My 40” waist is now 28” and the same size I was at 19.
I have boundless energy and sleep really well.
Some people recently pointed out to me that in the photos of me when I was sick (I didn’t like my fat self being photographed, so there aren’t many…), I was always looking sad.
Now I am always smiling. I’m not surprised.
The moral of all this?
Don’t trust everyone. Some shout loud but they might not know what they’re talking about. Research, research, research. Believe in yourself. Live like Grok as much as you can.
And don’t accept that aches and pains and limitations are part of growing old. They are not. We should be fit and well until we die. Food is medicine, medicine is food.
I’m aiming to drop dead healthy.
Gary
P.S. My wife and I have our own website now, Paleonutter.com and arrange lifestyle seminars and Paleo “nights out” similar to PaleoFX on a smaller scale. This whole thing has been life-changing for us.
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July 7, 2016
Why a Sense of Adventure Is Important (and 22 Primal Ways to Cultivate It)
It’s inevitable. Sometimes in life we get stuck. We feel stuck. We get in a rut, and from there all motivation can fizzle and sputter until it craps out entirely. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this scenario. It’s the way of human nature, I’d say. Boredom can be a productive influence if there’s space for it to inspire something new. Alternatively, it can be a deadening force if we’ve boxed ourselves into an uncompromising daily drill. A sense of sameness can numb us over time, lull us really, until one day we wake up and realize we’re not having fun anymore in this game of life. In abandoning novelty and adventure, it dawns on us, we’ve also abandoned ourselves.
This isn’t to disparage routine. After all, set structure often plays a critical role in stabilizing our core lifestyle changes, particularly as we shift toward a Primal take on eating, fitness, sleep and other lifestyle elements. If we’re reinventing the wheel every day, we’re probably expending too much energy unnecessarily. There are details of life that we can honestly work just fine, if not better, on auto-pilot.
For instance, we might find it easier to stay on our Primal track if we have the same breakfast each day during the work week. Alternatively, scheduling a set “green hour” for ourselves that’s the same every day (or weekday at least) can help ensure we regularly get the sun/outdoor benefits we desire. If we see routine as a tool of self-discipline and wise efficiency, we apply it strategically. As a result, we more easily meet our goals and move into the life we want for ourselves.
The danger doesn’t lie in employing routine, but in mistaking it for living.
When every day becomes regimented between work schedules and after school activities, volunteer work and lawn care, play dates, T.V. and bill paying, there’s a problem. We may not feel it at first. After all, our culture today values stability—sometimes above all else. Maturity is too often assumed to be the ability to settle into it. However, if we focus each day solely on comfort and convenience, sooner or later we may find we’ve settled for a life that’s below our expectations.
The results can be complacency, boredom and (eventually) burnout. From that point, too many people react in irrational and self-destructive ways. Ironically, it’s often not so much against the routine structure and artificial expectations that put them in a rut, but as against the core activities, major goals and key relationships in their lives.
But when we live in a way that balances strategic structure with meaningful adventure, we have the chance to continually ground our lives in what matters most to us while also regularly propelling ourselves toward new experiences. We simultaneously keep our values (including our health integrity) and expand our lives.
Adventure is about embracing the unexpected, venturing risk, letting things come to us. We take a break from the endless planning, acquiring and polishing of life. We deliberately release control and welcome an element of surprise and challenge. In doing so, we encounter new dimensions of aliveness (or Life with a capital L as some would say) and, in doing so, often feel or even discover new aspects of ourselves.
The “spirit of adventure,” for me, is the continual willingness to meet and be moved by the unexpected, larger forces and possibilities in life. There aren’t many concepts more primal in the original sense than that. Grok in his day had infinite time to think, wander, and explore. Life wasn’t systematized in his Outlook calendar. He accepted it for the most part as it came to him, and with it came generous shares of novelty and awe (with flashes of danger, which offered its own thrill when it didn’t cost him life or limb).
Today our perpetual busyness and distractibility drives a wedge between us and those instincts. We dictate what we need to do each day and too often circumscribe our realities with that limited vision. We tend to live as if we know it all (or at least all that matters) collectively and individually. Not only is that bunk, but it’s an incredibly dull way to move through life.
I prefer to act as if there’s always something new and enriching to be learned, seen and experienced. And I’ve never been disappointed. It just seems to work that way. If you assume adventure is contrived, adverse or out of reach, it will be. If you believe it’s an enriching, inborn aspect of you, you’ll find (and appreciate) it regularly and benefit from it.
By embracing adventure, you accept the value of mixing things up by trying new approaches to health, life, relationships and vocation (among other things). You open up the energy and idea exchange with the world around you. Suddenly, everything can be seen as feedback. In throwing caution to the wind and seeking out new (and possibly uncomfortable) situations, you’ll be in a position to discover hidden talents and passions. You’ll be able to experiment with more fulfilling ways to eat or work. You’ll likely stumble upon more efficient or creative ways to move and play.
