Mark Sisson's Blog, page 235

Vote for Mark’s Daily Apple in Paleo Magazine’s “Best of 2015”!

Perhaps it’s the competitive spirit left over from my marathon and triathlon days, but I love a good contest. And it’s that time of year again where Mark’s Daily Apple competes for the title of Best in Paleo Magazine’s Best of 2015 issue. And this year, Primal Kitchen is up for some awards too. But we need your help to make it happen.

Here’s a little bit of backstory if this is your first year taking MDA to the finish line. Paleo Magazine is the premiere print and online subscription publication for all things paleo, primal, and ancestral health. Every year, Paleo Magazine holds an open vote for the world of paleo/primal aficionados to pick their favorite examples of companies, products, forms of education, and entertainment that are the most cutting edge, relevant, and noteworthy representations of the community. Being on this list means you’re recognized as the cream of the ancestral health crop. And we want Mark’s Daily Apple and the subsequent resources it provides to be recognized for what they are: the leading examples in the ancestral health community!

Last year, Primal Fuel won for Best Product in the supplements category, and in 2013 we took home 3 titles: Best Paleo eBook (Primal Blueprint Fitness), Best New Paleo Book (The Primal Connection), and Best Lifestyle/Fitness Site (MDA).

And this year I need your help to beat our record.

Here are the categories we’re competing in:

Best Blog (General Health/Wellness): Mark’s Daily Apple

Best Blog (Fitness): Mark’s Daily Apple

Health Hero of the Year: Mark Sisson

Best New Packaged Product: PRIMAL KITCHEN™ Mayo

Best Online Program: The Primal Blueprint Expert Certification

Best Book (General Health/Wellness): The Primal Prescription

Best New Idea: Mark Sisson’s Primal Kitchen Restaurant franchise

Best Paleo Supplement: Primal Probiotics

So click here to head on over to the Paleo Magazine voting portal and cast your vote for Mark’s Daily Apple and Primal Kitchen, as well as your other favorite primal and paleo resources.

Paleo Magazine is also offering a special discount on a 1-year print and digital subscription for those who vote! You’ll get the promo code once you submit your voting form.

Thanks for the support. I’ll keep you posted about the results!

This Is Your Brain on Bugs: How Gut Bacteria Affect Mental Health

As many of you adopt new behaviors and habits during this year’s 21-Day Challenge, there’s a fascinating unseen story going on between your brains and bellies I thought it’d be worth talking about. New behaviors and habits create new neural pathways, which are essentially new road maps for how you’ll think, feel, and act in the future. Now the integrity of those neural pathways—whether they’re firing at full force and with the right materials to do their job—is intimately connected to something I’ve talked about on the blog before in different ways: our gut microbiome. But as you’ll see, this microscopic landscape is worth talking about again—specifically because it influences your brain (that grand master of all organs) and how well you’re likely to stick to all those newly adopted changes in the future.

“Second Brain”

Within the human gut lies a “second brain”: a vast network of neurons located along the intestinal lining. It’s called the enteric nervous system—enteric as in “pertaining to the gut”—and for years researchers assumed its sole province lay in regulation of the digestive process. Researchers now know that the enteric nervous system also relays and sends neurotransmitters like serotonin and GABA, responds to emotions, and has a direct conduit to the brain via the vagus nerve.

The gut is not the site of higher-level cognition. The neurochemical processes responsible for writing emails, doing trigonometry, and reading this blog post occur solely in the brain. But though decision-making and conscious thought happen up top, the gut has a lot of input on how those thoughts and decisions develop. About 90% of traffic along the vagus flows from gut to brain, and it’s not all information about intestinal contractions. The second brain is likely the province of instinct, subconscious response, and emotion. In other words, gut feeling, gut instinct, butterflies in your stomach, and got the guts? aren’t just figures of speech. They hint at real physiological processes occurring along the gut-brain axis.

Emerging evidence is showing that our enteric nervous system, and the gut bacteria, probiotics, and prebiotics that comprise and affect it, have effects on how we think, feel, perform, and respond to the world around us.

Let’s take a look.

Depression

Depression is an epidemic. More than 1 in 10 Americans over the age of 12 take antidepressants. Yes, there are 12-year old children who have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, worry about their future, and take powerful pharmaceuticals to deal with their clinical depression. Add to that the tens of millions more who may not qualify for major depressive disorder but are just plain sad. That doesn’t seem right. That doesn’t seem biologically appropriate. It makes a person wonder: is the gut involved?

Well, patients with major depressive disorder display a distinctive gut bacterial profile, and lower levels of a specific genus (Faecalibacterium) predict depression severity. And in a recent RCT, a 3-strain probiotic (L. casei, L. acidophilus, B. bifidum) had beneficial effects on the Beck Depression inventory (a way to measure depression) in patients with clinical depression. Reductions in inflammation and insulin and increases in glutathione status accompanied the improvement in depression.

Anxiety

Anxiety is fear. In today’s modern world, we rarely experience truly life-threatening situations. We fear failure, or rejection, or unfamiliar social situations. We’re anxious about people laughing at us, having nothing to say in conversation with the pretty girl. Nothing that’ll kill us, though it can certainly feel like it. The nervous flutter in the gut we get before a job interview used to prepare us for a life-or-death hunt or battle, but it still feels real. Judging from the epidemic levels of anxiety disorders (18% of Americans, or over 40 million people in the US alone), maybe too real.

We can certainly feel anxiety in the gut, but can changes to the gut biome actually affect anxiety?

GABA, or gamma-aminobutyric acid, is a “chill out” neurotransmitter. It reduces neural excitation. It induces sleep. It lowers anxiety. Most anti-anxiety medications, whether over the counter (alcohol) or prescribed (Xanax), work by interacting with GABA receptors in the brain. Certain strains of gut bacteria produce GABA, while other bacteria seem to increase GABA receptors in the brain.

For example, mice given L. rhamnosus were more relaxed than control mice. They produced less cortisol in response to stress and showed a greater density of GABA receptors in the brain. A portion of the probiotic mice with their vagus nerves severed were no more relaxed than the control mice, suggesting that the anxiolytic effects of L. rhamnosus depend on gut-brain communication.

