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The Definitive Guide to Blood Sugar

What’s sweet, red, sticky, and deadly?

Blood sugar. (I’m sure there are other things that qualify, but most of them contain sugar of some sort so I’m sticking with it.)

Too little of it, and you go into hypoglycemic shock. That can kill you if left untreated.

Too much of it, and you waste away slowly. Chronic overexposure to sugar will degenerate your tissues and organs.

Yes, getting blood sugar right is extremely important. Vital, even.

Today, I’m going to explain how and why we measure blood sugar, what the numbers mean, why we need to control it, and how to maintain that control.

First, blood sugar is tightly controlled in the body. The average person has between 4-7 grams of sugar circulating throughout their body in a fasted state—that’s around a teaspoon’s worth. How does that work when the average person consumes dozens of teaspoons in a single day?

Again, it’s tightly controlled.

The majority of the sugar “in our system” is quickly whisked away for safekeeping, burning, or conversion. We store as much of it as glycogen in our liver and muscle as we can. We burn some for energy. And, if there’s any left over, we can convert it to fat in the liver.

But sometimes, sugar lingers. In diabetics, for example, blood sugar runs higher than normal. That’s actually how you identify and diagnose a person with diabetes: they have elevated blood sugar.

There are several ways to measure blood sugar.

The basic finger prick: Prick your finger, produce a few drops of blood, place blood on test insert, test blood sugar level. It’s the most common method.
Fasting blood sugar: Your blood sugar level when fasted. These tests are usually taken first thing in the morning, because that’s the only time most people haven’t eaten in the last few hours. “Normal” is under 100.
Postprandial blood sugar: Your blood sugar after eating. These tests measure your blood sugar response to food; they also measure your ability to dispose of blood glucose.
HbA1C: Average blood sugar over 2/3 months. HbA1c measures the degree of glycation of your red blood cells’ hemoglobin; this is an indirect measure of how much blood sugar your cells are exposed to over time, since a red blood cell that’s exposed to more sugar in the blood over its life cycle—2-3 months—will have more glycation. Thus, A1c seeks to establish the average level of blood sugar circulating through your body over the red blood cell’s life cycle, rather than track blood sugar numbers that rapidly fluctuate through the day, week, and month. It’s a measurement of chronic blood sugar levels, not acute.
The continuous glucose monitor: A wearable device that measures your blood sugar at regular intervals throughout the day and night. This is becoming more common. The beauty of the CGM is that you get a visual display of blood sugar’s rise and fall throughout the day in response to meals, workouts, fasts, stress, etc. Since elevated blood sugar does its damage over the long term, seeing the entire daily trend is more illuminating than taking single snapshots with a finger prick. It’s similar in power to HbA1c, only with greater accuracy.

What’s Normal?

According to the American Diabetes Association, any fasting blood sugar (FBG) under 100 mg/dl is completely normal. It’s safe. It’s fine. Don’t worry, just keep eating your regular diet, and did you get a chance to try the donuts in the waiting room? They only start to worry at 110-125 (pre-diabetic) and above 125 (diabetic).

This may be unwise. Healthy people subjected to continuous glucose monitoring have much lower average blood glucose—89 mg/dl. A 2008 study found that people with a FBG of 95-99—still “normal”—were 2.33 times more likely to develop diabetes in the future than people on the low-normal end of the scale.

As for postprandial blood glucose, the ADA likes anything under 140 mg/dl.

How about HbA1c? A “normal” HbA1c is anything under 5.7. And 6.0 is diabetic. That’s what the reference ranges, which mostly focuses on diabetes. What does the research say? In this study, under 5 was best for heart disease. In this study, anything over 4.6 was associated with an increased risk of heart disease.

That 5.7 HbA1c isn’t looking so great.

What’s “normal” also depends on your baseline state.

Healthy FBG depends on your BMI. At higher FBG levels, higher BMIs are protective. A recent study showed that optimal fasting blood glucose for mortality gradually increased with bodyweight. Low-normal BMIs had the lowest mortality at normal FBG (under 100), moderately overweight BMIs had the lowest mortality at somewhat impaired FBG (100-125), and the highest BMIs had the lowest mortality at diabetic FBG levels (over 125).

If you’re very low-carb, postprandial blood glucose will be elevated after a meal containing carbs. This is because very low-carb, high-fat diets produce physiological insulin resistance to preserve what little glucose you have for the tissues that depend on it, like certain parts of the brain. The more resistant you are to insulin, the higher your blood glucose response to dietary glucose.

HbA1c depends on a static red blood cell lifespan. A1c seeks to establish the average level of blood sugar circulating through your body over the red blood cell’s life cycle, rather than track blood sugar numbers that rapidly fluctuate through the day, week, and month. If we know how long a red blood cell lives, we have an accurate measurement of chronic blood sugar levels. The clinical consensus assumes the lifespan is three months. Is it?

Not always. The life cycle of an actual red blood cell differs between and even within individuals, and it’s enough to throw off the results by as much as 15 mg/dl.

Ironically, people with healthy blood sugar levels might have inflated HbA1c levels. One study found that folks with normal blood sugar had red blood cells that lived up to 146 days, and RBCs in folks with high blood sugar had life cycles as low as 81 days. For every 1% rise in blood sugar, red blood cell lifespan fell by 6.9 days. In those with better blood sugar control, RBCs lived longer and thus had more time to accumulate sugar and give a bad HbA1c reading. In people with poorer blood sugar control, red blood cells live shorter lives and have less time to accumulate sugar, potentially giving them “better” HbA1c numbers.

Anemia can inflate HbA1c. Anemia depresses the production of red blood cells. If you have fewer red blood cells in circulation, the ones you do have accumulate more sugar since there are fewer cells “competing” for it. Anemia isn’t anything to sniff at, but it does throw off HbA1c.

Hyperglycemia and Health

Okay, is hyperglycemia actually a problem? I’ve heard some suggest that hyperglycemia is a marker of poor metabolic health, but it’s not actually causing anything bad itself. I agree with the first part—hyperglycemia indicates poor metabolic health and is a risk factor for things like heart disease and early mortality—but not the last. Indeed, hyperglycemia is both an effect and direct cause of multiple health issues.

Most cell types, when faced with systemic hyperglycemia, have mechanisms in place to regulate the passage of glucose through their membranes. They can avoid hyperglycemic toxicity by keeping excess sugar out. Other cell types, namely pancreatic beta-cells, neurons, and the cells lining the blood and lymphatic vessels, do not have these mechanisms. In the presence of high blood sugar, they’re unable to keep excess sugar out. It’s to these three types of cells that hyperglycemia is especially dangerous.