In short, you’ll take off the blinders that keep you on the same track you’ve always been on (and dislodge yourself from any entrapping boredom and sabotage that can come with being stuck). In this regard, adventure is a potent (and Primal) antidote to the modern scourges of self-limitation and malaise.
So, how can we embrace adventure as a Primal force in our lives to enrich us, to move us forward, and to expand our sense of what’s possible? The idea here is less about life-endangering stunts (although those can have their merits, too) and more about expanding one’s field of experience to see what shows up and how it can enhance our Primal life. Let’s look at a few prospects rapid-fire style. And I hope you’ll add your own to augment this list.
22 Primal Quick Tips to Cultivate a Sense of Adventure
1. Seek out some exotic foods—whether you make it, find it or order it.
2. Take a calculated risk in your career by applying for a different position or attending a new conference or training event.
3. Moonlight a few hours a week doing something that’s purely for fun.
4. Learn something by taking a class—related to an outdoor skill, a current/desired profession, a personal hobby, or a new interest.
5. Flex your work hours to make better room for activities you enjoy.
6. Go somewhere new every morning before work this week.
7. Give one day of every weekend to road tripping (or biking to area destinations) this month.
8. Set up a social event with people you normally just keep up with online.
9. Climb something new every week for a year.
10. Hit a new park every weekend through the end of the summer.
11. Travel to a state (or country) you’ve never visited.
12. Do something totally novel during your lunch hours or work breaks this week.
13. Try 3 human-powered modes of transportation you’ve never used before.
14. Say yes to the next five activities or opportunities that comes your way.
15. Exchange houses/apartments with someone for a week.
16. Go to camp this summer. (Yup, camp for adults is really a thing—a very good thing.)
17. Build something this summer by yourself or with someone else.
18. Devote an entire night or afternoon once a week to doing (start to finish) a creative project based wholly on whim (and available materials).
19. Teach yourself to cook a totally new and impressive Primal meal, and find someone who’s never eaten at your home to share it with.
20. Grow something you’ve never attempted before.
21. Design and set up your ideal Primal play space in your yard or (with portable tools) in a public area.
22. Commit to a detailed daily journal or photo journal for a week in which you record every novel encounter and awe-inspiring experience. And observe the power of intentional awareness.
Thanks for reading, everyone. What are you doing to keep adventure alive and well in your summer? Share your ideas and stories in the comment board, and have a great end to your week.
July 6, 2016
12 Reasons Why Swimming Is an Essential Primal Skill
In the US, summer is upon us. And it is damn hot. To keep cool and to get in a good stretch after lifting, I’ve been putting in a few laps a few times a week.
As a triathlete, my most hated leg of the race was the swimming. I hated being in cold water. I wasn’t the strongest swimmer, so it was—physically—the toughest part. But in recent years, I’ve come to embrace my time in the pool (at least as a post-workout stretch). Maybe it’s cause my cold tolerance has gone up. Maybe it’s that I’m no longer swimming miles at a time, instead doing dramatically shorter swims. Maybe it’s because I do it for pleasure, rather than training for one of the world’s most grueling events. All I know is that those few laps every week have worked out nicely. But for you water lovers out there, there’s a whole host of benefits that swimming has to offer. So if you’re suffering from the summer heat and looking for a great way to cool down while getting in a pretty extensive workout, swimming should be toward the top of your list.
So, what are some of some of the benefits you have to look forward to?
1. Swimming is tradition
Swimming is one of the most Primal skills. All throughout human history (and prehistory), people have settled in and around bodies of water. Rivers, lakes, and seas had the best food, the most important nutrients for building bigger and better brains, and we had to be able to handle ourselves in the water if we wanted to obtain those vital resources. Some populations have even developed physiological adaptations to a life in the water, like improved underwater eyesight. But even if you’re not a member of a seafaring nomad tribe, swimming is in your blood.
2. Swimming is low-stress
I can’t go out and run hill sprints or even bike sprints every day. I’ll hit a wall after a couple days of that after which the benefits cease and the negative effects accumulate. Traditional sprints on land are just too stressful. That’s why they work so well. Swimming isn’t like that.
You see, this is how elite swimmers train: every single day, often twice. Don’t use this as permission to overdo it. You’re not an elite swimmer, and you don’t need to be swimming for four hours every day. But what this does indicate is that swimming is overall easier on the body. You can recover quicker from it than other types of exercise.
3. Swimming is easy on the joints
Studies show that swimming is a great exercise for patients with osteoarthritis. Compared to cycling, swimming improves vascular function; both cycling and swimming reduce inflammatory markers and pain while improving stiffness and physical limitation in people with osteoarthritis. Turns out that the water is real easy on stiff, sore joints.
Swimming will keep your joints healthy by increasing motion, too. Since our connective tissues receive very little blood flow, they require conscious movement to shuttle blood, fluid, and nutrients toward and from them. Motion is lotion. Swimming is constant motion.
I wouldn’t only do swimming, though. You also need some stress on the joints to improve their strength and resilience.
