Mark Sisson's Blog, page 70

Weekly Link Love — Edition 86

Research of the Week

Ancient Irish elite were largely incestuous.

In a recent study, coronavirus shows up on tons of hospital surfaces but with very low viral loads. Present but not transmissible.

Having a younger blood donor is linked to shorter hospital stays.

“Conservation areas” don’t actually conserve anything.

Losing body fat probably improves cancer resistance.

New Primal Blueprint Podcasts

Episode 429: Rob Mack: Host Elle Russ chats with Rob Mack, an expert on the interplay between happiness and success.

Primal Health Coach Radio, Episode 65: Laura and Erin chat with Jacob Glass about finding and following your passion.

Media, Schmedia

The NBA plans on using OURA rings to track symptoms as they restart the season.

Interesting Blog Posts

Powerful links between vitamin D and COVID19 outcomes.

A topic most people don’t consider: What’s the best watering can?

Social Notes

Is this true?

Regarding setbacks.

Everything Else

The psychobiome knows you. Do you know it?

New rules for travel into Cambodia.

Low-dose hydrogen sulfide for life extension?

Things I’m Up to and Interested In

Important conclusion: “Whole-fat dairy, unprocessed meat, eggs and dark chocolate are SFA-rich foods with a complex matrix that are not associated with increased risk of CVD. The totality of available evidence does not support further limiting the intake of such foods.”

Interesting idea: The universe running its own simulation.

Paper I liked: More caffeine, more glutathione in your red blood cells.

Result I hope we can pursue further: Psychedelic-assisted therapy appears effective, often moreso than traditional therapy.

Dietary Guideline I can get behind: No added sugars for under 2 year olds.

Question I’m Asking

How are you spending Father’s day?

Recipe Corner

Paleo shrimp tacos with lettuce wraps.
Moroccan salad platter.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Jun 14 – Jun 20)

8 Comebacks for Keto Criticisms – How to fire back.
Dear Mark: Increased Red Meat, Reduced Carb, Increased Death? – Is this true?

Comment of the Week

“When I was reading, I couldn’t help but think ‘It’s got what plants crave.'”

– Ha, Patrice.

The post Weekly Link Love — Edition 86 appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Sauerkraut Benefits (with an Easy Homemade Sauerkraut Recipe)

Although fermented cabbage has been around in some form or another since ancient times – Roman author Pliny the Elder wrote of the stuff in the first century A.D. – modern methods for making sauerkraut were developed sometime between the 16th and 18th centuries. It’s primarily known as a German staple, but most other European countries use it in their traditional dishes. It’s pretty easy to understand why it was so popular: it keeps for a long time without refrigeration. Dutch, German, and English sailors found that the vitamin C-rich kraut prevented scurvy on the open seas, and the fact that it was salted and fermented made it ideal for long voyages without other preservation methods.

As the name would suggest, sauerkraut is quite literally sour cabbage. The sour flavor comes from the process of lacto-fermentation, similar to the pickling of cucumbers. But instead of soaking the cabbage in a vinegary brine solution, sauerkraut preparation requires only salt and the lactic acid bacteria already present on raw cabbage.

Is sauerkraut good for you?

You may have heard before that sauerkraut, or fermented foods in general, have a number of health benefits and you should eat more of them. Here’s what we know.

Health Benefits of Sauerkraut

More than just a delicious, tangy flavor, the beauty of sauerkraut also lies in its considerable health benefits:

Rich in vitamin C
Contains lactobacilli, a class of friendly bacteria that may aid digestion and immunity
Isothiocyanates, compounds shown to prevent cancer growth1
Manganese, vitamin B6, folate, and fiber from the cabbage itself

But most of us get our kraut at the grocery store. Going that route means you’re probably losing all the good stuff through pasteurization which involves heating to high temperatures. There are refrigerated brands that have not been pasteurized, but I personally like to control the process and ingredients to get the quality I want.

So, why not make your own? It’s incredibly easy. All it takes is some cabbage, some other vegetables if you’d like to include them (carrots, different colored cabbage, garlic, onions, beets, even apples), a storage vessel, a bit of sea salt, and patience. If you can chop and sprinkle salt, you can ferment your own homemade sauerkraut.

Is Sauerkraut Keto?

Coming in at 3g of carbs per 1/2 cup serving, sauerkraut is a keto food. Eat it on its own, or use it to add zing to other foods like soups and stews, pork chops, burgers, and more.

How to Make Homemade Sauerkraut: the Recipe

Servings: 16

Time in the kitchen: 15 minutes

Ingredients

1 head organic green cabbage
1-2 organic carrots (optional)
5-8 organic cloves of garlic, chopped (optional)
2 Tbsp. fine sea salt

Equipment

Cutting board
Knife
Fermentation jar: ceramic fermentation crock or a large wide-mouth mason jar (no plastic or metal)
Smaller mason jar to use as a weight
Mixing bowl
Wooden spoon

Before You Start, Sanitize Everything

Even if your cutting board, knife, mixing bowl, wooden spoon, and mason jars are clean, clean them again with soap and hot water. The fermentation process encourages microbes to breed, and you want to grow the ones you want, and not the ones you don’t. Allow your equipment to cool before starting.

Making Sauerkraut at Home

Begin by chopping your cabbage. I used green, but you can throw in some red cabbage to make the batch pink. You can include the heart, as the fermentation process will soften it. Tip: shred your cabbage as finely as you can. We’re going for is high surface area, because more surface area means more fermentation and exposure to the juices. Dump it into the mixing bowl and add salt as you go.

I like to include carrots and garlic here, but it’s not required. I like intense flavors, so I’m going to peel and grate the carrots and dice the garlic to get the most out of both vegetables. Drop these into the bowl and sprinkle in the salt as well.

 

Mix the ingredients together in the mixing bowl. Allow it to sit for a few minutes, and allow the salt to draw out the juices. You want to stimulate the natural juices of the vegetables, because they’re going to be your brine. You can help the process along by smashing the cabbage with the wooden spoon.

Start packing your mix into your fermentation jar. Just make sure you can cover whatever vessel you use. Pack it down hard, going slowly to make sure each addition is completely compressed in the jar. This will extract water and ensure the fermentation process goes smoothly.

Continue to press the mixture down with the wooden spoon until all of the cabbage is under the brine. Fit the smaller mason jar into the larger one to keep all of the vegetable submerged. Cover the whole thing loosely with a cloth or towel to keep bugs out.

For the next day or so, press down on the top several times a day to make sure the mix is submerged in brine. If it seems dry, you might have old cabbage. That’s fine. Just add a bit of water to cover everything, along with 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

Check your kraut every day. The volume will reduce as fermentation begins, and that’s exactly what you want.

That’s basically it. So really, it’s all about waiting. The actual preparation takes just a few minutes.

How Much Salt Should You Use?

To achieve a finished product with the perfect balance of tangy and salty, aim for a 2% brine.

For the most accurate calculation of how much salt to use, you’ll need a food scale. Set it to grams, and weigh your cabbage. For every 100 grams of cabbage, you’ll need 2 grams of salt.

You don’t have to have a food scale to make sauerkraut – the ingredients list above will come pretty close to the correct concentration.

How to Know When Your Sauerkraut is Ready

Start tasting your kraut after the third day. It should be tangy by now, and you can begin to gauge just how pungent you want it. The taste will get stronger as time increases. Every time you eat some, make sure you pack the rest of it in just like before: tightly packed, submerged, and with a weight pressing down.

How to Store Sauerkraut

Though sauerkraut is usually ready to eat in 3-7 days, if it’s cool enough, sauerkraut can improve for months. If you live in warmer climates, you might want to move your kraut into the fridge after a few weeks. If you store it, remember, it’s alive. Cover it with a loose lid or a banded cloth. Your ferment could release enough gas to pop the top and leave you with a mess.

How to Make Sauerkraut in a Crock

Making sauerkraut in a crock is exactly the same as making sauerkraut in a mason jar. Using the same methods, pour your mixing bowl of salted vegetables into your fermentation crock. Put the weights on top, add the lid, and your kraut should be ready in a few days.

Mold vs. Kahm Yeast

In most cases, your sauerkraut is totally protected by the brine, but things can go wrong. Mold should be discarded, but kahm yeast won’t ruin your ferment. Here’s how to tell the difference:

Mold. If you see fuzz, dark circles, colors, a raised texture, a funky smell, or any other indications of mold on the top, toss the whole batch and start over. It happens to the best of us.
Kahm yeast. Kahm yeast is white or slightly off-white, and looks almost like a thin layer of plastic wrap is sitting on top of your ferment. There can be bubbles, or it may have a stringy appearance. You can skim it off if you wish.

You can do a Google image search for “mold vs. kahm yeast” to get a side-by-side comparison of what both look like.

