Mark Sisson's Blog, page 309

Understanding Primal Blueprint Success from Crowdsourced Data

This is a guest article from Larry Istrail of the Ancestral Weight Loss Registry. Larry started AWLR to gain a better understanding of paleo and carbohydrate-restricted eating and bring the resulting data and trends into the mainstream medical community. He has presented the data at conferences around the country and today he is sharing his thoughts on data collected from Primal Blueprint adherents and how it compares to the medical literature. Enter Larry…

After two years, we at the Ancestral Weight Loss Registry (AWLR) are proud of what we’ve become. Over 3,100 people from all 50 states and over 55 countries have registered and shared the tribulations and triumphs populating their noble journey towards health, fueled by fatty meats with a side of buttered broccoli. A physician’s recommended eating strategy that, but for a few years ago, would at the very best be viewed as a data-less void of speculation, and at the worst, labeled utter quackery. Asking an overweight patient to eat foods high in calories does not pass the proverbial eyeball test, defying all common wisdom characterizing weight loss advice to date.

Coming up with a testable hypothesis for why we gain weight and how to lose it undoubtedly involves logic, intuition and researcher experience. As Nobel laureate Richard Feynman describes scientific discovery and hypothesis testing:

First we guess it…then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what it would imply. And then we compare those computation results directly to observation to see if it works. If it disagrees with the experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.

But what if we didn’t have to guess it? What if we had the capabilities to crowdsource hypothesis creation instead of relying on bias-confounded researcher intuition? This is the motivation for AWLR, and central to its success is you. Primal Blueprint (PB) followers make up 40% of registry members and from the bottom of my heart, I thank those who have registered thus far and urge those who have not to register here today to help make AWLR the largest weight loss registry the world has ever seen.

PB eaters have contributed a tremendous amount of data. The common experiences and behaviors that materialize by straining your conglomerate information through an algorithmic sieve become hypotheses that spawn a reverse engineering problem, beginning with clinical findings and searching for mechanisms of action. One of the most interesting such trends was that related to hunger.

After going primal, I just didn’t get so hungry any more. And when I did feel hunger, it wasn’t so pressing, and I could easily ignore it and it would go away for a while.

The ease of Primal Blueprint has surprised me the most. Fat tastes delicious, so I eat better-tasting food. I don’t go hungry because I simply eat until I’m full instead of counting calories.

See our testimonials page for hundreds of similar quotes. 95.8% of PB eaters report feeling “rarely or never hungry between meals” and of those who have tried a low fat diet in the past, 91% report feeling less hungry while eating PB. This satiety has led to an average of 33 pounds lost and over 31,000 pounds dropped total.

Could these findings be real? Or are they simply a function of the non-randomized, self-selected data that has accrued? Taking a journey through the medical literature may offer some insight.

They Starved, We Forgot

In 1944, Ancel Keys recruited 36 men into what would be known as the Minnesota starvation experiment, to study the physiologic and psychological effects of prolonged and severe dietary restriction. He documented his findings in a 1400 page tome, and shortly after the experiment began, the men quickly realized how difficult it might be. The predictable signs and symptoms quickly crept in: constant hunger, low body temperature, decreased libido and a total inability to think of anything but food. One subject offered a particularly chilling exposé of what it is like to eat such little food:

How does it feel to starve? It is something like this: I’m hungry. I’m always hungry – not like the hunger that comes when you miss lunch but a continual cry from the body for food. At times I can almost forget about it but there is nothing that can hold my interest for long. I wait for mealtime. When it comes I eat slowly and make the food last as long as possible. The menu never gets monotonous even if it is the same each day or is of poor quality. It is food and all food tastes good. Even dirty crusts of bread in the street look appetizing and I envy the fat pigeons picking at them.

So what were they eating? “The major food items served,” described Dr. Keys “were whole wheat bread, potatoes, cereals, and considerable amounts of turnips and cabbage. Only token amounts of meats and dairy products were provided,” with an average daily intake of 1570 calories, including about 50 grams of protein and 30 grams of fat.

Fast-forward 70 years

The director of Boston Medical Center’s weight management clinic and obesity consultant for Dr. Oz, Dr. Caroline Apovian describes in an interview how she treats her patients’ weight troubles.

“If somebody came into my clinic who had a BMI of 30—female—I would put them on a 1,200- to 1,500-calorie-a-day diet, and they usually would be eating 2,500. A normal, moderately active female eats 2,000 calories a day, and a male, 2,500.” But wouldn’t this “produce a chronic hunger?” the reporter aptly counters. “It does,” replies Apovian, “and it’s usually a hunger that people cannot tolerate. That is the reason most diet programs fail.”

So how did the “starvation diet” of 1944 become the standard of care today?

Protein, Hunger & Weight Loss

The Fat Trap, a popular New York Times article from 2011 profiles a study by Dr. Joseph Proietto, highlighting the difficulty in losing weight on a low calorie diet. Proietto recruited 50 obese men and women, studying the biological state of the body after weight loss. The patients were given 500 calories of a low fat Optifast shake each day for eight weeks. But after a year, the weight slowly came back and the subjects were haunted by their diet-induced hormonal changes, feeling “far more hungry and preoccupied with food than before they lost the weight.” Researchers also noticed that ghrelin, often dubbed the “hunger hormone,” was about 20 percent higher than at the start of the study. “What we see here is a coordinated defense mechanism with multiple components all directed toward making us put on weight,” Proietto says. “This, I think, explains the high failure rate in obesity treatment.”

However, this weight-loss-induced ghrelin rise is only observed when ketosis is absent. These same researchers three years later sung to a different tune:

Ketogenic low-carbohydrate diets are a popular means of weight loss, and in the short-term, often result in greater weight loss than low-fat diets…it is commonly proposed that ketones suppress appetite, and it has been observed that study participants on ad libitum ketogenic diets spontaneously restrict their energy intake.

And their randomized trial in the European journal of clinical nutrition confirmed this observation, demonstrating that “in mildly ketotic participants, the increase in the circulating concentration of ghrelin, a potent stimulator of appetite, which otherwise occurs as a result of diet-induced weight loss, was suppressed.”

This anorexic effect secondary to a high protein, high fat diet likely explains why PB eaters are so successful and happy with their new way of eating. It could also explain why in the majority of randomized clinical trials testing such diets, those highest in protein and fat systematically lead to more weight loss. There are at least 14 randomized clinical trials in which the people assigned to a calorie unlimited, high protein, high fat diet lose more weight than their low fat, calorie restricted counterparts.

Which begs the question: Where are the randomized clinical trials supporting low fat diets as the standard of care? The studies where a low fat, calorie restricted diet results in more weight loss than a calorie unlimited high fat diet. In fact, we at AWLR were so bewildered by the lack of evidence that we are running the “Low Fat Challenge” for anyone in the world to find such a trial, incentivized by a crowd-funded pot of cash. After nearly a year, hundreds of dollars have been raised with no winner to accept.

My wildest dream would be to make AWLR the largest weight loss registry in the world within the next year, overtaking the National Weight Control Registry that has a 15-year head start. They boast around 10,000 members after approximately 17 years of existence. At 3,100+ after two years, it is an ambitious but attainable goal; a dream that can only be achieved with your help. It would make a tremendously unbelievable statement to the dietary research community if Paleo and PB was so prominent and demonstrated such incredible improvements in health. If you have not registered yet, please take 10 minutes to do so here. And if you have, sharing this post with the world would make all the difference.

As you are reading these words, there is someone out there who is depressed, unhealthy and overweight. A poor soul being shunned by the medical community due to their “lack of willpower,” who struggles to get by on their 1400 calorie low-fat diet. A beautiful human being with boundless happiness trapped underneath the overwhelming heaviness of constant hunger and a label of “BMI > 30″, desperately searching for a real solution. With your help, I hope we can reach them and offer a gentle, heart-felt helping hand.

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Dear Mark: Wheat Germ Agglutinin and Leptin, Early Allergen Introduction, Fasted Training, Green Bananas, and Sunchokes

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, we’ve got a five-parter. First, I discuss wheat germ agglutinin’s potential interaction with the leptin receptor. Next, I explore the prospect of introducing gluten and peanuts (among other potential allergens) to youngsters as a way to prevent allergies from developing. I also discuss whether fasted workouts are a sound strategy to boost fat burning, if any good non-nightshade sources of resistant starch exist, and the nutritional benefits of sunchokes.

Let’s go:

Dear Mark,

This is one part question preceded by a brief story.

I am a science graduate student, and a couple years ago, I went to a seminar on leptin receptors in the brain. More specifically, the woman presenting had been trying to better understand projections of leptin receptors and leptin neurons beyond the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus. She had been using fluorescent wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) to figure out where the receptors are because WGA binds to leptin receptors. The thing that makes WGA so useful is that it sits on the leptin receptor for a really long time, though it doesn’t elicit the same downstream signaling effects as leptin. I was blown away, not by the intended presentation but by the clear depiction of WGA as a contributor to leptin resistance and other metabolic issues. I mean, the stuff crosses the blood brain barrier! (Also, leptin receptors exist beyond the arcuate nucleus).