Unfortunately, these are all pretty important cells.

What happens when too much glucose makes it into one of these cells?

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation is a normal byproduct of glucose metabolism by the cell’s mitochondria. If the stream of glucose into the cell is unregulated, bad things begin to happen: excessive ROS, a mediator of increased oxidative stress; depletion of glutathione, the prime antioxidant in our bodies; advanced glycation endproduct (AGE) formation; and activation of protein kinase C, a family of enzymes involved in many diabetes-related complications. It’s messy stuff.

How does this play out in the specific cell types that are susceptible, and what does it mean for you?

Pancreatic beta-cells: These cells are responsible for secreting insulin in response to blood glucose. They essentially are the first line of defense against hyperglycemia. If maintained for too long or too often, hyperglycemia inhibits the ability of pancreatic beta-cells to do their job. For instance, type 2 diabetics have reduced pancreatic beta-cell mass; smaller cells have lower functionality. Mitochondrial ROS (often caused by hyperglycemia) also reduce the insulin secreted by the cells, thereby reducing their ability to deal with the hyperglycemia and compounding the initial problem.

Neurons: The brain’s unique affinity for glucose makes its glucose receptor-laden neuronal cells susceptible to hyperglycemia. It simply soaks up glucose, and if there’s excessive amounts floating around, problems arise. Hyperglycemia is consistently linked to cognitive impairment, causes the shrinking of neurons and the inducement of spatial memory loss, and induces neuronal oxidative stress. It also impairs the production of nitric oxide, which is involved in the hippocampus’ regulation of food intake.

Endothelial cells: Flow mediated dilation (FMD) is the measure of a blood vessels’ ability to dilate in response to increased flow demands. Under normal conditions, the endothelial cells release nitric oxide, a vasodilator, in response to increased shear stress. Under hyperglycemic conditions, nitric oxide release is inhibited and FMD reduced. A decreased FMD means your endothelial function is compromised and strongly predicts cardiovascular events (PDF) and may cause atherosclerosis (PDF).

Electrolyte depletion: Persistent hyperglycemia can cause the body to shed glucose by urinating it out. In doing so, you also end up shedding electrolytes.

Okay, okay. Controlling your blood sugar is important. Avoiding hyperglycemia is one of the most important things you can do for your health and longevity. How do I do it?

How to Improve Blood Sugar

Go for a walk. A short walk after eating will reduce blood sugar. Fifteen minutes is probably enough (although more is always better).
Eat vinegar before. Eating vinegar before a meal that contains carbohydrates will improve the blood glucose response to that meal.
Exercise. Exercise depletes muscle glycogen, which opens up storage depots for incoming glucose. If glucose is converted to glycogen and deposited in your muscles, your blood glucose will normalize. Pretty much any kind of exercise works.


Sprint and/or intervals. A review looked at the blood glucose responses of diabetics (type 1 and type 2) to “brief high intensity exercise,” as which sprinting definitely qualifies, finding that although glucose was elevated immediately post workout, blood glucose control is improved for one to three days following a sprint session. Research finds that endurance training works, too, but sprinting may work faster and better.
Steady state endurance. Then again, steady state endurance training was just as effective as sprinting at reducing glucose variability and improving glucose spikes in overweight women. There was no difference between the two—both beat doing nothing.
Resistance training.
All of the above. As different types of training target different tissues, deplete glycogen at different rates, and induce different metabolic effects, doing sprints, weights, and low level aerobic activity is your best bet for improving glucose control.

When I take a bird’s eye view of all this, the best glucose-lowering exercise is the one you’ll do on a regular basis. It’s all good.

Avoid unnecessary carbohydrates. Carbs you earn through glycogen-depleting exercise will not contribute to hyperglycemia. Those are “necessary,” or at least “earned.” Carbs you didn’t earn will contribute to hyperglycemia. A surefire way to avoid hyperglycemia is to avoid the foods that induce it—carbs.
Eat more protein and fat, fewer carbs. This is a simple one for most of you guys, but many people never consider it. A basic swap of whole eggs (or egg whites) for carbs reduces not just postprandial glycemia but also endothelial dysfunction.
Get enough sleep. Sleep deprivation increases blood glucose variability and impairs regulation.
Eat fermented dairy. Kefir improves glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes. Yogurt does too. Cheese is also associated with better glucose control.
Use spices. Spices can have profound anti-hyperglycemic effects.

If you’re low-carb or keto and need to pass a glucose tolerance test, eat 150-250 grams of carbs per day in the week leading up to the test. This will give you a chance to shift back into sugar-burning mode.

Long Term Blood Glucose Control?

Consistency is everything. Consistently doing all the little tips and hacks we just went over that lower blood sugar in the moment will lead to long term blood sugar control. If you take vinegar before and walk after every single meal for the rest of your life, you will control postprandial blood sugar. If you avoid excess carbohydrates, you will exert long-term control over blood sugar levels. If you exercise 3-4 times a week and get plenty of low-level activity, you’ll be much less likely to have hyperglycemia.

Thus concludes the Definitive Guide to Blood Sugar. If you have any questions or comments, drop them in down below. Thanks for reading!

The post The Definitive Guide to Blood Sugar appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Dear Mark: Abandoning the Keto “Fad,” Ketone Study Calories, and Low-Lactose Fat

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering three questions from readers. First, does the renewed vigor assailing the keto diet have me worried about my business? Should I start going vegan to cover all my bases? Second, did the “ketones for overtraining” study from last week control for calories? And third, how can a person eat enough fat if they’re avoiding lactose?

Let’s go:

Interested to see if Mark’s focus on keto will continue now that the trend factor is wearing off. That VICE piece, flawed though it may be, is part of a much larger media pushback against keto. What are the business implications of aligning yourself with a so-called “fad diet”?

I’ve built a pretty good business by aligning myself and my writing and my products with “fad diets.”

