Mark Sisson's Blog, page 350

Why You Should Wear (or Carry) Your Baby (At Least Some of the Time)

For hundreds of thousands of years, humans have been trying to figure out ways to avoid carrying their infants so that they could drink Frappucinos and update their Facebook status on their phones. Ancestral Inuit mothers had sled dog strollers placed on top of skis. Native Australians kept several varieties of marsupials megafauna as pets and infant caretakers, using their pouches to store up to a half dozen human infants at once. I’m kidding, of course. Just as all members of the family hominidae are and were ardent co-sleepers, apes, humans, and (most likely) all extinct hominids carried or even wore their infants on their bodies as a general rule. And so, for most of human history, our infants have been swaddled, slung, carried, grasped, hugged, and otherwise attached to our bodies for a significant portion of their early development. Like other environmental inputs to which our ancestors were routinely and consistently exposed, there’s plenty of evidence that carrying your baby confers beneficial physiological and psychological effects – to both child and parent.

What are they?

Well, there’s one benefit that’s immediate and obvious to anyone, even those without kids. Parents, ever notice how your babies, who’re liable to erupt into tears when placed in the stroller, in the crib, or in the car seat, clam up when you decide to carry them? Non-parents, ever notice how those screaming hellions who annoy you in public places become pacified mutes once their caregiver picks them up, quiet and sweet enough that you can even imagine having one someday? Exactly. The kid stops crying, or maybe never even starts.

The idea behind babywearing/babyholding/kangaroo care/attachment parenting/whatever you want to call it is that since infants are helpless sacks of fleshy potential, we should provide all the support and reassurance they need to graduate to independent, intelligent, thinking, learning, growing, maturing kids and, eventually, adults. We want them to realize that potential, and it just might be that being what some might characterize as “overly nurturing” is the best way to do it. What does the research say about maintaining close physical contact with your baby?

Breastfeeding.

Easier breastfeeding. Babywearing increases the mother’s ability to breastfeed, just like co-sleeping increases it, simply because of proximity. When you’ve got a hungry little fella within striking distance of the “bottle” at all times, it’s hard not to do it more often. You all know how important breastmilk is to a baby. Babywearing streamlines the logistics of breastfeeding, oftentimes allowing the mother to nurse hands-free.

Promotes exclusive breastfeeding. One randomized controlled trial found that early skin-t0-skin contact “significantly enhanced the success of first breastfeed and continuation of exclusive breastfeeding.”

Not breastfeeding? Having your baby attached to you, rather than laid out on a mat somewhere, allows you to bottle feed and still reap the benefits of being physically close to your child. The composition of the breastmilk is a huge benefit to breastfeeding, but I’d argue that the mutual touch is equally important.

Benefits for baby.

Increased socialization. I told myself I wouldn’t talk about children in terms of dog training, but it just works so well in this case. Children need to be socialized. They’re going to be a part of this world, this society, this community, and wearing or carrying them around as you go about your day, interacting with people, and doing “adult” things as often as you can will introduce them to that world in a safe way. You’re not keeping them cloistered in a pen for years interspersed with brief moments of engagement with the world (playdates, playgrounds, car rides, shopping trips, etc.). You’re letting them see the world through your eyes on a constant, daily basis. Because with all else being equal they’ll have more exposure to communicating adults, carried/worn babies will likely learn speech and facial expressions more quickly (that’s how babies learn language, after all).

Improved development of the vestibular system. No, the vestibular system is not a collection of hospitable planets that the colonial fleet from Battlestar Galactica used to hide from the Cylons. It’s the brain system that detects motion and controls balance, and it’s one of the earliest brain systems to develop (ten-week old fetuses already have working vestibular systems). When a baby is worn or carried on the body, rather than lying in a stroller staring at the sky, the inside of the stroller, or a baby iPhone, the baby is privy to the constant motion of an ambulating adult. The worn baby is moving as you move. To the baby, what you’re doing – walking on two feet without tripping over them or teetering over to either side – is amazing, it’s unheard of. And it will help the baby develop balance, motor skills, and general movement ability.

Benefits for mom and dad.

Improved ergonomics. I cringe every time I see a mom or dad carting around those removable car seats. Imagine lugging around an oversized kettlebell where ever you go and you’ll get the idea. You might get stronger, but the added, unceasing, ever-increasing weight, plus the awkwardness of the size and shape of the seat which forces you to hold it away from your body and thereby increase the lever arm, can put your musculoskeletal system at risk. Factor in the sleep deprivation-induced poor posture (PDF) common in parents of youngsters and you have a potent recipe for body pain.

Less crying. Picking up a crying child doesn’t just halt the crying right there and then. Done habitually, carrying or babywearing can also reduce crying in general. Babies who are held for at least a few hours a day are less likely to cry at night.

Reduces the risk of postpartum anxiety disorder. Physical contact with the infant increases (and decreases, when appropriate) a number of physiological markers, including oxytocin, and reduces the maternal anxiety thought to be a risk factor for postpartum depression.

Benefits for mom/dad and baby.

Improved attachment. It ain’t called “attachment parenting” for nothing. Being physically attached to your kid, through wearing or carrying, increases the bond between parents and child. You really can’t separate the two. Physical attachment breeds psychological attachment. If you maintain physical contact with your baby as much as possible, you’ll have a stronger, more lasting bond with that child, that teen, that adult. Even the first few moments of a child’s life are crucial. Immediate post-birth skin-to-skin contact between mother and naked child had a positive influence on mother-child interactions one year later. The same benefits were not observed when the infants were dressed/swaddled before being handed over to the mom after being born.

Oxytocin release. Oxytocin has been called many things, but it’s most famous as a promoter of bonds between people (and animals). Pleasing, welcome touch – like the caress of a lover or the skin-to-skin contact of a babywearing mother-infant duo – causes oxytocin secretion. This strengthens bonds between parent and child, increases empathy, and solidifies and establishes familial ties. Heck, oxytocin is so subtly powerful that even administering it exogenously to just the parent alone has beneficial effects on their child, improving their “physiological and behavioral readiness for social engagement.” Imagine how important the endogenous steady drip of oxytocin in habitual babywearing is for child-parent relationships.

Benefits for preterm infants.

Babywearing is particularly beneficial for preterm infants. These little guys and gals need close physical contact with their parents more than anyone – remember, they’re still “supposed” be in the womb.

Improved bonding. Remember how skin-to-skin post-birth contact improves mother-child interactions later on down the line? That holds true for preterm infants as well. Mothers allowed to practice skin-to-skin holding of preterm infants in intensive care also reported feelings of increased comfort and “being needed” by their babies – an excellent feeling, as any parent will attest, and a particularly important one for mothers of preterm infants.

Lower stress. Wearing your preterm baby will help lower stress and modulate the infant’s cortisol response, which tends to be exaggerated in that group.

Improved pain tolerance. One study compared kangaroo care (skin-to-skin) to incubator care for modulation of the the pain response in preterm infants; babies who got kangaroo care showed improved behavioral and physiological responses to physical pain.

Improved brain development. Preterm infants are at risk of impaired neuronal development, but one recent study found that kangaroo care effectively normalized premature brains when compared to standard care. The neonates (who were “very pre-term”) given skin-to-skin contact displayed brain motor function comparable to adolescents who were born at term, while the neonates given standard care did not.