Cabbage is cheap, so even if yours goes moldy, you only lose a few dollars. Don’t let fermentation intimidate you. Once you try it, you’ll be hooked, and you’ll probably start experimenting with lacto-fermenting other vegetables. Have fun with it.

Further Reading:

How to Make Pemmican

10 Primal Foods You Aren’t Eating Enough Of 

How Gut Bacteria Affect Mental Health

References https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/129/3/768S/4722180

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What to Do When You Have a Setback

“I went off the rails this weekend…”

“I feel like I lost all my progress…”

“I couldn’t make it a day without eating a piece of bread…”

The path to success is often paved with setbacks. And the fact of the matter is, if you haven’t had one yet, you probably will sometime in the near future. Is that a reason to freak out? No. But it is a reason to arm yourself with the tools to, as they say, make the comeback stronger than the setback.

Changing behaviours takes time and patience. Trust me, I see this with most of my health coaching clients. And, like I always tell them, there is no expectation to knock a massive lifestyle change right out of the park on your first try. I don’t care if you’re trying to change your diet or your workout routine or your sleep habits — it’s never a linear journey. There’s always a combination of successes, plateaus, and setbacks.

What Is a Setback?

By definition, a setback is an event that delays your progress or reverses some of the progress you’ve previously made. It can be frustrating, humbling, and can likely trigger some negative self-talk. After all, you put time and energy into this endeavor. Maybe you spent money. Or you told all your friends and family what you were doing. And now what?

Listen. A setback, or even a few setbacks, doesn’t have to be the end of your story. In fact, quite the opposite. A setback might be exactly what you need to get where you want your health to go.

Can Setbacks Make You Stronger?

Researchers in this study 1 conducted in-depth interviews with 85 elite athletes and coaches, seeking to understand the motivating factors of what breeds success. Turns out, most of the top athletes interviewed had suffered a significant setback early on in their career. That’s what fueled their success. They found a way to turn the defeat of a setback into a reason to push themselves further the next time they competed.

In another study, 2 UVA economist Adam Leive compiled a database of medal winners in Olympic track and field events to see how their lives played out after winning. He found that the athletes who just missed out on getting the top podium spot were more ambitious in their post-sports careers than their gold medal counterparts. The trauma of not securing the top spot actually seemed to have made the athletes stronger. And, they actually lived longer.

But it’s not just athletes who are able to reap the rewards of setbacks. Researchers have studied diverse groups from students3 to scientists 4 and found the same thing — failures along the way can make you stronger than those who never had a stumble.

4 Steps to Overcoming Setbacks

In light of this research (and about a decade of helping my clients through inevitable setbacks of their own), I wanted to share my personal strategy, designed to take you from setback to success.

1. Look at the big picture. Sure, you had a setback, but my guess is you also had some successes along the way. Despite slipping back into your toast-and-cereal-for-breakfast routine or discovering that your favorite pants are currently too tight, ask yourself what’s gone well over the past few days, weeks, or months. What changes have you made that have contributed to a more metabolically flexible lifestyle? What habits have you implemented since you began your journey?

Also, take an objective look at what didn’t work. Was there a stressful event or period of time that interfered with your progress? Did you get overly hungry or not eat enough protein? Get really honest with yourself and write down your successes and your struggles. Seeing them on paper without emotion can help you move forward more easily.

2. Recognize your obstacles (and have a plan). If summer BBQs trip you up, have a plan. If vacations make you loosen your commitment, have a plan. Key takeaway here? Have. A. Plan. Figure out what situations, places, or foods are your triggers and learn how to navigate them. Or avoid them all together until your confidence around your ability to choose gets stronger. It’s one thing to consciously enjoy a cookie at your favorite coffee shop; it’s a totally different story if you accidentally ate one and decided you “screwed up” so you might as well binge on sweets for the rest of the day.

Keep in mind the theory of cause and effect too. Binging on carbs over the weekend will likely send your brain begging for more pastries, pizza, and pasta come Monday morning. And if you’re someone who subscribes to “food as a reward,” those pints of Ben & Jerry’s can look awfully tempting after a few weeks of “being good.” Acknowledge your obstacles and find a way around them.

3. Surround yourself with support. In a world of whole-grains-this and low-fat-that, not to mention old-school doctors who whole-heartedly believe that saturated fat will send you right to your grave, it can be a challenge (to say the least) to get the support you need to make lifestyle changes that last.

That’s why it’s so important to have a network of people who have your back, whether it’s our community here on Mark’s Daily Apple, a health coach like one from the Primal Health Coach Institute, or a group of friends and family members who understand the science behind why your heart won’t explode by following a diet free of refined carbs, sugar, and industrialized oils.

4. Take a step forward. Ditching your whole efforts or punishing yourself with a grueling workout after a setback won’t get you any closer to your goal. As I mentioned earlier, the journey is never linear. It might feel like you’re taking one step forward and two steps back, but eventually you will get there. Your path is still there. There’s always a next step. You just need to choose to take it.

Think about what you can do right now to start making progress. It doesn’t need to be a huge sweeping change either. It can be as small as going for a walk, preparing a big-ass salad, or getting to bed at a reasonable hour. Having a long-term goal is great (and something I highly recommend) but getting there requires you to take the first step.

Remember, setbacks can actually make you stronger. So, if you’re in the midst of a massive change and wondering what to do to get back on track, put aside your frustration and follow these four steps:

Look at the big picture
Recognize your obstacles
Surround yourself with support
Take a step forward

References https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-016-0476-2https://news.virginia.edu/content/who-needs-olympic-gold-batten-researcher-finds-silver-medalists-live-longerhttps://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00612/fullhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12189-3

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How to Intermittent Fast and Which Type of Fasting Is Right For You

Intermittent fasting has taken the world by storm. No longer is it the province of fitness freaks. No longer do you get weird looks because you skipped the break room donuts. Now you’ve got grandmothers trying it and doctors recommending it. It’s here, the benefits are legion, and you’re interested. But how should you do it? Are there different types of intermittent fasting? Are there different benefits associated with the various flavors of IF?

Thinking about fasting, reading about fasting, and reciting the benefits of fasting are all pointless if you don’t know how to go about doing it.

First, the most fundamental concept central to all the flavors of intermittent fasting is not eating. Skipping meals, skipping entire days of meals, letting yourself get a little hungry. There’s no getting around that. It will happen. let’s go over the different variations of fasting. I’ll give a quick rundown. Each involves not eating for a period of time, unsurprisingly.

A couple other rules that apply to all the given methods:

Sleeping hours (provided you don’t sleep-eat) count as fasting hours.
Eat well regardless. While some fasting plans tout their adherents’ ability to eat crappy food and still lose weight, I’m not interested in fasting solely as a weight loss method. Keep your food Primal as possible.

Okay, on to the variations.

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12:12, 16:8, 18:6, or 20:4 Intermittent Fasting

As the names suggest, these breakdowns of intermittent fasting involves fasting for either 12, 16, 18, or 20 hours and taking in all of your food for the day over the remaining window of hours.

How to find out which fasting length is the the best one for you? There’s only one way. You have to experiment.

You can start with a 12:12 intermittent fast, which comes with the benefits of intermittent fasting and is easy to do for most people. You stop eating a couple of hours before bedtime, and delay breakfast a couple of hours after waking. If that works well, extend your fasting period the next day, and repeat until you find the eating and fasting pattern that feels good.

Lots of diets have added more detail to the intermittent fasting model, but bare-bones intermittent fasting is simply a shorter feeding period.

If you’ve heard of Leangains, Martin Berkhan’s incredibly popular fasting protocol, you’ve heard of 16:8 intermittent fasting. How does it work?

A daily 16 hour fast during which you eat nothing containing calories. Coffee, tea, and other non-caloric fluids are fine. Some people get away with a little cream in their drink.
A daily 8 hour eating window.
Three days of weight training, ideally performed at the tail end of the fasting period. To improve performance and muscle protein synthesis, you have the option of consuming 10 grams of branched chain amino acids 10 minutes before the workout.
Always eat high protein.
On training days, eat more carbs and less fat.
On rest days, eat more fat, fewer carbs, and slightly reduce calories.
Most people begin their fast after dinner (say, 9 PM), workout in the afternoon (at around 12 PM), and break their fast immediately post-workout (at around 1 PM), but you can use any schedule you prefer as long as you hit the 16 hours of fasting.
Your post-workout meal should have about 50% of your day’s caloric allotment (a real feast).

Who should try it?

12 or 16 hours isn’t a long time to wait for a meal, which makes intermittent fasting a great model for anyone who wants to experiment with fasting. One benefit of fasting this way is that it’s not that long a fast – you eat every day. It is totally doable. Whether you add the detailed lifting days and carb days is up to you.

Women may have better success with slightly shorter fasting windows—12-14 hours long instead of 16 hours. To understand why, check out my post on women and fasting.