Naturally, I waited for the research to come out about this. It never did. Maybe the leptin-resistance boat sailed a while ago and people don’t care as much. I guess my question is this: Why is the science community, of which I am a part, failing to make these connections? Why are we failing to get this critical information out there? What can we do to ask better questions?

Megan

Actually, a few people have noticed the WGA-leptin receptor connection. I wrote about it a few years back in my leptin post. Staffan Lindeberg, author of the Kitava study and noted ancestral health researcher, wondered the same thing in his paper discussing the differences between agrarian and non-agrarian (hunter-gatherer) diets. According to that paper, studies were in the works to examine whether dietary lectin interaction with leptin receptors occurred in vivo, but I haven’t heard much beyond that. Other studies do what the presenter at your seminar did, though.

It’s a great observation. I find myself doing the same thing when reading studies. Rather than focus on the stated intentions of the researchers in a given study, I’ll often be looking at the compound they use to reliably induce a disease state.

Take the diets they use to fatten up rodents. These are diets that are used whenever a scientist wants to study obesity – because they so reliably make rats and mice incredibly overweight. They call them high-fat diets, but anyone who knows much about fat knows that “fat” doesn’t tell us a whole lot. Fats are bioactive compounds with very different health effects depending on their level of saturation, chain length, and arrangement of the atoms along the chain. Both beef tallow and soybean oil will stain your clothes and prevent food from sticking to the pan – like all other fats – but the effects upon ingestion are very different.

The two most popular obesity-inducing “high-fat” diets use industrial lard as the primary fat. Lard. We love lard, right? It’s a traditional low-PUFA, low-omega-6 specifically animal-derived cooking fat. Except that industrial lard is no longer low in PUFAs because of the industrial diets used to feed the pigs. According to the manufacturers of the high-fat rodent diets themselves (PDF), the lard used is about 22-26% linoleic acid (compared to sub-10% in more traditional lard). Since dietary omega-6 is adipogenic, meaning it promotes the creation of new fat cells, we can see how a high-fat diet that’s actually a high-linoleic acid diet could be fattening. That’s never mentioned in the studies, though. Researchers are only interested in the effects of getting and being obese, not what’s causing the obesity. They take for granted that a “high-fat diet” causes obesity, because, well, that’s “settled science.”

Excellent sleuthing.

For a long time it was thought that one should avoid giving toddlers and children common allergens, such as peanuts, shellfish, dairy. Recently, pediatricians have changed their thinking and now say it is important to expose children to such foods as it helps them to build antibodies early in life and may diminish the risk of having an allergy later in life. My daughter is 11 months old and I have not fed her any peanuts or gluten, as we follow a paleo diet. I am not keen on giving her peanuts or gluten as I know they can be very irritating to the gut, but I also want to avoid any future allergies and so a part of me feels like a bit of exposure may be good for her. What do you think??

Tiffany

I think there’s something to it. Look, a hallmark of the Primal Blueprint and other ancestral health eating plans is avoidance of wheat. The fact remains, though, that your kids are going to come of age in a food environment where wheat and peanuts are extremely prominent. There will be birthday parties with cake, sleepovers with peanut butter sandwiches, pizza parties. It’s everywhere. They may want to include those foods in their diet (regardless of, or perhaps because of, your attempts to prevent it) when they get old enough to control what they eat, and you should prepare them.

I’m not saying you should give them cream of wheat every morning or peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. But a little bit probably won’t hurt, and it may help prime their immune system so that any future choices are theirs and theirs alone.

Here’s how I’d handle it, if you’re going to do it:

Introduce the potential allergens one at a time, with at least a couple days in between exposures. This will give you (and the immune system) enough time to note any reactions. Give organic peanut butter, maybe some well made sourdough bread. Look for telltale signs like rashes.
Maintain breastfeeding. Breast milk is extremely protective to infant guts and has been shown to reduce the risk of autoimmune responses to gluten in kids at risk for celiac disease. This will minimize any gut irritation from the peanuts and wheat. Breast milk also contains important probiotics for protection from allergies, like bifidobacterium infantis. If you’re not breastfeeding, or even if you are, you can add b. infantis supplements to your kid’s diet.
Eat a bit yourself at the same time (unless you’re sensitive or celiac). The antibodies you produce will be expressed through the milk, which may promote even more protection.

Unfortunately, optimal timing of gluten introduction is unknown. We do know that 3-4 months is way too early (PDF) and increases the risk of celiac. Some research claims that 4-6 months is the sweet spot, while noted gluten researcher Alessio Fasano has preliminary research suggesting that delaying gluten exposure to 1 year can delay the onset of celiac disease in vulnerable populations. It sounds like 6 months and onward might be the best bet, but I can’t say that with total confidence. Luckily, more research from Fasano’s group should be coming later this year.

Again, I may be inviting lightning bolts from the paleo gods, but so be it. We do what’s best for our kids, right?

Dear Mark,

I’m trying to do my workouts on an empty stomach to make my body tap into my fat reserves. However, I often find myself lacking the energy to do a workout on a completely empty stomach, so I often have a black coffee with a teaspoon of coconut oil before. Now I was wondering though whether that negates the whole idea of making my body tap into its fat stores because it just uses the coconut oil instead?

Thanks in advance!

Jay

The real beauty of a good workout is not the mechanical consumption of calories that occurs during the workout itself. It’s that your ability to oxidize fat for fuel is upregulated and enhanced. Your mitochondria become more adept at burning fuel, your muscles become more sensitive to the effect of insulin (thus requiring less of it), and the food you do consume gets partitioned as lean, rather than fat, mass. And, with regular workouts, that ability to oxidize body fat and preferentially store energy substrates stays elevated (or rather normalized).

The problem with insisting on fasted training is exactly what you’re experiencing – lack of energy is common. I recall one of our worker bees here who got really into fasted training and ended up feeling like working out with food in his stomach was a waste. Problem was he often ran out of energy – just like you – for workouts and his workout consistency and progress dropped off a cliff because he didn’t want to train with food in him. It wasn’t until he divested himself from the “fed training = wasted training” mindset that he was able to resume progress and get stronger and fitter.

It’s a tricky balance, because workouts on an empty stomach are effective in their own way, and fat oxidation is generally favored over glycogen oxidation since there’s not as much of the latter to go around, but you have to do the workouts. If you don’t have the energy to do them, you don’t get the benefit. Ironically, I bet if you made sure to fuel up before your workouts for the next month or so, your fat-burning machinery would be humming along enough that you could then do workouts in a fasted state without feeling depleted. Even though I don’t make it a point to work out in a fasted state, I can do it without much of an issue if I have to because my fat burning ability is optimized.

In my experience, the best activities to do in a fasted state are really low level movement type stuff, like walking, hiking, cycling, maybe some yoga or real short, real simple body weight exercise routines. The folks who try to consistently lift heavy, run intervals, or go for distance on an empty stomach every single workout tend to crash and burn in the long run, at least from what I’ve seen and heard (in emails and messages from readers). There are outliers, vocal ones, but you might not be one of them.

In short, eat whatever you have to eat to initiate and complete the workout! Try the fasted training again later when you’ve got more of your ducks in a row.

Hi Mark,

I have been reading all about resistant starch and am convinced of its benefits. However when I tried the raw potato starch I immediately had a flare up of my autoimmune skin condition (presumably from the nightshades). Is there any other source of resistant starch that you can recommend for a reactive hypoglycemic who doesn’t tolerate carbs such as white rice? We don’t get plantains here in Australia. Do you know whether tapioca flour is a good source of resistant starch, and is it likely to send my blood sugar souring? Should I deviate from the primal recommendations and add some properly prepared beans or lentils to my diet, or rather forget the whole resistant starch thing? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Vicki

The safest bet for you would be unripe bananas. You can get those, right? A green banana can contain as much as 34 grams of resistant starch (PDF). You’ll know a banana is high in RS when you bite into it: it’s not very sweet and has a gritty, sandpaper-esque texture that dries your mouth out. It’s not delicious by any means, but it’s definitely edible and it blends well in smoothies. Plus, it’s real, whole food, full of vitamins and minerals and phytonutrients.

Properly prepared beans and lentils are another option, yes, but you may find the antinutrients they contain also give you autoimmune flare-ups. So be prepared for that. They’re also much higher in digestible carbs, which could be a problem depending on your normal carb intake and activity level (although the higher RS content can ameliorate that to some extent by improving insulin sensitivity and lowering the blood glucose response).