Better breastfeeding. It’s crucial for preterm babies to get breastmilk, since, well, it’s the perfect food for them, and early skin-to-skin contact between mom and baby helps the youngest neonates breastfeed.

All that said, the reality is that 24/7 babywearing is tough. These days, most parents work outside of the home. We generally don’t spend our days at home, doing the day-to-day things to survive like cooking, cleaning, foraging, that pre-industrial cultures were able to do while wearing their children. Carrie and I tried out the slings with our kids, but it didn’t really work for us as a constant, regular thing. We carried them as often as we could, usually without the use of a carrier or sling, and were sure to get plenty of skin-to-skin contact, but we didn’t do it all day, every day. And you know what? They turned out to be fantastic, independent kids. Constant baby-wearing isn’t necessary, but some daily contact is probably (definitely) best.

Babies, and humans in general, need to be touched in a loving, reassuring, comforting way. I wrote about this in The Primal Connection, and I’m adamant about it: we’re largely afraid of touch, and that’s a real shame. If you’re not going to hug your friends, at the very least hug (and carry, and hold, and wear) your kids. I realize the lawyer’s not going to wear her newborn into court, nor is the pilot going to wear his baby on the plane. But babies need touch. Full-on attachment is probably ideal, in a perfect world – but don’t beat yourself up if you can’t. It’s not a perfect world.

Lack of meaningful touch, though? There’s no excuse for that one.

When you do carry or wear a child, you should do it safely (for both mom/dad and kid) and effectively. Next week, I’ll discuss how to do it. In the meantime, just go pick up a baby (preferably yours).

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Dear Mark: Adding a Workout to an Active Life and Topical Wound Ointments

We’ve got a nice pair of questions for today’s Dear Mark. In the first, a young woman who’s perhaps the most intuitively active person I’ve ever heard about asks whether or not she should incorporate a dedicated, formal workout to her schedule of skiing, playing with dogs, hiking, manipulating heavy bags of dog food (in a physical sense, not an emotional sense), yoga, and rafting. You guys might be able to guess the gist of my response, but read on to find out what I say. In the second, a guy asks about topical ointments that promote wound healing. As a response, I discuss the standard over the counter ointments (antibiotic ointments, petroleum jelly-based ointments) as well as the more “natural” alternatives like honey, coconut oil, and garlic.

Let’s go.

Hi Mark,

I was wondering if playing replaces workouts. I am lucky to be able to play a lot (well it wasn’t lucky, I planned it this way). Winter and spring I am usually skiing 2-3 times a week. I camp out at the ski area/resort, ski sidecountry and backcountry. So I do a lot of skiing and hiking in my ski boots with a backpack to get to the steep and deep. I hike my dogs anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hrs a few or more days a week and daily in the summer. I manage a pet resort on the weekend. I usually work 3- 12 hour days on my feet playing with dogs, lifting dog food bags (5-60#), shoveling poo (glamourous!), etc.  In summer and fall I replace skiing with just as much backpacking (I will stay out in the mountains all of my days off) and a little rafting. Sometimes if I feel tight, I might do a little 15 minutes of yoga once or twice a week. I mostly take a none-day once a week when I do absolutely nothing except sit at my house and try to veg out. Well sort of a veg out; this is usually my dogs big walk day and I clean my house, stock wood, catch up on some reading, craft some moccasins, and make more adventure plans! I am 32, 5’3″ and a steady 107 lbs. I was a vegetarian for 12 years and thank goodness for all that is playful, started eating meat 2 years ago. I sleep very well, I might need more of it than others (10-12 hrs a night) but I don’t drink coffee (yuk!) to get up in the mornings. I last longer than all of my ski gang, and my hiking partners although I go to bed a lot earlier than them. Sometimes I eat as much as my 220 lb husband. I don’t think I need to add any workouts but, sometimes feel a bit lazy for not. And, I am afraid I might lose weight if I do. I feel no desire to be ‘ripped’, I just want to have the stamina and strength to ski forever! So, would playing replace work outs? Would it be beneficial to add a workout?

Cheers!

Krystal

Let me get this straight:

You ski 2-3 days a week for half the year. This involves carrying your skis by foot as you trudge up hills and through powder to reach the best spots.

For the other half the year, you backpack in the mountains and go river rafting.

Once or twice a week, you do yoga.

You go on hikes upwards of 2 hours long 2-3 times a week in spring, winter, and fall, and you hike every day in the summer.

Weekends, you work long hours playing with an entire resort full of the close descendants of quadrupedal carnivores. One popular game in dog society is tug-of-war, a full body ordeal. You also perform power cleans with sixty pound bags of kibble and do weighted shovel exercises.

On your rest days, you do chores, carry wood, and go on dog hikes.

You sleep 10-12 hours a night and occasionally eat more than your 220 pound husband without gaining weight.

Your fitness and strength levels appear to be superior to those of your peers.

And you think you might need to add a dedicated workout to maintain your current level of fitness? I’d say you’re doing better than most. I’d say you absolutely don’t need to include a formal workout. In fact, I’d say you shouldn’t include one, because it might actually be detrimental to your goals. Less is more, especially when you’re already so active.

You’re staying in shape the way humans have been built to stay in shape: by maintaining a steady flow of low-level activity punctuated with acute bouts of high intensity. Most importantly, you’re doing the most sustainable workout imaginable – one that you truly love doing. I wish I could maintain a schedule like that. Keep it up!

Hi Mark,

I was curious about your thoughts on first aid for minor cuts. If you are out running barefoot, or climbing trees, you’re bound to have some scratches! Would you recommend products like antibiotic ointments that you would rub into a cut to make it heal faster? Or do you know of something possibly more natural?

Thanks for all that you do!!

Rob

Antibiotic ointments like Neosporin are certainly good at preventing infection, they can certainly make cuts heal faster by preventing or stopping bacterial infection, and plenty of people will absolutely vouch for their efficacy, but they don’t always perform very well in clinical trials. In one recent study of different ointments’ influence on wound healing time, Aquaphor Healing Ointment, whose active ingredient is simple petroleum jelly, beat both Neosporin and Polypsorin (an antibiotic ointment containing fewer antibiotics than Neosporin). Other studies have had similar results, concluding that petroleum jelly was just as effective than the more expensive antibiotic ointments. Antibiotic ointments also bring the potential for skin irritation or allergic reactions, a problem more inert ointments generally do not have; another study found that Aquaphor Healing Ointment also caused less irritation than antibiotic ointments.

As to the gushing reports of Neosporin’s powers, I suspect a lot of it stems from lack of a proper control group. If all you ever put on your wounds is Neosporin and every wound has healed, you’ll assume that it “works,” even if it isn’t actually doing much. There’s also the chance that “dirty” wounds, like you might get out in the real world, are at a greater risk of infection and may benefit from topical antibiotics, whereas the controlled environments of clinical trials remove the risk of bacteria. There’s also evidence that antibiotic ointments are increasing the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bugs, including MRSA. That said, I find it likely that Neosporin works better than nothing at all, particularly if the wound is infected or at risk for infection (which you won’t know unless you test the wound).