4. Swimming works the entire body
Try it, guys. Hop in the pool, do a 50 meter sprint, and tell me how your muscles feel. It’ll be the best pump of your life. A pump so potent it’d bring 1970s Schwarzenegger to climax. If you don’t do this often, you’ll probably be sore the next day. Be warned.
5. Swimming is enough to keep your bones healthy
You might think that the gentleness of swimming and the perceived weightlessness of being in water would weaken the effect exercise normally has on bone. You’d be wrong, at least in rats. In rats subjected to three weeks of no exercise, interrupting their bed rest with swimming was enough to completely prevent loss of bone mass. The rats who didn’t swim progressed to full-blown osteopenia.
That said, it doesn’t seem to augment bone mineral density like high-impact sprints or strength training. Surveys of competitive swimmers find little evidence of increased bone mineral density, and some evidence of reduced density. Better pair it with more intense, load-bearing activity.
6. Swimming enhances blood flow to the brain
Exercise in general increases blood flow to the brain—it’s why a brisk walk can really get the creative juices flowing—but exercising in water boosts the effect. A recent study examined this. To avoid confounders, the researchers had subjects either do water- or land-based stepping exercises. Same type of movement and intensity, different medium. Those who stepped while immersed in water experienced augmented blood flow to the brain compared to landlubbers.
Even though the subjects didn’t actually swim, swimming will work. I don’t think there’s anything special about stepping. It’s the “being in water as you exercise” part that enhances the blood flow.
7. Swimming trains a very specific capacity you probably aren’t getting
One study found that adding weight training to a swimmer’s routine made them more powerful in the water (“tethered swim force”) but didn’t improve actual swim performance. Another found that only swim-specific lifts (bench press and pullover) improved swim performance. This means that swimming is doing something unique to swimming. It’s making you better in the water. It’s giving you a specific type of fitness that you can’t get elsewhere.
If your goal is total fitness and all around capacity, you can’t neglect swimming.
8. Swimming will keep you alive
If you’re a competent swimmer able to fluidly and efficiently tread water, float, and move through the water, it will be very hard to drown you. The world’s about 3/4 water. You’re really limiting yourself if you’re only comfortable on land.
9. Swimming builds lung capacity
Everything that taxes your oxygen use builds lung capacity. Lifting weights, running sprints, jogging, hiking, sex, and competitive hopscotch can all build lung capacity. But swimming is cool because it’s an environment where you often can’t breathe even if you wanted to. It’s not like holding your breath while running, where you just have to open your mouth and inhale. It’s too easy to let a little air slip in when you’re immersed in the stuff. Being underwater makes it easier to keep from breathing because you must actively choose to breathe. It’s an extra step.
There’s evidence that swimmers build greater lung capacity than runners. Swimming forces air restriction. Runners always have all the air they want, whenever they want.
10. Swimming may offer special benefits to asthmatics
Chlorine muddies the waters here; there’s some evidence its presence in pool water can worsen certain aspects of asthmatic function. But on the whole, swimming, particularly in non-chlorinated water, appears to offer special benefits to people with asthma and is less asthmogenic than other types of exercise. If it makes your asthma worse, don’t swim (or try a chlorine-free option), of course. You’ll know it if it’s getting worse.
11. Swimming is cold water exposure
If you’re looking for a way to expose your body to cold water, and you’re not one to idly sit in a tub full of ice water, swimming works. You’ve got a job to do. Swimming isn’t just exercise. It’s also cold (or cool) water exposure, provided you’re not in tepid bath water. Being in cool water forces you to burn more calories (via brown fat activation) to maintain your body temperature. If you can resist the massive spike in appetite many people experience after swimming, you’ll likely burn a little extra fat.
12. Swimming is joyful
There’s something special about swimming beyond the fun it provides. You dive down below the surface and enter another world, an alien world where your interactions with the laws of physics are different than you’re used to. It’s a “reset,” a literal change of perspective. The immersion one experiences while swimming isn’t just a physical consequence of being surrounded by water.
Has anyone else been spending more time in the water this summer? Why do you like to swim? Is it leisure time, training time, or both? Let me know down below!
Thanks for reading, all.
July 5, 2016
Feeling Overwhelmed? 9 Ways to Cope With and Work Past Primal Roadblocks
For all the positive effects, for all the long-term successes, for the life-changing (and in some cases life-saving) impacts of going Primal, I never want to give short shrift to the actual process of transition. Going Primal, taking it to a deeper level, or hitting a snag several years in can throw us for a loop. We hit a major fitness plateau. We get hit with a new health diagnosis or injury just as we’re making it out of the Primal starting gate. We think too much about the scale. We get caught up in analyzing how far we have to go and forget how much ground we’ve already covered. These unnerved moments and temporary backslides are all part of real-life (i.e. imperfect) natural adaptations to new challenges—challenges that will offer huge payback once we move through them. Most days and weeks things go well, but once in a while they don’t. We lose our footing. We lose our mojo. We get discouraged and slip into an emotional swampland. Times of feeling deeply overwhelmed threaten to derail some of our biggest endeavors—but it doesn’t need to go down that way.
