Exuberant Animal

Remember last year I interviewed Frank Forencich?

Here he expands on his philosophy - primal, practical and playful.

How do we cope with living in what is an alien environment, where we don't move enough, where our food is wrong and where we no longer have a tribe.



From the Exuberant Animal blog

Paleo diet and milk

An interesting study here for you to peruse - the full pdf is available currently.

It is not so much the study itself, more the idea that some of are - by nature / genetics - able to digest milk and some aren't. Dairy is a bit controversial on a paleo diet - see Kurt Harris or Mark Sisson

A worldwide correlation of lactase persistence phenotype and genotypes

Great Video of Art DeVany

Jeff Erno pointed to this as did Richard

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

Interesting finally to see Art with his shirt off.

The full story is here.

Tactical Edge Basic Takedowns

A couple of days ago I reviewed one of the Tactical Edge DVDs - Countering the 5 most common street attacks

Here is a new video of Mark going through the basic takedowns:



Demonstrated at Combat Ready

Basic Takedowns filmed at our 'Tactical Edge Core Combatives' workshop for 'Combat Ready' in Edinburgh. In this clip we're working on three basic takedowns as a 'Dry Fire Drill', so we're doing them without supporting strikes, & we're not working against an attack; we're using our training partner as a 'crash test dummy' to perfect the technique.

Sugar and cancer

I've had lots of stuff here before about sugary diets and cancer - for example this here.

I usually post the simple science, the idea being that starving cancers of sugar can kill them. Other cells can be fuelled in other means but tumours need sugar, so if you cut off the supply then they struggle to grow:

unlike healthy cells, which generate energy by metabolizing sugar in their mitochondria, cancer cells appeared to fuel themselves exclusively through glycolysis, a less-efficient means of creating energy through the fermentation of sugar in the cytoplasm. The theory is simple: If most aggressive cancers rely on the fermentation of sugar for growing and dividing, then take away the sugar and they should stop spreading. Meanwhile, normal body and brain cells should be able to handle the sugar starvation; they can switch to generating energy from fatty molecules called ketone bodies — the body's main source of energy on a fat-rich diet — an ability that some or most fast-growing and invasive cancers seem to lack.

Asclepius posted this morning about a new bit of research doing the rounds:

Soft drink consumption may increase risk of pancreatic cancer

Consuming two or more soft drinks per week increased the risk of developing pancreatic cancer by nearly twofold compared to individuals who did not consume soft drinks, according to a report in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Although relatively rare, pancreatic cancer remains one of the most deadly, and only 5 percent of people who are diagnosed are alive five years later.

Mark Pereira, Ph.D., senior author on the study and associate professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota, said people who consume soft drinks on a regular basis, defined as primarily carbonated sugar-sweetened beverages, tend to have a poor behavioral profile overall.

However, the effect of these drinks on pancreatic cancer may be unique.

"The high levels of sugar in soft drinks may be increasing the level of insulin in the body, which we think contributes to pancreatic cancer cell growth," said Pereira.

That is pretty scary - 2 or more a week.....

The trials of the mainstream

I keep an eye out on the internet for mentions of the paleo diet. There has been a flurry of interest recently - as I mentioned here - but I do not think some of the coverage is doing the concept any favours.

Focussing on raw meat (?!) is sensationalist and doesn't address the science, but hey it will sell papers.

To them it is just another fad diet.

I hate it when things I like become popular. It is like when you have a favourite band that you follow for a couple of years. Then they get a hit and everyone becomes a fan. Then the magic goes.

Paleo poster

Brent from Healthcare Epistemocrat / Ancestral Fitness recently presented a poster at UCLA. You can read about it here.

Anyway you can now download a pdf of the poster here. It is worth taking a look at.