Honey works well on wounds, acting as a broad-spectrum antibacterial agent and as a promoter of tissue healing. Thanks to many factors, including the antioxidant compounds, acidity, natural hydrogen peroxide content, osmotic effect, and as-yet unidentified compounds, it appears to stimulate tissue growth, reduce scar tissue formation, and increase epithelialization. The honey doesn’t even need to be raw as long as it’s actual, real honey (although unfiltered, raw honeys may have more bioactive compounds, also known as “impurities”). The only side effect of topical honey is, to my knowledge, incitement of pooh bears. If you ever cut yourself walking through the woods of Sussex, England, skip the honey – particularly if you see any bipedal piglets wearing pink horizontal striped singlets. Though normally plush and giggly, the pooh bear is a fearsome predator when in the throes of honey lust. Don’t let the baby T fool you.

Coconut oil is a potent antibacterial agent, mainly because of its medium chain triglyceride content (PDF). Since it’s MCTs we’re after, it shouldn’t matter much if you use refined or virgin coconut oil. That said, virgin coconut oil may have some extra bioactive compounds that affect the healing effect; sure enough, one study found that virgin coconut oil improves wound healing time partially due to “the cumulative effect of various biologically active minor components present in it” in addition to the MCTs.

Allantoin, a compound found in comfrey root, seems to speed up the healing process. This comfrey ointment gets very good reviews.

Garlic is another one, especially aged garlic extract (extract from garlic aged at least 20 months, giving it a higher phenolic content).

There’s also the timeless classic that spans species: wound licking. Most saliva has healing properties, whether canine, murine, or hominin. A dog’s saliva is antibacterial (against e. coli and s. canis), certain types of rat saliva promotes wound healing, human saliva contains healing-promoting histatin, and nerve growth factor, which stimulates wound healing, is produced in the saliva of most mammals. There are lots of other possible explanations for the beneficial effect of licking – the physical removal of dirt and debris from the wound, for one – but it’s pretty clear that we’re drawn to lick our wounds because it helps in some fashion.

I won’t go into an exhaustive list of all possible natural alternatives, because there are way too many. Some are bunk, some are legit. I’d even wager that most plant-based compounds have potential to help, even if an effect has yet to be shown in a clinical trial, simply because plants tend to contain bioactive compounds, oftentimes antimicrobial (to, you know, protect the plants from microbes). Antibiotic ointments and the aforementioned petroleum jelly ointments won’t win you any friends at the food co-op, but they also appear to be better than nothing.

Cleaning the wound with soap and water (or even just water), keeping it moist, and keeping it covered are probably more important to the healing process than what ointment you use.

Hope my answers helped! Thanks for reading and be sure to leave a comment with your own Dear Mark questions.

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Weekend Link Love

Research of the Week

New genetic research shows that the ability to digest starch helped mark, in part, the passage from wolves to dogs. This implies nothing about thriving, however, as anyone who’s put their pooch on a grain-free, animal-based diet can attest.

Marion Nestle discusses the study that recently revealed ties between Big Food and Registered Dietitians. I’m disappointed, but certainly not surprised.

Interesting Blog Posts

How the guy from the Art of Manliness doubled his testosterone levels naturally (and you can too).

Paul Jaminet explores why he thinks chicken is the most mediocre of meats.

Media, Schmedia

Female readers: interested in giving birth to a Neandertal (or Neanderthal; it’ll be your kid so you can choose the spelling)? A Harvard researcher might be able to make it happen.

World War II era lard recently washed up on a beach in northeast Scotland, still “good enough to have a fry up with.” Talk about a stable fat.

Everything Else

Here are two chances to win a copy of The Primal Connection: One over at PaleoNonPaleo where Alison has also reviewed my new book, and another at Balanced Bites where you can listen to a podcast interview with yours truly.

With the Superbowl coming up, lots of Primal eaters are wondering about game-day recipes that fit the lifestyle. Look no further than Marla Sarris’ Pigskin Paleo, a great new paleo cookbook designed entirely around recipes you’ll want to eat and serve on the day of the big game (or any day of the week, really). To get an idea of what to expect, check out her recipe blog.

An easy, low-tech way to vacuum seal food.

Vice Magazine recently met a guy who’s been injecting himself with snake venom for over 20 years. Here’s the video they made of the Venom Superman (warning: not quite safe for work).

We made Greatist’s Top 60 Health and Fitness Blogs to read in 2013.

Recipe Corner

Virtually nothing beats oxtail. Make it a ragout and it becomes invulnerable to criticism.
Got a crockpot? Try making traditional Burmese pork curry.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Jan 27 – Feb 2)

Why You Should Eat Leafy Greens – Real men (and women) eat leafy greens.
What to Eat On an Upset Stomach – Just cause you’re Primal doesn’t make you invulnerable. You’re gonna get a little queasy from time to time, and here’s what to eat when you do.

Comment of the Week

The next post on co-sleeping should be about cats and dogs. I find it incredibly comforting to sleep with our cat right up to when he is co-sleeping on my head while chewing on my hair or licking my eye.

- Maybe, Juli. I’ll look into it. I certainly do love the feel of a sandpaper cat tongue against my cornea.

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Roasted Salmon and Vegetables with Coconut Aminos

Roasted salmon and vegetables gently seasoned with coconut aminos, garlic and green onion is a delicious, nutritious meal that’s on the table in thirty minutes flat. The salmon will be moist and tender, the beans and bell peppers crisp and fresh and the mushrooms soaked with the sweet-salty umami flavor of coconut aminos.

What makes this meal so quick and easy is that everything’s seasoned the same, goes in the oven at the same time and comes out of the oven at the same time, too.

Buying individual salmon fillets of the same weight and thickness makes it easy to gauge when the salmon is perfectly cooked. For a 1 to 1 1/2 inch thick fillet, this means 10 to 12 minutes. That’s just enough time to set the table. It’s also just enough time to cook crisp-tender veggies that haven’t lost their fresh flavor or vibrant color.

Make this meal again and again, using a new combination of vegetables each time. Bok choy, thinly sliced cabbage, carrots and zucchini are all delicious options.

Serves: 4

Time in the Kitchen: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1/4 cup coconut aminos https://www.marksdailyapple.com/is-it... or tamari (60 ml)
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil (15 ml)
1 tablespoon olive oil or coconut oil (15 ml)
3 green onions, roughly chopped
2 to 4 cloves garlic
4 (6-ounce) center-cut salmon fillets (170 g each)
3/4 pound green beans (340 g)
1 pound mushrooms (try a blend of cremini and oyster), roughly chopped (450 g)
3 red bell peppers, thinly sliced (seeds removed)
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 450 ºF (232 ºC).

Place three rimmed baking pans in the oven to heat up. One needs to be just large enough to hold the salmon, the other two will be for the vegetables. The more spread out the veggies are, the faster they will cook.

In a blender, combine the coconut aminos (or tamari) and the oils, green onions and garlic for about 25 seconds, until the green onions and garlic are very finely chopped.

Pour 1 tablespoon (15 ml) of the sauce into a small bowl and then brush it onto the salmon pieces.

Combine the green beans, bell peppers and mushrooms in a large bowl. Pour the remaining sauce on top and use your hands to toss the veggies until well coated.

Take the hot pans out of the oven. Set the salmon pieces in one of the hot pans. Spread the veggies out in the other two pans. Place all the pans in the oven.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until salmon reaches desired doneness.

Sprinkle sea salt and black pepper over the salmon and veggies to taste. Serve with additional coconut aminos or tamari on the side for additional flavor if needed.