You likely know the feeling. One day you feel good, composed, eager. But things happen, responsibilities pile up, schedules get busy, and progress doesn’t happen as fast as you think it should. Gradually the initial optimism begins slipping through your fingers. Instead of empowerment or enthusiasm, you start noticing a heaviness. Determination wanes as you see projects as too big to handle—the myriad of demands as too much. You find yourself trending toward avoidance. You feel smaller, maybe edgier. Whereas before you identified with your endeavor, an emotional distance now grows between you and what you’re reaching for—or maybe everything. Your goals (and maybe your life) become something you want to escape. One day you realize that phase of frustration has thrown you off the wagon entirely. And it may be a long stretch before you’re truly ready to get back on.
I think it’s important to back up here and note that many (and possibly most) people come across the Primal Blueprint because something in their lives just isn’t working. Not surprisingly, there’s usually a long history of disappointment, aggravation, and failure, which can get re-triggered when we find ourselves hitting bumps along the Primal path.
And let’s be honest. Many of us already live on the edge of feeling overwhelmed, whether or not we’re taking up a new health challenge. The regular stresses of modern life and its incessant demands too often stretch us to the brink. Add to this the fundamental mismatch between these contemporary conditions and our evolutionary hardwiring, and you have an even greater underlying pressure. Even as we take up the Primal solution to CW’s faulty diet and exercise designs, we’re still likely operating within tech overload, sensory strain, professional and home overworking scenarios, and more. The fact is, it’s almost impossible to not get overwhelmed on occasion.
When we add a major lifestyle change to the mix, it’s important to respect the additional energy and focus we’ll be applying—not to take the wind out of our sails, but just to apply a reality check. Will a shift to the Primal lifestyle move your health, well-being, and vitality to new pinnacles? Yes, but it takes thought and change to get there—logistical change, certainly, and emotional change for many people, too. It’s not an effortless process, especially if you’re looking to undo significant weight gain or chronic illness. Nothing in life is free. That said, progress will take you by surprise, even if it doesn’t always come as an immediate or linear result.
Becoming overwhelmed can happen when we take on too much at once or when our approach to an endeavor takes us too much out of our comfort zone too quickly. The Primal Blueprint absolutely fosters physical as well as psychological resilience, but we inevitably go through uneven terrain on the way to it. Primal life changes us, as life in general thankfully does, and we can bring a Primal attitude to its challenges for perspective along the way—including times of feeling overwhelmed.
So let’s look at a few ideas for how to do just that.
1. Plan for it
As in plan for feeling overwhelmed. Just assume that it’s going to happen at some point, and prepare yourself emotionally for it. Everyone experiences undulations in their process of moving from A to B in their health. The Primal Blueprint is all about flexibility, and the 80/20 offers a useful principle for this purpose.
As you begin your Primal path and at various points along the way, think about what flexibility can mean for you in different phases of motivation. Preemptively brainstorm for days or weeks when you’ll need to operate from a pared down, simpler plan. What will eating look like during those stretches? What would a good fitness outline be for these phases? Write it down (because most of us, realistically speaking, won’t remember it when we’re already on actual overload). A little forethought goes a long way to staying on track.
2. Stop and let the dust settle
When you realize you’re in over your head, resist the urge to push. Just shut down the engines. There’s nothing woo-woo about this. The fact is, I’ve yet to meet anyone who does his/her best thinking in a desperate, overwhelmed, insistent mindset.
When you see that you’re swimming in the waters of exasperation, the answer isn’t to swim harder. It’s time for the float, maybe even the dead man’s float, simply to conserve precious energy and sanity. The more we wear ourselves out flailing around, the more likely it is we’ll just sink. Stabilize yourself instead, and give rational response a space to come through.
3. Accept the phase and move through it
No regrets. No self-flagellation. No coulda, woulda, shoulda. Just get your head in the now because that’s the only moment you have any influence over. Once you’ve collected yourself, the only relevant question will be, “What’s the next best move given where I’m at?”
4. Apply self-compassion
It’s my experience that people often get themselves to the point of feeling overwhelmed because they were more focused on a sense of obligation to others (e.g. family or friends who criticize our Primal commitment) or to perceived “perfectionistic” principles than to their own individual needs.
Accept the lesson and use the chance to get back to your intuition. No guilt here—just a potent reminder that retrieving health (and, indeed, living a life) is just a grand self-experiment, and we need to focus on our body’s feedback more than any expectation we or others might have of us. Take time to cultivate patience with your own process.
5. Load up on self-care
Self-care certainly encompasses getting/staying healthy, but it’s not about letting an unrelenting, drill sergeant force run your life. An excellent recent Harvard Business Review article offered a spot-on reminder of this principle. The title alone, “Resilience Is about How You Recharge, Not about How You Endure,” says a lot. If you tend to be someone who resists taking your foot off the gas, consider it suggested reading.
Self-care, as I’ve explained before, is ultimately about cultivating self-attunement and applying healthy as well as nurturant activities to your life. When you’re overwhelmed or discouraged because of a setback (e.g. a fitness plateau or workout injury), it goes double.