I generally use several factors to determine where to align myself and target my work:

Personal experimentation. What am I trying? What kind of diet, exercise, and lifestyle modifications am I experimenting with? The quality of my work suffers if I’m not fully engaged on a personal level. I’m not a technical writer. I need to live my subject matter for it to come alive on the page.
Personal needs. What works for me? What gets me going? What am I interested in, drawn toward on an intuitive level? What am I missing? Even my best products were designed with my own selfish desires in mind. I made Adaptogenic Calm because I needed a way to recover from excessive endurance training, and it turned out that tons of other athletes needed it, too. I made Primal Mayo because I was sick of whipping up a batch of homemade mayo every time I wanted tuna salad without all the soybean oil. I went keto because the research fascinated me. It turns out that the things I vibe with tend to resonate with others, too. Humans are often quite similar to each other. Not all of them, but there are enough that are.
Your needs. What does my audience want? What do they need? What kinds of questions are they asking me? What feedback am I getting from them? How are they responding to what I’m putting out?
New information. I’m always ready to pivot when new information is made available or when new research arises. Sometimes a reader will point something out and it will change the trajectory of my thinking and writing. I try not to wed myself to my ideas, to the things I want to be true, even though that’s a human foible that’s unavoidable. I always try to approach a subject in as intellectually honest a manner as I can. To me, new developments, even if they appear to contradict a stance I hold, breathe new life into my work. For example, I’m definitely biased toward lower-carb approaches for most people. They just clearly work better for the bulk of the people who encounter my work and who struggle with their health and weight in modern industrialized countries. Most people don’t perform enough physical activity to warrant perpetual “high-carb” diets, and most people find weight loss is easier and hunger lower on lower-carb, higher protein/fat diets. But at the same time, there’s room for higher-carb intakes, or even moderate-carb intakes. And can people eat high-carb and be healthy? Have populations lived well on high-carb diets? Absolutely.

Keto still satisfies these factors. Now, I’m always looking toward the horizon; I think my ancestors were probably explorers of some sort. It’s in my blood. So I probably will write about something else—next week, next month, and years from now. But my overall “thrust” will still be low-carb/Primal/keto because, well, the stuff just works.

What I wonder after reading this is: Would there have been a significant inter-group difference had calories been controlled for? Ketone esters obviously have some caloric value that the control group did not receive. How much of the benefit is merely having a better caloric intake to support this intense training protocol?

Good question—this is in regards to the study discussed last week. They actually did control for calories. The experimental group got the ketone ester drink. The control group got an isocaloric medium-chain triglyceride-based drink. Both groups consumed the same amount of calories.

Having tracked through to Michael Eades’ blog on cholesterol—how do you increase fat when you are lactose intolerant? A problem for myself and my adult children. I hadn’t realized that high fat was the actual content rather than the percentage!

Oh, man, there are so many ways to increase fat while lactose intolerant.

My favorite way is to focus on whole food sources of fat, rather than isolated fat sources:

Fatty animal foods: a ribeye, a beef shank, some ground beef. A lamb shank, some lamb chops. Bacon, eggs, sausage.
Fatty plants: olives, coconut, nuts (favoring higher MUFA nuts like macadamias), dark chocolate. Salads, which aren’t “fatty” without the dressing and meat but I’m counting as “whole foods” because that’s the effect of eating them.
Whole avocados: great source of potassium, fiber (if you want that), and polyphenols.

Foods like my Primal Mayo or avocado oil dressings, while technically “isolated” or “refined,” allow and promote the consumption of nutrient-dense whole foods like tuna (tuna salad), eggs (deviled eggs, egg salad), cruciferous veggies (slaws), and steaks (try searing a steak covered in mayo). And even our mayo isn’t nutritionally bereft—it contains choline, folate, and all the other good stuff found in eggs. And our dressings are full of spices and herbs that confer health effects through their phytonutrients.

Also, don’t think you have to focus on “increasing fat.” That’s the mindset that leads to things like chugging olive oil and eating a bowlful of sour cream. High level athletes who need calories at any cost can get away with and even benefit from that, but for most people it makes more sense to focus on reducing excess carbohydrates and eating whole-food sources of fat as they appear naturally.

Also, the lactose intolerant can still have dairy. Try hard cheeses, Greek yogurt, and yogurt and kefir that’s clearly marked “low” or “no lactose.” Butter is fine in all but the most severe cases, and cream is not far off from butter. Ghee is another good cooking fat that should be near zero in lactose.

Anyone else have good “lactose-free” fat sources? Anyone else worried about “keto as a fad”?

Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care!

The post Dear Mark: Abandoning the Keto “Fad,” Ketone Study Calories, and Low-Lactose Fat appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Keto Pills: Why I’m Highly Skeptical

There are a dizzying number of keto pills on the market now. They promise easy weight loss, increased energy, and the benefits of ketosis without the pesky following-a-strict-diet part.

As savvy MDA readers, you know that optimal health never comes in a bottle. You also know that I’m a proponent of wise supplementation to support a Primal diet and lifestyle when appropriate. I’ve said before that I think exogenous ketones can be useful in specific circumstances, though they’re never necessary for success.

The question at hand is whether keto pills are likely to offer any benefit or if they’re a waste of money. I focused on pills that seem to be popular on Google searches and Amazon—ones with names like Ultra Fast Keto Boost, Super Fast Keto Boost, Keto Burn Xtreme, Instant Keto, and Keto Slim Rx. (My Amazon search history is shot now. This is the sacrifice I make for my readers.)

First Impressions: Are Keto Pills a Scam?

My first impressions weren’t positive—let’s just say that. 

These products are being sold as diet or weight management pills. Their descriptions strongly imply, or sometimes state outright, that the pills will help you lose weight and “enjoy a slim and fit physique.” Most of the claims center on the general promise that being in ketosis causes you to burn fat and, by extension, lose weight (it doesn’t necessarily), and that their products will help keep you in ketosis (a claim I’ll investigate below).

The biggest red flag was when I noticed how many Amazon customers were trying to find the keto pill featured on the TV show Shark Tank. This was news to me, so I did some digging. Apparently there was a popular scam a while back wherein sellers claimed that their keto pills appeared on Shark Tank, and the sharks went wild for them. You didn’t miss anything. This never happened.

Only one product that I looked at—Keto Burn Xtreme sold by Advanced Life Science—still had that on their Amazon page as of December, 2019. It seems like some of the other products might have been falsely advertising this in the past based on older reviews and questions, though.

So it wasn’t looking good off the bat, but I’m an open-minded guy. Bad marketing doesn’t necessarily mean an ineffective product. Sure, the Amazon reviews for these pills are pretty negative overall, but maybe people just aren’t giving them a fair chance? Some folks like them, after all. Let’s try to be objective here.

Do These Keto Pills Contain Ketone Bodies?

Assuming you can trust the labels: Yes. 

Exogenous ketones come in two forms: ketone salts and ketone esters. Ketone salts in commercial products are the ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) bound to a salt. Ketone esters are ketone bodies bound to alcohol.

All the keto pills contain ketone salts because they are easier and less expensive to manufacture than esters. On the label they’ll list BHB bound to minerals, such as “calcium beta-hydroxybutyrate” and “magnesium beta-hydroxybutyrate.”