Another study found that feeding gut bacteria with specific prebiotics reduced negative emotional bias and lowered cortisol (a stress hormone). People who took the prebiotic (Bimuno-galactooligosaccharides, or BOS) focused more on positive stimuli and were able to ignore negative stimuli in a test of emotional bias. These tests are typically used to track anxiety, as anxious people are more likely to focus on negative imagery, and the BOS group showed similar results to people taking anti-anxiety meds.

Earlier this year, a study reported that the greater the intake of fermented food like yogurt, kefir, kimchi, or sauerkraut, the lower the incidence of social anxiety. This relationship was strongest in people with a genetic tendency toward neuroticism.

Autism

Food intolerances, diarrhea, constipation, leaky gut, irritable or inflammatory bowel disorders and other gut problems frequently accompany autism/ASD. Gut biome profiles reveal striking, consistent differences between people with and without autism. For years, reports from parents of children with ASD of major benefits through probiotic or gut-centric therapies were dismissed, but the evidence is becoming difficult to ignore. According to one recent n=1 report from a father of an autistic child, a ten day course of amoxicillin for strep throat improved autism symptoms.  It’s unclear if the antibiotic was killing off ASD-promoting bacteria or whether the kid’s results would even apply to others (some researchers think antibiotics can cause certain types of ASD), but there’s something going with the gut and ASD.

A mouse study suggests the potential efficacy of certain probiotics. Pregnant mice were injected with mock viruses to stimulate an immune response and produce autism-like behavior—obsessive grooming, poor communication and vocalization, difficulties socializing with other mice—in the offspring. The offspring had leaky gut and 46-fold higher levels of a gut bacteria metabolite chemically similar to one found in the urine of autistic humans. After supplementing with a B. fragilis probiotic for a couple weeks, ASD-like mice were less obsessive (they stopped burying marbles in their cages) and their leaky guts improved, but they still had trouble socializing with other mice.

Cognitive Flexibility

When you’re driving home from work and your normal route is suddenly cut-off, what do you do? Imagine you don’t have Google Maps with you. Imagine you have to find a new path home. People who can easily figure out a new route home, switch between conversations with two different people, or move from task to task have good cognitive flexibility. It’s the ability to pivot from one thing and to another without losing focus in the process, and it’s becoming increasingly important in today’s world.

In one recent study, researchers placed mice on different diets, tracked the diets’ effects on gut bacteria, and tested the mice’s cognitive flexibility. Mice on the western-style diets (high-sugar, high-industrial fat), who showed higher levels of Clostridiales bacteria and fewer Bacteroidales bacteria than control mice, performed poorly on the tests. They were able to navigate the initial maze, but once the maze was flipped they could not.

Reactivity

Bad things happen to everyone. We’re going to encounter stressors and feel negative emotions. That’s life. Schools of mindfulness suggest acknowledging the emotion, then letting it go. Practice non-judgmental awareness, they say. Or more colloquially, “it is what it is.” Whatever you call it, the key is to not let these negative emotions rule us. Our responses to the emotion are the emotion. Do we dwell on sadness, recycling and amplifying it? Or do we feel sad and move along, giving no extra thought or credence to the emotion? I’d argue that our cognitive reactivity to negative emotions and stressors determines our propensity to, well, be sad and stressed out—and gut health plays a role.

In healthy women, taking a fermented milk product containing the probiotics B. lactis, S. thermopilis, L. bulgaricus, and L. lactis twice a day reduced emotional reactivity to a series of images of facial expressions. Whether they viewed smiles, frowns, grimaces, or any other human facial expression, the yogurt-eating women were more objective about it.

In another recent study, a multi-strain (B. bifidum, B. lactis, L. acidophilus, L. brevis, L. casei, L. lactis, L. salivarius) probiotic reduced cognitive reactivity to sad feelings in non-depressed individuals. Subjects who got the real probiotic experienced less rumination (brooding) and fewer angry thoughts than subjects who got the placebo (PDF).

It’s all very impressive, isn’t it?

Now, a couple caveats are in order before you start megadosing L. rhamnosus, hunting down the fermented milk product used to reduce emotional reactivity, or making BOS pancakes.

As you may have noticed, neither I nor the researchers make many unequivocal statements. This is confusing stuff. We’re wading through largely uncharted territory. There’s no definite way to “cure” autism or depression or anxiety or increase mental performance through probiotics or prebiotics. There are dozens of things that affect our gut bacteria. Some will also affect our cognition and mood positively, others negatively.

One recent paper, for example, found a resistant starch-based diet increased anxiety in mice navigating an open environment. RS-fed mice explored less and even spent less time rearing their young, behavior changes that were accompanied by concomitant alterations to the gut bacteria. Resistant starch is generally helpful, but too much at the wrong time in isolation when you’re astrally projecting into your murine avatar may apparently have unwanted mental effects. The same thing could be true for any of the probiotics or prebiotics mentioned in today’s post, especially once you get into pharmacologically-active dosage territory.

The exact mechanisms by which a focus on gut health can improve mental health are still unknown.

Maybe bacteria-produced neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, and GABA are talking to our neurons along the enteric nervous system and sending messages up the vagus nerve to the brain.

Maybe we’re reducing gut inflammation and tightening up leaky gut—both of which are associated with increased anxiety and depression.

Maybe we’re restoring the ancestral ecology of our guts and reducing immune hyper-reactivity.

I suspect it’s all of the above.

Whatever the case, just be smart and sensible.

Get dirty on a regular basis.
Eat fermented foods, especially yogurt, kefir (which contains lots of the strains used in the studies), kimchi, and sauerkraut.
Take probiotics (just don’t count on any miracles).
Eat prebiotic fiber, including resistant starch (but don’t base your diet on it).
Consort with dogs.

And whatever you do, listen to your gut. It’s a lot smarter than you think.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care and I hope the challenge is going well!