Make a list of what healthy indulgences (e.g. massage, naps) and recovery activities (e.g. meditation, yoga, time outdoors) fill the well for you. Responding effectively to feeling overwhelmed isn’t just about what to cut out of your daily life, but also including more of what rejuvenates you.
6. Enlist major support
Make a list of five ways someone else can help you this week. Do this every week, and follow through. If you’re the answer to how everything in your life gets done, getting overwhelmed will dog you at every turn. Find a way to clear space for yourself.
Support can mean delegating responsibilities or employing a trainer or health coach to hold and design the bigger picture of your Primal endeavor. If you’ve been spinning your wheels for a while on the health/fitness front, there may be issues you wouldn’t necessarily consider that a professional might be able to help with. Bringing an objective eye to your situation can be extremely helpful. Where, after all, does it say in the book of life that you have to be the one to figure it all out on your own?
7. Set lower threshold goals
This is relatively self-explanatory. The risk of getting overwhelmed is the common response of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. Of all times, this is the one in which to dump the perfectionistic, all-or-nothing tendency. Walk back your behavioral change goals instead of walking away from them altogether.
8. Take your time
You have your entire life to institute these changes. Even when you feel you’re up against the clock because you’re working to dial back blood sugar issues or heart disease, resist rushing to the finish line. Take the time you need. Live from a patient commitment to the Primal path, rather than a desperate swinging at it. Baby steps will still get you where you want to go.
9. Recalibrate a new normal
Too often, people who get overwhelmed want to take a week off, patch themselves up, only to get back into the same routine as fast as possible. They don’t stop to consider that the old routine was what got them overloaded to begin with.
Taking a break is a time for recalibration, for assessing what’s been working and what hasn’t. Do you have enough time for free play in your life? Is a certain job or the commute to it draining the life out of you? Accept feeling overwhelmed as feedback, and take advantage of its cue for reflection. Use the temporary slowdown or detour to move into a new plan that will take you to your next Primal level.
Thanks for reading, everyone. I’d love to hear your thoughts on feeling overwhelmed and the situations in which it’s come up for you in going Primal.
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Feeling Overwhelmed? 9 Ways to Cope and Work Past Primal Roadblocks
For all the positive effects, for all the long-term successes, for the life-changing (and in some cases life-saving) impacts of going Primal, I never want to give short shrift to the actual process of transition. Going Primal, taking it to a deeper level, or hitting a snag several years in can throw us for a loop. We hit a major fitness plateau. We get hit with a new health diagnosis or injury just as we’re making it out of the Primal starting gate. We think too much about the scale. We get caught up in analyzing how far we have to go and forget how much ground we’ve already covered. These unnerved moments and temporary backslides are all part of real-life (i.e. imperfect) natural adaptations to new challenges—challenges that will offer huge payback once we move through them. Most days and weeks things go well, but once in a while they don’t. We lose our footing. We lose our mojo. We get discouraged and slip into an emotional swampland. Times of feeling deeply overwhelmed threaten to derail some of our biggest endeavors—but it doesn’t need to go down that way.
You likely know the feeling. One day you feel good, composed, eager. But things happen, responsibilities pile up, schedules get busy, and progress doesn’t happen as fast as you think it should. Gradually the initial optimism begins slipping through your fingers. Instead of empowerment or enthusiasm, you start noticing a heaviness. Determination wanes as you see projects as too big to handle—the myriad of demands as too much. You find yourself trending toward avoidance. You feel smaller, maybe edgier. Whereas before you identified with your endeavor, an emotional distance now grows between you and what you’re reaching for—or maybe everything. Your goals (and maybe your life) become something you want to escape. One day you realize that phase of frustration has thrown you off the wagon entirely. And it may be a long stretch before you’re truly ready to get back on.
I think it’s important to back up here and note that many (and possibly most) people come across the Primal Blueprint because something in their lives just isn’t working. Not surprisingly, there’s usually a long history of disappointment, aggravation, and failure, which can get re-triggered when we find ourselves hitting bumps along the Primal path.
And let’s be honest. Many of us already live on the edge of feeling overwhelmed, whether or not we’re taking up a new health challenge. The regular stresses of modern life and its incessant demands too often stretch us to the brink. Add to this the fundamental mismatch between these contemporary conditions and our evolutionary hardwiring, and you have an even greater underlying pressure. Even as we take up the Primal solution to CW’s faulty diet and exercise designs, we’re still likely operating within tech overload, sensory strain, professional and home overworking scenarios, and more. The fact is, it’s almost impossible to not get overwhelmed on occasion.
When we add a major lifestyle change to the mix, it’s important to respect the additional energy and focus we’ll be applying—not to take the wind out of our sails, but just to apply a reality check. Will a shift to the Primal lifestyle move your health, well-being, and vitality to new pinnacles? Yes, but it takes thought and change to get there—logistical change, certainly, and emotional change for many people, too. It’s not an effortless process, especially if you’re looking to undo significant weight gain or chronic illness. Nothing in life is free. That said, progress will take you by surprise, even if it doesn’t always come as an immediate or linear result.