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No Grains Equals No Migraines

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!

The first time it happened I panicked. My vision was slowly filling up with shiny blobs of light. Instinctively I went to a dark room and, 15 minutes in, I couldn’t see. Eventually it ramped down just like it ramped up. And as soon as it cleared, the pain started. I was never one for much pain medication, so I just put a cold rag on my forehead and bore it. Then the nausea kicked in. The pain subsided after a few hours. But it happened again the next week. And the next.

The third time, I hyperventilated from the pain and my boyfriend drove me to the hospital at 2 a.m. A scan cleared me of any brain tumors and I was diagnosed with ocular migraines. The doctor gave me a prescription for a drug used to help cancer patients deal with nausea and told me to get a bottle of Excedrin.

People who have had ocular migraines know what I’m talking about. It fills your world with panic. What will trigger it next? Bright white snow? Car headlights? My mother tells me my aunt gets shots to stop them, so I figure it must run in the family. I became attached to my sunglasses. I’d wear them even at night sometimes to block building or street lights. I had to pull over in my car once because I couldn’t see through the “shinys,” as I called them. It’s not a good way to live. As a college sophomore, I was kept out of class and work with pain. I eventually learned to stop the pain by taking the Excedrin as soon as I saw the flashy lights. But that much medicine would leave me in a haze for the rest of the day.

Here’s what gets me. As a sophomore, I had put on the freshman 15 and wanted to start the year eating healthy. I cut out all white grain products and switched to whole-grain bread and pasta. I ate healthy lean meats but would binge on sugar on the weekends. Years passed and I accepted migraines as a part of my life. I carried a big bottle of meds everywhere. Here’s a look at my old diet:

I graduated college and married the boyfriend who drove me to the hospital. He was always overweight and I, being a journalist/graphic artist, was constantly bombarded with health information and the newest studies. So we tried a few of these popular trends to help him get his weight down (6-foot, 245). I wasn’t as worried about mine at the time (5′ 7″, 145), but I figured I could stand to lose a few. We did P90X, the Abs Diet, lots of whole grains and really boring food. I still had migraines. I still had IBS, acne – oh and regular headaches, too!

Here’s us:

In late 2011 my husband found your website on some message boards. He started Primal and two weeks later, he says he feels like Superman! Able to leap tall buildings! Inspired to run around and lift things! The weight came off fast with his fasting schedule. I looked at the catalog of research online and it just seemed right. I couldn’t be left out, and he needed my support like he always helped me through my migraines. I got the book and started in January 2012 with a meal plan that looked like this:

And yes, I dropped down to 125 pounds (high school weight) and my husband lost 70. Yes, my IBS symptoms are gone. My skin is glowing and there are no more sugar crashes. But what makes me tear up in gratitude is that I haven’t had a single migraine since.

Looking back, I have to pinpoint those grains/gluten as the migraine trigger. I’ve had sugar since (I still love ice cream). I’ve had legumes a few times, but I’ve been gluten free. And I won’t go back. In July I stopped carrying around the industrial-sized bottle of pills. If Primal just cured the migraines alone, I’d still do it. It’d be worth it. The fear is finally gone.

Katie

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Weight Loss: The Emotional Element

In a recent survey, psychologists named emotions as their clients’ “top obstacle” to weight loss. The 1300+ licensed psychologists, to fill in the picture, also cited emotional eating as well as food selection and exercise commitment among the common challenges their clients faced. Sure, it’s maybe little surprise that psychologists would emphasize the role emotional issues play in weight loss. It’s their profession after all, and their clients comprise a self-selected group of people who are interested in delving into the emotional dimensions of their weight management struggles. That said, I know plenty of trainers (myself included), doctors, and dietitians (Primally focused or otherwise) who would suggest psychology has figured prominently into many of their clients’ situations as well.

From my own perspective, I’ve worked with many people who honestly felt they didn’t deserve to be healthy, to be beautiful, to be happy. Every effort they’d made in the past to lose weight and improve their wellbeing had been sabotaged by psychological ghosts. Negative self-talk got the better of them even after they’d experienced substantial success in losing weight and/or achieving other health and fitness goals. When a number of these folks combined emotional work with their lifestyle changes, it was like the air cleared. Not overnight, but over time.

As much as I believe giving people accurate information (about diet, fitness, and other key lifestyle areas) can empower them to live healthier lives, there’s that more complex dimension. The body, after all, is pretty simple. Our metabolic functioning, for example, is fairly straightforward once you understand the basics of hormonal responses.

For many people, however, the physical side isn’t the issue. They get it – and they do it. It’s the psychological baggage that acts as the obstacle at some point (or points) along the way toward a healthier life. Maybe it’s a background of abuse, neglect, bullying, or depression. For some, food dulled some pretty harsh emotions in their histories, and the associations are hard to break. For others, there was something to the image of themselves itself that was protective: being overweight or sick was part of how they had defined their lives. For many, it could even be negative self-talk related to current stresses and circumstances.

By all means, if you feel emotional issues significantly affect your daily functioning or progress toward reasonable health goals, the expertise of a professional counselor is advisable. For anyone who’s interested in fostering the emotional side of their health journey or break past what might be a mental as opposed to a physical block, let me throw out a few suggestions. I hope you’ll add yours as well.

Cultivate Self-Awareness

The journey toward better health – under any circumstances – offers plenty of fodder for great journaling. Use a journal or other tool to explore or record realizations, stumbling blocks, self-doubt, accomplishments, and motivational ideas. Reflect on the history you bring to your current health endeavor (previous weight loss attempts, disordered eating, etc.) as well as your day-to-day journey in the here and now.

Try to identify the roots of emotional issues at play and the current triggers that send you down the road of negative self-talk. Use your developing awareness to continually “catch” yourself earlier in the self-talk cycle and redirect your thoughts and activities before it even starts. Record what works in that redirecting.

Seek Support

Use whatever works for you: inspirational books, affirmations, close and supportive relationships, online forums, formal support groups, life coaching, and/or personal counseling. Social support is key to any life change, and it can be incredibly motivating whether or not you feel emotional issues figure into your health journey.

Differentiate Between Self-Soothing and Self-Care

Even if you indulged in your share of self-soothing at the refrigerator, you may have denied yourself any meaningful self-care. Commit to self-care and consider what activities and choices have the power to really nourish your physical and mental health. Make a list of healthy indulgences that can take the place overeating or other unhealthy habits once held in your life. What other practices or activities can offer comfort? Research, for example, suggests relaxation training helps people avoid emotional eating and reduces feelings of depression and anxiety.

Revise Your Life Script

After a major weight loss or health change, some people continue to live with a distorted view of themselves. Even if you’re loving the transformation, it can be worth the effort to envision the future. Certain routines or even social connections might not play as big a part as they once did. Certain opportunities you never considered might seem worth pursuing.

The road to health and weight loss obliges a degree of striving. (Although a Primal life of bacon and leisurely bike rides isn’t such a hard existence really…) However, the process sometimes calls us to shed other things along the way – the self-talk as well as habits, the self-image as well as diet that just don’t work for us anymore (and in truth never did). In this sense, it’s about surrender as well as striving. We strive for a better, healthier life, but it’s important to ask ourselves what we need to let go of in the journey.