People with steady eating schedules will have more success than people with erratic schedules. A huge benefit of intermittent fasting is the hormonal entrainment induced by regular feeding times. Once you get locked into your routine, your hunger hormones will adapt to the schedule, and the fasting should get easier, or even effortless. For this reason, it’s a good idea to get a feeding schedule and stick to it.

OMAD — One Meal a Day

Ori Hofmekler’s plan is based on the feast-and-fast concept:

Eat one meal a day, at night, and make it a big one. A real feast. You have three or four hours to eat until full. So it’s basically 20/4 hours.
You can occasionally snack on low-calorie raw fruit and vegetables during the day, but try to limit protein as much as possible until the feast.
Exercise during the day, in a fasted state.

Who should try it?

People who have trouble sticking to a stricter fast will do better on the OMAD, as it allows light eating during the time leading up to the feast, but I wonder if you’d be squandering some of the benefits by eating.

Alternate Day Fasting

Researchers often use this method in lab studies:

Eat normally one day (last meal at, say, 9 PM Monday).
Don’t eat the next day.
Resume eating the day after that (at, say, 9 AM Wednesday).
It works out to a 36-ish hour fast, although there’s plenty of wiggle room. You could eat at 10 PM Monday and break the fast at 6 AM Wednesday for a “mere” 32 hour fast.

Who should try it?

People who have no trouble going to bed hungry. With other intermittent fasting methods, you can always manage to get to bed with a full belly; with ADF, you will be going to bed on an empty stomach several times a week. That can be tough.

That said, the therapeutic benefits to serious conditions will most likely really be pronounced with this way of fasting. The casual 20-something Primal eater who lifts heavy things and enjoys going out with friends? Probably not ideal. The older Primal eater interested in generating some autophagy and maybe staving off neurodegeneration? It might just work out. And while I’m not able to tell a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy what to do, I’d guess that the longer fasts will be more beneficial in that regard, too.

Eat Stop Eat

Put together by Brad Pilon, Eat Stop Eat is really basic:

Once or twice a week, don’t eat for 24 hours.
Start your fast in the morning, at lunch, or at dinner. It doesn’t matter as long as you don’t eat for 24 hours.
Break your fast with a “normal-sized meal.” Don’t try to make up for the lost calories by feasting.
Exercise regularly.

Who should try it?

People interesting in fasting for the therapeutic benefits (cancer protection, autophagy, life extension, etc.) would probably get a lot out of this method, as opposed to people interested in the body composition benefits.

Going a full 24 hours without food is a much tougher slog than going for 16 hours. In my experience, going lower-carb and higher-fat makes longer fasts easier, so I’d have to say a low-carb Primal eater would do better than most.

But my personal favorite way of implementing fasting?

WHEN — When Hunger Ensues Naturally

I’m not going to put any bullet points here, because none are required. Instead, I’ll give a few scenarios:

I wake up bright and early on a Saturday morning. It’s about 65 degrees, the sun’s out, my dog is walking around with the leash in his mouth, and Red Rock Canyon is kinda calling my name. I’ve got my coffee already and I’m actually not all that hungry from dinner. You know what? I’ll go on that hike, skip breakfast, and really work up an appetite for lunch. Or not. If I’m hungry afterwards, I’ll eat. It’s a fast, but not really.

I hit the gym, put in a light workout, then swing by the beach for some sand sprints. I’m toast by the end and have to stagger back to my car, but I’m not hungry. Even when I get home and smell the grilled salmon, I have no desire for it. I might eat later that night, but only if my appetite returns. I’m fasting post-workout only because it doesn’t occur to me to eat, not because I’m following a plan.

I’m away on business, stuck on a layover that’s turned into a delay that’s turned into an overnighter. The only food available is a Kudos candy bar – I mean, healthy granola bar (they seriously still make these?) from the mini fridge, a greasy pizza joint on the corner across the street from the hotel, a Chinese takeout place next to the pizza joint, and a slew of fast food restaurants some ways down the road. It’s late, I’m tired, I had a Big Ass Salad before I left for LAX… you know what? I’m just going to skip the “meal.” I’ll figure out something at the airport in the morning (20 hour fast) or once I land (24 hour fast). And I’ll be okay either way.

That’s eating When Hunger Ensues Naturally.

This is the most natural, most effortless way of “fasting,” at least for me, because it allows a person to eat intuitively. Although most people will eventually acclimate to more regimented fasting schedules, and many may even need and thrive with that structure, I prefer a more fractal, loose, random pattern of “missing” (in quotations because I don’t feel like I’m missing anything, and that’s the whole point!) meals. I have no data on whether it’s as effective or more effective than the more popular methods, but I do know that I’ll often fast for 16 hours and eat for eight, or skip an entire day of eating, or sometimes (but very, very rarely) even approach a full 30 hours, and it seems likely that this random pattern of eating characterized the eating “schedules” of our ancestors.

In short, we’re all doing the same thing, chasing the same goals. We’re all skipping meals, reducing calories, staying active, and all the while we’re doing this without feeling miserable and restricted. It just so happens that because we’re efficient Primal fat-burning beasts, switching over to burning our own body fat reserves for energy during a fast is a natural, seamless transition. We often don’t even notice it. There’s no effort involved.

That’s the key: lack of stress. If any or all of these fasting methods stress you out, make you irritable, kill your performance, make you feel restricted, or reduce your ability to enjoy life, and these feelings persist beyond the first five fasts you attempt (when some adaptation difficulties are totally expected), you shouldn’t employ them. You should shelve fasting for a while and come back to it later, or never. It’s not a “requirement” or anything. It’s just a tool you can wield if your situation warrants it. In fact, this is the perfect opportunity to conduct an informal experiment of one. Try one style for a week or two, then throw in a a different style once or twice a week for a bit, then try another method. Compare and contrast. How did you feel? How did you perform at work, at home, and in the gym? Take some waist measurements perhaps, or analyze your favorite barometer of body composition to see how the different fasting methods worked – or didn’t work – for you.

Now, I’d like to hear from you. What’s your favorite fasting method? Do you have one, or you just kinda go with the flow? Be sure to review the previous installments below and if you have any questions about any of the stuff I’ve covered in this series, leave them in the comment section and I’ll try to get them answered for you next week. Thanks for reading!

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Electrolytes 101: What Do Electrolytes Do?

When I say “electrolytes,” what do you think of? Maybe rowdy professional athletes dumping a cooler of some neon-colored sports drink over their coach’s head after winning the championship. Electrolytes have a much bigger role in winning than just soaking the coach. What do electrolytes do?

If you’re an endurance athlete or a keto dieter, you might already supplement electrolytes as part of your daily routine. But do you know why? What are electrolytes anyway, and why do you need them? Does everyone need electrolytes, and are you missing out if you aren’t taking electrolyte pills?

In fact, electrolytes are unsung heroes that allow your body to run smoothly. Too much or too little, and your health is seriously impacted. Thankfully, the body’s delicate system of checks and balances usually keeps everything operating as it should. Still, you need to be mindful of your electrolyte intake if you want to maintain optimal health. (And isn’t that what we all want?)

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What Are Electrolytes?

Electrolytes are minerals (and some proteins) that carry an electrical charge when dissolved in water. These positively or negatively charged ions play an essential role in a wide variety of metabolic processes. Electrolytes allow nerves to fire and muscles, including the heart, to contract; regulate acid-base balance; support hormone and tissue production; and maintain proper fluid balance within cells, interstitial fluid, and blood plasma.

There are many electrolytes in the human body, but the most important are:

Sodium
Potassium
Chloride
Bicarbonate
Calcium
Phosphate
Magnesium

Sodium, chloride, and bicarbonate are highly concentrated in blood plasma and interstitial fluid outside the cells. Potassium, phosphate, magnesium, and, to a smaller degree, calcium are concentrated within cells. The body regulates hydration status and acid-base balance by maintaining the right gradient, or concentration, of electrolytes in different fluid compartments. Water and electrolytes are constantly diffusing through membranes to preserve the delicate balances.

Cells also use active transport to “pump” electrolytes across membranes using ion channels. You may remember learning about the sodium-potassium pump in high school biology class. Active transport of these electrolytes across the cell membrane is how nerve, muscle, and endocrine cells generate impulses and fire.

Most people get all the electrolytes they need through a healthy diet. Some folks—notably those following a ketogenic diet and endurance athletes—may need additional supplementation.

Electrolyte Balance and Imbalance

For the body to function properly, it needs the right amount of each electrolyte, and it needs them in the proper ratios.

In healthy individuals, electrolyte balance is tightly regulated by hormones, especially parathyroid and antidiuretic hormones and aldosterone. The kidneys filter water and electrolytes in the bloodstream, returning what the body needs to circulation, and excreting the rest. To a lesser extent, electrolytes are also excreted in stool, sweat, and respiration.