Becoming overwhelmed can happen when we take on too much at once or when our approach to an endeavor takes us too much out of our comfort zone too quickly. The Primal Blueprint absolutely fosters physical as well as psychological resilience, but we inevitably go through uneven terrain on the way to it. Primal life changes us, as life in general thankfully does, and we can bring a Primal attitude to its challenges for perspective along the way—including times of feeling overwhelmed.
So let’s look at a few ideas for how to do just that.
1. Plan for it
As in plan for feeling overwhelmed. Just assume that it’s going to happen at some point, and prepare yourself emotionally for it. Everyone experiences undulations in their process of moving from A to B in their health. The Primal Blueprint is all about flexibility, and the 80/20 offers a useful principle for this purpose.
As you begin your Primal path and at various points along the way, think about what flexibility can mean for you in different phases of motivation. Preemptively brainstorm for days or weeks when you’ll need to operate from a pared down, simpler plan. What will eating look like during those stretches? What would a good fitness outline be for these phases? Write it down (because most of us, realistically speaking, won’t remember it when we’re already on actual overload). A little forethought goes a long way to staying on track.
2. Stop and let the dust settle
When you realize you’re in over your head, resist the urge to push. Just shut down the engines. There’s nothing woo-woo about this. The fact is, I’ve yet to meet anyone who does his/her best thinking in a desperate, overwhelmed, insistent mindset.
When you see that you’re swimming in the waters of exasperation, the answer isn’t to swim harder. It’s time for the float, maybe even the dead man’s float, simply to conserve precious energy and sanity. The more we wear ourselves out flailing around, the more likely it is we’ll just sink. Stabilize yourself instead, and give rational response a space to come through.
3. Accept the phase and move through it
No regrets. No self-flagellation. No coulda, woulda, shoulda. Just get your head in the now because that’s the only moment you have any influence over. Once you’ve collected yourself, the only relevant question will be, “What’s the next best move given where I’m at?”
4. Apply self-compassion
It’s my experience that people often get themselves to the point of feeling overwhelmed because they were more focused on a sense of obligation to others (e.g. family or friends who criticize our Primal commitment) or to perceived “perfectionistic” principles than to their own individual needs.
Accept the lesson and use the chance to get back to your intuition. No guilt here—just a potent reminder that retrieving health (and, indeed, living a life) is just a grand self-experiment, and we need to focus on our body’s feedback more than any expectation we or others might have of us. Take time to cultivate patience with your own process.
5. Load up on self-care
Self-care certainly encompasses getting/staying healthy, but it’s not about letting an unrelenting, drill sergeant force run your life. An excellent recent Harvard Business Review article offered a spot-on reminder of this principle. The title alone, “Resilience Is about How You Recharge, Not about How You Endure,” says a lot. If you tend to be someone who resists taking your foot off the gas, consider it suggested reading.
Self-care, as I’ve explained before, is ultimately about cultivating self-attunement and applying healthy as well as nurturant activities to your life. When you’re overwhelmed or discouraged because of a setback (e.g. a fitness plateau or workout injury), it goes double.
Make a list of what healthy indulgences (e.g. massage, naps) and recovery activities (e.g. meditation, yoga, time outdoors) fill the well for you. Responding effectively to feeling overwhelmed isn’t just about what to cut out of your daily life, but also including more of what rejuvenates you.
6. Enlist major support
Make a list of five ways someone else can help you this week. Do this every week, and follow through. If you’re the answer to how everything in your life gets done, getting overwhelmed will dog you at every turn. Find a way to clear space for yourself.
Support can mean delegating responsibilities or employing a trainer or health coach to hold and design the bigger picture of your Primal endeavor. If you’ve been spinning your wheels for a while on the health/fitness front, there may be issues you wouldn’t necessarily consider that a professional might be able to help with. Bringing an objective eye to your situation can be extremely helpful. Where, after all, does it say in the book of life that you have to be the one to figure it all out on your own?
7. Set lower threshold goals
This is relatively self-explanatory. The risk of getting overwhelmed is the common response of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. Of all times, this is the one in which to dump the perfectionistic, all-or-nothing tendency. Walk back your behavioral change goals instead of walking away from them altogether.
8. Take your time
You have your entire life to institute these changes. Even when you feel you’re up against the clock because you’re working to dial back blood sugar issues or heart disease, resist rushing to the finish line. Take the time you need. Live from a patient commitment to the Primal path, rather than a desperate swinging at it. Baby steps will still get you where you want to go.
9. Recalibrate a new normal
Too often, people who get overwhelmed want to take a week off, patch themselves up, only to get back into the same routine as fast as possible. They don’t stop to consider that the old routine was what got them overloaded to begin with.
Taking a break is a time for recalibration, for assessing what’s been working and what hasn’t. Do you have enough time for free play in your life? Is a certain job or the commute to it draining the life out of you? Accept feeling overwhelmed as feedback, and take advantage of its cue for reflection. Use the temporary slowdown or detour to move into a new plan that will take you to your next Primal level.