Thanks for reading today, everyone. I hope you’ll share your thoughts, perspectives, and experiences related to weight loss and health changes. Have a great weekend, everyone!

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Co-Sleeping: How to Do It Safely

Last week, I broached the topic of co-sleeping. The reception was almost unanimously positive, with plenty of you chiming in with your own c0-sleeping success stories. Before you toss the crib, however, realize that co-sleeping isn’t as simple as flopping down in bed with your baby and drifting off to sleep. Co-sleeping is a healthy, effective, and arguably “natural” way to raise independent children, but it must be done safely. Remember those studies I cited last week where co-sleeping was associated with infant deaths? Yeah, when co-sleeping is done poorly or incorrectly or unsafely, it becomes an effective way to harm children. Sadly, most parents no longer have access to the “village,” that treasure trove of knowledge full of parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and infinite cousins with parenting advice for days, so we read books, and articles, and magazines, and blogs for tips and knowledge. These aren’t the same, sure, but they are helpful in their own way. Certainly better than left to fend for ourselves.

So, how does one co-sleep safely?

First off, let’s go over what not to do. Let’s identify unsafe co-sleeping. It may sound like a lot of don’ts, but c’mon – these are our kids!

Co-Sleeping DON’Ts

Do not smoke, drink, or use drugs that affect judgment and awareness (prescription, illegal, or over the counter – think Tylenol PM), especially before bed.

Overlaying (where a sleeping parent absentmindedly rolls over onto the child) is a rare occurrence that pretty much only happens when the parent is too messed up to wake up and realize they’ve just rolled over onto a small human. A sober, alert parent will wake up if it ever happens. Heck, I sometimes have to hide the ball from Buddha (my lab) in bed at night to keep him from pestering me to toss it, and if I roll over onto it, I wake up in a flash. A huge part of the benefit of co-sleeping is the increased awareness of the baby’s position and status, but being inebriated removes that entirely.

Avoid tobacco altogether. 

You know how when a smoker comes into the room, you know it just from sniffing? That smell only lingers because the smoke itself – with all the tars and toxins – lingers on the clothes, in the hair, and on the skin of the person who smokes. Now imagine how much of that smoke the baby will be ingesting, and just how little smoke is needed to hurt the little thing. This goes for mom, dad, and, you know what? Just make the entire house smoke-free and don’t let people smoke around the baby. They’re a lot more sensitive to the stuff than we are.

Don’t let babies sleep next to other children or pets.

As sensitive as your dog is, there’s a good chance he’ll think nothing of walking all over this strange new creature in the night, scratching its tender feet, or laying a fluffy tail across its nasal passageway. Toddlers, who are even less thoughtful than dogs and have opposable thumbs, are probably even worse.

Do not co-sleep on the couch, sofa, loveseat, or recliner.

Couches are plush and cushy, and they have cushions that infant heads slip between all too easily. They’re elevated off the ground and relatively narrow, meaning the baby can easily fall off and crack something. I’ll make an allowance for rickety wooden rocking chairs, but avoid doing so in a room full of cats.

Be careful with very small, very young infants.

By virtue of their diminutive size, very small infants are more susceptible to being smothered, crushed, or otherwise roughly manhandled. Plus, if this is your first kid, or your first attempt at co-sleeping, you’re already going to be nervous about what to do and how to do it and likely sleep-deprived. Consider room-sharing for the first few weeks to months, where the baby sleeps in an adjoining cot or mattress. You can still reach out and touch those cute puffy cheeks, but you won’t worry about making any catastrophic mistakes.

Don’t co-sleep if you’re a heavy sleeper, are excessively sleep deprived, are obese (disregard if you’re a bodybuilder with obese BMI; just cool it on the pec popping) and/or have sleep apnea.

These conditions will all reduce one’s ability to stay apprised of what’s going on in the bed. You need to be sensitive to your child if you’re going to share the bed safely. They may also make any mistakes made all the more damaging. If you’re severely sleep deprived – which will happen fairly often – consider keeping an adjoining cot/bed/crib in the room next to your bed so that you can still room share when necessary.

Don’t use thick bedding.

Huge frothy comforters full of imitation goose down are unnecessary for most people and downright dangerous (suffocation, smothering, overheating risk) for young babies. Even normal pillows and blankets can be excessive for infants; consider that most crib babies are bedded down with minimal bedding, a sheet or light blanket at most. That’s kinda what the adult co-sleeping bed should look like, too.

Don’t use overly soft mattresses.

Don’t use anything that you or the baby can “sink” into, like beanbag mattresses or those really soft beds that some people seem to like. Water beds are out, obviously, and not just because it’s no longer the 1980s.

Don’t co-sleep if not everyone is onboard. 

Co-sleeping is a family event. Both mom and dad need to be up for it for it to work. If there’s major anxiety about the method, I have to think it’s going to manifest as poor sleep (or worse).

Co-Sleeping DOs

Keep the bed low, preferably on the floor.

Make sure the bed is as low as you can manage it. This will make any falls less catastrophic, and as a bonus, it will force you to do more “floor living.” Those with carpeting can get away with higher beds, while those with hardwood flooring are advised to go a bit lower.

Use a firm mattress.

There should be minimal “give” to the sleeping surface. This will reduce the chance of suffocation.

Use a tight-fitting sheet.

Make sure the sheet fits well, without bunching up. Bunched up sheets can be a choking or suffocation hazard.

Breast feed.

Studies show that breast feeding makes for safe co-sleeping, while bottle feeding is associated with SIDS. According to James McKenna, the “breast feeding-bedsharing landscape is highly differentiated from the bottle feeding-bedsharing landscape.” (PDF) In his clinical experience, “breast feeding mothers typically keep their babies away from pillows, position their infants on their backs, placing them below their shoulders, while raising their arms above them,” and they “lay on their sides… in ways that can prevent accidental overlays.”

Put the kid next to mom, not wedged in between mom and dad.

By virtue of not having given birth, the dad is going to be less “connected” to the baby and possibly less aware during the night. Plus, a big advantage of co-sleeping is the ease of breast feeding, and you don’t want your baby getting confused in the middle of the night, reaching for the wrong breast, and ending up with a mouthful of hairy man nipple (although that would definitely establish a connection between father and child).

Place your baby on its back to sleep.

Sleeping in the supine position (on its back) is the safest way for a baby to sleep and reduces the risk of SIDS.

Eliminate any crevasses that the baby could fall into.

If the bed is up against a wall or headboard, make sure it is flush against the surface – no cracks or openings. Some people even pull their bed away from the wall to eliminate the possibility of getting stuck between the bed and the wall. If you can’t eliminate the crevasses, consider pulling the bed away from the wall. Products like these are also helpful for preventing falls or crevasse wedging.

Get a bigger bed.

When it comes to co-sleeping, bigger is usually better, particularly when you start introducing multiple co-sleepers.

Pay close attention to the list of don’ts up above.

Don’t do the don’ts.

I’d highly recommend picking up a copy of James McKenna’s book on the subject, Sleeping With Your Baby: A Parent’s Guide to Cosleeping. It’s under $10, it’s a quick read, and it’s written by the premier expert.

And whatever happens, don’t feel like you have to co-sleep. Try room sharing, perhaps, which offers most of the same benefits as bed sharing. Convert cribs into side-cars that sit alongside the adult bed, thereby making it bigger. Just do what works for you and your family.