Like This Blog Post? Subscribe to the Mark's Daily Apple Newsletter and Get 10 eBooks and More Delivered to Your Inbox for FREE

Contest: Prizes for Your Thoughts

The Prize:

The Primal Blueprint Platinum Package – The Platinum Package is the ultimate in supplementation and is what thousands of Primal enthusiasts and I take daily. It includes: Damage Control Master Formula, Primal Fuel, Primal Probiotics, Primal Omegas, and a Primal Sun booster.

What are five of your favorite Primal Blueprint Publishing titles? Want a copy of The Primal Blueprint, the book that started it all? Or would you like to try out one of our newest releases, like Fruit Belly, The Primal Prescription, or Primal Endurance? Perhaps you’re looking to expand your cookbook library…the choice is yours! Today’s winner picks any FIVE books from PrimalBlueprint.com!

The Contest: 

This one’s simple. If you’ve used any of the Primal Blueprint supplements I’d love to hear from you. Has Primal Fuel helped you eliminate sugar cravings and lose body fat?

Have Primal Probiotics helped improve your digestion and regularity? Did you reverse a vitamin D deficiency with Primal Sun?

Tell me about it by filling out this form.

I get success story emails every day, but I never tire of hearing how the Primal Blueprint family of supplements (books, events and services) have helped people take control of their health and change their lives.

Eligibility:

Anyone can enter.

The Contest End Time:

January 24, 11:59 PM PDT.

How the Winner Will Be Determined:

One winner will be randomly selected.

To track all the contests visit the 2016 Primal Blueprint 21-Day Challenge Contest Page for daily updates.

Dear Mark: 21-Day Challenge Rapid Fire Edition

For one of the 21-Day Challenge contests last week, you guys asked dozens of questions. Today, I’m answering a bunch of them in rapid fire style including how to get kids to eat more meat and veggies, how to get adults to eat greens, whether keto can coexist with high-carb, if it’s better to eat seasonally and many, many more. Don’t expect long, drawn-out answers. I’m answering quickly and succinctly. If you have any further questions after hearing the answers, toss ’em in the comment section. There will always be more Dear Marks down the line.

Let’s get to it:

I struggle to get my kids (4yo twins) to eat meat or vegetables. The only meet I can guarantee my son will eat is bacon and pepperoni. My daughter will eat a piece of chicken occasionally. They eat fruit out the wazoo, and breakfast is always grain heavy (after 4 years primal I’m still alone in my quest for optimum health), but I can sneak in a berry “pancake” (100% egg) once or twice a week. I worry that they aren’t getting enough protein though.

My question is whether I should stress about it. I fell like the battle is not worth the reward at this time; eventually they might just follow my lead, but until then, should I be more diligent in getting them aligned primally?

Matt

Nope, it’s not worth it. In my experience, the battles will only make them battle-hardened veterans committed to rejecting the food you foist upon them.

Smoothies are your friend. Handful of greens, a raw yolk or two, some kefir or yogurt, a little fresh juice, some frozen berries, maybe even a frozen green banana (for resistant starch)? That’s a nutritious breakfast that most kids would love.

If you’re doing oatmeal in the mornings, whisk a few eggs and stir them in toward the end.

I see nothing wrong with eating good quality bacon every morning. If you buy from a local producer at a farmer’s market whose bacon is less homogenous, you can generally find cuts with more lean muscle and less fat (or vice versa) to increase the protein.

I wouldn’t eat pepperoni every day, but good stuff a couple times a week? Sure. Maybe use the bacon or pepperoni to make other dishes more appetizing. Chop it up and stick it in an egg scramble.

Whatever you do, don’t give in. If they don’t want to eat the steak, green beans, and whipped butternut squash you made for dinner, they don’t eat. They don’t get a bowl of grapes “just to get some calories.” Don’t drop everything to whip up a separate batch of bacon. Kids won’t starve themselves.

Mark,

I have been primal a while now but I was having problems shedding subcutaneous (hope I spelled that right) body fat. Recently I have switched to a very ketogenic approach restricting my daily carb intake to 30 grams or less (mostly less) a day. Question: Since I am doing this, what is your feeling on carb backloading or reloading-would it help at all. Thanks for your time buddy!

High carb intakes can work alongside ketogenic dieting, provided you time it correctly.

Here’s how I’d try it:

Low-carb/keto on rest days. Focus on protein and fat when you’re not working out.

Higher carb, with your carbs coming post-workout, on training days.

Many programs follow this basic structure. Leangains, carb backloading, cyclical keto all involve eating very low carb for most of the time and eating high carb adjacent to training sessions when insulin sensitivity is high and muscle glycogen stores are starving. This allows you to restore muscle glycogen (and not insignificantly enjoy carb-rich food from a hedonistic standpoint) without impacting ketosis much.

Whatever option you choose, you’ll need to deplete glycogen if you want to include carbs in a ketogenic diet. As long as you have a glycogen debt, any carbs you eat will go toward restoring those glycogen stores and won’t interfere with ketone production. Since you’re talking carb backloading, I’m guessing you train regularly (carb backloading is big in the strength training community). This is good. Hard training is necessary for keto and carbs to co-exist.

How often do you switch things up vs maintaining a routine? Even within this 21-day challenge, I find myself making sure I keep to a fairly regular schedule to make sure I eat healthy and get a good amount of sleep.

But I’m worried about monotony setting in where I’m less “responsive” when there are disruptions to the schedule – late night event I want to attend, etc.

The people who go out every night and wake up at noon may seem like they’re better off, like they’re handling the sleep insults better than you, but they’re really just forcing their circadian rhythms to hew to an unnatural cycle. It’ll catch up to them, even if they’re inured to the negative effects right now.

Folks who sleep better more regularly will actually bounce back from sleep insults. Every day you get to bed at a good time and wake up refreshed, you’re paying off your sleep debt. Those nights out with your pals, the dinners that stretch past 1 AM, the comedy shows, the live music, the Netflix binges are less harmful, provided they remain special occasions, against a backdrop of solid, regular sleep.

Mark,

I’ve found that going low-carb tends to spike my LDL-C from around a norm of 70 up to 120 (with a corresponding LDL-P of 1,300). The LDL-P number is concerning, but I am loathe to give up low-carb Primal. Should I be concerned?