The good news is that eating resistant starch and other forms of prebiotics (see next question) may eventually improve your gut health to the point where nightshades no longer give you issues. It’s just a guess, but lots of food sensitivities are related to the health of our gut flora – which, as you may know, comprise most of our immune system. Might be an interesting experiment to try the potato starch (and other nightshades) after you’ve settled into a nice routine with prebiotics to see if your tolerance changes.

Potatoes bad, sweet potatoes good. Check.

What about things like parsnips, sunchokes, jicama? There are so many yummy veggies that don’t make it onto either the avoid or gorge list, usually I just go with moderation. But in the case of sunchokes, they are SO easy to grow in my neck of the woods, and the flowers so pretty, I’ve kinda let them take over the garden. Can I eat them with reckless abandon? I’d love if you could dig up (har har) some info on them (and whatever other less common edible roots too).

Julia

These foods are all good. Jicama is delicious with some lime, salt and chile powder. Parsnips make good fries and mashes. Sunchokes are a different beast entirely.

Tread lightly, Julia. Tread very lightly. Sunchokes, also known as jerusalem artichokes, are incredibly rich with inulin, one of the premier prebiotics and FODMAPs. They have the potential to bolster your gut flora, increase butyrate production, and improve your digestive health. They also have the near-certain potential to increase the breadth, depth, and hilarity of your farts.

That’s right. If you insist on availing yourself of all the sunchokes your garden can produce, expect the generation of reckless amounts of gas that will then abandon your body of their own volition. “Reckless abandon” indeed.

Jicama is also high in inulin, but less so than the sunchoke. I’ve noticed a distinct difference in my gut’s response to jicama – which I can eat quite freely – and the sunchoke – with which I have to exercise restraint.

That’s it for this week, folks. Thanks for reading and be sure to keep sending in questions!

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Weekend Link Love

Episode #6 of The Primal Blueprint Podcast is now live. In it I discuss the reality of the calories in, calories out concept. Check it out and let me know what you think.

If you’re convenient to Newark, Delaware, don’t miss the Primal Blueprint Seminar coming to your area on Feb. 27.

Research of the Week

Both biking for an hour and shivering for 10-15 minutes release the same amount of irisin, a hormone that turns white fat into metabolically-stimulating brown fat.

Steeping green tea for 15 minutes at 90 ºC extracts the most flavonoids. That would be a pretty bitter brew, and I wonder if that would be too many flavonoids and exceed the hormetic threshold.

Interesting Blog Posts

How much control do you really have over your food intake? Part 1 and part 2.

No text is necessary to show what’s wrong with the modern diet. These 11 graphs are plenty.

This blog post from the ever on-point Frank Forencich is the most mind-rending, consciousness-shattering, paradigm-shifting piece you will read all year.

Media, Schmedia

Why nutrition is so confusing.

The man who tried to warn us about sugar - and had his career destroyed in the process.

NPR reports on the “full-fat milk paradox.” I think we need to reassess our use of the word “paradox” when they seem to pop up every other day.

A long and sobering read from the New Yorker on a Berkeley scientist’s fight against agro-chemical companies. This certainly makes me even more suspicious of industry-funded research.

The new UK cholesterol guidelines seek to put people at a low risk of heart disease on statins. Sure, why not? Makes perfect sense.

Everything Else

Midwest corn farmers are beginning to switch admittedly small portions of their crops over to fruits and vegetables, where there “is vastly more money to be made.” I suspect this trend will continue.

Looks like those insignificant inconsequential muscles in our feet are actually good for something after all.

The rise of caveman-style dining is apparently upon us.

Here are a bunch of photos of Russian people squatting.

This kid gets it.

PrimalCon isn’t coming to South Africa anytime soon. You could do way worse than this retreat if you’re local to SA, though.

One-upping the standing workstation.

A new book on entomophagy recently came out, and it looks pretty interesting.

This split keyboard might be a nice adjunct to a standing or walking workstation.

The good things fasting did to this guy’s body.

Recipe Corner

Easy to make and more delicious than it has any right to be, I give you Paleo crockpot chili.
From a blog that couldn’t be called anything but Jamaican It Paleo comes a recipe for beef liver, Jamaican style.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Feb 17 – Feb 23)

12 Healthy Ways to End the Day – All good things come to an end. Here are 12 ways to make it even gooder.
Top 10 Favorite Herbs and Spices – The Caltons give their top 10 healthiest (and tastiest) herbs and spices.

Comment of the Week

I believe being forgetful is natures way of exercising the old people. Go upstairs. Why am I here? Go back down stairs. Ah, I remember. Go back upstairs. Come to think of it, maybe I get in more than 10 flights in per day.

- I kind of want to hug this comment.

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Celeriac Noodles with Parsley Pesto

There are several types of vegetables that can be used to mimic noodles (spaghetti squash, zucchini) but none do it as well as celeriac. Peeled strands of this rugged root will cook to al dente in less than 3 minutes, making a fine bowl of faux fettuccine.

Celeriac noodles can be topped with any of your favorite sauces, but are especially good with this parsley pesto that matches the clean, fresh flavor of the noodles. Celeriac (also called celery root) has an herbal, pleasantly bitter flavor that will remind you of both celery and parsley. The flavor is stronger when raw and quite mild when cooked.

This pale root is hiding a surprising amount of nutrients beneath its humble exterior: vitamin C, vitamin K, phosphorus, potassium, vitamin B6 and magnesium. In addition to making noodles, celeriac can be shaved raw into salads, boiled like a potato or puréed into soup.

Servings: 2

Time in the Kitchen: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

1 to 2 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon raw sunflower seeds or chopped nut of your choice (10 g)
1/4 to 1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (45 to 22 g)
1 bunch parsley, mostly just the leaves
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more as desired (60 ml)
1 bulb of celery root (celeriac)

Instructions:

In a food processor, blend seeds/nuts, garlic and cheese until finely chopped.

Add the parsley and pulse a few times. With the blade running, drizzle in the olive oil. If desired, add more than 1/4 cup olive oil until the pesto has the consistency you want. Add salt to taste.

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.

Use a paring knife to carefully slice the skin and knobs off the celeriac root.

Cut the peeled root into several long slices that are roughly 1/2-inch wide. (13 mm)

(Exposed celeriac turns brown quickly. If not cooking immediately, immerse the slices in water and lemon juice)

Use a vegetable peeler to peel thin “noodles” (about 4 inches/10 cm long) off the top of the longest edge of the slices.

Boil the celeriac noodles for 2 to 3 minutes until tender.

Drain. Immediately toss with pesto or another type of sauce.

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I Am a New Man

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!

Several days after Thanksgiving 2012, I began my Primal journey. I had to finish all the cornbread dressing before I started this life changing adventure!

Growing up, I was your typical kid. Always outside playing, involved in every seasonal sport, and always finishing off my plate. I was never really fat growing up, but as my mom always told me, I was “husky.”

During the football offseason of my freshman year in high school, the hormones began to kick into overdrive and I started to lean up, get stronger, and faster. Several of my friends had questioned me if I was on steroids since I was making huge gains, which I wasn’t. I focused on football during high school and worked out all the time. My diet was the Standard American Diet but I was so active that I never really noticed anything. In my senior year, I was selected to the Texas 2nd Team All State as a center. I was recruited by several colleges to play football and finally accepted the offer from the United States Air Force Academy.

Prior to leaving for the academy, I didn’t train as much and continued to eat. Prior to reporting to basic training, I went from a playing weight of 195 lbs to 230 lbs. However, after starting basic training, I quickly lost weight and got back down to about 195 lbs. During my first year, I put on about 25 lbs of muscle thanks to the intense training regimen we were put under. I was in the best shape of my life at the time.

I did not finish the academy and left to attend a civilian school, ultimately ending up and graduating from Texas A&M University. My then fiancée (now wife), moved in together and started school. Neither of us were working and were living off of credit cards and student loans. Needless to say, we were going broke and things were pretty dismal. Our health and mental well-being were in danger.

Growing up, I had always wanted to be a police officer. I had met with one of the local departments and inquired on being a reserve officer while I completed school. I met with the chief and after a quick interview, he told me that if I applied I would probably get hired. My wife told me that she had heard an advertisement on the radio that one of the other local agencies was hiring. I decided to test, but I was 20 years old and out of the several hundred people testing for just a handful of jobs, I didn’t think that I had a chance. However, after placing at the top of the written test, I was allowed to move on to the physical fitness assessment. Needless to say, the PT test was difficult for me, I did not understand what had happened. But, I did pass and eventually made it through the background process and was offered a job.