Now let’s hear from you guys. Co-sleepers: how did you do it? What did you learn? What didn’t you do? How did you determine co-sleeping was right for you? Everyone else: what made you choose the methods you chose? Let’s get a good discussion going. Let’s get our own village established.

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Is It Primal? – Smoked Salmon, Nutritional Yeast, 5-Hour Energy Drinks, and Other Foods Scrutinized

It’s about that time for another round of “Is It Primal?” Today we’re covering smoked salmon, a surprisingly stable source of omega-3s. After that, I finally get to nutritional yeast, a food that many of you have been asking about for many moons. I hope you’re happy with the answer. Next up are 5-Hour Energy Drinks, which aren’t quite as bad as you might think. After that, I cover the edibility of brines – olive, pickle, sauerkraut, cocktail onion, and so on. The final object of scrutiny is Kremelta, a kind of coconut oil shortening.

Let’s take a look:

Smoked Salmon

Smoking is one of the world’s oldest food preservation techniques, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: subjecting strips, cuts, and pieces of animal to smoke from wood fires until they are “cooked.” Today, we can preserve our foods by refrigerating, freezing, or applying industrial-scale methods using mass-produced antioxidant compounds, so we tend to eat far fewer smoked meats. Most would agree that this is a good move, as fresh meat tends to be, well, fresher and therefore better for us.

But what about smoked salmon? People love the stuff – I know I do – and it retains an elevated status in modern food culture. It’s become a luxury, a treat, rather than a staple food that we have to eat because it’s all we’ve got and we have no refrigerators. Does smoked salmon hold up to scrutiny? I mean, all that smoke and heat can’t be good for the fragile omega-3s, right?

Actually, salmon does appear to hold up to smoking. Better yet, it gets even more stable. A 2009 study found that smoking salmon at 95 degrees Celsius made the “fragile” fish fats even more oxidatively stable, with a lower peroxide value, fewer TBARS, and fewer free fatty acids, than fresh salmon. That’s right: smoking salmon at a high heat protected the omega-3s from oxidizing to a greater extent than leaving it alone, even if antioxidants were added to the fresh salmon oils. That said, when heating the smoked salmon fat past 75 degrees C, peroxides formed at a faster rate than in the fresh salmon fat.

Oddly enough, cold-smoked salmon (where the fish is smoked without added heat) appears to be more susceptible to oxidation. You’d think the hot-smoking would be more damaging, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

For the double-whammy of salmon preservation techniques, you might want to try fermenting your smoked salmon, as smoked salmon grows even more stable upon fermentation.

Not all smoking is the same. The cheaper outfits use sawdust as the smoking medium – yes, sawdust – while more traditional salmon smokers use actual wood, like hickory, oak, or alderwood. Some Scottish producers even use old Scotch barrels. Since wood (like all plant materials) has bioactive components which manifest in the smoke (smoking, after all, is a traditional method of plant ingestion), the type of wood used probably matters as much as anything.

Verdict: Primal.

Nutritional Yeast

Nutritional yeast is a darling in the vegan set. They’ll sometimes proclaim that since nutritional yeast is a fungus, not an animal, and it contains B12, an animal-free source of vitamin B12 exists. Except it’s not true. Nutritional yeast, an inactive (dead) form of the same yeast that bakers and brewers use, only contains vitamin B12 if its producers decide to add it. So yes, while dotting your bowl of popcorn with the carcasses of a million fallen yeasts is arguably more nutritious than not, it’s not an endogenously-formed, “natural,” cruelty-free source of B12. There remains no naturally-occurring source of B12 that doesn’t involve sweet, sweet animal flesh.

That said, nutritional yeast is certainly interesting. I’ve had it a few times on store-bought kale chips as a sort of cheese replacement. It was tasty. It is a good source of (fortified) vitamins, the utility of which I question beyond the correction of blatant deficiencies.

Nutritional yeast is also a strong source of RNA, specifically the nucleotide uridine. You may not usually consider the ingestion of dietary genetic material, but dietary RNA from yeast can increase uric acid levels in humans. Hyperuricemia, as you probably know, is a strong cause of gout. Of course, that study gave 8 grams of brewer’s yeast nucleotides to the men, a huge amount; most sources suggest that brewer’s yeast (and therefore nutritional yeast, which is the same species) is 3% nucleotides. To get 8 grams of nucleotides, you’d need to eat around 266 grams of nutritional yeast. That’s roughly 33 tablespoons. Good luck with that. Besides, Primal darlings, sardines and organ meats are also high in RNA, so I don’t think we can condemn nutritional yeast on the basis of RNA.

In the amounts the average Primal person who just enjoys the flavor is likely to consume, I don’t think nutritional yeast is a problem.

Verdict: Primal. Just don’t rely on it as a source of vitamins.

5-Hour Energy Drinks

I’d never really looked into 5-Hour Energy Drinks before writing this post, and until now, I’ve always sort of assumed they were sugar-laden caffeinated liquid beasts that truckers and club kids resorted to when they ran out of meth. I was wrong. 5-Hour Energy Drinks are caffeinated, but they only have a hair over 200 mg of caffeine, which is a bit more than a cup of coffee (but who drinks just one “cup of coffee”?). They are sugar-free, but contain sucralose, also known as Splenda. I’m not a sucralose fan, seeing as how it may reduce beneficial gut flora.

Most of the effects of the energy drinks are attributed to the bevy of nutrients they dose the thing with – vitamin B6, niacin, vitamin B12, folic acid, taurine, citicoline, tyrosine, phenylalanine, malic acid, caffeine, and glucuronolactone. Their “energy” blend totals 1870 mg and is proprietary, so beyond the first four vitamin ingredients, we don’t know how much of each nutrient is contained in the drink. We can look at the efficacy of each ingredient, though.

Those vitamins are all important for health and a Primal eating plan of meat, greens, fruits, offal, and other whole foods will be replete in them. Caffeine’s effects are known (and loved). What about the others? Are they safe and/or effective?

Taurine – Paired with caffeine and glucuronolactone in a 5-Hour Energy Drink-esque drink, taurine appears to be “stimulate cognitive performance and well-being.” Another study, which controlled for caffeine withdrawal, also found a beneficial effect. Large doses of taurine are safe.

Citicoline – A recent review found that citicoline can improve cognitive function, particularly in stroke patients. Citicoline is safe.

Tyrosine – Tyrosine is a naturally occurring amino acid, so if you eat animals, you’re eating tyrosine. In supplemental form, tyrosine is somewhat effective when a person is stressed or under duress (like fatigue). In healthy, alert, otherwise chipper individuals, tyrosine doesn’t seem to do much. It’s safe, though.

Phenylalanine – Phenylalanine is the precursor to tyrosine, so this should just become tyrosine in the body.

Malic acid – Malic acid provides the sour flavor of tart apples, like Granny Smiths. It’s a byproduct of human metabolism, but it doesn’t seem to do much as a supplement (unless you’re a dairy cow, in which case it can help you make more milk – PDF).

Glucuronolactone – This is also safe in the context of an energy drink, and, in the first taurine study cited above, it may even work synergistically with caffeine and taurine to improve mental performance.

Verdict: Not exactly Primal, but neither is falling asleep at the wheel. And the nutrients within are pretty solid.