Thanks,

Aaron

I always urge people to experiment with different macronutrient ratios if they feel something’s amiss.

So hey, use this 21-Day Challenge to try a moderate carb Primal approach. More roots, tubers, fruit. Less fat. Keep protein as constant as you can (although that’s hard, as fat generally comes attached to protein).

Whatever you do, it’s crucial to see how subjective perceptions align with objective measurements. Your LDL may “improve,” but your energy levels decrease, you start gaining body fat, and you perform poorly in the gym. Or the opposite may happen.

How do you feel right now? Are you loathe to give up low-carb Primal because it makes you feel great or because you’re wedded to it ideologically? The distinction matters.

Note that I’m not leading you either way. I myself prefer and perform best on low-carb Primal, and for most people that seems to hold true, but it’s not for everyone. Find out for yourself and be honest about what you discover.

Is it better to eat locally/seasonally or focus on getting a variety of foods? For instance, is it preferred to eat roots and tubers for the winter in the northeast rather and save leafy greens and other veggies for the spring when they are in season? Any thoughts on this would be terrific!

There are good arguments for both.

Local/seasonal eating has the potential to be:

More nutritious. When food is local, you get it shortly after harvest. When food is trucked in from the other side of the country, you’re getting it well after harvest.

Easier. Fewer options mean you make fewer decisions about what to eat.

Cheaper: Not always, though.

Focusing on variety gives you:

Wider range of nutrients. You get to pick and choose what to eat, taking the best from every region.

More choices. Some people love and thrive with choices.

You probably know my answer: take the best of both. Buy local produce whenever possible, eat frozen blueberries shipped in from Canada because they’re so good and good for you. Don’t follow the rules (they don’t actually exist), blend and break them.

So long as the overall volume and intensity level of physical effort wouldn’t put one into chronic cardio/ black hole zone, and appropriate rest is accounted for, should daily “play” be acocunted for in any specific way during the challenge?

Personally, I’m asking if it’s ok to continue with the wrestling practice schedule I had before the challenge started, in which I had been tapering effort and participation to recovery based on both intuition and HRV scores?

Keep wrestling. Physical play trumps formal workouts, at least for me. Having fun while getting a great workout is basically hitting the fitness (and life) jackpot.

And since you’re tracking your recovery using proven biomarkers and intuition? You’re way ahead of the game. Absolutely keep wrestling.

Can you please share some tips on sneaking greens into my diet? I’m willing to eat them for health’s sake, but so many greens taste very bitter to me.

There are tons of ways. A few of my favorites:

Smoothies: See the smoothie recipe I mentioned up above.

Meatballs: Mix steamed, chopped, or pureéd greens into balls of animal flesh with spices. Cook, eat, ingest green stuff without really realizing or tasting it.

Bone broth: Toward the end of making broth, throw in some greens. Even if you toss the greens, many of the nutrients will have leached into the broth.

Salad: Find a dressing you absolutely love, so much that you’d eat cardboard shavings if they were smothered in it. This one’s pretty decent. If you’re doing a hardy green like kale, give it a good dressing massage a half hour before you plan to eat. This gives the greens more time to soften and become more palatable.

Hi Mark,

I have a 8 month old, a new job, am in graduate school, and am trying to complete the 21 day challenge. As a personal addition to the challenge, I am trying to incorporate a 24-hour fast one or two days a week (dinner to dinner). I’ve had success fasting before, but stress is at an all time high these days. I’m wondering if I’m doing more harm than good by stressing my body a bit further by not feeding it, or if, by relying on my energy stores between my waist and my belly button (aka my love handles), I am actually taking some of the stress off my body. In short, does fasting help or hurt when dealing with periods of very high stress?

Thanks,

Sam

I lean toward not fasting in this situation.

However, some people deal with stress naturally by not eating. Others crave food. If you’re the type who inadvertently stops eating when you’re stressed out, fasting may work well for you. If you’re the opposite type, or you don’t really know, I’d suggest not fasting and focusing on other aspects of the challenge.

What are some easy ways to get calcium without dairy? Dairy triggers serious skin issues such as acne for me. I try to eat lots of almonds, greens, and broccoli, but I find myself full before hitting the recommended amounts of calcium. On normal days, I hit about 70% of the DV. Second question: is it possible my body is telling me that I have enough?

Canned, bone-in sardines are fantastic for calcium (and omega-3s, and protein, and ocean minerals, and lots more). I like Wild Planet best.

– If I go to bed early enough for 8 hours, I ALWAYS wake up around 3 or 4 hours later. I generally use the bathroom at this time and in a weird way, I look forward to this as a sign that I did go to bed early enough. But still, waking up early when I try to sleep is odd, right?

– I wake up after 7 hours of sleep anyways. And this time when I wake up, it’s difficult to fall back asleep because my body just feels awake at this time.

So, given my case, would 8 hours be the number to shoot for or should I just go for 7 since it seems I get 7 hours regardless?

1. This can be perfectly normal. There’s some evidence that natural human sleep is biphasic, two 3-4 hours blocks separated by an hour or so of quiet contemplation, quiet (or not) sex, reading, meditation, or whatever else people did before smartphones. So no, you’re not odd.

2. If you feel awake, you’re awake. You’re probably one of the lucky ones that only needs a good 7 hours to feel rested and complete. Embrace it.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Any followup comments or questions go right down below. Grok on!

Contest: You Might Be Primal If…

The Prize:

Bottle of Avocado Oil: More heat stable than olive oil and a wonderful alternative for those who don’t like the taste of coconut oil, PRIMAL KITCHEN™ Avocado Oil is perfect for searing, drizzling, sautéing, stir-frying and dressing. Use to make marinades, finish sauces, or even in lieu of butter for all your baking needs.

Jar of Avocado Oil Mayo: PRIMAL KITCHEN™ Mayo is the perfect companion for your deviled eggs, coleslaw and chicken salad needs. Every dollop is chock is full of good fats, phytonutrients, and other antioxidants, so you can use it lavishly—not sparingly—to upgrade the flavor and nutritional profile of your meal.