While in the police academy, the PT wasn’t that hard and my weight held steady at about 225 lbs. After graduating the academy and finishing field training, I was assigned to night shift patrol. While on night shift, I always stayed active. I worked out and moved a lot! The area I worked had a lot of crime, so a lot of nights were spent chasing bad guys and walking several miles in the neighborhoods doing foot patrol. While on night shift, I didn’t eat much, typically ate when I woke up and had a small snack during the shift. I had lost about 10 lbs and felt fairly good. After a few years on patrol, I transferred to a narcotics unit. There was a joke about the unit which was similar to the term of “freshman 15,” it was called the “Task Force 20.” The typical day of a narcotics officer is spent typing reports, warrants, talking on the phone, long hours in your car doing surveillance, and driving around town. Since I worked during the daylight hours, I typically ate breakfast, had lunch at a restaurant, and ate a lot of fast food since we stayed on the go. My weight began to creep up, and in no time I had gained about 20 lbs. I was now in the worst shape in my life.

After several years, I began to workout again. I wanted to try out for our SWAT team so I spent nearly every morning in the gym. It was the typical workout, pound on the treadmill for about 30 minutes and go lift some weights. Pretty conventional workout. I had dropped some weight and felt better, but the obstacle course I was required to run for the SWAT tryout beat me down for sure! The course is modeled after Marine Corps and Army obstacle courses. We are required to finish it in 15 minutes. I did it in about 30 minutes and failed to negotiate several obstacles. I was miserable when I finished.

As several years went by, my weight continued to go up. I had accepted the fact that I will always weigh 250 lbs. I was overweight, weak, and slow. After leaving narcotics, I transferred back to patrol and eventually the K9 unit. The K9 position can be physically demanding, but I kept getting heavier. For the longest time, I refused to get on the scale. I hated looking in the mirror and every time I bought a new pair of pants, the waist line only got bigger.

On one August day, my wife and I were helping her father do some work around the house. After 8 plus hours of sweating and working in the Texas sun, I got on the scale prior to taking a shower. I was shocked, 271 is what I read. Finally, enough was enough. But, with all my conventional wisdom, I had a plan! Count calories and do a lot of cardio. Well, I probably lost about 10 lbs but stalled out as usual. I began to think I had something wrong with me. I had my testosterone tested, had my doctor do other tests, and finally got prescribed an inhaler for exercise induced asthma. Being the father of a young child, I could not keep up and I felt horrible! How could I go from respected athlete to fat, out of shape, and wheezing dad?

During October of 2012, my life changed forever! I attended a school for a month out of state and stayed with a friend of mine. That is when I was introduced to Mark’s Daily Apple. As with most people, it made no sense to me. What do you mean you can eat bacon? I was so engrossed in conventional wisdom it was sickening. I argued with him at first about how whole grains were good for you. But, since I was living under his roof for a while, I ate what he ate for several weeks. Not many bad carbs, snacked on beef jerky and almonds, and began to move more. I started to feel better within a few days.

After several weeks of living like this, I went back home for a week break. I started eating our traditional fare and of course, my body revolted and I felt horrible. When I went back to his house, I ate like he did and felt great. Once I got done with training, I came home, signed up for the MDA newsletter, and began reading as much as I could. Things started to make sense. So after one last hoorah of Thanksgiving, I decided to go all in.

In the beginning, I was losing several pounds a week and I was feeling better. But, the real breakthrough for me is the day I could feel the upper ribs – the fat was starting to melt away! In the beginning, I wasn’t working out much. We own a seasonal business and we stay extremely busy. But, the weight continued to come off with diet alone. I then started to take it slow with the exercise and started with Mark’s recommendations. I bought the 21-Day Transformation as a guide and things continued to get better. My wife and I had been trying for our second child for about 18 months, and within a few months of going Primal, she got pregnant. Pretty sure I read some stuff that this lifestyle makes you fertile!

This past summer I began to workout harder and then started doing CrossFit. My body had never felt better! I felt like I could suit up again and play! I had always told myself that if I could pass the obstacle course in the required time, then I knew I was in good shape. I ran the course with the team one day with some apprehensions. Had I come as far as I thought? I ran the first half of the course and got to the rope climb. I think the rope is about 25-30 feet high, which is the one obstacle I couldn’t even do several years back. However, on this morning, I went right on up. I ran the remainder of the course with the team and learned techniques. I felt great! I was asked to try out for the team and after several months, I ran the course again and passed! We are also required to do a challenge course which was a culmination of different PT exercises for over an hour. It was very difficult, but I made it through. Since then, I have run my first half and full marathon (bucket lists) and recently completed the GoRuck Challenge in Austin. That was the hardest endurance event I have ever done! In 13 hours we covered 17.4 miles doing all kinds of crazy things.

Thanks to MDA I am a new person! I now play with my kids without getting tired, have been recently assigned to the SWAT team, and I feel like there is no challenge that I cannot overcome! The nightly heartburn and miserable feelings have gone away! The Primal journey has changed my life forever and I love giving people advice on the lifestyle when they ask me for it. My wife questioned me in the beginning but she is now a true convert! After our second child was born, within weeks she was back at her starting weight and she loves the new life. My only regret about this journey is that I didn’t do it years ago!

I have attached several pictures of me and our family several years ago. The after pictures are with our new baby boy and me after the GoRuck Challenge. Grok on!

Chad H.

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A Primal Look at Art Therapy

A few years ago as I was beginning to get a vision for what would become The Primal Connection, I was exploring the idea of vitality from new angles. I was interested in what lay beyond the basics for human survival: nutrition, movement and fitness, sleep, stress and sun. I wanted to examine the connections between our hunter-gatherer ancestors’ lifestyles (what we can reasonably determine and presume) and the existing (if somewhat marginal) activities and therapies that appeared to show therapeutic benefit in scientific studies. I talked about bibliotherapy, writing therapy, music therapy as well as other more enigmatic but relevant topics like silence, solitude, ritual and retreat. What could be gleaned from the research (and a bit of Primal philosophizing) for further refining the good life – the deeper sense of well-being that accesses and actualizes the many facets of our evolutionarily fashioned humanity? In the midst of my recent blogging forays into vegetable recommendations, gentle cooking, pollution mitigation and resistant starch, I’ve been thinking lately about those past explorations. Truth be told, looking into those areas influenced my life at the time. I’m one to write about what I live – or at very least try what I write about….

Recently, another one of those intriguing intersections between evolutionary activity and modern creative therapy has been on my mind. It’s one of those situations where you encounter something and suddenly you keep running into it. A friend’s mother is in hospice care and has her best days during the art therapist’s visits. A work associate talked about doing art therapy before the birth of her second child to release lingering tension from a traumatic first childbirth. Another friend’s child does art therapy in counseling sessions around family transition. I run into articles about art therapy for recent combat veterans and for women with breast cancer. It makes me stop and wonder. What is it about art that gets to the depths of our experience – often when other “normal” approaches fail? And what does (or should) this mean for everyday Primal life?

As the earlier examples suggest, art therapy has been applied to conditions as vastly various as eating disorders, autism, cardiovascular disease, cancer, brain injury (PDF), PTSD, pain management, anxiety and palliative care. From a medical standpoint, most agree that solid research of any significant scope is limited thus far. Yet as one study author writes (PDF), art related therapies “contribute significantly to the humanization and comfort of modern health care institutions by relieving stress, anxiety, and pain of patients and caregivers.” When you compare modern health care to what we likely evolved with in traditional shamanism or something akin to it, it’s no wonder that these auxiliary, “humanizing” therapies are so critical. We too often think we can separate medical acts from our human experience. We’re naturally (and appropriately) more sensitive to this with children’s experiences, but I think it applies to all of us. Yet, there’s something more universal to art therapy’s relevance. Beyond its use for medical issues, art therapy has also been demonstrated as effective for the mental health purposes of severe job burnout and severe stress. What’s at the root of this “alternate language” for processing pain and experience?

We know humans have been making art for tens of thousands of years. The oldest discovered cave paintings in Cantabria, Spain, date back to approximately 40,000 years ago. Shell beads found in eastern Morocco believed to have been for ornamentation are estimated at 82,000 years old. It boggles the mind to think of what existed when we see the traces that still exist today. Creativity was an immensely critical leap cognitively speaking for the human species. The symbolic and representational opened up whole new possibilities for communication and record keeping. More importantly, however, the creative representational capacity undoubtedly changed the way we perceived and interacted with the world as we developed the potential for mental modeling. It gave us a new means to engage material experimentation, social interaction – and personal introspection. We had the means to understand our own humanity and reflect on our experience through various expressive means – including but not limited to language.

When we look at creativity this way, it’s clear we’re not just talking about visual art or formal art therapy activities. There’s something uniquely and deeply human about creative expression of many kinds. With visual art, you might say, it’s a means of expression that doesn’t require linguistic engagement or even ability. It can engage multiple brain areas from memory to sensory to emotional centers to visual processing system. Yet, it’s perhaps simultaneously the simplest and richest means for emotional exploration. On that note…it’s rare for a research summary to elicit much feeling (and I’ve read thousands), but I stumbled upon this gem as I was digging for today’s blog. I’ve been hooked ever since. “Feeling effective as a young person depends on a capacity to draw upon one’s own resources in the service of healthy living and development. In adolescent health care, there is the need to call upon the talents and creativity of young people, to introduce new and exciting experiences, and to facilitate involvement in their own care in order to nurture optimal growth and development on a physical and psychological level.”