Electrolyte imbalances can occur with:

Poor diet
Improper hydration (too much or too little water)
Vomiting or diarrhea
Excessive sweating
Diabetes
Gastrointestinal disorders that interfere with absorption
Kidney disease
Some cancers
Respiratory diseases like COPD
Certain medications like diuretics, beta-blockers, and corticosteroids
Trauma, burns, surgery
Old age

You might not notice any symptoms if you have a mild imbalance. Following a short illness, for example, if you return to eating your typical Primal diet and drinking a reasonable amount of water, your body will likely regulate itself without any major issues.

Signs that you might have a more serious imbalance include:

Headache
Fatigue
Irregular heartbeat
Muscle weakness
Muscle cramping
Loss of coordination
Nausea and vomiting
Diarrhea
Constipation
Irritability
Confusion
Edema

Specific symptoms depend on which electrolyte(s) are out of balance, and whether you have too little or too much. Very severe imbalances can even lead to seizures, coma, or death. Your doctor can test electrolyte levels with a simple blood test.

What Do Electrolytes Do, How Much Do You Need, and Where Do You Find Them?
Sodium

Main functions in the body: Along with potassium, regulates the fluid volume in cells, interstitial fluid, and blood plasma. Needed for muscle contraction and generating nerve impulses.

Dietary sources: Most sodium in our diet comes from the salt we add to food. Much smaller amounts naturally occur in foods like beets, carrots, celery, and dairy products, and in drinking water. Someone eating a typical modern diet gets the bulk of their sodium from processed, packaged foods.

Recommended intake: In recent decades, doctors and the folks behind our governmental dietary standards have told us to limit sodium intake, mostly in the name of heart health. However, experts are increasingly challenging that advice. Multiple studies point to a greater risk of negative health outcomes with too little sodium1 2 3 Many believe that the current recommended daily intake of 1,500 mg per day for adults is woefully inadequate.

Instead, the sweet spot seems to be between 4 and 6 grams per day. That’s about 2 teaspoons of fine sea salt like Redmond Real Salt or a heaping tablespoon of kosher salt. (Remember, the salt we eat is not pure sodium, it’s sodium plus chloride—NaCl.) However, individuals with salt-sensitive hypertension or kidney disease will want to consult their doctors, as these populations probably do need to restrict sodium.

RELATED POSTS: Salt: What Is It Good For?, Dear Mark: Salt and Blood Pressure 

Potassium

Main functions in the body: Along with sodium, potassium regulates fluid volume and allows for muscle contraction and nerve impulses. Regulates heartbeat.

Dietary sources: Fruits and vegetables. Bananas have become synonymous with potassium, but a medium potato actually contains twice as much potassium as a medium banana. Avocado is a better source as well. If your diet includes a variety of vegetables and perhaps some fruit, you are probably getting enough potassium.

Recommended intake: 2600 mg per day for adult females and 3400 mg per day for males.

While sodium gets most of the attention when it comes to heart health, potassium is at least as essential, if not more so. People with higher (but not excessive) potassium intake have lower blood pressure, less risk for cardiovascular disease, 4 and lower all-cause mortality.5

Research also suggests that the relative amounts of sodium and potassium you eat—the sodium:potassium ratio—is as important as the absolute amounts of each. You want to avoid high levels of sodium with low potassium. On the other hand, increasing potassium intake seems to offset the supposed dangers of higher levels of sodium intake (within reason).6 7 8

RELATED POST: A Primal Guide to Blood Pressure

Chloride

Main functions in the body: Maintaining fluid balance, which is vital for regulating blood pressure and pH of body fluids. Also a primary component of gastric juice in the form of hydrochloric acid.

Dietary sources: Mostly from added salt—sodium chloride and, to a lesser extent, potassium chloride. Seaweed and many vegetables also contain some chloride. You can also get chloride through the skin if you use a magnesium spray, which is usually magnesium chloride.

Recommended intake: 2.3 grams per day for adults up to 50, 2.0 grams per day up to age 70, 1.8 grams per day thereafter.

Calcium

Main functions in the body: In addition to structural roles (bones and teeth), calcium helps muscles contract and nerves fire. Calcium also has a role in blood clotting.

Dietary sources: Leafy greens, broccoli, nuts and seeds, fish like sardines and anchovies where you eat the bones. Dairy products, if you consume them, are good sources as well despite any controversy about bioavailability.

Recommended intake: For adult females, 1,000 mg per day up to age 50, 1,200 mg per day thereafter. For males, 1,000 mg per day up to age 70, 1,200 mg per day thereafter.

RELATED POST: Dear Mark: Calcium for Women

Phosphate

Main functions in the body: Like calcium, most phosphate is stored in bones and teeth, acting as a mineral reserve. The rest is used by cells for energy production and in cell membranes and DNA.

Dietary sources: Derived from phosphorous, which is found most abundantly in animal products—meat, dairy, eggs.

Recommended intake: 700 mg per day for all adults

Bicarbonate

Main functions in the body: Crucial for maintaining extracellular acid-base balance. Moves carbon dioxide through the bloodstream.

Dietary sources: We get bicarbonate from baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), but the body also produces bicarbonate endogenously (on its own), so it’s not necessary to target it in the diet.

Recommended intake: Has not been established

RELATED POST: Dear Mark: Does Dietary Acid/Base Balance Matter?

Magnesium

Main functions in the body: Magnesium is involved in over 300 enzymatic reactions, including ones that allow nerves to fire and muscles to contract. Maintains regular heartbeat.

Dietary sources: Leafy greens, dark chocolate, nuts and seeds, fish, avocado

Recommended intake: For adult females, 310 mg per day up to age 30, then increases to 320 per day. For males, 400 mg per day up to age 30, increasing to 420 mg per day.

RELATED POST: The Complete Magnesium Manual

Natural Electrolyte Supplements

When people talk about supplementing electrolytes, they generally mean sodium, potassium, and magnesium. For the average healthy person, you can meet your electrolyte needs by eating a varied diet rich in different vegetables, perhaps some fruit, and animal products, especially fish.

However, you may need to supplement if you eat a restricted diet or have certain health conditions such as gastrointestinal issues that interfere with your ability to absorb nutrients, or kidney or liver disease. Because supplements can interact with medications, talk to your doctor before starting any kind of supplement regimen.

Obviously, if you get an electrolyte panel done by your doctor, and it shows a deficiency, that’s another good reason to supplement. Likewise, if you’ve had a bout of vomiting or diarrhea, or if you’re having issues such as brain fog or muscle cramping. Don’t go overboard; it is certainly possible to have too much of any electrolyte. Drinking some salty bone broth or trying a standard dose of a potassium or magnesium supplement should be safe.

I should note, though, that dietary deficiencies in potassium are uncommon. It’s never a bad idea to track your food for a few days using an app like Cronometer. See how much you’re getting from diet so you can tailor your supplementing appropriately. It’s probably much more likely that you’re getting less sodium than you need if you’re eating mostly close-to-nature foods, especially if you’re hewing to conventional wisdom about restricting salt.

What Are the Best Forms of Electrolytes?

For sodium, all you need is good old salt. Different forms of salt contain varying amounts of sodium, so look at the label.

For potassium, I like potassium citrate. You can also use LoSalt or Nu-Salt, which contain potassium chloride. They are found with the table salt at your local grocery store. Some folks make their own electrolyte blend with cream of tartar (yes, the same stuff you bake with), which is potassium bitartrate. Any of these will work, but I think potassium citrate is the superior option.

For magnesium, the most bioavailable are the chelated forms that end in -ate. Different forms of magnesium are thought to have specific benefits, but magnesium malate or glycinate (also called bis-glycinate) are good all-around options. Magnesium L-threonate is particularly touted for cognitive benefits because it crosses the blood-brain barrier.

Is Potassium Supplementation Safe?

Because potassium is closely linked to heart function, there is a concern that supplementing potassium could lead to arrhythmias or even heart attacks. However, a 2016 meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials found no risk associated with supplementing within normal guidelines in healthy individuals.9 People with heart or kidney problems should definitely talk to their doctors, though.

Although I think supplementing potassium is generally safe, it’s also reasonably easy to meet your potassium requirements through diet alone. Potassium supplements are limited to 100 mg per dose by the FDA anyway, which is a fraction of what you need.

Considerations for Keto Folks

If you’re following a keto diet, you probably do need to supplement. When you drop your carbs low enough for the liver to start making ketones, this also triggers a (normal) hormonal response that leads the kidneys to dump water. Along with water goes sodium and potassium especially. This can lead to low blood pressure, and it’s the reason why some people feel so crappy when they first go keto—-the dreaded “keto flu.”

If you’re eating a keto diet and your workouts are suffering, or you have low energy, headaches, or brain fog, low sodium and/or potassium is the likely culprit. Some people find that they need to supplement when transitioning into keto but not once they are keto-adapted. Others feel better if they continue supplementing.

In particular, many keto folks feel better when they increase their sodium considerably—3 to 5 grams above what they get from food, or perhaps even more.