Do the Pills Contain Enough BHB to Be Effective?

Short answer: No, not likely. 

A keto pill might “work” because it successfully raises blood ketone levels or because it brings about a desired outcome such as weight loss or improved athletic performance. In any case, keto pills are unlikely to hit the mark, but I’ll get to that.

Both ketone salts and esters raise blood ketone levels, but esters are considerably more effective. In laboratory studies, even large doses of ketone salts usually yield blood ketone levels to between 0.5 and 1.0 mmol/L. That’s enough to qualify as being in ketosis, but it’s not a knock-your-socks-off result by any means. It’s what you’d expected from following a standard keto diet. Still, plenty of people notice that they have more energy and decreased appetite in this range.

It’s probably not enough to profoundly affect certain health markers or athletic performance. For example, a panel of respected exogenous ketone researchers agreed that blood ketone concentrations in excess of 2.0 mmol/L are needed to boost athletic performance. Ketone esters can get you there, which is why most studies demonstrating the efficacy of exogenous ketones use esters. Studies using ketone salts yield decidedly more mixed results.

How Much BHB Salt Is Needed to Be Effective?

There is no agreed upon minimally effective dose for BHB salt. However, let’s use some laboratory studies as a reference point:

In this paper, Study 1, participants received about 24 grams of BHB, and their average blood ketone levels peaked at 1.0 mmol/L.
In this study, researchers gave participants 11.7 grams of BHB prior to exercise and then a second dose 45 minutes later during exercise. Blood ketones averaged 0.6 ± 0.3 mmol/L.
These researchers gave participants two doses of 18.5 grams BHB, which they noted was 60% more than the standard dose recommended by the manufacturer, prior to exercise. Blood ketones measured 0.33 ± 0.16 mmol/L prior to exercise and 0.44 ± 0.15 mmol/L at the end of exercise about an hour later.
Finally, these participants ingested 0.3g/kg of BHB, which would be about 24 grams for a 175-pound individual. Blood ketone levels peaked below 1.0 mmol/L.

How Do Keto Pills Measure Up?

Answer: Badly

Of the keto pills I looked at, the highest dose of BHB I saw per serving was 1000 mg, or 1 gram, in Ultra Fast Keto Boost Pro.

It turns out that many of the products contain the same BHB product, goBHB®. For example, Ultra Fast Keto Boost, Insta Keto, Keto Burn Xtreme, and Keto Slim Rx* sold on Amazon by nutra4health LLC are all the same goBHB blend at different price points ($19.95 – $39.95 for 30 servings). Super Fast Keto Boost and Ultra Fast Keto Boost—same thing. Per serving, goBHB contains 800 mg of BHB.

(*This is not to be confused with the other Keto Slim Rx product on Amazon that doesn’t disclose its ingredients but does promise you can “achieve your dream body” and “skyrocket your ketosis!!”)

Many pills contain even less than that. Pure Keto Boost and Instant Pure Keto list 800 mg of another blend that includes BHB salts plus other ingredients, so less total BHB. Others I checked out contained 700 mg or less.

I’m extremely dubious that 800 or even 1000 mg would meaningfully boost blood ketone levels. This is a mere fraction of the dose used in research. If the researchers could give 1 gram of BHB instead of 12 grams or more and still get a measurable effect, they would. Plus, reputable brands of exogenous ketones such as Perfect Keto and KetoCaNa offer 11.4 and 11.7 grams of BHB per serving, respectively.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that none of the Amazon reviews I read for any of these products mentioned that the reviewer had tested their blood ketones and saw a rise after taking the pills. (And I read a lot of reviews. Too many.)

Can Ketone Pills Make You Lose Weight?

Answer: No.

These pills claim that they’ll put you in ketosis, which will melt away body fat. Unfortunately, being in ketosis does not guarantee that you’ll burn body fat. You lose weight on a keto diet they same way you do on any other diet: by expending more energy than you ingest.

That said, it’s fair to say that ketosis is an advantaged state for weight loss. Ketones both suppress appetite and increase energy, meaning it’s easier to eat less and move more when in ketosis. Ketones are also anti-inflammatory and they improve blood glucose regulation. These both contribute to having a healthier metabolism so you trend toward your ideal body weight with less resistance.

If these pills actually support ketosis, which I doubt, their main benefit would probably be appetite suppression, not increased fat burning per se, as they imply. Anyway, the sellers frequently state that these should be used in conjunction with a low-carb or keto lifestyle to be beneficial. Thus, even if someone loses weight while taking them, it would be impossible to attribute it to the pills directly.

The Verdict

It’s obvious what I think: Save your money.

If you want to be in ketosis, drop your carbs, play around with intermittent fasting, or just go do a hard workout and wait to eat until W.H.E.N. (when hunger ensues naturally).

 

Related Posts from MDA

Exogenous Ketones Explained: Who Should and Shouldn’t Take Them
How to Lose Weight with the Keto Diet

The post Keto Pills: Why I’m Highly Skeptical appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

2-Ingredient Keto Snack: Chocolate Bacon

Few words exist that can elicit an immediate mouth-watering response like these: dark chocolate and bacon. As simple as cooking can get (if that’s what we’re calling baking bacon, and melting chocolate), if you’re Primal, keto, or Primal-keto, you likely have these two ingredients on hand in your kitchen most of the time. Very dark chocolate (90%) has a bitterness akin to coffee that enhances all of the flavors paired with it, and the slightly sweet, salty, smoky flavor combination of the chocolate bacon tantalizes the tongue even more than our Dark Chocolate Macadamia Bark with Sea Salt. You can guild the lily by adding toasted unsweetened coconut or finely chopped nuts to the chocolate before it sets, but we prefer this as a twosome.

Servings: 10

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

10 oz. thick cut Applewood bacon (10 slices)
3 oz. 90% dark chocolate, chopped

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Lay the bacon in a single layer on a parchment-covered sheet pan.

Bake until the bacon reaches the desired crispiness, then lay the bacon pieces on a paper towel to cool and soak up excess fat.

While the bacon is cooling, melt the chocolate over a double boiler: Heat a few inches of water in a small pot over medium or medium-low heat.

Once water begins to simmer, place a heat safe bowl over the top of the pot. Add the chopped chocolate and use a spatula to stir until it begins to melt. Stir until melted.

Pick up a slice of bacon and use a spoon to drizzle and spread out some of the chocolate over half of the slice of bacon.