Now go back and read that using “human” and “people” in place of “adolescents”. Like this… Feeling effective as a human depends on the capacity to draw upon one’s own resources in the service of healthy living and development. In health care [and cultivating well-being], there’s a need to call upon the talents and creativity of people, to introduce new and exciting experiences, and to facilitate involvement in their own care in order to nurture optimal growth and development on a physical and psychological level. I think it makes perfect sense.

But why, then, do we relegate the importance of creative expression to illness and/or childhood/adolescence? Sure, as children there was room for exploration and experimentation in a day. There was time for expression just for the fun of it. Expression for the sake of play or self-discovery doesn’t have much of a role in our society beyond the age of 14. Unless we work in a particularly creative field, it just doesn’t figure in. The ordained, accepted use of art for adults is within a medicalized, therapy context. While I’m convinced of its therapeutic benefit, I wonder if creative expression is part of a larger force or longing within our innate humanity.

Let me pose this question: if art therapy (and other creative therapies) can make a substantive, measurable difference for people experiencing significant pain, hardship or disability, what power could it have within everyday life for how we cope with everyday stresses and conflicts, how we process the immense amount of emotional, social and intellectual information we take in, how we situate ourselves in the scope of our own life stories? Could we potentially be happier or better adjusted if we “indulged” in expressive arts (in our own personal ways) as a regular part of life? In this scenario particularly, it’s hardly a matter of life and death, but as I’ve said many times, my goal isn’t satisfactory survival. I prefer to thrive, and I’m good with doing whatever I think makes sense to get me there.

For me, I think this means appreciating the art of others around me, building the occasional furnishing and taking an active role in the design for my books as well as writing. Expression in this way acts as a mirror for what I might not otherwise see – nuances about myself, about the nature of health and vitality, about the meaning of Primal life – all that good stuff. When I take the time, I enjoy the flow of the process. For the biggest and most personal creative challenges, however, it’s even more than that. I’m taken in by it. The work itself opens up a path to follow. I move along its twists and turns having discovered dimensions of thought and self exploration inaccessible by any other route. In those moments I have the sense that it’s more than a creative experiment but something of a Primal imperative for the good life as I’d like to live it.

Intrigued? Curious? Interested in doing a little exploration yourself? Try out some visual journaling prompts or check out what one art therapy practitioner offers as the “Ten Coolest Art Therapy Interventions.”

Let me know your thoughts. Have you ever worked with an art therapist or in a setting where art was used for therapeutic purposes? Would you? Share your feedback, and thanks for reading, everybody.

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Do You Really Need to Eat Vegetables to Be Healthy?

The idea that vegetables are an essential part of a healthy diet has been hammered into our collective consciousness by every authority out there. Parents, teachers, scientists, government health “experts” all stress the importance of eating your veggies. Problem is, they also told us that butter would kill us, margarine would save us, animal protein would give us cancer, and animal fat would give us heart disease. They said we should jog for an hour a day three days a week, that deadlifts would hurt our backs, and that we need to wear shoes with “good arch support.” Basically, conventional wisdom gets it wrong an awful lot of the time, so what should we think about the CW regarding vegetables? It’s a fairly common query I receive from readers:

Do you really need to eat vegetables – or plant matter in general – to be healthy?

Yes. Yes, you do. Maybe not a huge amount, necessarily. But you do need some.

With that out of the way, allow me to address some of the pertinent questions I receive from readers. See, MDA readers are an astute bunch. They don’t just send me one line emails with questions in all caps; they send questions and then proceed to lay out very persuasive arguments. Let’s look at some of them.

“What about the traditional cultures that ate little to no plants or vegetables and were healthy? Like…”

The Inuit – While they ate a high-fat, high-protein, low-carb diet consisting of the fat and meat from seal, walrus, whale, caribou, fish, and other wild game, the Inuit actually utilized a wide variety of plant foods including berries, sea vegetables, lichens, and rhizomes. They made tea from pine needles, which are high in vitamin C and polyphenols.

The Maasai – Milk, meat, and blood were the high-fat, low-carb staples of the Maasai diet, particularly that of the male warriors. But it’s not all they ate. The Maasai often traded for plant foods like bananas, yams, and taro, too, and they cooked their meat with anti-parasitic spices, drank bitter (read: tannin- and polyphenol-rich) herb tea on a regular basis, and used dozens of plants as medicines (PDF).

Or the Sami – The reindeer herders of the Scandinavian north, the Sami people eat a low-carb, high-protein, high-fat diet of meat, fish, and reindeer milk. They also gather wild plant foods, particularly berries and mushrooms (Finland’s forests produce 500 million kg of berries and over 2 billion kg of mushrooms each year!), sometimes even feeding their reindeer hallucinogenic mushrooms to produce psychoactive urine.

Plants played small but important roles in their diets. Not as a source of calories, necessarily, but as a source of micronutrients, plant polyphenols, and medicinal compounds. We can’t know that they would have gotten the results they did without the plants.

“Animal foods provide all the micronutrients a person needs.”

Animal products include some of the most nutrient-dense foods available. They’re our best (and often only) source of vitamin A (retinol), DHA/EPA, and vitamin B12, as well as lesser-known nutrients like choline, creatine, and carnosine. But a diet devoid of vegetables and other plants will likely be a little low in certain nutrients that we need. Like:

Betaine – A vital liver-supporting nutrient, the best source is spinach.

Potassium – Important electrolyte and regulator of blood pressure, the best sources are avocados, leafy greens, citrus fruits, and bananas. Meat contains potassium, but you have to capture the juices to get it.

Magnesium – Involved in hundreds of crucial physiological functions, the best sources are leafy greens like spinach and chard.

Fermentable fiber – The best sources are plants.

Whoa, whoa. Fiber? What is this, the AHA? No. I’ve questioned the merits of insoluble fiber-driven fecal hypertrophy in the past, and I remain puzzled at the relentless pursuit of toilet bowl blockages, but I strongly support the consumption of fermentable fiber. If you’re convinced of the importance of a healthy gut microbiome populated with happy, vibrant gut flora – and you should be, by now – you can’t ignore their food requirements. They need fermentable fiber to survive and tend to your immune system, and the best way to provide that is to eat plants.

It’s also easy to miss out on nutrients like folate (if you don’t eat offal) and calcium (if you don’t eat dairy or small bony fish).

Plus, and this is an important point, we evolved eating wild animals. Wild animal meat and fat comes loaded with antioxidant compounds from all the wild plant matter they eat. Grass-fed beef (the more easily attainable alternative to wild meat) is also higher in B-vitamins, beta-carotene (look for yellow fat), vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol), vitamin K, and trace minerals like magnesium, calcium, and selenium. Unless you’re hunting game or eating “salad bar” beef (what Joel Salatin calls grass-fed beef), eating vegetables, herbs, and spices with your meal will help emulate the ancestral steak dinner.

“What about people who just hate vegetables? Or who don’t like them all the time? Shouldn’t we listen to our instincts?”

I have a sneaking suspicion that the ability to sense nutrients noted in many animal species is also present in people. Like how salt-deficient cattle will gravitate toward the salt lick, maybe some people just don’t need that extra hormetic stimulus provided by the plant, and their bodies are letting them know by making vegetables taste bad. Maybe they’re so darn optimal that they only require the basic vitamins, minerals, and macronutrients to maintain their health.

But remember: the body is kind of a dumb instrument. It evolved in an environment when little mistakes could be very costly. A sprained ankle could mean death, destitution, or a limp that never leaves; these days, a sprained ankle means some ice, some elevation, and parking a little closer to the office/grocery store. Eating the wrong plant, or the wrong part of the wrong plant, might destroy your liver; these days, you just Google “[plant] toxicity.” So we’re subconsciously hypersensitive to things that may (have once) pose(d) a threat that we may miss out on some good stuff. Plant toxins, also known as phytonutrients, are one of those things.

Carrie already explained how some folks’ distaste for bitter plant toxins might be an adaptation from the days when a portion of the available plant food was too dense in toxins/phytonutrients for regular consumption – an adaptive holdover that prevents us from enjoying the extremely healthy, hormetic, moderate levels of plant toxins in cultivated plants.

I actually get where these people are coming from. I’ll go days where I don’t really want any green things on my plate, where a salad (even a Big Ass one) just doesn’t appeal to me. I’ll also have days where I don’t really feel like eating a steak, where a few bites of it is plenty. I tend to listen my body in these cases.

People known as “supertasters” are particularly sensitive to the bitter compounds in plant foods and generally eat fewer of them as a result; some research indicates that they may be at a greater risk for certain cancers, while other research indicates that supertasters weigh less, with a lower risk of heart disease, than “normals.” However, that’s because they’re more picky about food and eat less of it in general, not because bitter vegetables are fattening. It’s not conclusive either way.