Considerations for Athletes

Electrolytes, especially sodium and chloride, are lost through sweat, so many athletes use electrolyte supplements as a part of their training nutrition. This probably isn’t crucial for the average person working up a sweat at the gym. For hard-charging endurance athletes pounding away for hours, especially in intense heat, it might be the difference between making it to the finish line or not.

If you’re taking in a lot of water during a training session, it’s a good idea to add a pinch of salt, and perhaps a bit of carbohydrate, to your water. For one thing, this increases absorption. Drinking too much water without adequately replacing sodium losses can also lead to the dangerous, even fatal, condition of hyponatremia.10 I’m not a huge fan of most commercial electrolyte drinks due to their high sugar content, but it’s easy to make your own using one of the many online recipes. You can also use salt pills. It might take some tinkering to dial in the amount you need.

Some athletes also take sodium bicarbonate supplements in an attempt to offset exercise-induced acidosis. (Recall that bicarbonate helps maintain acid-base homeostasis.) Research shows that doses of 200 to 500 mg/kg may reduce lactate concentration and improve aerobic exercise performance and hand-eye coordination.11 Doses at the higher end of the spectrum seem to be more effective, but they can also cause undesirable gastrointestinal symptoms. If you experiment with this, make sure to take into account both the sodium and the bicarbonate you are adding and, if necessary, adjust your additional sodium supplementation accordingly.

References https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23216128/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25119607/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21036373/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23558164/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5637309/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5537815/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24001491/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26039623/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27289164/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5334560/https://examine.com/supplements/sodium-bicarbonate/

The post Electrolytes 101: What Do Electrolytes Do? appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

The Myriad of Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

At this point, intermittent fasting isn’t a new concept, nor is it a difficult one. You take in all of your calories for the day within a limited window of time, and the rest of the day, you stick with water, maybe a cup of coffee, or tea in the morning if you feel so inclined. The idea is that giving your body a period of time “off” from digesting food allows your cells to heal and renew in other ways.

A Practice Born Because Calorie Restriction is Unpleasant

Intermittent fasting became popular because calorie restriction was found to contribute to healthy aging. A few mouse and worm studies seem to show that drastic reductions in food intake over a long period of time could prolong your life.

The research is compelling, but I’m not convinced actively restricting your calorie intake through sheer will is the true path to enjoyable longevity. I don’t want to be thin, frail, distractible, or preoccupied with food. I’d rather be vibrant and full of zest. I want to eat big strapping meals of steak and veggies smothered in butter without worrying about calories. I want to maintain muscle mass and have enough energy to go on long hikes and have the legs to still leap for high passes (over the young guys) at the end of Ultimate games. And as I appreciate the neuroprotective and autophagy-promoting qualities of calorie restriction, I’d rather not expend the mental energy and fortitude required to maintain such a regimen day-in and day-out.

Intermittent fasting is the workaround. Pushing off breakfast for a few hours gives me all of the benefits of calorie restriction, without all the misery.

Fasting is the way to have your cake and eat it too. Beyond the already proven benefits of a Primal Blueprint low-carb lifestyle, fasting once in a while seems to offer many of the same benefits of calorie restriction – you know, stuff like increased longevity, neuroprotection, increased insulin sensitivity, stronger resistance to stress, some cool effects on endogenous hormone production, increased mental clarity, plus more – but without the active, agonizing restriction.

You just eat Primally, focusing on meat and vegetables with plenty of animal fat, and skip meals on occasion. A sixteen-hour fast is on the low-but-still-effective end, or you could opt for longer, more intermittent fasts – say, a full twenty-four hours once or twice a week. Women may need to time fasts a little differently than men. More on that here.

When you’re done with the fast, eat as much as you want (which usually isn’t an issue, once you’re keto-adapted). It essentially turns into “eat when you’re hungry,” because let’s face it: eating the types of foods we evolved eating induces powerful satiety and makes eating the right amount of food a subconscious act. Fasting becomes a whole lot easier (and intuitive) when you’ve got your food quality dialed in. And I’ll come back to that little caveat at the end here.

“Fasting” was the top search term for MDA last week, and I hadn’t done a big post on it in a while, so I thought I’d do a comprehensive rundown of all the benefits (some conclusive, others prospective) you can expect to obtain from IF.

You can have a fun night out and stay on track. Instantly download the Primal and Keto Guide to Dining Out

Intermittent Fasting and Longevity

Everyone wants to live longer, but I find longevity pointless if you’re not enjoying yourself. Otherwise, life becomes dreary.

The popular c. elegans worm enjoys increased longevity with both twenty-four and forty-eight hour IFs via signaling through a gene that we all have.1

One study (full PDF) from the 1940s found that varying amounts of twenty-four hour IFs (every other day, every fourth day, every eighth day, etc) prolonged the lifespan of rats without retarding or stunting the growth (as occurred with calorie restricting them). Female rats responded best to every eight day fasts, while males responded best to every other day fasts.

Reductions in brain insulin signaling have been shown to increase lifespan in animals, either by calorie restricting or actively knocking out brain insulin receptors.2 Fasting also reduces brain insulin signaling, at least in rats.3

Blood Lipids

Going in and pharmaceutically manhandling your cholesterol synthesizing equipment is one thing; eating real food and exercising, resulting in possible alterations to your lipid profile, is another. We don’t set out to force your blood lipids into submission, but lifestyle changes that happen to change them for “the better” are usually a good thing. Fasting brings potent changes to blood lipids in an “organic” way – you’re just letting your machinery do its thing on its own – and this is probably a very good thing.

Intermittent fasting is as effective or even more effective than calorie restriction in improving metabolic syndrome markers in overweight women, and it’s a whole lot easier to stick with.4

Alternate day fasting improved cardiovascular risk markers, including lowered triglycerides and LDL-C numbers (although it’s unclear whether the improvements were related to the weight loss alone or something unique to fasting).5

I discussed this last week, but it can’t hurt to mention that short-term alternate day fasting wrought improvements in LDL particle size and distribution in obese adults.6

Sticking with Intermittent Fasting

A dietary regimen is useless without compliance. In fact, that’s what we’ve always said about the low-fat, low-calorie diet advice we’re inundated with: sure, they might work, but they’re impossible for most people to maintain. Eating Primally solves this problem, because it’s simple, easy, delicious, and satiating (you just have to enjoy cooking, or learn to), and intermittent fasting is another compliance-breeding regimen that blends quite nicely with the Primal Blueprint. A lot of Primal eaters find that fasting just kinda happens without them setting out to do it, so it’s not even a conscious struggle.

Obese individuals were able to quickly adapt to alternate day modified fasting, which meant on fasting days they’d get 26% of their normal caloric intake. They were also able to maintain physical activity despite the fasting.7

Heck, intermittent fasting even helped cocaine addicts stick to their treatment and rehab program.8 Not bad.

Intermittent Fasting and Cancer

The notion of IF reducing cancer incidence and improving survival is compelling, but little evidence in humans exists. Ketogenic diets may also offer exciting potential for cancer patients, and both intermittent fasting diets and ketogenic diets share something: fat (either dietary or from your own adipose tissue) as primary fuel sources.

While you might not want to be in a constant state of ketosis, intermittent fasting is sustainable, simple, and can be integrated into your current diet. As of now, most of the evidence for IF’s protective effects against cancer exist in animal trials, mostly using mice. Still, fasting seems to confer so many other benefits that working it into your life for its anti-cancer potential is probably worth it. Some of the evidence:

Calorie restriction has been shown to fight cancer cell proliferation in mice, but researchers found that intermittent fasting was just as effective.9 In fact, here’s a review of most of the animal anti-cancer evidence.10 It’s quite compelling.

Some researchers are speculating, based on substantial evidence, that fasting before and during cancer treatment should result in reduced morbidity, better tolerance of chemotherapies, and higher cure rates.11 This is refreshing news. A preliminary study12 in human cancer patients found that fasting during chemotherapy reduced the negative side effects of the treatment. The authors are quick to point out that the results are in no way a prescription for fasting in chemotherapy patients and that controlled trials are needed to change official recommendations, but that doesn’t mean you – the individual – can’t experiment.

Growth Hormone

Aging humans “normally” experience reductions in growth hormone. While it’s true that unchecked growth hormone can lead to unwanted cell proliferation (like, ya know, cancer), growth hormone therapy can really help stave off the doldrums of old age. A study found that resistance training actually blunted hunger for an hour.13 I’ve found this to be the case for me. If the body “needs” food right after a workout, why would hunger be blunted? This is why I tend to hold off on the eating post-workout. Every little bit helps, especially as you age.