Bottle of Greek Vinaigrette: Using real, organic oil of oregano, organic apple cider vinegar and the freshest ingredients (avocado oil, organic red wine vinegar, black pepper and lemon) our perfectly balanced vinaigrette is a tantalizing and refreshing complement to any salad. Its lush herb flavor is balanced with a hint of sweetness, savory spices and the zest of fragrant lemon oil—the quintessential addition to roasted chicken…or drizzle some on top of your vegetable lasagna. It also pairs very well with heavier fish like mackerel or sablefish.

Bottle of Honey Mustard Vinaigrette: This succulent dressing packs in the pungency of stone ground mustard and the sweetness of organic honey, perfectly enhanced by a tangy bold touch of lemon. It pairs well with slightly bitter greens, like chicory, Belgian endive, escarole or radicchio, and is succulent enough to be used as a dipping sauce for veggies…or to flavor your favorite fish, chicken or beef dishes. Honey mustard-flavored braised short ribs, anyone?

12 PRIMAL KITCHEN™ Dark Chocolate Almond Bars: A healthy and tasty alternative to sugar-laden energy bars, Primal Kitchen’s Dark Chocolate Almond Bars boost energy with 15 grams of healthy protein (from grass-fed collagen), and just 3 grams of sugar. Indulge whenever you are on the go and your stomach is rumbling…or when your taste buds are jonesing for a treat.

The Contest:

If you were alive in the mid-1990’s, you may remember comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s empire of “You might be a redneck if…” humor. Today I’m looking for “You might be Primal if…” jokes. Think one up and leave it in the comment board.

Examples:

You might be Primal if you’ve been banned from your local grocery store for repeatedly violating the “No shirt, no shoes, no service” policy.
You might be Primal if you’ve never used an elevator. Ever.
You might be Primal if you prefer your apple with worms.
You might be Primal if you accidentally broke your neighbor’s second story window with a kettlebell.
You might be Primal if every butcher in America can recognize you on the spot.
You might be Primal if you measure friends, relatives, and children not by the mettle of their character, but by how far you could throw them.
You might be Primal if you’ve started to use Tabata intervals for dish washing, shopping, shaving, and dating.
You might be Primal if you make guests take off their shoes before leaving the house.
You might be Primal if you measure time by the number of cows you’ve consumed since an event occurred… “When did we take that trip to Portland?” “Oh, that was about 3 cows ago.”

Eligibility:

Anyone in the world can enter, though this prize may only be available to U.S. contestants. In the case of an international winner, substitute prizes of equal value will be shipped.

The Contest End Time:

Midnight PST, tonight!

How the Winner Will Be Determined:

I’ll pick a handful of my favorites and let all of you decide the winner through a reader poll.

To track all the contests, visit the 2016 Primal Blueprint 21-Day Challenge Contest Page for daily updates.

Weekend Link Love – Edition 383

Research of the Week

Children exposed to bright light in the afternoon are slimmer than children exposed earlier. This one surprised me. I may have to chew on it a bit.

Saying “some other time” instead of “no, never” in response to temptation reduces consumption of said temptation in the immediate moment and over time.

Some mosquito species have evolved to love how we smell (and use us as their sole food source).

Obesity increases prostate tumor aggression.

Having more children could slow biological aging in women, according to a study. Or, women who age more slowly are healthier, more fertile, and better able to support the growth of multiple humans in their wombs.

“You know what would help that stroke? Another stroke.”

New Primal Blueprint Podcasts

Episode 102: 115 Things Endurance Athletes Need to Know: Host and Primal Endurance co-author Brad Kearns details 115 tips, tricks, and hints every Primal endurance athlete needs to know to perform and stay healthy.

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 Discover Your Hidden Obstacles to Primal Success
5 Ways to Achieve Your Health Goals in 2016
The Definitive Guide to Using Your Recent Ancestry to Determine Your Optimal Diet
The Annual Primal Blueprint 21-Day Challenge Begins Next Week! (and Here’s How to Prepare)

Also, be sure to check out and subscribe to the Primal Endurance Podcast.

Interesting Blog Posts

Release the IT band (no foam roller-induced agony necessary).

The coolest upcoming health and fitness tech Sid Shah saw at CES 2016.

Media, Schmedia

Slim but diabetic.

US national parks are free for 16 days this year, starting with tomorrow.

Everything Else

I made the Greatist 100 most influential health and fitness people (again), along with Robb Wolf, Abel James, Gary Taubes, K-Starr, and Michelle Tam. Great company.

The complete visual guide to pork cuts and bits.

Support psychedelic research, find out if magic mushrooms can fight depression.

5 minute squat battle: cyclist vs powerlifter vs strongman.

This standing desk costs $25. It’s cardboard, but so what?

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

The (non)evolution of the mortar and pestle.

Plants need blue light, and they’ll activate growth genes to find it.

Hark! The triumphant return of the incandescent bulb is upon us (and they’re more efficient than LEDs!).

That’s one way to ease the pressure of modern life.

12 year-olds on summer vacation everywhere beg to differ.

Recipe Corner

I’m gonna be honest here: I pretty much just chose this admittedly delicious salad because it contains “porkitos.”
Pork and cooked apples really do work well together. The walnut crust on the pig meat doesn’t hurt.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Jan 19 – Jan 25)

11 Ways to Assess Your True Fitness Level – How fit are you, really?
I Think Therefore I Do – I’m pretty sure Descartes was Primal.

Comment of the Week

nothing like a stomach flu to kick off a health challenge…

– Sorry to hear that. On the bright side, it should help with the purging.

Artichoke Deviled Eggs with Capers

Today’s guest post is an original recipe from my eldest, Devyn Sisson! Devyn is hard at work writing her first cookbook, Kitchen Intuition. In the meantime, check her out on Instagram for more recipes and kitchen tips.

I’m Devyn, aka, The Intuitive Chef, aka, Ms. Kitchen Intuition. Whatever alias I go by, “Dev” is always a good fallback. I just received my Masters in Spiritual Psychology, started writing a cookbook called Kitchen Intuition, and recently completed an integrative nutrition program.