Thanks for reading, everyone. I’d love to hear your thoughts on feeling overwhelmed and the situations in which it’s come up for you in going Primal.
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July 4, 2016
Dear Mark: Amino Acid Supplements, Preventing an Infection, and Knee Pain in a Lunging Athlete
For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering three questions. First, are the amino acid supplements sarcosine, D-serine, and D-cycloserine worth taking? What do they do and who can they help? Next, what should you do to prevent an infection? Besides the regular stuff like vitamin C and vitamin D, is there anything else to take to mitigate the damage and prevent pathogenic incursions? And finally, I field a question from a fencer and martial artist who’s feeling the beginning twinges of knee pain. He leads a lunge-heavy life—it’s an inescapable part of his training—and I offer a few suggestions for limiting the damage.
Let’s go:
Dear Mark,
You have talked about branched chain amino acids before.
I was wondering how safe you believe the other Amino Acid supplements are?
In particular, Sarcosine, D-Serine, and D-Cycloserine?
Thank you
Alana
These aren’t the BCAAs you’re used to taking to enhance performance in the gym, fat loss, and body composition.
Sarcosine, D-serine, and D-cycloserine increase signaling at the NMDA receptor, a glutamate receptor that plays a huge role in depression, schizophrenia, addiction, anxiety and other mental disorders. Sarcosine is a glycine transporter-1 inhibitor; it reduces the amount of glycine taken up by cells, increases serum glycine levels, and makes more glycine available for binding with the NDMA receptor. D-serine is an NMDA co-agonist; it makes the NMDA receptor bind more effectively to other agonists. D-cycloserine is a partial NMDA co-agonist that also acts as an antibiotic against tuberculosis.
What are they good for?
They’ve all been studied in schizophrenia. In both long-term stable schizophrenia patients and patients suffering from acute episodes, sarcosine reduced the PANSS (positive and negative symptom score). D-serine improved symptoms, just not as effectively as sarcosine. Adding it to an antipsychotic regimen helped reduce symptoms, too. D-cycloserine is also effective against symptoms of schizophrenia when added to typical meds.
They may help against certain types of depression. Some types of depression are characterized by over-expression of NMDA receptors, while others are caused by low NMDA activity. As they enhance NMDA activity, sarcosine and D-serine may help with the latter type.
D-cycloserine shows promise in treating anxiety disorders, mostly as an enhancer of existing treatments. When you take it shortly before the exposure, cycloserine makes exposure therapy better at extinguishing anxiety and fear in a number of disorders including snake phobia, OCD, social anxiety, panic disorder, and acrophobia (no word on arachnophobia). It may also help older autistic kids and teens with their social skills.
As the NMDA receptor is a popular and viable target for cognitive enhancement, and enhancement of NMDA receptor function is a “core strategy” in combatting age-related cognitive decline, these amino acids may have potential as nootropics. Do they work?
It’s all very preliminary. In one study, D-serine improved working memory, sustained attention, verbal fluency, and reaction times. One group of researchers suggest D-serine may be “the key” to synaptic plasticity, which is required for learning something new or the formation of memories. Sarcosine should work pretty well for this, too, as it increases D-serine levels.
However, sarcosine is also elevated in patients with prostate cancer. It’s even found in the prostate tumor itself. Its relationship to prostate cancer isn’t strong enough to warrant using sarcosine as an early biomarker for detection of prostate cancer, but it may act as a co-carcinogen once the cancer has been established. This is extremely speculative, mind you.
So while these are probably “safe,” they’re mostly used for very specific treatments, often under medical supervision, and probably don’t have as much application to the general public. If you have any of the conditions listed above, mention these amino acids to your doctor and show some research.
Mark-
As our family’s go to health Guru I have a question for you that I wasn’t able to find an answer to on your site already. I have a feeling I already know at least part of the answer from reading daily but here it is….
My wife and I have three children. My girls are 10 and 5 and my son is 9 months. Just the other day, my younger daughter and my son came down with the dreaded 24hour-ish stomach bug. Now my wife, older daughter and I feel like the poor victims on The Walking Dead” who have been bitten but not killed and are just waiting for the sickness to ensue. So my question is, outside of doubling down on Probiotics, Vitamins D and C and increasing water consumption, on top of a quality primal 90/10-ish diet, are there any other measures you would recommend to try and avoid coming down with the stomach bug ourselves?
Thanks for all that you do! You have been an incredible resource for our family over the last 4+ years.
Ryan
There are a couple things you can try in addition to probiotics, vitamin D, and vitamin C, which are all good things to try:
Zinc: Taken at the onset of an infection, it can reduce the duration. Taken with vitamin C, it’s even more effective. Taken regularly, it can reduce the incidence of infections in people with zinc deficiency. Shoot for at least 45 mg of elemental zinc.
Garlic: Take an entire head of garlic, smash each clove, and let them sit for ten minutes. Drop into simmering broth for 3-4 minutes, until some but not all of the pungency has dissipated. Drink broth, eat garlic. This is a lot of garlic, but it seriously works wonders.