Brine

A reader asked about drinking brine. As in, the liquid that olives, cocktail onions, pickles, pickled peppers, and sauerkraut comes swimming in. Is it safe? Is it nutritious?

It depends on the brine. Pickle juice and sauerkraut brine are world-renowned hangover cures, probably because of the electrolyte replenishing action of the incredible salt content. Football teams are even using pickle juice to defeat cramps, and they have a double-blind study out of BYU to prove it. Real pickle and sauerkraut brine – the fermented kind – will also offer probiotics. I’ve seen stands at farmers markets selling (and selling out) sauerkraut juice for more than the kraut itself.

Most brines are just water, spices, and salt. Olive brines will often have a few slugs of olive oil added. The point is – they’re edible and relatively safe. I don’t know if they’re exactly nutritious in the absence of sodium deficiency, dehydration, hangover, or exercise-induced cramping, but there’s nothing wrong with them.

Replacing all your normal fluid intake with brine will likely throw your potassium-sodium balance way off, so I wouldn’t recommend that. Instead, sip a bit when you’re parched, add some to salad dressings for flavoring, and keep a small bottle for grueling athletic endeavors. I would avoid drinking the Thanksgiving turkey brine, but that’s probably just me being picky.

Verdict: Primal.

Kremelta (Coconut Oil Shortening)

Kremelta is hydrogenated coconut oil, albeit hydrogenated coconut oil with 2% soy lecithin (a nice source of choline, which keeps our brains and livers running smoothly). But it’s hydrogenated coconut oil, which has that bad word (“hydrogenated”) in it.

The thing is, Kremelta is fully-hydrogenated, rather than partially-hydrogenated. This means the coconut oil, already a highly-saturated fat, is completely saturated. The few percentage points of PUFA and MUFA become SFA, with a little lecithin tossed in for emulsion. As I’ve written previously, fully hydrogenated fats do not contain trans-fats, so they are going to be better than partially-hydrogenated fats.

I’ll admit I’m a little suspicious of full hydrogenation. Since Kremelta is used in a lot of candies and other processed foods and it has to be as shelf-stable as possible, the total and utter hydrogenation makes sense. You wouldn’t want those few grams of linoleic acid to go bad. Still, though – I’d opt for real butter (probably grass-fed, since Kremelta is big in New Zealand) or mail-ordered coconut oil. And you can always get your choline from egg yolks.

Verdict: I’m on the fence, but leaning not Primal.

That’s it for today, guys. Thanks for reading, and be sure to leave a comment.

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Dear Mark: Acrylamide, Sprint Alternatives, Gynoid Fat, and Adult Bed Sharing

In this week’s edition of Dear Mark, I’ll be covering three wide-ranging topics. First is acrylamide, the french fry toxin, the coffee carcinogen, the rat destroyer. It appears in almost every starchy item cooked or roasted at high heat, and it’s classified as a carcinogen. What do we do about it? Do we even have to worry about it? Next up are sprint alternatives for the person who loves to runny really fast every once in awhile but has a herniated disk that becomes aggravated shortly after said sprint. Sprinting is an important, beneficial activity, so long as you can do it pain and injury free, so I try to come up with a few worthy options. Then, I offer some advice to a man with gynoid – or lower body/hip/thigh – fat, most of which hinge on my suspicion that he’s low in free testosterone. Finally, I discuss the benefits – and drawbacks – of co-sleeping with your adult partner.

Let’s go:

So recently I was in Starbucks and it seems a law has been passed in San Diego where mandatory posted warnings against the detriments of Acrylamide, a chemical that is created when a food is baked or roasted that is highly toxic and carcinogenic, must be presented. Are you familiar with Acrylamide and how would you suggest we go about avoiding it?

Dakota

Acrylamide is a carcinogen that forms when starches are heated above 250 ºF, particularly when “browning” occurs. Boiling and steaming do not reach 250 degrees and thus do not form acrylamide. The easiest way to avoid acrylamide is to avoid the foods highest in it.

As you saw in the link, restaurant and store-bought french fries, chips, crackers, baked goods, and other high-heat starchy fare are uniformly high in acrylamide, while meats and most vegetables are extremely low. Bread, particularly crusty, well-toasted bread, is a big offender as well. Coffee’s another one (hence the message in Starbucks). Homemade foods can also be high in acrylamide, but they don’t have to be. Provided you take certain precautionary steps, you can enjoy your sweet potatoes without worry.

Steaming or boiling are good options. Braising should be better than baking, roasting, or frying, but there’s still the chance for some acrylamide formation.

Certain “dietary plant materials,” like clove extract and grape polyphenols, are actually able to inhibit acrylamide formation during the cooking of starches. Rosemary, too, can reduce it. I’d imagine other antioxidant-rich plants, herbs, and extracts would have similarly inhibitory effects. Next time you make sweet potato chips in the oven, consider including some herbs and spices in the mix.

Fermentation reduces acrylamide fermentation. This may not matter much to you (who ferments french fries, and how do you even do that?), but if you have any bread eating friends or family, try convincing them to make the move to real sourdough (or away from grains altogether).

It’s also worth noting that man is the cooking animal. We’ve been subjecting our food to fire for hundreds of thousands of years (at least), and it’s likely we’ve developed some endogenous acrylamide detoxification pathways along the way. Most human studies have failed to find a connection between dietary acrylamide and rates of cancer (except for kidney cancer and multiple myeloma). That’s not to suggest it’s harmless. It’s that every (cooked food) diet is going to include some acrylamide. It’s unavoidable. The key, I think, is to avoid or minimize eating the most egregious sources. Don’t eat fries every day, for example – even if they’re cooked in pastured duck fat.

Mark,

I’ve, in the last few weeks, gone totally paleo. I feel better, look better, and my back hurts a little less than it did. However, I do have a herniated disk in my back and as much as I’d love to sprint ( I actually love running and go to the gym daily), it makes my back pain way worse afterward. Any suggestions on cardio that will be similar to sprinting or a way I can run with my bad back?

Victoria

If I had to guess, the reason why sprinting aggravates your back is the impact of landing. When you sprint, you’re hitting the ground pretty dang hard, and the shock can reverberate throughout your body. Any weak link – like a herniated disk – will feel the brunt of the effects. Here are my tips:

1. Sprint uphill. When sprinting uphill, your feet don’t “fall as far” as when you’re sprinting on a flat surface, and so the impact is reduced.

2. Check your sprinting form. Make sure you’re landing on the forefoot-to-midfoot, rather than on the heel. Allow your heel to come down into contact with the ground, but only after you’ve established contact with the fore/midfoot. You also want to maintain good posture when running. If you let your shoulders internally rotate and your head dip forward, you’ll lose postural integrity and risk incurring pain. Also, when you run, your head shouldn’t be bobbing up and down. Film yourself, or have someone watch when you run and note whether or not your head bobs and your posture fails.

3. Try an alternate mode of transportation. Cycling, swimming, running in water, even crawling can reduce the impact on your back. I love a good stationary cycle sprint myself.

4. Find a full body exercise, preferably involving weights, that you can perform safely at a high intensity with good form without pain. Then, do that exercise at a high intensity for short, repeated bursts – maybe 5-10 rep sets with short rest periods.

5. Don’t sprint. If nothing’s helping, avoid the activities that cause pain. You want to heal, and pain is your body’s way of telling you that damage is (or soon will be) being done.