Set the bacon on a parchment-covered plate or platter. Repeat with the remaining pieces of bacon. Once the chocolate has set, arrange the bacon on a platter or in a jar or container.

Nutrition Information per serving (1 piece of chocolate bacon):

Calories: 121

Total Carbs: 3 grams

Net Carbs: 2 grams

Fat: 12 grams

Protein: 3 grams

The post 2-Ingredient Keto Snack: Chocolate Bacon appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Weekly Link Love – Edition 63

Research of the Week

Evidence of cooked starchy rhizomes from 170,000 years ago.

Prenatal exposure to phthalates linked to lower muscle mass at 6 years of age in girls (but not boys).

More liver and pancreatic fat, more diabetes.

Damaged mitochondria promote autoimmune disease.

New Primal Blueprint Podcasts

Episode 397: Darryl Edwards: Host Elle Russ chats with the one and only Darryl Edwards, creator of the Primal Play Method of fitness.

Episode 398: Cool Dudes Talk Carnivore and More: Brad Kearns, Brian McAndrew, and William Shewfelt hang out and talk about carnivore and much much more.

Primal Health Coach Radio, Episode 42: Laura and Erin chat with Deepak Saini, a recovering accountant turned health coach for whom making calls and networking does not come naturally.

Each week, select Mark’s Daily Apple blog posts are prepared as Primal Blueprint Podcasts. Need to catch up on reading, but don’t have the time? Prefer to listen to articles while on the go? Check out the new blog post podcasts below, and subscribe to the Primal Blueprint Podcast here so you never miss an episode.

Media, Schmedia

C’mon, people. The experts have spoken. Isn’t it about time you stopped with the keto nonsense?

George Monbiot claims that lab-grown food is going to destroy farms and save the planet.

Interesting Blog Posts

Another reason not to toss your apple cores out the window.

Can visualizing death help us accept it?

Social Notes

Ted Naiman drops incredible knowledge in about a minute.

Tips for your Whole30.

Curious how Primal Health Coaches are doing? I’ve got a couple of success story videos, here and here.

Everything Else

Drug prices on the rise.

Soil, not soy.

All this, and it’s not even really milk.

Why training to burn calories usually doesn’t burn as much fat as you’d think.

Things I’m Up to and Interested In

Case study I hope to see replicated: Man uses paleolithic keto diet to beat glioblastoma (for 38 months and counting).

Story that sounds like science fiction but is real: When a DNA test says you’re no longer you.

Unexpected results that I’m not so sure are definitive: Researchers find no link between sleep duration and cognitive function or brain structure.

Happens in people, too: Feeding fish saturated fat preserves long chain omega-3 content of the fish meat; feeding them linoleic acid reduces it.

Cardio is good when it isn’t chronic: When regular people trained for a marathon—running 6-13 miles per week—their hearts saw lasting benefits.

Question I’m Asking

How much sleep do you need? What happens when you don’t get it?

Recipe Corner

Sonoran hot dogs, without the gluten.
Stuffing them makes chicken breasts more appetizing.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Jan 4 – Jan 10)

Are All Calories the Same? – Well, are they?
20 Keto Snacks (All Under 5 Minutes)– Quick and easy.

Comment of the Week

“‘Future predictions’ is redundant, no?”

– I have the best readers. Yeah, you got me, Margaret.

The post Weekly Link Love – Edition 63 appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

5 Easy Promises to Make and Keep This Year

This is the time of year where we audit what we can change, improve, and do away with in our lives.

What goals can we crush this year?

If there was a phrase that could be done away with it, this would be it for me: “CRUSH YOUR GOALS.” It sounds exhausting, and a little angry.

Here, instead, are a few nice promises that you can make for yourself. These five promises are all about loving kindness—the gentleness you need to thrive and survive in a world gone mad with goal-crushing.

5 Promises to Keep:

Enable Your Environment
Trust the Progression of Progress
Offer Yourself Kindness
Have the Full Experience
Ask for Help

1. Enable Your Environment

We are what we surround ourselves with, and if you’re trying to make any improvement in your life, you’ll be more successful if your environment is set up to support you.

Trying to stick to a budget, diet, or fitness routine? Keep near you things that support those endeavors, and ruthlessly purge anything that gets in the way.

Let’s say you’re trying to curtail your alcohol consumption this year. Simply not bringing adult beverages into the home is the obvious first step to setting up your environment for success.

But go deeper than that. Rearrange your cupboards so the wine glasses or highball glasses are hidden away. Acknowledge what other rituals go alongside your cocktail routine. For example, is it how you wind down in front of the TV each night? If so, consider treating yourself to a great book, a true crime podcast series, or an indulgent epsom salt bath, so you have something to do besides TV, the activity in which your alcohol habit is tethered.

If your friends, loved ones, or life partners seem to influence whether or not you have a drink, speak up: Let it be known that you are changing your habits, and that a friendly internet stranger told you that setting up your environment is the first step. If they love you, they’ll be on board and won’t pressure you. If they do pressure you… it might be time to have a meaningful conversation about how you need your loved one to show up for you with support and love.

This is why many diet programs—including Mark’s 21-Day Primal Reset—begin with the Pantry Purge as step one. The willpower required to stick to a lifestyle change works better in the context of an environment that’s set up to remove the struggles and barriers. It’s a nice thing to do for yourself when you’re trying to change, grow, and improve.

2. Trust the Progression of Progress

You will not knock your goals out of the park on the first try. I repeat: YOU WILL NOT.

Simply acknowledging this already takes the pressure off.

In the world of coaching, we use a body of knowledge called the Transtheoretical Model, or the Stages of Change (which is much easier to remember, and to spell). Developed by behavioral psychologists, the Transtheoretical Model factors in six different stages of change:

Pre-Contemplation: You don’t even know you want or need to change. Given that you’re here, reading Mark’s Daily Apple, that’s probably not you.
Contemplation: You have begun to think about changing, though you haven’t yet taken action. This might ring familiar to you if you have a list of New Year’s Resolutions staring you in the face that you’ve not yet embarked on. There’s no shame in that—you should be proud of yourself for even contemplating change. Many never do.
Preparation: You’re ready to take action! You begin to make small steps toward your end goal. This is a big deal, and should be an exciting and celebratory time.

Think of a staircase with your ultimate goal at the top, and every necessary micro-step in between, leading you deliberately up to your final destination. At this stage, you’ve begun to take those tentative first steps.

This is the stage where folks tend to feel as though they’re falling off the wagon; failing at achieving their goals, just because their forward momentum up the staircase has slowed, stopped, or temporarily regressed backward. You aren’t failing. It’s impossible to leap from the bottom step to the top one in a single bound. You may take a step back down on the staircase, but the steps are small, so no harm is done. And that next upward step is always within your reach.