Although I’ve learned from cookbooks, the trusty Food Network, and amazing chefs along my journey, I’ve always trusted my intuition when it comes to cooking, paying close attention to my body and taste buds to create strange, delicious, new, exciting recipes that I get to test out on my brave friends and family. And I’d like to share one of those intuitive variations with you today.

Like I say in my upcoming book, I don’t like to use “recipes,” per se, since I always encourage folks to take their own spin on any traditional formula. It’s good to have a template, but the final product is only limited by your own creativity and imagination!

For today’s deviled egg recipe, I used PRIMAL KITCHEN™ Mayo and chopped artichoke hearts. Sometimes I top the eggs with chives and paprika, other times with rosemary. But in today’s recipe, I was feeling the need for some capers! Whatever variation you choose will be delicious. Just pick your favorite based on your particular mood, taste, and whim that strikes your fancy.

I hope you have a blast creating today’s recipe or one of its MANY available variations.

Until next time, trust your kitchen intuition and enjoy!

Time in the Kitchen: 25 minutes

Servings: 2

Ingredients:

3 hard boiled eggs
3 tablespoons PRIMAL KITCHEN™ Mayo (or homemade)
1/4 cup chopped marinated artichoke hearts
2 teaspoons of mustard
Garlic & onion powder, to taste
Salt and pepper, to taste
Optional toppings: Capers, paprika, chives, or rosemary

Directions:

Hard boil the eggs by placing them into a pot and bringing to a boil. Once the water boils, remove from the heat, cover and let sit for 20 minutes.
Run the hard boiled eggs under cold water and then peel. Slice in half and remove the yolks.
Mix yolks with remaining ingredients. Salt and pepper filling to taste.
Put mixture in a piping bag and then fill the middle of the egg whites with the yolk mixture.
Garnish with whatever strikes your fancy (today I used capers) and enjoy!

Goodbye Eczema, Hello Health

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!

This isn’t a weight loss story, although I am extremely proud of all those Apples who’ve experienced tremendous weight loss success–kudos! Mine is, however, a story about how Primal living allowed me to exterminate my auto-immune issues and overcome my lifelong battle with eczema.

I grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, during the post-Apartheid Nelson Mandela era. My folks and I moved there from London in 1994 when I was two, so I count myself lucky to have been exposed to people from a multitude of cultures, nationalities, and faiths. It’s quite hard to imagine that only 10 years prior to that blacks and whites lived in forced separation from each other under an iron-fisted government!

Anyway, I always had systemic inflammation as a kid, and our family doctors constantly told my parents that I would quite possibly never grow out of the eczema which plagued me every break-time at school. South Africa, being a sports mad country, has always encouraged its children to play outdoors (which is wise in and of itself), however, my experience was often quite different. I remember being ten and playing with my friends on a hot cricket pitch. The sun was out, smiles were in heavy supply, but I was in agonizing pain. My eczema would develop sporadically in sun exposed areas and would leave me in crippling pain, unable to even concentrate on the games we played. Whenever rugby season came around in high school, I knew that my chances of being able to maneuver around the pitch easily (and at speed, I played wing) depended on whether or not my skin irritation ceased.

I had always been into “clean eating,” a principle I emulated from my mother, who first took me to the gym at age 13. Meals at home were largely centered around green leafy veg and meat, and at Christmas when we went to see family in Ghana, I would divulge in fresh coconut and plantains. Although there were many primal aspects to my childhood, I still had a love of whole grains and milk, which I would devour religiously after weekly training sessions. This of course didn’t help my teenage acne and certainly ruined my mood, especially as I was in a rag and tag (although beautiful) boarding school. I also rowed quite competitively during high school and by the time I was eighteen, I had developed a nasty case of over-training in an attempt to “be fit”…this failed abysmally.

Fast forward to college a year later and I was studying history in Dublin, Ireland–the home of Guinness Beer and Oscar Wilde (yes, both). Studying abroad was, and continues to be, a surreal experience. During my first year I did not have adequate health insurance and navigating the Irish health care system was a daunt  task for a foreign student. My grandmother made me promise that I would take “extremely good” care of myself so as not to need any health care, and so I turned to the web to help me get “extremely” healthy. I became a devout reader of Muscle & Fiction, and Men’s Ill-Health alike, and the fact that I naïvely took a greeting job at Abercrombie & Fitch–the mecca of vanity and self-delusion–didn’t help…yes, some of those boys have perms! Thank God this misdirection only lasted a year. I was fortunate to meet a number of open minded health enthusiasts on my college track team and in my Bible study group, a number of whom were self-proclaimed ‘Biohackers.’

Great things happened and I read The Primal Blueprint (the divine book of fitness, health, and living long while looking darn good doing it!). I also read Robb Wolf’s Paleo Solution and the Hartwigs’ It Starts with Food. My health CHANGED. Mr. Sisson opened Pandora’s Box of health for me and I quickly realized how steeped in delusion much of the health industry is.

I now train a mere three times a week with one conditioning session, outdoor sprints aren’t always possible in a rainy country so body-weight does the job, and I’ve had the pleasure of training friends and family too!

As a student today, I’ve seen too many twenty-somethings running around on treadmills and eating 12 meals a day between lectures for the sake of “bulking up,” while denying their auto-immune issues because conventional wisdom shuns fat and praises the grain. I have seen too many cases of male bigorexia and have seen far too many girls wearing waist trainers for it to be okay. Primal living has taught me to respect myself and in turn, my body has disallowed eczema and other autoimmune problems from inhabiting it. I’ve only just gotten my sleep on track, and being in bed by 10:30 is no social death. Those who matter don’t mind, and I fear that those who mind won’t be with us sixty years down the line. Health isn’t hard, it is a God given birth right we all have.

Thank you Mr. Sisson for your tireless work in the ancestral health realm. My family has a copy of The Primal Blueprint sitting on a bookshelf in South Africa, my family in Ghana have their copy on the way in the mail, and I am trying to gently, but persistently, spread primal knowledge with all those I am encountering in Europe.

Yours truly and Grok on!