Hi Mark,

Thanks to supportive friends and the resources you and others have provided online, I’ve been following the paleo lifestyle for around a year now. So first, thank you for everything you’ve already contributed to the world.

As I’ve gone down the paleo path, to measure progress, I got a DexaFit body scan. Part of the result showed that I store an abnormally high proportion of my body fat in my gynoid region (waste/hips/thighs). For additional context, growing up, I was a “fat” kid until I was about 14, when I started exercising more / eating less.

All this got me wondering – is my body shape today due exclusively to my genetic make-up (nature) or the actions I’ve taken in life (nurture)? Is it some combination favoring one or the other? At what point are we “locked-in”, where our actions no longer have an impact?

I wonder, if I hadn’t been a “fat” kid growing up, maybe I’d look different today, even eating the same things and following the same workout regimen. Through the years, I’ve heard miscellaneous “facts” like weightlifting too early stunts growth, there’s some belly fat you can’t lose after a certain age, etc.

Thank you for your insight! I really appreciate your expertise on this.

Teddy

As with just about everything, it’s both nature and nurture. That is, environment interacts with genetics to produce the people we become, with all our health conditions, quirks, foibles, flaws, and strengths. The black and white dichotomy between nature and nurture is pure silliness (except for maybe something like eye color or hair color) that no one really takes seriously anymore. It’s (almost always) both.

On to your specific issue. For you, a male with a more “feminine” pattern of fat deposition, I would suspect low testosterone levels. A recent study found that patients with hypogonadism, characterized by chronic testosterone deficiency, stored dietary and free fatty acids primarily in the hips and thighs. In the leg-and-thigh adipose tissue of the low-testosterone group, acyl-CoA-synthetase (which is partially responsible for fat deposition) activity was greater. Another study confirms that when it comes to body fat distribution, genetics have a greater role in women, while environment is the primary determining factor for how fat is distributed in men. Luckily for you, you can control your environment. You can affect how much testosterone you produce, often without resorting to hormone replacement creams or injections or anything like that.

Certain nutrients help restore and maintain testosterone productions. Eat the foods that contain them. Supplement if you can’t or won’t eat the foods.

Magnesium – Eat leafy greens, almonds, halibut. Take epsom salt baths, apply magnesium oil transdermally, take chelated magnesium supplements.
Selenium – Eat Brazil nuts, kidneys, wild fish.
Zinc – Eat red meat, oysters.
Cholesterol – Eat brains, egg yolks, liver. We make testosterone out of cholesterol.
Fat – Eat fat, especially saturated and monounsaturated fats. One study found that olive oil (monounsaturated) and coconut oil (saturated) enhanced the conversion of cholesterol into testosterone, beating out grapeseed and soybean oils.
Vitamin D – Get sun, eat wild fish, take D3 supplements.

You’ll also want to make some lifestyle changes, if you haven’t already.

Get enough sleep. A lack of sleep dramatically reduces testosterone in young men. Similar relationships between sleep quality and testosterone are found in older men, too.
Reduce stress, or find ways to deal with it. Cortisol “opposes” testosterone, so an imbalanced or excessive cortisol rhythm will hamper your production of testosterone.
Meditate. Meditation is relaxing by definition, and one study even shows it reduces the cortisol:testosterone ratio.
Try breathing exercises. I talked about belly breathing a while back, and you might want to try that out.
Get a massage.

Even if these tips don’t result in reduced gynoid fat (I bet they will, though), they will result in an improved, more enjoyable life and diet. You might also want to get your free testosterone tested, just to make sure that low T is indeed your problem. Good luck!

Hi Mark,

Can you tell us your opinion about adults (partners) sleeping together? Is this a primal behaviour? Is sleeping on your own more restful?

Andre

It all depends, of course. There’s no one single absolute overarching answer.

If your partner snores to the point of keeping you awake, sleeping separate will get you more sleep and is probably going to be more restful and therefore more healthy.

If your partner has the jimmy legs, and the notion of a bony knee or ankle bone digging into the small of your back makes you unhappy, sleeping separate is going to be more restful.

If your partner has obstructive sleep apnea, you may have disturbed sleep and increased musculoskeletal pain.

However, recent research indicates that sleeping with a partner lowers cortisol (reducing stress), increases oxytocin (increasing bonding and closeness), and lowers inflammatory cytokines. If you’re fighting with that partner over conflicting sleeping habits, of course, you’ll probably be stressed out (cortisol goes up), be unwilling to touch each other (lowering oxytocin), and you probably won’t get the anti-inflammatory benefits.

Harmonious co-sleeping with a partner is more restful. Argumentative co-sleeping is not.

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Weekend Link Love

We’ve got a few more open spots left at the Primal Transformation Seminar and Cooking Class next Sunday in Phoenix, AZ. Sign up and learn how to live, eat, and move from Brad Kearns and Tara Grant, and how to cook from Chef Rachel.

Because of popular demand, we’ve opened up new dates for the Primal Blueprint Luxury Retreat. If you’re interested in being Primally pampered on May 16-19, 2013, sign up by February 1 for the special early bird price.

The American Gut project is nearing its final push. Consider donating, so that we can all benefit from more knowledge about how the gut microbiome affects health and responds to lifestyle. You can also test the gut ecology of your dog, and who doesn’t want to know that information?

If you’ve ever wanted to try something from Steve’s Original paleo products (or you’re running low on your stash), now’s your chance: Steve has prepared a special free-shipping promo code for MDA readers. The code is “marksdailyapple” and will expire on January 27th. Check the store to see what looks good.

Research of the Week

Nutrition researchers are finally realizing that “food synergy” – the metabolic interaction between micronutrient constituents of whole foods – must be considered when conducting dietary studies and interpreting studies of isolated nutrients.

Fingers that wrinkle when wet have an evolutionarily-preserved purpose, after all: it makes handling wet objects much, much easier.

Interesting Blog Posts

The Whole 9 blog digs into the sordid, murky, curly-tailed world(s) of pig farming.

Media, Schmedia

Everything you know (well, probably not you guys as much as everyone else) about fitness is a lie.

It seems quinoa isn’t so harmless after all. Can a person truly care about the welfare of all animals if he or she ignores the effects it has on one prominent member of the mammalian family – humans?

Everything Else

The denizens of Portlandia try their hands at pasta restriction.

Well, well, well – would you look how the most recent Miss America winner got in shape? Lifting heavy things (with a bit of dancing). Also note the immense bulk and incredible vascularity.

Some guy with a new book out gave a podcast interview over at Abel Bascom’s The Fat-Burning Man Show.

Recipe Corner

Cod is said to be a rather boring fish, but that all changes when you wrap it in prosciutto.
Orange gremolata beef roast, straight outta Sweden.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Jan 20 – Jan 26)

Musings on Specialization and Self-Sufficiency in the Modern World – Why I think it’s good to work with your hands and create stuff.
My Top Six Anti-Inflammatory Foods – My favorite therapeutic (and delicious) foods.

Comment of the Week

Back in the Boy Scouts we called it “camp salt”.

- I like it, captain mike! Camp salt would be a pretty decent probiotic supplement, I bet. I’ve always had different hygiene standards when camping. Food that falls on the ground, knives that don’t get completely washed, hands that get wiped off on the edges of picnic tables – that’s “camping clean,” and it’s good enough.

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