Neurological Health

Fasting doesn’t cause your brain tissue to waste away, contrary to what some people will tell you. It’s actually good for brain health. Any dietary restriction tends to increase neuronal plasticity and promote neurogenesis, but it was IF that had the greatest effect (with the fewest downsides).14 Another study of mice found that meal frequency impacts neuronal health.15 That is, mice who ate larger meals more infrequently saw greater increases in brain and overall bodily health. Still another study found that IF was beneficial for peripheral nerve function in mice by promoting the maintenance of the neuronal pathways responsible for locomotor performance.16 It’s almost like this stuff just puts your brain in repair, or maintenance mode.

Fasting and Autophagy

Fasting turns on autophagy (most studies nowadays treat this as common knowledge17), which is the process by which cells recycle waste material, eliminate or downregulate wasteful processes, and repair themselves. Why is autophagy so important? It’s required to maintain muscle mass18, and inhibiting it induces atrophy of adult skeletal muscle.19  It reduces the negative effects of aging20 and reduces the incidence and progression of aging-related diseases. In fact, researchers have determined that autophagy is the essential aspect of the anti-aging mechanism of fasting.21

Without the autophagy that fasting provides, you would get very few of the benefits. Fasting even increases neuronal autophagy,22 which aids in maintaining mental health and function. Short term fasting, too. No marathon thirty-six hour fast required.

Fasting and Fitness

You’ll hear that you should never exercise on an empty stomach. You’ll hear that fasted training will burn your  muscles and cause you to waste away. You’ll hear that performance will surely suffer. None of these things are necessarily true – and they are even less so if you are well-adapted adapted to a low-carb eating strategy. Fasted training can actually result in better metabolic adaptations23 (which mean better performance down the line), improved muscle protein synthesis,24 and a higher anabolic response to post-workout feeding25 (you’ll earn your meal and make more muscle out of it if you train on an empty stomach). Studies on Muslim athletes during Ramadan show no effect on performance while fasting,26 as well as a more favorable lipid profile27 in those who exercise and fast rather than just fast. When you train in a fasted state, glycogen breakdown is blunted28 and more fat is burned, leaving you more glycolytic energy in the tank for when you really need it and less body fat. Those are just a sampling of the benefits to fasted training; there are dozens more.

Mental Well-being and Clarity

A lot of health influencers will tell you that failure to eat something every few hours will cause mental fog and sluggishness, so keep a banana or a granola bar on your person at all times. Of course, this is all based on an assumption that we need to supply exogenous carbs on a regular basis to properly fuel the brain. This notion that fasting is only the province of anorexics or “caveman” has kept many people from experiencing the vast array of benefits.

I maintain that one’s comfort in handling intermittent fasting effortlessly does increase dramatically when you’ve reprogrammed those cells (and genes) to predispose your body to derive most of your day-to-day energy from fat, as opposed to constantly dipping into glycogen stores (as happens when we rely so much on refeeding carbs every few hours).

Overall, fasting just seems right. It’s like a reset button for your entire body, presumably across a large spectrum of maladies and dysfunctions. It puts your body into repair mode – at the cellular level – and it can restore normal hormonal function in the obese or overweight. Now, you don’t have to fast, but it’s definitely something to consider.

Have you tried intermittent fasting yet? Let me know how intermittent fasting has worked – or hasn’t – with your lifestyle in the comment section!

References http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=RHEB-1http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18948730http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21244426http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20921964http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20300080http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20880415http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20815899http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20456017http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18184721http://www.ajcn.org/content/86/1/7.fullhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19135806http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2815756/?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_SingleItemSupl.Pubmed_DiscoveryDbLinks&ordinalpos=1&tool=pubmedhttp://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/296/1/R29.fullhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12558961http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1471-4159.2003.01586.x/fullhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19320048http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21106691http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19945408http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20104028http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16973211http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17934054http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20534972http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21051570http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20720176http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20187284http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19085449http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19787180http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18...

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Keto Burrito Recipe

Everyone loves a good burrito. They’re hearty, filling, and you can stuff them with whatever you’re in the mood to eat. Wrap them up, and they make a convenient and flavorful meal on the go. Can you have burritos when you’re keto, though?

When you’re keeping your carbs low, good burritos can seem out of reach. Traditional flour tortillas send your carb counts through the roof, and inflammatory grains drain you of all of your energy. Other store-bought tortilla options are either just as carby, they have questionable ingredients, or they simply just don’t hold up.

We found a way. This keto burrito recipe has all of the flavor you’re looking for, without the carb-loaded carrying case. Instead, we use a thin, crepe-like egg pancake that compliments any burrito ingredient combination you can dream up.

Here’s how to make it.

Keto Burrito Recipe

Servings: 1-2

Time in the kitchen: 15 minutes

 

Ingredients

Primal Kitchen® Avocado Oil Spray
2 Tbsp. Primal Kitchen Avocado Oil, separated
6 eggs
¾ cup shredded cheese of choice
1 tsp. water
½ cup thinly sliced red bell pepper
½ cup thinly sliced yellow bell pepper
2/3 lb. thinly sliced flank steak
1 tbsp coconut aminos
squeeze of lime
½ tsp. chili powder
½ tsp. onion powder
½ tsp. cumin
¼ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. pepper
Additional toppings: sliced avocado, shredded lettuce, salsa

Directions

To make the wraps:

Spray your seasoned cast iron pan with the avocado oil spray. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and place the pan in the oven for 10-12 minutes. In a bowl, combine 2 eggs and ½ tsp. water with a pinch of salt and pepper and whisk together with a fork.

Once the pan is quite hot, place the hot pan on your stovetop and heat over medium-high heat. Swirl 1/2 tablespoon of avocado oil in it and then quickly add the egg mixture to the pan and spread it out if necessary with a rubber spatula. As the edges of the egg begin to set, tilt the pan slightly while pulling up the egg from the edges with a spatula. This will allow the raw egg in the middle to fill the spaces in the pan so it can set.

Allow the egg to cook until it is almost set, continuing to periodically run the spatula under the edges of the egg. Using your spatula and hand, carefully flip the omelette tortilla over and allow it to cook for another 15-30 seconds. Remove the omelette from the pan and repeat using another ½ tablespoon of oil, and the mixture of 2 eggs, ½ teaspoon of water and a sprinkle of salt and pepper.

Set the tortillas aside and wipe out any excess egg from the pan.

To make the cheesy eggs:

Whisk together the remaining 2 eggs and the shredded cheese along with a pinch of black pepper. Add ½ tablespoon of oil around the cast iron pan and swirl it around the pan. Quickly add the egg and cheese mixture to the pan and agitate it with a spatula. Continue to move the egg and cheese mixture around the pan as it cooks until a cheesy scramble forms. Remove from the pan and chop up into pieces.

To make the steak:

Remove any bits of egg from the pan and add the last ½ tablespoon of oil. Add the bell pepper and saute for 2-3 minutes, or until slightly softened. Toss the flank steak in the spices and add the slices to the pan. Use tongs to move the sliced steak around the pan to encourage browning. Add the coconut aminos and lime and continue cooking until the steak reaches your desired doneness.

Arrange the burritos by placing a few slices of steak and peppers in the center of the egg tortilla, and some of the cheesy eggs next to them. Top with additional toppings like shredded lettuce, sliced avocado and salsa. Carefully wrap up the 2 tortillas and slice them so you have 4 burrito portions.

Tips:

The “tortillas” for this burrito are a thin omelette that’s almost crepe-like. The key to the omelette not sticking is to use a very hot pan. We like to use a preheated seasoned cast iron pan for this. When you place the preheated pan over the flame on the stovetop, you swirl some oil around the pan and then quickly add your egg mixture. Adding the egg to the oil right away will help create a sort of non-stick seal so the egg tortilla stays together and in one piece.

The burritos are filled with a cheesy egg scramble and sautéed steak and peppers for a super filling and satisfying meal. Fill your burritos with your favorite toppings – we like lettuce, avocado and salsa. The egg tortillas are fairly delicate so be gentle while working with them.

Nutrition Information (per burrito half):

Calories: 408

Total Carbs: 6 grams

Net Carbs: 5 grams

Fat: 29 grams

Protein: 31 grams

The post Keto Burrito Recipe appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Weekly Link Love — Edition 85

Research of the Week

Listening to Mozart daily reduces seizure frequency.

A Mediterranean ketogenic diet makes changes to the cerebrospinal fluid profile indicative of a lower risk of cognitive decline.

A low-carb, high-fat diet works for people with type 2 diabetes. Again.

More omega-3s, more strength (in older adults).

Links between personality traits and where a person spends their time.

New Primal Blueprint Podcasts

Episode 428: Jerry Wolf: Host Elle Russ chats with Jerry Wolf, a personal trainer and body worker with over 15 years of experience

Primal Health Coach Radio: Taking Your Fitness Off the Ground with Jenea Sutton

Media, Schmedia

Woman dies after drinking 2 liters of soda and 1 liter of energy drinks each day for years, but somehow it’s the caffeine that’s the problem.

Interesting Blog Posts

The global slowdown hasn’t budged the rise of CO2 emissions, at least according to Mauna Loa data.