Kwadwo

Like This Blog Post? Subscribe to the Mark's Daily Apple Newsletter and Get 10 eBooks and More Delivered to Your Inbox for FREE

Contest: Share Your Success Story

The Prize:

A year’s supply of Primal Fuel. That’s 12 months of my ultimate, low-carb, high-fat, high-protein shake mix delivered right to your door! Primal Fuel serves as the perfect post-workout treat or meal replacement; curbing hunger with healthy fats, helping build and maintain muscle mass with 20 grams of whey-protein isolate, and improving digestion and immunity with the addition of prebiotics.

Go with Vanilla Coconut Creme or Chocolate Coconut…or alternate between the two. Winner’s choice!

The Contest:

We’re just a few days into the 21-Day Challenge, but I know many of you have seen amazing results going Primal leading up to the challenge. Weight lost, muscle built, complexions cleared, even meds kicked. Now’s the time to share it! This means you have the opportunity to show the rest of the community who you are and what you’ve accomplished. In the process you’ll inspire thousands of people to take control of their health just as you have. I don’t know about you, but I get a kick out of that.

So for this contest I want to hear your story. Write it up and include a photo. Including both pre-Primal and post-Primal pics is even better, but not required. Don’t worry if you’re not a chiseled Adonis. This isn’t a “who’s the most ripped” contest. Whether you’ve lost 100 pounds over two years of Primal living or you’ve simply managed to kick that diet Coke habit, just tell me what going Primal has done for you. I’m looking for interesting and personal tales. Details about your health history, how you found MDA and the Primal Blueprint, what has worked and what hasn’t, what differences you’ve seen in how you look and feel, and anything else you think readers might be able to learn from and you’re open to sharing are welcome. It doesn’t have to be a thousand word diatribe, but hopefully more than a couple paragraphs. Feel free to be creative with your story format, too. Remember, good stories usually have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and honesty is king.

I’m sure many of you have thought about sending your story in, but just haven’t gotten around to it. There is no better time than now. I’ll be featuring reader stories during the 21-Day Challenge and beyond, so get yours in soon!

Email me your story along with any pictures. Please use the subject heading “My Primal Story.” Otherwise, there’s a good chance I may completely miss your submission.

Examples:

One of the most memorable stories published on MDA: The Unconquerable Dave. If you haven’t read it, do it now. You won’t regret it. YAWP!

View other Success Stories here for ideas on how to write your own story.

Eligibility:

Anyone in the world can enter.

Additionally, everyone that has submitted a Success Story to Mark’s Daily Apple since the last year’s Challenge is automatically entered to win, so don’t worry if you emailed me just a few days ago. You’re entered!

The Deadline:

January 24, midnight PDT.

How the Winner Will Be Determined:

An executive decision will be made to determine which stories and accompanying photos get published on MDA. The winner of the prize package above will be chosen at random from those that are submitted.

To track all the contests, visit the 2016 Primal Blueprint 21-Day Challenge Contest Page for daily updates.

8 Kitchen Hacks Every Primal Cook Should Know

A big part of the Primal Blueprint 21-Day Challenge happens in your kitchen, which is a good thing. Preparing your own meals is the best way to ensure you’re eating real food that your body needs to thrive. It takes the guess work out of what is or isn’t Primal in a world of ready-made meals. But if you don’t approach cooking 3+ meals a day with a strategy, you’ll start feeling like you’ll never get out of the kitchen, which isn’t such a good thing.

A collection of Primal recipes right at your fingertips definitely helps. But if you really want Primal cooking to be easy, convenient, and manageable in the long haul, then what you need most are some kitchen hacks that every Primal cook should know.

1. How to Cook With a Cast Iron Skillet

If you’re going to invest in one new piece of cooking equipment, buy a cast iron skillet. Cast iron is a safe, indestructible cooking surface that puts a crispy sear on meat like no other. It can go from the stovetop, to the oven, and even on the hot grates of a grill (the last option makes for awesome burgers, because allowing them to bask in the glory of their own fat, rather than dry up while the precious drippings fall beneath the open grating, is just brilliant).

Cast iron pans cook best when really hot. So heat up the pan, add some fat, and throw in whatever you’re cooking, be it meat or vegetable. Cast iron retains heat well even when cold food is added, so expect ingredients to cook a little faster than usual. Finish cooking on the stovetop, put the pan in a pre-heated oven to finish cooking meat all the way through, or cook vegetables until tender.

To season your new cast iron pan (which helps create a fairly non-stick surface), heat the pan up on the stovetop until it’s really hot, then rub a little neutral-flavored oil, coconut oil, or lard into it and let it cool. Do this several times before you initially cook with it and after each time you wash it. It’s fine to wash a cast iron pan with water and a little bit of soap if necessary—just make sure to dry it immediately and don’t use a metal scouring pad.

2. How to Cook Large Cuts of Meat

A large cut of meat is a gift that keeps on giving. Cook it at the beginning of the week and you’ll have meals for days. Slice off meat for breakfast, add it to salads for lunch, or reheat the meat with vegetables for dinner.

Be it beef (chuck roast, round roast, brisket), pork (shoulder/butt), or lamb (shoulder or shank), the following 3 steps can be used to cook large, and therefore less expensive, cuts of meat.

Season liberally and bring up to room temperature. Season the meat and set it out 1 hour before you plan to cook it—meat at room temperature cooks more evenly than cold meat right out of the fridge. You can use your favorite spice rub, but salt and pepper are just fine.


Sear. Searing the outside of the meat in a hot cast iron skillet or heavy pan will give you a delicious, crispy crust that’s always tasty (this step is optional if you’re short on time.)


Put on low, slow heat and add a little moisture. Tougher cuts of meat become juicy and tender when cooked for a long time at low heat. To shorten the cooking time, cut larger cuts into 2 to 4 smaller pieces before cooking it.

Oven: Set the oven to 300 F. Put the meat in a baking dish that it fits snugly into. Add enough stock (or a combination of wine and stock) so the liquid comes halfway up the side of the meat. Throw in a chopped onion, a few garlic cloves and a bay leaf. Cover with a lid. Cook for 2 to 4 hours until you can pull the meat apart easily with a fork. If the meat is still tough when you check it, cook it longer.