In the interest of closing the loop, the final three stages of the Transtheoretical Model include: Action (you’ve officially changed a behavior and are confident and comfortable moving forward with it); Maintenance (the change no longer feels like a “change;” it has integrated into your life!); and, Termination (you’ve effectively exited the change interstate, and are now a different person).

It’s the earliest first few steps of change where we’re hardest on ourselves, though. Understand that steps backward are allowed, and be kind to yourself when they inevitably occur.

Speaking of which…

3. Offer Yourself Kindness

This is why I don’t like language around sacrifice or deprivation when one is embarking on a change, and it’s why the phrase “crush your goals” feels like nails down a chalkboard for me. This hard language forgets one important thing: Your inner and outer worlds are unpredictable, and if you hang your hat on drive and discipline, what happens when you’re inevitably thrown a curve ball that you can’t program your way out of?

Often I’ll work with people who identify, proudly, as: “being very black and white.”

“I need to be absolutely ON, otherwise I’m OFF,” they’ll say.

While I admire the boldness of this statement, it simply can’t and won’t work for most people, for a lifetime.

Life is not black and white. And the sooner you can get comfortable hanging out in the grey between Winning and Losing, the more at peace you’ll be as you navigate the inevitable ups and downs of personal growth. Heck, of life.

So be kind to yourself. Feel proud when goals are “crushed,” absolutely. And when they aren’t? That’s okay too. Sit with it; observe it, journal it, declare out loud why you experienced your struggle or slip up. Recognize it. Give it a face, a name. Take the power back. And then dust off and move on.

I want you to achieve your goals. And I want the entire process of that journey to feel good in your heart and mind, even the screw-ups.

When you can flip the switch from driven discipline to loving kindness, the process of navigating change feels friendlier.

4. Have The Full Experience

This is one of those ideas that I thought I had invented… and then I heard Mark describe it perfectly on a podcast.

His example was cheesecake, a dessert he loves… and one that is not particularly Primal!

When he orders the cheesecake, the very act of that decision comes from a place of excitement and happiness. He wants the cheesecake, and doesn’t hesitate to order it. The entire experience of ordering the cheesecake is considered: how exciting it is to see it on the menu, to make the decision to order it, ask the waiter to bring it, patiently await its arrival while chatting and laughing with loved ones at an amazing restaurant.

When the cheesecake arrives, how does it look? How does it smell? How does your body respond when it’s put down in front of you: Joy, delight? Anxiety, disappointment? There is never a wrong answer, only a necessary observation.

Take the first bite. On a scale of 1-10, it’s a 10. Second bite: about an eight. Third bite: solid five. Fourth bite… four…

And so on and so forth, stopping when the awesomeness of the cheesecake experience has been fully enjoyed, and before you’re just still eating it for the sake of eating it. Once the joy has faded, it’s time to put the fork down, and bask in the memories of those first few epic bites.

With my clients, I take it further. What happens after the cheesecake? How does your body feel: Tired? Foggy? Do you have a stomach ache? Or do you feel fine?

And then we keep going: the “after” after. The next day, has the cheesecake awakened the sugar monkey that lives on your back? Are your sugar and refined carb cravings awake and alive? How do you feel having indulged your cheesecake craving: satisfied and happy? Or have you descended into guilt and shame? Were you able to return to your regularly scheduled programming with no hiccups?

Was it, ultimately, worth it?

This is an incredible teaching moment.

You may know this as “mindfulness.” I wanted to give it a more descriptive title since I think the concept of mindfulness has been too vague for too long, and though folks think they know they “need to be more mindful,” not too many can put their arms around what it really means.

So have the full experience any time you make a choice that supports your goals—or doesn’t. If it was worth it, hooray! If it wasn’t, what can you learn from it?

5. Ask For Help

This is a hard one for anyone who prides themselves as being proud, stoic, or strong. Whether we don’t want to bother people with our struggles and strife, or we don’t feel comfortable declaring our goals and challenges out loud, one of the best promises you can keep to yourself is to ask unapologetically for help when you need it.

I can tell you from experience that big change and growth only happens when you stretch yourself out of your comfort zone. So get comfortable with discomfort, and don’t be shy to seek a mentor who specializes in what you want help with. Finances? Hire a money coach. Health? Hire a health coach. Love? Get thee a relationship coach. Confidence? Yes, there are even confidence coaches out there.

If you knew that there was a trusted expert out there who could help solve your specific problem, imagine how liberating and transformational it would be to form a partnership with that coach. I promise you, it’s a life-changer.

Let’s make this the year we kindly and lovingly make and keep promises to ourselves.

I’m Erin, the coaching director for Mark’s Primal Health Coach Institute. And if this little missive can help you start this year off feeling extremely pumped up, optimistic, happy, and empowered about the exciting opportunity for change ahead of you, then I’ve done my job.

If you need any help along the way, we have thousands of Primal Health Coaches with vast specialities who are trained to help you mentor you toward your health and happiness goals for 2020 and beyond.

Erin Power is the coaching and curriculum director for Primal Health Coach Institute. She also helps her clients regain a loving and trusting relationship with their bodies—while restoring their metabolic health, so they can lose fat and gain energy—via her own private health coaching practice, eat.simple.

The post 5 Easy Promises to Make and Keep This Year appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Video Roundup: The Moves, Routines and Know-How You Need For Ultimate Primal Fitness

When you ask most people what it takes to be fit, you get some pretty wild answers. Hours on the treadmill or pounding pavement every day. Hours in the weight room. Obsessing over how to turn every moment of the day into an opportunity for some kind of workout move.

I never liked what I heard, and after many decades of overtraining, I decided it was time to come up with a sane alternative—Primal Blueprint Fitness as I’ve called it over the years. It boils down to three logical steps all rooted in ancestral patterns people lived for hundreds of thousands of years:

Primal Blueprint Law #3: Move Frequently
Primal Blueprint Law #4: Lift Heavy Things
Primal Blueprint Law #5: Sprint Once in a While

All told, it’s a handful of hours a week, most of it moving frequently. In addition to those 4-5 hours a week of walking or other light movement, throw in an hour’s worth of strength training and 15 minutes of sprint time. There you go. Do that, and you’ll be in darn good shape.

I’ve written over the years about ideas for moving frequently—walking, hiking, and various ways to keep your walking routines interesting. But it’s not just about walking. Moving frequently can mean a lot of things after all.