Respiratory infections are still a big mystery.

Social Notes

Underrated dip station: old walker from the thrift shop.

Paleo lawn mower.

Everything Else

Dairy adoption through Europe was mostly genetic. Central Asian dairy adoption was mostly cultural.

Sprinters’ stride length drops as they age.

If you have to get up in the middle of the night, a quick burst of exercise may improve your subsequent sleep.

I’d go here.

Things I’m Up to and Interested In

My kind of pesticide: Ducks.

Interesting paper: Sex differences in immune responses to COVID-19.

Video I liked: The Mozart piece used in the seizure study linked above.

Paper I’m still reading through: “Quantifying the contribution of Neanderthal introgression to the heritability of complex traits.”

I’m not surprised: Gouda good for coronavirus.

Question I’m Asking

What’s your favorite wilderness area?

Recipe Corner

Instant Pot zucchini bolognese.
This Thai steak salad takes me back to my last trip there.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Jun 7 – Jun 13)

Primal Grilling Guide – How to grill.
Why Does the Keto Reset Allow 50 Grams of Carbs? – Well, why does it?

Comment of the Week

“Mr. William Shakespeare wrote some great stuff during a pandemic, in his lifetime. There are opportunities here…”

– Nocona speaks truth.

The post Weekly Link Love — Edition 85 appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Ask a Health Coach: The Most Common Primal Blueprint Questions Answered

Hi folks, in this week’s edition of Ask a Health Coach, Erin dives into your Primal Blueprint questions, helping you wrangle your dark chocolate addictions, navigate self-sabotage, and find workouts that don’t feel like a chore. Keep your questions coming in the Mark’s Daily Apple Facebook Group or in the comments section below.

Cam asked:

“I’ve done really well with the Primal Blueprint so far. I don’t mind changing my eating, but I can’t stand exercise. I know I need to do it, but what can I do to make working out less of a chore?”

I hear you Cam. Most of my clients do great ditching grains, sugar, and industrial oils, but when it comes to working out, they have a harder time getting on board. What I’m hearing you say is that exercising feels like work. Let me ask you this though. Is it possible that there are certain types of exercises you could do that wouldn’t feel that way?

No one says you have to do push-ups, pull-ups, planks, and squats — even though they’re considered essential movements of the Primal Blueprint. If you don’t like doing them, there are about a million other forms of exercise you can do.

As I’m sure you know, one of the main PB pillars is play. By applying your fitness to real-life (and really fun) situations, you can help dissipate some of the negative effects of being chronically stressed out. Side note here, if traditional exercises make you feel stressed out, they kind of defeat the purpose.

So, what would be some activities you’d consider play? Maybe you like to go bike riding with your kids. Or playing ultimate frisbee. Or tennis. Or making obstacle courses in the backyard? These are all forms of exercise — and you could actually be getting a solid dose of sprinting and lifting heavy without even realizing it.

I’d also ask you to think about why exercising is important to you. Is it because it’s something you’re “supposed to do” per the PB playbook? Or is that you want to lower your risk of heart disease, drop weight, slow down muscle loss, or climb a flight of stairs without breathing hard?

Having a reason why can help you reframe your situation. Sure, exercise might not be your favorite activity, but achieving your goal might end up being the best feeling in the world.

Lisa asked:

“I like that the Primal Blueprint’s 80/20 rule accommodates my cravings for dark chocolate, but I can’t seem to stop at a square or two. What gives?”

There are lots of reasons your chocolate cravings feel out of control. I have a hunch about what it might be though. But let’s back up and have a quick talk about dark chocolate. While it certainly isn’t considered a health food, dark chocolate does have quite a few health benefits, including the ability to lower blood pressure, lower stress, and improve circulation.

Remember, with the Primal Blueprint, we’re aiming for a higher percentage of cacao. The sweet spot is 85% — that’s when the benefits really start to add up.

So, here are a few things to look at. Chocolate is a great source of magnesium, and if your cravings are really strong, your body could be asking for more of that mineral, which by the way, can also be found in leafy greens, nuts and seeds, and avocados. Chocolate is loaded with tryptophan as well, the precursor for serotonin, which is the feel-good neurotransmitter that regulates anxiety.

There’s also the possibility that you’re using chocolate as a reward. “I made it through the day without quitting my job/yelling at the kids/eating a box of donuts. I deserve this dark chocolate!” Sound familiar? It might sound really familiar if you habitually aren’t eating enough during the day.

The combo of being overly hungry, overly stressed out, and eating a trigger food like dark chocolate can become a customized recipe for relief that you don’t want to end after 2 squares.

I always tell my clients, if you can’t control yourself around a certain food (even a food with health benefits), it’s not the right food for you.

Josh asked:

“I’m on the road a lot. Even when I plan to follow the Primal Blueprint, I ended up eating things I shouldn’t or just overeating in general. I’m a good planner, but if I have a choice, I usually opt for the less healthy stuff.”

Josh, you’re not alone. I probably hear this once a week in my own health coaching practice. My clients tell me they’ve stocked up their kitchens, prepped healthy foods, and they’re 100% committed. But then, in the moment, something different happens. The opportunity to do something perceived as taboo, becomes more exciting than sticking to the plan.

Basically, you’re engaging in the act of self-sabotage.

When your logical, conscious mind has a goal (like eating the raw almonds you brought on the road with you) is at odds with your subconscious mind (the side of you that believes life won’t be the same if you don’t stop for a double cheeseburger), your subconscious or “inner critic” tries to protect you and keep you safe from potential failure by sabotaging your efforts.

Make sense?

In the moment, you have two choices. You can give in to your inner critic or decide that your goals are worth sticking to. Think about previous times when you’ve decided to stick to your plan. How does that feel? Pretty good, right? And in comparison, how does it feel when you let your self-sabotaging inner critic win? When you think about it, probably not that great.

Of course, it’s not always that simple. Usually, self-sabotage is an in-the-moment thing— meaning it’s not premeditated. It’s fueled by instant gratification. And if you’ve suddenly become dead-set on veering off into the drive-through, just thinking about making a different choice might not be enough to deter you. If that’s the case for you, what are other ways you can stop your inner critic from taking the wheel (no pun intended)?

Simple things like listening to an audio book or podcast can help change your thought pattern. Sure, these distractions help you focus on something other than food, but they’re also engaging you, providing a much-needed shift in your mind and your mood.

In an instant, you can go from obsessing over curly fries to feeling peaceful, calm, and content. Some of my other favorite ways to shift mindset include meditation and deep breathing exercises, but you have to find the method that works best for you.

The post Ask a Health Coach: The Most Common Primal Blueprint Questions Answered appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

The Definitive Guide to Protein

Protein is an incredible essential macronutrient. Fat is plentiful, even when you’re lean, and there are only two absolutely essential fatty acids; the rest we can manufacture from other precursors if required. Carbs we can produce from protein, if we really must, or we can just switch over to ketones and fats for the bulk of the energy that would otherwise come from carbs. Protein cannot be made with the raw material available in our bodies. We have to eat foods containing the range of amino acids that we need.

In other words, protein is incredibly important—which is why today I’m writing a definitive guide on the subject. After today’s post, you’ll have a good handle on the role protein plays in the body, how much protein you need to be eating, which foods are highest in protein, and much more.

First, what roles does protein play in our bodies?

It helps us build muscle.

We use it to construct new cells, muscles, organs, and other tissues.

It’s a chemical messenger, allowing us to turn on and turn off genes.

It forms the fundamental substrates used to manufacture enzymes, DNA, and hormones.

It can even be a fuel source, either directly or through conversion into glucose.

Now, am I saying that the steak you eat directly becomes a thyroid hormone? Does chicken breast turn into DNA?

No. But the strings of amino acids and peptides that make up proteins are eventually broken down and cobbled back together to fulfill all the roles I describe. Every bite of protein you consume contributes toward maintenance of your physiology. And we can’t make new protein. We have to eat it.

What’s the Recommended Daily Protein Intake?

If you go by the official numbers, the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDI) for protein is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight, or 0.36 g protein/lb. That’s what the “experts” say to eat. That’s all you “need.” I disagree, and I’ll tell you why down below, but there’s the official answer.

Sufficient is one thing. Optimal is another. In reality, the amount of protein required for optimal health and performance is different for every population.

Protein Intake for Athletes and Exercisers

Athletes need more protein than the average person, but perhaps not as much as most fitness enthusiasts think (or consume). A 2011 paper on optimal protein intakes for athletes concluded that 1.8 g protein/kg bodyweight (or 0.8 g protein/lb bodyweight) maximizes muscle protein synthesis (while higher amounts are good for dieting athletes interested in preserving lean mass), whereas another settled on “a diet with 12-15% of its energy as protein,” assuming “total energy intake is sufficient to cover the high expenditures caused by daily training” (which could be quite high).1 2 One study even found benefit in 2-3 g protein/kg bodyweight (0.9-1.4 g protein/lb bodyweight) for athletes, a significant increase over standard recommendations.3 That said, I wouldn’t be too quick to discount anecdotal evidence or “iron lore.” A significant-enough portion of the strength training community swears by 1-2 g protein/lb bodyweight that it couldn’t hurt to try if lower amounts aren’t working for you.