Slow cooker: Set your slow cooker to low. Put in the meat, add ½ cup stock, plus a chopped onion and a few garlic cloves. Cook for 6 to 8 hours until the meat is tender.

Strain the cooking liquid into a pot after removing the cooked meat. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer to thicken into a sauce.

3. How to Love Lamb

If you always buy beef, pork or chicken and avoid lamb because you’re not exactly sure what to do with it, here’s a simple idea: Use lamb in your next stir fry. Or stew. Or chili. Easier yet, shape ground lamb into meatballs or burgers.

To enjoy lamb, you don’t have to get super-fancy or spend tons of money on expensive cuts. Just treat it like any other type of meat. Lamb loves herbs and spices, so break out the cumin, coriander, paprika, cayenne, curry powder, cilantro, rosemary and parsley.

4. How to Cook Fish Perfectly

Fish is a great alternative staple to land roaming creatures, especially if you get a wild caught variety packed with anti-inflammatory omega-3s. But you won’t want to make it part of your Primal menu if it’s bland, rubbery or dry. So next time you buy fish, choose a fillet with the skin on and try this simple cooking method for a perfect texture every time (it works for skinless fish too, but that skin is worth keeping on!)

Pat the fish dry. Better yet, uncover the fish in the refrigerator 1 to 2 hours before cooking so it air dries. Wet fish sticks to pans and grills, and wet skin won’t get as crispy.

Season fish generously with salt and pepper.

Use a stainless steel or cast iron skillet and get it really hot. Right when the pan is about to start smoking, add a tablespoon or two of oil/fat–enough for a thin coating on the bottom of the pan. Lard works well for frying fish, or a combination of butter and olive oil.

Get the oil/fat hot, too. When the oil is hot and shimmering, add the fish skin-side down (watch out for oil splatters).

Use a long, wide spatula to press the fillet flat against the hot pan as it cooks. But don’t move the fillet around! Cook until the fish is opaque, with just a thin layer on the very top that remains uncooked. Quickly and confidently slide the spatula under the fish and flip it over. If the fillet is ready to be flipped, it will release easily from the pan. Cook it just 1 minute more. Err on the side of taking fish off heat sooner rather than later. Remember, it will continue to cook a little once it’s out of the pan.

5. How to Eat More Seaweed

Seaweed is a potent source of important minerals that you’re probably missing out on. Some cultures consider seaweed a staple food, but in the United States it’s mostly just served with sushi. If you’re not packing nori full of rice anymore, then how else can you regularly eat what is essentially one of nature’s best multivitamins?

Sure, you can sauté dulse as a side for eggs or blend it with olives for a salty tapenade. You can buy bags of mixed seaweed, wakame or alaria and add it to regular salads and coleslaw. You can even use nori as a wrap for meat or eggs, or bake it in the oven to make your own seaweed snacks.

But the easiest way to bring seaweed into your life is to keep kombu in your pantry, since its formidable constitution helps it stay fresh forever. Whenever a pot of stock or soup is simmering, throw a piece of kombu in it. It’s one of the easiest ways to add nutrients to a dish without adding strong flavor (just remember to remove the strip of kombu before serving the soup.)

6. How to Replace Rice and Pasta

The great thing about replacing traditional rice and pasta with Primal “noodles” is that it doubles as an easy way to add a vegetable to your meal.

Cauliflower is the most common substitute for rice. Throw steamed cauliflower in the food processor and process until it’s chopped into rice-sized bits. Or, process raw cauliflower into small bits, toss with olive oil and salt, and bake in a thin layer on a large rimmed sheet pan for 20 to 30 minutes until brown and crispy.

In place of noodles, spaghetti squash and thinly sliced zucchini can be tossed with your favorite pasta sauce. Or, invest in a Spiralizer to turn just about any vegetable into noodles. Craving baked pasta? Try celery root lasagna.

Or, just skip noodles all together and simply dig into a bowl of hearty meat sauce.

7. How to Eat Sandwiches Without Bread

True, sandwiches are convenient for lunch. But putting your favorite sandwich in a bowl, minus the bread, is just as easy. Add lettuce, and you’ve got a great salad. Turkey, tomato, bacon and avocado over greens is a fantastic lunch. Who needs the bread? Keeping a bottle of olive oil and vinegar in your desk at work makes dressing the salad easy (or, if you don’t feel like prepping, stashing away one of PRIMAL KITCHEN™’s avocado oil based dressings will do the trick).

Then, there’s the Primal Egg McMuffin, Guacamole-stuffed Southwest Burgers, and Portabella Chorizo Burgers. All delicious, and all served without bread.

8. How to Say Goodbye to Chips (and Other Salty, Crunchy Junk Food)

Potato and corn chips have two things going for them: they’re salty and they’re crunchy. But the potato and corn part, plus many other questionable junk food ingredients (like industrial seed oils), not so great. Luckily, crunch and salt are easy to re-create with other real foods.

When a chip craving hits hard, steer yourself out of the junk food aisle and towards the meat section. Why? Because meat laden snacks like these chicken skin chips are as light, airy, crunchy and salty as any grain based chip you’ve ever had. (Also, the meat section has bacon, one of nature’s crunchiest, saltiest Primal favorites). If you’re not in a meaty mood, vegetable chips are also great for crispy, salty snacking. You’ve got your kale chips, cabbage chips, zucchini chips, and the list goes on.

A handful of nuts can also be a satiating and nutrient rich snack. Or, you could really go for it with a batch of Primal Bacon Trail Mix. Beef jerky, olives, spicy pickled green beans…all of them are snacks that will satisfy your cravings for crunchy and/or salty things.

So how’s that for a start? Are you ready to give some of these tips a try? Have you already tried some out, but want to give them a second go? Head over to your pantry or grocer today and start experimenting with some of these Primal hacks for your next meal.

Like This Blog Post? Subscribe to the Mark's Daily Apple Newsletter and Get 10 eBooks and More Delivered to Your Inbox for FREE