The Bottom Line

Plants complement meat. They make meat taste better, make it healthier by preventing the formation of carcinogens during cooking when you incorporate them into marinades, and reduce the impact of those harmful compounds when you consume them alongside. Cruciferous vegetables are a classic example; that broccoli you’re eating with your steak contains phytonutrients that reduce the potential mutagenicity (cancer-causing properties) of heterocyclic amines in well-done meat.

Vegetables also compliment meat. They notice when meat has had its hair and nails done, or when it’s lost weight. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard kale say the words, “Have you been working out?” to a lamb shank. Even if they’re not always totally sincere, they obviously care about making meat feel good about itself. That’s awesome. Harmony on your plate is always good.

If you hate veggies and refuse to eat them, fine. You can get most minerals and vitamins elsewhere (though it’s tough, and some spinach would take care of most of them), and using supplements is an option. But if I were you, I would at least strongly consider drinking tea, eating phytonutrient-rich fruits like berries, eating phytonutrient-rich legume extracts like dark chocolate, and using lots of different spices and herbs in your cooking. These won’t have a large caloric (or carb) load, but they will offer nutrients you simply can’t obtain from animals and they provide the largest plant bang for your buck.

Before you throw in the towel, be sure to try lots of different plants. There are thousands of edible and medicinal ones out there, with tens of thousands of recipes and preparation instructions available right this instant just a few keystrokes away. You’ll find something you like if you keep looking.

What does everyone else think? Can you be truly healthy without including plants, particularly veggies, in your diet?

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How to Ensure Your Final Years Are Good Ones

We talk about aging gracefully, but what does it mean? How does one age gracefully? To me, it means ensuring your final years are good ones. Basically, we want to avoid the “regular” maladies of aging like dementia, osteoporosis, blindness, sarcopenia, and immobility. We want to live long and drop dead, not live long and wither away from a host of degenerative illnesses that prevent our ability to enjoy or even experience life, relegated to a bare room tucked away in a building somewhere. That scares me more than anything, more than heart disease or cancer or shark attacks: helplessness.

When I’m nearing 100, I want to be able to…

Fix a meal for myself.
Go for a walk.
Use the stairs.
Use the bathroom without help.
Lift a grandkid or two.
See where I’m going.
Recall distant memories.
Create new ones.
Hold conversations.
Play – and play hard.
Be witty.
Be sharp.

How do we do it, though? What steps can we take, what foods can we eat, what exercises can we do to ensure these things – or at least boost our chances?

Going and staying Primal is a good start. Hewing to the 10 Laws will help. But I thought I’d dig into the research and get a bit more specific. What can we – the young and the old and the in-between – do to improve our chances at graceful aging?

Start walking every day.

One of the most effective predictors of an older adult’s mortality risk is his walking speed. The faster you (normally) walk, the longer you (normally) live. That doesn’t necessarily mean that grandma should start speed walking to live longer, because it may not work exactly like that. It’s “walking speed at a normal pace” that matters, not “how fast you can force yourself to walk.” But “forcing yourself to walk” and cultivating that walking ability – right now, this instant – will certainly help predict normal walking speed later in life, or later this week. So get on it.

Lift heavy things and stay active.

A while back, I linked to undeniable visual evidence of the importance of staying active all throughout life. It depicted cross-sections of the thighs of a 40 year old male triathlete, a 70 year old male triathlete, and a 74 year old sedentary man. The first two were nearly identical – a good sized cord of dense bone surrounded on all sides by several inches of lean muscle with very little fat – while the sedentary thigh had a more narrow bone and pitiful amounts of muscle that seemed to be actively degenerating, plus about two or three inches of pure fat. The stronger you are, the more able you are, the less likely you are to fall, and the longer you are likely to live. The good news is that even if you weren’t very active in the past, starting today can make a big difference.

Take the stairs.

Stair-climbing is a fairly simple, highly accessible mode of exercise for anyone, but it’s been shown to improve resting and exercise heart rates, balance, and perceived exertion particularly among seniors.

Do planks.

All movement originates from the core – from the torso. If it’s not stable and strong, you’ll be less sure-footed and more prone to make mistakes. A strong trunk is a stable trunk, and stable, strong trunks help prevent falls and improve balance. Planks are a great way to strengthen your trunk. Almost anyone can get started on them, too, so don’t wait any longer. Doing a few minutes (with some rest, of course!) of planks every other morning is a good recipe for strength and stability. Check out the basic plank progression here.

Eat your spinach with butter.

Spinach is a great source of lutein, a micronutrient that can help protect against eye diseases like age-related macular degeneration, cataracts, and retinitis pigmentosa, but you have to absorb it for it to do its thing. The saturated fats in butter seem to be the best vehicle for lutein absorption when compared to MUFAs (olive oil) or PUFAs (fish oil), so eat your butter and spinach! Similar effects were found for absorption of zeaxanthin. Shrimp scampi, anyone?

Keep in touch with your friends, or make new ones.

Being social animals, humans need contact with other humans. Whether it’s a spouse, a son, a daughter, or an old friend, these are the real human connections that give us meaning and indeed promote better physical health. Having a strong social network improves the quality of life in everyone, including people with dementia. It also improves mortality risk in senior citizens. So say “hello” to the neighbors.

Play often.

Play doesn’t necessarily mean “play a sport.” Play can be card games, video games, board games. Heck, go LARP if that’s what you enjoy. Play simply has to be fun. Those are the only requirements. Sorry – no studies to reference here. You’ll have to take my word for it.

Have a pet.

A sad reality for many older adults is loneliness. Spouses and partners pass away, children move, and friends drift apart. But pets? Pets remain, and pet ownership has been shown to attenuate the negative effects of loneliness in seniors. Plus, a dog will keep you active by requiring daily walks. Cats on the other hand will keep your ego in check. And hey, you could always be the eccentric old guy with a snake draped over his shoulders or a ferret in his pocket.

Laugh a lot.

If you haven’t laughed yet today because of something funny, go ahead and force it. The simple act of laughter, even if it’s contrived, can reduce stress and improve immune function.

Eat a variety of plants.

Corn, potatoes, and peas for dinner every night just won’t cut it. Research suggests that seniors with a wide variety in the fruits and vegetables they eat have improved health markers, including higher HDL and lower triglycerides, higher folate levels, higher potassium levels, and more lean mass. Eating a wide variety of edible plants also gives you a wide variety of plant polyphenols, which have been associated with reduced cognitive decline in old age.

Eat a diet that allows you to maintain good blood sugar control, avoid obesity, and keep chronic inflammation at bay.

Simple, right? Though it’s a non-linear, somewhat confusing one, a relationship does appear to exist between Alzheimer’s disease and the standard outcomes of a standard American diet: hyperglycemia, hyperinsulinemia, obesity, and chronic inflammation. That makes a Primal eating approach more important than ever.

Get plenty of sleep.

Some people have the weird idea that sleep is a waste of time when you could be out doing stuff and living life. Don’t listen to them. Sleep is restorative, preserving immune function and insulin sensitivity and repairing muscle tissue. Sleep is when our sex hormones are made and growth hormone is secreted. If we get bad sleep on a regular basis, our bodies will be too broken to enjoy the waking time we have left.

Drink coffee, tea, or both.

In aging rodents, coffee (both the caffeine and the bioactive compounds) has neuroprotective, cognitive-enhancing qualities, and in humans hoping to avoid Alzheimer’s disease, it may offer therapeutic potential. Humans and rodents both show similar brain biomarkers upon coffee consumption, and among older women with vascular disorders, caffeine intake is associated with improved maintenance of cognitive function. Meanwhile, most studies of both tea and coffee consumption report protection against cognitive decline in consumers of the beverages.

When losing weight, be careful, eat more protein and lift more weights.

In the elderly, ever ounce of lean mass is precious. Unfortunately, weight loss in the elderly often means more lean mass is lost than fat mass, which probably explains the connection between weight loss and mortality in that demographic. That’s why eating more protein and resistance training is more essential than ever in seniors looking to lose weight; both will help reduce the loss of lean mass. Don’t go on crash diets.

Limit stress.

Or rethink it.

Meditate.

Meditation can reduce stress and improve sleep and lower inflammation, all of which are good for functioning as we age, but it may be more than that. Evidence suggests that meditation may directly improve cognitive function in older people. There’s also some limited evidence linking meditation to increased telomere length and life extension.

Keep your bones strong.

Underneath all the skin, fat, muscle, nerves, and organ tissue, your bones support you. When they break, your mortality risk goes up. You need to support them with the right nutrients and weight-bearing activities: vitamin D, vitamin K2, calcium, and resistance training.

Take vitamin D.