Protein Intake During Weight Loss

Weight loss involves a caloric deficit (whether arrived at spontaneously or consciously). Unfortunately, caloric deficits rarely discriminate between lean mass and body fat, while most people are interested in losing fat, not muscle/bone/tendon/sinew/organ. Numerous studies show that increasing your protein intake during weight loss will partially offset the lean mass loss that tends to occur. In obese and pre-obese women, a 750 calorie diet with 30% of calories from protein (about 56 grams) preserved more lean mass during weight loss than an 18% protein diet.4 Another study in women showed that a 1.6 g protein/kg bodyweight (or 0.7 g protein/lb bodyweight) diet led to more weight loss, more fat loss, and less lean mass loss than a 0.8 g protein/kg bodyweight diet.5 Among dieting athletes, 2.3 g protein/kg bodyweight (or a little over 1 g protein/lb bodyweight) was far superior to 1.0 g protein/kg bodyweight in preserving lean mass. And, although specific protein intake recommendations were not stated, a recent meta-analysis concluded that high-protein weight loss diets help preserve lean mass.6

Protein Intake When Injured

Healing wounds increases protein requirements. After all, you’re literally rebuilding lost or damaged tissue, the very definition of an anabolic state, and you need protein to build new tissue. One review recommends around 1.5 g protein/kg bodyweight or close to 0.7 g protein/lb bodyweight for injured patients.7 Children recovering from illness or injury may need up to 2.5 g protein/kg. If you mess this up and undershoot your protein intake during recovery, you will compromise your healing.

Protein Intake for Seniors

The protein metabolism of the average senior citizen is compromised. They need more protein to do the same amount of “work.” The protein RDA is simply not enough for seniors, who lose thigh muscle mass and exhibit lower urinary nitrogen excretion when given the standard 0.8 g protein/kg bodyweight.ref]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1... What’s good for the goose may not be good for the elderly, frail gander. More recent studies indicate that a baseline intake of 1.0-1.3 g protein/kg bodyweight or 0.5-0.6 g protein/lb bodyweight is more suitable for the healthy and frail elderly to ensure nitrogen balance.8 That said, active seniors will do better with even more and evidence suggests that increasing protein can both improve physical performance without necessarily increasing muscle mass and increase muscle mass when paired with extended resistance training in the elderly.91011

How Much Protein on Keto?

What about another population entirely: ketogenic dieters. We’ve got a lot of those around here, so this is important. If you’re on a keto diet, should you restrict protein? I mean, doesn’t extra protein just convert directly into glucose?

Our livers only convert protein into glucose when we—for whatever reason—need more glucose. It’s demand, not the supply. And since keto-adapted people are running mostly on fat and ketones, they have a lower requirement for glucose and are much less likely to trigger the kind of perceived glucose deficiency that necessitates gluconeogenesis.

Extra protein can however impair ketogenesis by contributing oxaloacetate donors to the Krebs cycle. With oxaloacetate, fatty acids enter the Krebs cycle and are fully oxidized and turned into ATP, the body’s energy currency. Without oxaloacetate, fatty acids can’t enter the Krebs cycle and are instead converted into ketones to generate energy.

If you’re dealing with cognitive decline, elevated inflammation, or any other condition that requires or may improve with deep ketosis, aim for a lower protein content (10-15% of calories). Get those high ketone levels, see how it feels, and see if that’s the protein intake for you. Start low, really revel in those high ketone readings, and stick with them if you’re improving.

If you’re losing weight (or trying to), eat closer to 15-30%. For you, the ketone readings aren’t the biggest focus. How you look, feel, and perform are your main concern. Eating slightly more protein will increase satiety, making “eating less” a spontaneous, inadvertent thing that just happens. It will also stave off at least some portion of the lean mass accretion that occurs during weight loss; you want to lose body fat, not muscle.

If you’re trying to gain large amounts of muscle, eat closer to 20-30%.

Understand, however, that everyone is unique. For some, protein is deeply anti-ketogenic—eating too much protein will knock you out of ketosis almost immediately. For others, protein has little to no effect. Or if it has a momentary nullifying effect, you can quickly slip back into ketosis. Unless deep ketosis is medically necessary, don’t worry about protein too much either way. There are studies of “modified ketogenic diets” where protein goes as high as 30% of calories and subjects still get the benefits.12

High Protein Benefits

Beyond supporting the basic underpinnings of human physiology, eating more protein than the RDI offers extra benefits.

Protein Satiety

As a fundamental biological motivator, hunger can’t be ignored forever. Eventually you crack, and the diet fails. Eventually, you’re going to eat. Where extra protein helps is adding satiety. Successful fat loss comes down to managing your hunger; protein helps you manage it without relying on sheer willpower.

Protein For Muscle Gain and Muscle Retention

To increase muscle protein synthesis, you need two primary inputs: resistance training and protein intake. You can lift all the weights in the world, but if you’re not eating enough protein, you won’t gain any muscle. You can’t make extra, it has to come from outside sources.

And then during active weight loss, upping your protein intake will minimize the loss of muscle that usually accompanies fat loss. In women, for example, cutting calories while keeping protein higher than normal led to better lean mass retention than cutting the same number of calories and keeping protein low.13 Simply put, more protein tends to enhance fat loss and preserve muscle.

Protein to Increase Energy Expenditure

Metabolizing protein is costlier than metabolizing fat and carbohydrates: it takes extra energy to process protein than it does to process the other macronutrients. This increases the amount of calories you expend, simply by eating more protein. Thus, higher protein diets increase energy expenditure relative to diets lower in protein.

Higher Micronutrient Intake

While we love our fat-soluble vitamins around here—your vitamin Ds, your vitamin K2s, your retinols, your vitamin Es—we musn’t forget about our B-vitamins and minerals. Those latter two groups come bound in the muscle meat. The more whole food-based protein we eat, the more micronutrients we’ll take in.

Protein Foods: Where to Get Your Protein

The best sources of protein for humans are animal foods. Meat, fish, fowl, shellfish, eggs, and dairy all contain the most bioavailable form of protein: animal protein. Makes sense when you consider that we are animals, and we use the protein we eat to build new animal tissues in our own animal bodies. Of course animal protein will be better and more efficient at doing protein-y things than plant protein.

Following resistance training, soy protein blunts testosterone production in men.14
In both the young and the elderly, whey promotes greater muscle protein synthesis than soy protein.15
Compared to milk, soy protein results in less hypertrophy following resistance training.16
Women who consume animal protein have greater muscle mass than female vegetarians.17

We can also confirm this by studying the Biological Value (BV) of a given protein source. The BV describes the proportion of protein in a food that becomes incorporated into the consuming organism’s tissues, with 100 being best.

Egg protein: 100 BV
Whey isolate: 100 BV
Milk protein: 91 BV
Beef: 80 BV
Casein: 77 BV

And then:

Soy protein: 74 BV
Wheat gluten: 64 BV
Pea protein: 65 BV

Another factor to consider is that animal protein is complete; it contains all essential amino acids—those amino acids which we cannot produce ourselves and must obtain from outside sources. Plant proteins tend to be incomplete. No individual plant protein is complete, except for perhaps potato protein (but the absolute levels of protein in a potato are too low). If you want to go all plant, you have to combine different ones to hit all the amino acids you need.

So in theory you could get your protein from an algorithmically-derived blend of gluten powder, pea protein, rice protein, and fermented free range soy. Or you could just eat 5 eggs for breakfast (30 grams), a Big Ass Salad with a can of oysters (11 grams), some cheese (8 grams), and a can of sardines (24 grams) on top for lunch, and a ribeye for dinner (40-80 grams, depending on size).

I know what I’d choose. I know what’s easier, what’s more delicious.

Collagen Protein

Collagen protein is the type of protein you get from connective tissue in meats. You can slow-cook tougher cuts of meat until they’re tender, or simmer a batch of bone broth to get your collagen.

Collagen is so important that I consider it the fourth macronutrient. It contains amino acids that aren’t as plentiful in muscle meats and other protein sources, so it helps your body complete the amino acid chains that would otherwise be limited. You get more benefit out of the other protein you eat by eating collagen-rich foods or supplementing with a hydrolyzed collagen protein supplement. You can read more about collagen here.

How about you, folks? How do you get your protein? How much do you eat per day?

References https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22150425https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1763249https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14971434https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17299116https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16046715https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23097268http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/711879_7https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16886097https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22889730[ref][ref]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22889730https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22889730https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22770932https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18175736https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17622289https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24015701https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20368372https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17413102https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19678968

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