Today I’m sharing a whole host of video how-tos and routines that touch on all of those three Primal Fitness Laws—but especially #4 and #5. Sit back, watch the ones that speak to you, and see how they’ll shake up how you’re working out….

First off, let’s review the Primal Essential Movements:

The 4 Primal Essential Movements
Pull-Up

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Push-Up

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Squat
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Plank

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For those who have these moves down and want to step up the effort, variations are one tool.

Advanced Variations On Basic Moves
One-Leg Push-Ups

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Dead Stop Push-Ups

Now let’s move on to resistance training workouts.

Lifting Heavy Things
My Favorite Way To Lift Heavy Things

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Deadlift

That brings us to Primal Law #5: Sprint Once In a While….

Sprinting How-Tos
My Sprinting Workout

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Running Form Primer

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Now that you’ve got the basics, let’s move on to quick workouts you can do anywhere.

Quick Workouts
Microworkouts

On the Road Warrior Workout

More About My Personal Routine
How My Routine Has Changed

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My Take On “Ab” Workouts

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How I Rest: Matters for Ancestral Fitness

My Favorite Way To Play… After All These Years

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Thanks for stopping in, everybody. Have thoughts or questions about any of the above moves or routines—or anything fitness related? Shoot me a line below. Have a great week.

The post Video Roundup: The Moves, Routines and Know-How You Need For Ultimate Primal Fitness appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Dear Mark: Ketones for Overtraining?

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering a question about taking ketones for overtraining from a reader.

Hi Mark,

I just saw this article the other day and I’m wondering what you think of it. Should high-carb athletes (or regular carb athletes) be taking ketone supplements? Is there any reason why they shouldn’t? It’d be awesome to get the “best of both worlds,” but is it safe?

Thanks,

Bill

I saw that one too. Very interesting. Here’s the full study they reference.

Okay, so what’s this all about?

Most ketone ester studies have looked at the benefits to performance. An athlete takes ketones prior to training, then they measure the effect it has on subsequent performance. It’s useful in that situation, improving performance by a few percentage points. I’ve noticed the same thing. Whenever I use ketones—which is rarely—I’ve usually taken them before an Ultimate Frisbee session.

Other studies have looked at post-training ketone supplementation, but only acutely. They’d have trainees work out or compete and then take ketones, with the effects including increased protein synthesis and glycogen repletion. Good to know, but what about long-term post-training supplementation? Would those acute effects translate to long-term effects?

This recent study aimed to find out. Instead of having the athletes take the ketones before or during training, or after but only in the short-term, they had them take them post-training consistently over a period of several weeks to see if they’d aid in recovery. They did.

All the athletes in the study trained twice a day. In the morning, they did either HIIT—high intensity interval training, 30 second all out cycle sprints with 4.5 minutes rest—or IMT—intermittent endurance training, 5 × 6 min with 8 min recovery or 5 × 8 min with 6 min recovery. Evenings, they did steady state endurance training. This was a heavy schedule designed to promote overtraining. There was a lot to recover from.

Both groups showed evidence of overtraining:

Lower adrenaline at night. Increased adrenaline at night is a hallmark of overtraining and can make it really hard to get a good night’s sleep.
Blunted decrease in resting heart rate. Acutely, stress increases heart rate. But over the course of several weeks of overtraining, an athlete’s resting heart rate will drop. Taking ketones led to a lower reduction in resting heart rate, indicative of lower stress.
Improved bone mineral density. Ketone-takers had slightly higher bone mineral density than the control group, in whom bone mineral density decreased. This is a marker of positive response to training. In overtraining, bone mineral density tends to drop.
Increased tolerance of training. Those who took ketone esters had a higher subjective tolerance for training on subsequent days, indicative of improved recovery.

The group who drank ketones had better numbers, though.

And when they tested both groups with a two-hour endurance session at the end of each week, the ketone-takers had better performance: more power output during the last 30 minutes.

In the past, I’ve expressed skepticism over high-carb eaters adding exogenous ketones to their diets. It just seemed physiologically “wrong” and unnatural to mix ketones and high-carb intakes, since the normal prerequisite for ketosis was a low-carbohydrate intake.

But this study, and some other research I’ve since explored, makes me wonder if adding ketones to a high-carb training schedule might make physiological sense. There are instances where exercise alone is sufficient to get someone into ketosis. For instance, in multistage ultra-marathoners—men and women running 240 km/150 miles over five days, no amount of dietary carbohydrate was able to keep them out of ketosis. They ate over 300 grams a day and they were still deep into ketosis. They even tried eating over 600 grams a day, and they still couldn’t keep themselves out of ketosis. That tells me that ketone production during protracted training is a feature, not a flaw, of human physiology. The two can naturally co-exist even in the presence of carbs.

The key is “glycogen stripping.” As far back as the 1980s, researchers knew that depleting glycogen stores was a prerequisite for ketosis. Now, back then, most researchers saw ketosis as a negative side effect of glycogen depletion, as something to be avoided and mitigated with “proper” carbohydrate intake. They were unaware of the potential benefits ketone bodies can deliver to athletes.

Ketones are anti-inflammatory. I even know a few high-level athletes who are experimenting with extended fasting during de-load periods to reduce the effects of overtraining and speed up healthy recovery. I make the distinction between healthy and unhealthy recovery. Healthy recovery is true recovery; it speeds up the process without inhibiting healing or training adaptations. Unhealthy recovery can get you back out there quicker but you might miss out on some of the benefits of training. One example of this is using ice baths to recover from intense performances. Doing so will blunt pain and help you get training/competing, but it may inhibit some of the benefits of training, like hypertrophy. Useful when you have to get back out there (it’s the playoffs). Not so useful if you’re trying to adapt to the training (it’s the off-season).

Ketones are protein-sparing. When ketones are present in the body, you are less likely to break down muscle tissue and organs for amino acids to convert into glucose. This makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? As an alternative source of fuel for the vast majority of your body’s tissues, ketones reduce the amount of protein you need to break down to provide glucose.

Thus, contrary to my earlier assessment, what was unnatural about the study wasn’t the combination of ketones and carbohydrates. That can clearly occur in natural settings where glycogen is depleted and elevated levels of physical activity are maintained. The unnatural aspect of this study was the insane level of training these subjects were doing.

Humans are built for high volumes of low-intensity work and movement—walking, hiking, gathering, low-level labor.

Humans are built for low volumes of high-intensity work and movement—fighting, killing and field dressing large mammals, carrying heavy objects.