Vitamin D isn’t just good for your bones, immunity, and heart. It also improves neuromuscular function, especially in older adults with a history of falling (which indicates poor neuromuscular function), and reduces the incidence of falls with somewhere around 1000 IUs as the highest and most effective dose studied. Get sunlight, too, but don’t rely on it for vitamin D because our ability to synthesize it wanes with aging.

Don’t let your cholesterol get too low.

“High” levels of cholesterol are fairly consistently associated with lower risks of all-cause mortality, in both women (PDF) and in men (I particularly love the conclusion in that last study: “We have been unable to explain our results.”) Meanwhile, elderly with cholesterol levels lower than 189 mg/dL – which is often high enough to get you put on a statin – are at an increased risk of dying, even when all other variables are accounted for. Low total cholesterol can also predict future cognitive decline.

Challenge your brain.

It could be the daily crossword (that’s mine). It could be sudoku. It could be a game of chess down at the cafe, or a weeks-long game of Risk that ends with a Ukrainian guy smashing the board on the subway. It could be a great conversation or a day whittled away at the library. Just use your brain.

Eat fermented foods.

With all the research coming out concerning the interplay between the health of our guts and the function of our brains, it’s no surprise that the gut microbiome might also affect cognitive decline during aging. Eating fermented foods like yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchi, and natto (a great source of vitamin K2) and taking probiotic supplements is a good way to hedge your bets while the research is being sorted out. Eating prebiotic fibers to feed your probiotic flora is a good idea, too.

Have sex.

Sex promotes graceful aging for many reasons. First, it’s a form of play, and play keeps you vibrant and engaged with life. Second, it’s pleasurable, and pleasure is an important motivator and a vital component of a happy life in its own right. Third, it may even promote neurogenesis – the growth of new neurons.

Use coconut oil.

The medium chain triglycerides present in coconut oil are uniquely ketogenic, meaning they increase the production of ketone bodies, even in the presence of carbohydrates. High levels of one of these coconut-derived ketones, beta-hydroxybutyrate, have been linked to improved cognition in patients with Alzheimer’s and other forms of cognitive decline.

Find ways to avoid medications when it’s possible.

In some cases, medication is absolutely called for, but not always. Don’t avoid medication by just not filling the prescription and going about your day (the head in the sand approach). Instead, ask the doctor or health practitioner if there are other, more lifestyle-driven ways to tackle the problem, instead of turning immediately to, say, statins that might speed up cognitive decline and increase the risk of cataracts. Avoiding unnecessary medication also helps you avoid the medication meant to fix the side effects of the unnecessary medication.

Cut the cord.

Some would have you ditch the TV altogether, but I don’t think you need to do that. Just eliminate the mindless droning of reality TV and commercials. Stick to watching great movies, good TV shows that you’ve vetted, and maybe even playing the occasional video game (which may enhance cognitive function in older adults, provided they learn how to use the controllers!).

Believe in something.

It doesn’t have to be a deity (although that can work) or anything “mystical.” But being committed to something, having a purpose (whether originating within of your own motivations or from an outside source), being a part of something bigger, or having something to live for in other words – these are good practices that foster long life. For me, it’s my family first and foremost, but I also believe in and derive meaning from this blog, my books, and this movement.

As you can probably tell, a lot of it comes down to doing the same Primal stuff we talk about on here all the time, only with more urgency and specificity. And that’s not even everything. In the future, I’ll dig more into how things like supplementation and glucose restriction might be able to improve how we age.

Thanks for reading, everyone! Got anything else to add?

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Dear Mark: Sprints and Blood Sugar, Resistant Starch as Carbs, PUFA in Coconut Oil, Cycling as Chronic Cardio, and Morning Sickness

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I cover four questions and my wife Carrie covers one. First, I discuss the effects of sprinting on blood sugar in the short term and long term. Next is whether or not one counts resistant starch as a carb in their daily allotment. Third, I identify the actual proportion of omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids found in coconut oil. Finally, I give my take on cycling as a gentler mode of chronic cardio relative to running. Carrie wraps things up with a short review of the evolutionary reasons for morning sickness.

Let’s go:

Dear Mark

I see a lot of talk on your site about sprints and how great they are. My question is, what is their effect on blood sugar immediately after a session? As a recovering T2 diabetic living primally for about a year, I hadn’t had a large spike in blood sugar in weeks…until I tried some sprints (jump rope to be precise). I was back to normal about 1/2 hr later.

What’s a normal immediate blood glucose response? Are there any health detriments to blood sugar spikes due to intense exercise?

Clark

That’s totally normal, Clark. Sprinting is a particularly glucose-intensive activity. It burns right through muscle glycogen. Sensing this, the liver releases glucose to provide additional fuel for the body; in healthy people, type 2 diabetics, and type 1 diabetics alike, blood glucose spikes after most any exercise, but especially after sprinting. It’s a feature, not a flaw.

The good news is that over the long haul, sprinting leads to improved glucose control. Heck, a type 2 diabetic doesn’t even need to wait more than day to start seeing massive improvements in his glucoregulation. A recent review looked at the blood glucose responses of diabetics (type 1 and type 2) to “brief high intensity exercise,” as which sprinting definitely qualifies, finding that although glucose was elevated immediately post workout, blood glucose control is improved for one to three days following a sprint session.

Keep sprinting.

Hi there, do the carbs in resistant starch count as part of my daily carb intake. In other words if I am trying to stay at 90g of carbs a day and I am taking in 40g of carbs from the resistant starch, does that mean I have 50g left or are those carbs in a different category because they are processed differently?

Thanks!

Yelizaveta

No, they don’t really count. You’ve still got 90 grams left.

Resistant starch is resistant to digestion by the host organism (that’s you), acting more like prebiotic fiber (food for your gut flora) than anything else. More and more, we’re beginning to understand the necessity of feeding our gut flora, which don’t just impact our digestion, but also our immunity and cognition.

The cool part about resistant starch in relation to digestible starch is that its fermentation yields butyric acid, a short chain fat that actively improves insulin sensitivity and blood glucose control. In other words, it helps you become more tolerant of the carbs you can digest.

Unless you’re heating up your resistant starch past 140 ºF, which would turn it into fully digestible regular old starch, resistant starch doesn’t convert en masse into glucose in the body.

I have a tablespoon of unrefined virgin coconut oil in my tea every morning, because of its health benefits. I was told recently that coconut oil is pure omega-6. Now I’m a little confused, should I be limiting my coconut oil intake like I do nuts or is there something about it’s structure that makes it different?Would you please clarify.

Thanks

Dusti

You’ve got a saboteur in your midst feeding you bad info. Coconut oil is almost entirely saturated fat with negligible levels of omega-6. Here’s the breakdown:

91% of the fat is saturated, mostly medium chain triglycerides (fats like lauric acid, caprylic acid, capric acid, and caproic acid which boost ketone production and increase metabolism).

6% of the fat is monounsaturated (the same kind found in olive oil and macadamia nuts).

A lowly 3% of the fat is polyunsaturated (omega-6).

You’re fine. Keep enjoying that coconut oil!

Have you done any more research into specific cardio versus just cardio in general?

In other words, respectfully, I question a little that cycling shouldn’t be separated from the “bad, too much cardio” group. Especially considering that with downhills, stopping at red lights/stop lights and the very social, stop and regroup aspect of it (well, for us amateur riders anyway) – couldn’t it be considered along the lines of sprinting and recovery? I know that on some rides, even centuries, I don’t pedal with full power the whole time, often just coast, and my heart rate goes way down often when I’m just spinning lightly and enjoying the views. Cycling is more a workout for the soul, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m just so torn on thinking that even on long rides (endurance rides) I’m doing myself any harm. It’s the weekend after weekend of long rides that I believe are where one could potentially run (ride) into trouble.

It’s just, I don’t know – given that it isn’t hard on the knees or joints (I ride a triple gear proudly to save my knees!), isn’t hard on the back (if you use your abs to hold your posture correctly!) and is just so social and enjoyable, wouldn’t cycling be considered primal in most ways?

Mary

Most research confirms that running is the riskiest of all the non-contact sports. Triathlons afford us a direct comparison between running and cycling injury statistics in the same population. There’s some variance, but the running portion is usually linked to more injuries, as you might expect:

An online survey of 212 triathletes found that 50% of injuries were from running and 43% were from cycling. 54% of all injuries were “contusions or abrasions,” which are more likely caused by falling from a bike than tripping over your own feet.
Another study found that among 131 triathletes, “high running mileage” but not mileage on the bike was predictive of overuse injury risk.
During an actual triathlon, more injuries occur during the run portion than the cycling portion - almost a 3:1 ratio.
Traumatic injuries are more likely to occur during cycling, while running is more likely to cause overuse injuries.

The main reason I stopped competing in marathons and switched over to triathlons is because it let me keep up my admittedly insane training and competing load without continuing the destructive trajectory of my joints and overall health. Of course, it didn’t last for long, but I did get a brief lull in degeneration by switching from all running to some running, some cycling, and some swimming.