As far as probiotics go, make sure you’re taking one with L. plantarum. It’s the strain with the most efficacy against infections.
Bear in mind that most of the above research is on upper respiratory tract infections like cold and flu. The stomach flu, or gastroenteritis, can have a ton of different causes so it’s difficult to make specific recommendations. Hope it helps and good luck!
Hi Mark,
I’m a regular fencer and martial artist who’s passionate about the sports they love, I practice lunging and techniques almost every day but I’m hitting 30 in the next couple of years and I’m starting to get a few niggling pains in my knees I’m hoping to see a physiotherapist about soon.
All of this got me a bit scared because I’ve always hoped to keep primally healthy and practicing well into old age.
What advice do you have for diet exercise and lifestyle choices for keeping the knees healthy in the long term for those of us who regularly give them a pounding?
Cheers!
I don’t know enough about fencing or martial arts to offer specific modifications to your skill training, but I do have some general advice.
Training
Check out MobilityWOD. Focus on the lower body MOBs (mobility workout of the day). Anything to do with hips, hip flexors, hamstrings, glutes, calves, ankles, feet, quads. Learn to love/hate the couch stretch.
Stretch your calves (often tight in lunging athletes, since lunges let you get away with tight calves whereas squats do not). These work well.
Switch to rear lunges when training. Obviously, when competing you’re going to be doing all sorts of forward lunges, but you don’t need to hammer that movement during training. Rear lunges will strengthen the same movement patterns in a controlled fashion.
Do some stability lunges. Get in a lunge position and hold it. Really stretch those hip flexors out. Get comfortable there.
Foam roll/lacrosse ball your legs. Get in there. Some say they don’t work, but I think they do.
Make the lunge a hip hinge, rather than forcing an upright posture. Hinging at the hip during a lunge with a little forward lean of the torso actually places more emphasis on the glutes and less on the knee, contrary to popular belief.
Diet
Get some collagen in your diet. Eat more gelatin-rich meats. Make/drink bone broth. Learn to cook oxtails, shanks, feet, hocks, and other collagenous animal parts. Try my collagen chocolate bars, which are delicious and get you most of the gelatin you need in a day. The human body requires at least 10 grams of glycine per day for basic metabolic processes, so we’re looking at an average daily deficit of 7 grams that we need to make up for through diet. With gelatin running about 33% glycine, aim for 21-25 grams of gelatin a day. Maybe even more, since you’re experiencing joint pain and glycine requirements go up in joint disorders.
Get your omega-3s. If you’re not eating fatty fish on a regular basis, that’s a no-brainer. Fish fat is anti-inflammatory, and although human evidence is mixed, the general consensus is that it improves joint pain. Besides, we know that omega-3s are important for other reasons, so why not try?
Eat turmeric or take curcumin. Curcuminoids from turmeric have shown efficacy against osteoarthritis (in addition to inflammatory disorders in general). A blend of turmeric extract, hydrolyzed collagen, and green tea extract looks like it might work pretty well.
Good luck!
Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care and be sure to help out with your input down below!
July 3, 2016
Weekend Link Love – Edition 407
Research of the Week
Taking your meals at the same time each day is probably better for your metabolic health.
It’s not the butter, it’s the bread.
There are major methodological problems with the latest “paleo diet kills mice” study.
Installing big green arrows that point to a grocery store’s produce section increases spending on fruits and vegetables.
New Primal Blueprint Podcasts
Episode 125: Cara and Jimmy Haun: Host Elle Russ hangs out with Cara and Jimmy, who tell their story of using Primal principles to overcome Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.
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.
Why Exercise Actually Does Matter for Weight Loss
From Float Tanks to Silent Retreats: Why Are People Looking for More Extreme Forms of Sensory Deprivation?
Are Cell Phones and EMF Really Harming Your Health?
Interesting Blog Posts
Someone proposes evolutionary explanations for political leanings.
Why exercise doesn’t burn fat (directly).
There still isn’t much of an obesity paradox.
Media, Schmedia
Humans speed up the evolution of other species.
Just lie back and enjoy it: how to really handle being caught in a rip current.
How exercise makes you more comfortable with discomfort.
Everything Else
Is there an evolutionary mismatch between how schools teach kids and how kids naturally learn?
The medical case for psychedelics is getting stronger.
A bitter battle between pear and apple enthusiasts threatens to tear the Pacific Northwest apart.
Freeloading butterfly a real jerk, say ants who rely on the gooey bamboo secretions it steals from them.
Recipe Corner
Who doesn’t like an envelope full of hot, lemony chicken?
Carrot and cucumber noodles may not take an alfredo sauce all that well, but avocado dressing? Absolutely.
Time Capsule
One year ago (Jul 3 – Jul 9)
10 Primal Foods You Aren’t Eating Enough Of – Get on it.
Doctors of the Future: 3 Promising Trends in Medical Education – What’s on the horizon?
Comment of the Week
A recipe for brains, and DNA that activates after you’re dead. Are you trying to tip us off about something, Mark?
– Hey, I’m just having Walking Dead withdrawals.
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