Humans are not built for high volumes of high-intensity work and movement—”two a days,” sprinting in the morning and going for long bike rides in the afternoon. We can do it, but there are consequences.

So what the ketone esters are doing is restoring the natural balance. They are physiological tricks to restore order in a highly-stressed body asked to perform supranatural feats of endurance.

If you try them out for this reason, I have a few suggestions:

Don’t use ketones as a way to get back out there and keep overtraining. Instead, use them to enhance the training effect—to improve your recovery, to make your time off more meaningful and effective.
Consider simply going keto. Adding ketones to a bad diet might be better than nothing at all, but the real benefits come when you commit to going keto, build up those fat-burning mitochondria, and become truly fat-adapted.

Taking ketones after a training session clearly works. But you can get there just as easily, with likely downstream benefits, by going low-carb. I’m reminded of the study from a few years ago where athletes “slept low“: after similarly grueling training, they’d eat a low-carb meal (rather than refuel their glycogen) and go to sleep.

They rapidly reached the very-low carb/ketogenic state for a good portion of the day by depleting glycogen and failing to replace it, from the afternoon snack to the post-workout breakfast. They weren’t just “high-carb.” They were smart carb, filling the glycogen, depleting it, and forcing their bodies to run on fat for a while.

To me, that’s a better (cheaper, too—ketone esters are expensive!) way to get similar results.

But whatever route you take, it’s a good way to spend time in the ketogenic state. The presence of ketones, especially paired with training, is a good thing for anyone.

What’s your experience taking ketones? How do you incorporate ketogenic states into your training schedule?

Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care!

The post Dear Mark: Ketones for Overtraining? appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Keto Sugar Cookies

On occasion, a reliable and tasty basic cookie recipe that’s remade to be keto-friendly can be useful when you need to bake something for the kids’ class but don’t want to pump the already energetic kids full of refined sugar, when you’re having guests over that might expect or appreciate dessert, or when you want a nostalgic rainy- or snowy-day activity that perfumes the kitchen with melted butter and toasted sugar. Let the kids help by imprinting the dough with their favorite cookie cutters, icing with melted coconut butter, and decorating the cookies with dark chocolate chips or trimmed pieces of fresh or dried fruit. If you aren’t able to use the sweeteners suggested in this recipe, you can swap in coconut or cane sugar (the carbs will change if you do so, of course).

Servings: 8

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Chill Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

3 Tbsp. Salted butter, softened
3 Tbsp. Granulated Monkfruit Sweetener or Granulated Swerve
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup finely ground almond flour
1 Tbsp. coconut flour
1 egg white
Melted coconut butter, optional, for icing

Instructions:

Cream the butter, sweetener, and vanilla extract together in a bowl. Mix in the almond flour and coconut flour. Crack the egg white into the bowl and mix until a dough forms.

Let the dough rest for 1-2 minutes, then form it into a ball and wrap the ball in plastic wrap. Refrigerate the dough for at least one hour.

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

Roll the dough out between two pieces of parchment paper until the dough is a little thicker than 1/8”. Remove the top piece of parchment paper and put the bottom piece with the dough on a baking sheet.

Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes and carefully peel away excess dough. Roll out the remaining dough and repeat until all of the dough is cut into shapes. The dough should make 8 good-sized cookies.

Bake the cookies at 325 degrees for about 7 minutes, or until the undersides and edges of the cookies begin to brown. Allow the cookies to fully cool before removing them from the pan.

Is using icing: Melt the coconut butter by pouring warm water from a recently boiled kettle into a bowl (fill about halfway up the sides of the bowl). Place the coconut butter jar in the warm water. The water should go about halfway up the outside of the jar. Allow the jar to sit in the warm water for a bit, then stir the coconut butter until it becomes runny and spreadable.

Ice the cookies with coconut butter, if desired, and top with any other little toppings you’d like.

Makes 8 cookies.

Nutrition Information per serving (per cookie, without coconut butter):

Calories: 157

Total Carbs: 3 grams

Net Carbs: 2 grams

Fat: 12 grams

Protein: 4 grams

The post Keto Sugar Cookies appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Weekly Link Love — Edition 62

Research of the Week

Under severe calorie restriction, exercise reduces muscle loss by inhibiting autophagy.

Alcohol abstinence is a good idea for people with atrial fibrillation.

Common pyrethroid pesticides, including anti-tick chemicals, linked to heart disease.

The fungus linked to dandruff is also linked to pancreatic cancer.

Mindfulness doesn’t seem to increase mental health when you control for personality.

New Primal Blueprint Podcasts

Episode 396: Mark Sisson’s Keto for Life: Brad Kearns and I chat about the release of the new book, plus how Keto for Life almost didn’t happen because I wasn’t walking the talk. Writing the book forced me to pivot and recalibrate my own life.

Primal Health Coach Radio, Episode 41: Laura and Erin chat with Chris Prior about his process of content creation.

Each week, select Mark’s Daily Apple blog posts are prepared as Primal Blueprint Podcasts. Need to catch up on reading, but don’t have the time? Prefer to listen to articles while on the go? Check out the new blog post podcasts below, and subscribe to the Primal Blueprint Podcast here so you never miss an episode.

Media, Schmedia

In a world with endless food availability, some people need artificial borders.

Interesting Blog Posts

Future predictions.

Mel Joulwan’s favorite books of the 2010s.

Social Notes

Happy New Year (and new decade).

Ancient wisdom.

Everything Else

One binge-drinking episode may make all the difference.

What stops ranchers from trying rotational grazing?

Seabirds who use tools.

Things I’m Up to and Interested In

New way to think about fatty acids: Peter delivers.

Drink I’m not sure I’d try: Ant schnapps.

Interesting result: Active anti-depressants cause more drop-outs than placebo anti-depressants.

Unrelated to ancestral health in any way, but interesting read: Prison in Japan.

This seems like an easy win: Classroom air filters to remove air pollution and increase achievement.

Question I’m Asking

What are you going to do differently this year?

Recipe Corner

Asian steak salad.
Sometimes you just want a latke.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Dec 28–Jan 3)

How to Restart Keto – How to do it.
Dear Mark: How do the Hadza Eat so Much Honey? and Happy New Year! – On the Hadza’s love and tolerance of honey.

Comment of the Week

“This space, this year, seems to be gathering in anticipation of something big. Personally I feel the shallow, lifeless chaff of the previous decade fluttering away in preparation to better absorb what’s next. People seem to be coming to their senses about the superfluous nature of easily acquired stuff. Thanks for being the vanguard.”

– Well-said, Jim.

The post Weekly Link Love — Edition 62 appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.