Cycling is lower impact, but not “no-impact” when compared to running. Overuse injuries do occur, and force does act upon the joint when cycling. One study compared the compressive forces acting on the knee cartilage when running and cycling by measuring the degree of cartilage deformation. Running created greater forces, deforming knee cartilage by 5%. Cycling wasn’t far behind, with 4.5% deformation. These deformations were transient and normal, but you can imagine how they might add up over the course of a session (or sessions). Any misalignment of your tissues – due to, perhaps, fatigue, overtraining, or tight surrounding musculature – will increase or at least concentrate the deformation.

Of course, running form is less linear than cycling form and that makes the runner more susceptible to overuse injuries. When you get tired on a run, your legs start to flare out to the side and your form gets sloppy. When you’re cycling, your form is more “locked in” by the pedals, even if you’re tired. This is probably why cycling is more forgiving to the joints.

Leaving joint issues aside, chronic cardio refers more to the long term effects of repeated medium-to-intense work that causes the heart to overreach and in many cases the heart wall to thicken. A-fib is a minor epidemic now among lifelong CCers.

It is possible to embark on a running program, a cycling program or a triathlon training program that steers you away from CC territory (cross-training, specific weight training, intervals, very slow paced running or riding and, yes, the occasional long, hard slog).

I have never said someone shouldn’t go out for a weekly long ride or run – even a hard one. Or even a few times a week if you’re fit and enjoy that – and can recover fully in between. I am just opposed to the day-in, day-out medium-to-hard effort that doesn’t really improve fitness, but just causes the heart to beat metronomically (not a good thing over a long effort) and to never fully recover. Endorphin addiction (the runner’s high) is not necessarily a good thing.

If cycling is improving your life, getting you out into nature, letting you hang out with your pals, then I’d say it’s worth doing. Just be wary of that threshold where it starts taking away from your life, where you stop noticing the scenery or appreciating the nature, where you start neglecting your friends and family because you’re too sore or sleepy to do anything. It sounds like you know what you’re doing and you’re watching out for the warning signs.

Now, let’s hear from Carrie…

I have read in numerous places that “morning sickness”, as we Westerners know it, simply is non-existent in hunter-gatherer and primitive cultures…in fact they have no idea what such a term even means. These women enjoy easy, robust pregnancy’s with very few issues, and it is my understanding from anthropologists research, that stress is the true culprit that triggers morning sickness for us women living in modern societies. The levels of stress are far fewer, and of a different nature amongst primitive cultures then for us Westerner’s.

So, I am hoping that either you or Carrie can provide some insight on this truly miserable phenomena from an historical/anthropological viewpoint. An exploration into what it means to be preggo, and Primal/Paleo, would be a welcome subject to tackle here on MDA!

Thanks so much!!

-SJ

Actually, morning sickness is fairly universal among pregnant women, regardless of culture, ethnicity, or diet. About 70% (give or take) of women experience food aversions and nausea during pregnancy, usually the first trimester, and modern research has generally coalesced around the “morning sickness as prophylactic” theory. Even if you’re a pastoral, rural Tanzanian woman eating a whole foods diet, you will probably experience morning sickness when you get pregnant. Food aversions are there to keep potentially toxic or harmful foods or substances out of your body and away from the growing baby. It’s not a perfect system by any means, rather a blunt tool that removes large swathes of food that might actually be harmless or helpful but “fit the profile.”

For instance, wild plants are higher in polyphenols (or phytonutrients) than domesticated plants. Maybe too high, and that’s why we bred them out. In fact, phytonutrients can become phytotoxins at high enough concentrations. Mark has written about this before, but many of the benefits of phytonutrients come from our defensive reaction to them. We want the right amount, not too many, not too little. Then there are the outright toxins found in some wild plants. The end result is that domesticated plants get included in the aversions because our ancient bodies don’t really know the difference, even though they’re probably good for pregnant women.

Some phytonutrients reduce iron absorption. Others, like the ones found in cruciferous vegetables, can inhibit thyroid function when eaten in large amounts especially with concomitant low iodine intake. Wild cruciferous vegetables have even more of these substances. Both thyroid hormone and iron are essential for development of the fetus, so it makes sense that we would evolve built-in mechanisms to prevent overconsumption during pregnancy. Studies have also found connections between high consumption of polyphenols in late pregnancy and negative changes in fetal blood pressure dynamics. A very recent trial even found that polyphenol restriction in the last trimester improved those flow dynamics. Also, many herbal teas are contraindicated during pregnancy due to undesired health effects, and a widespread revulsion against bitter plants would have the same protective effect.

That’s also why pregnant women are more likely to remember people’s faces after just a single introduction, more sensitive to health cues, and more suspicious of “out-group” members – these are all protective measures to keep bad stuff (sick people, dangerous people, certain foods, toxins) away from the baby. I personally find it incredibly fascinating!

But you still need to eat, so what can you do in this case?

Make the best choices out of what you can stomach. You need calories now more than at any other time, so eat what sounds good and try to make the best choices possible. So, if you’re craving a sandwich, maybe have it on gluten-free bread. If you’re craving french fries, make some yourself with coconut oil instead of going to McDonald’s.
Eat well before you get pregnant. This is your chance to get ahead of the game. It allows you to build up your nutrient stores while you still have your normal, Primal appetite so that eating sweet potatoes for three days straight or living off of avocados and rice when you’re pregnant won’t be such a big deal.

Hope that helps!

Thanks for reading, everyone.

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Weekend Link Love

All Primal Apparel (except for the new Primal Blueprint beanie) is 50% off for a limited time. Just add the apparel to your cart to see the discount.

Episode #5 of The Primal Blueprint Podcast is now live. In it I discuss the role of supplementation in a healthy Primal lifestyle. Check it out and let me know what you think.

If you’re convenient to Newark, Delaware, don’t miss the Primal Blueprint Seminar coming to your area on Feb. 27.

Research of the Week

Regular physical activity “obliterates” some of the deleterious metabolic effects of a high caloric intake.

Turns out sick people do have a certain smell about them.

Third hand smoke, “that rich, burnt oatmeal smell emanating from grandpa’s sweater,” is also dangerous.

Fragmented sleep weakens immunity and promotes (or at least allows) tumor growth in mice.

Statins may be contraindicated in patients with heart failure.

If you’re looking for a mass gain protocol for your liver, low-carb ain’t it.

If you are going to use a protein supplement, better that you pick the most efficient at building or maintaining muscle mass. That’s why I use whey protein isolate in Primal Fuel.

Interesting Blog Posts

A potential toolkit for lowering the risk of cancer, as explained by Peter Attia by way of Tim Ferriss, boils down to reducing the amount of glucose hanging around in your body either by lowering your intake, improving your ability to clear it, or both.

There’s at least one cancer pathology professor who would agree with Peter and Tim’s toolkit.

Yet another good reason to question the validity of observational diet studies: food frequency questionnaires aren’t very accurate.

Seth Roberts gives a very interesting explanation of why the same dose of the same drug can be deadly or benign in the same person, depending on a simple change of venue.

How to be paleo in New York City.

Media, Schmedia

Got a problem with wheat? It may not just be the gluten.

Do we need GMO wheat?

While it’s nice that the media’s reporting on a study showing an association between sugar consumption and mortality, we should be fair and admit that it was merely an observational study that cannot prove causation.

Everything Else

The Dietitians for Professional Integrity – “advocacy group co-founded by 14 dietitians that advocates for the Academy [of Nutrition and Dietetics] to cut its ties to its Big Food partners and sponsors” – recently released their scathing report on the influence the processed food industry holds over the presentations at the nation’s largest nutrition conference.

A building’s architecture helps determine the species of bacteria that live there.

Now that’s what I call a good use for sugar.

My bad.

If we’re serious about preventing cancer, avoiding all that vegetable oil and using animal adipose tissue instead might be a good move, too.

In downtown Miami, archaeologists are unearthing an ancient Tequesta Indian town that dates back to at least 2000 years ago.

The sex of the child, as well as the mother’s economic status, determines the fat content of her breast milk.

Uzbekistan plans on using genetic testing to find future Olympians among the nation’s children.

Recipe Corner

Want to try out some gently cooked dishes? Try the venison ragout from The Nourished Caveman. Comes with confessions from a conflicted soul, too, which are always nice.
Paleo beet hummus looks fantastic. That color, man.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Feb 10 – Feb 16)

13 Healthy Ways to Begin the Day – Since most of us are subject to the laws of temporal existence, knowing thirteen different healthy ways to start our day should help out.
5 Things People Assume About Me That Are Wrong – I didn’t think I was that much of an enigma, but people are still getting a few things about me really, really wrong.

Comment of the Week

Cook it with a flashlight

- That’s definitely gentle.

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