Paleo Diet Cures Diabetes....

I just came across this fascinating blog

It is from Michelle:

On May 16, 2008 I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 20. I had all the classic symptoms of thirst and weight loss, tested positive for all the autoantibodies and had an AlC of 14%.

On January 8, 2009 I eliminated grain, dairy, and legumes from my diet and the results have been remarkable. Only after a few weeks my insulin needs dropped dramatically and after six months on the diet I quit taking insulin altogether.

Fascinating stuff - effectively she claims to have cured her Type 1 diabetes by eliminating grains, dairy and beans.....

Some interesting drills

A vacation body?

Rusty has put together a free little report on Building "a vacation body". It is free and has some good ideas on training and intermittent fasting.

You can get it here.

Run to the hills

Just back from a few days up north. Weather was rotten but it was great being in the big hills again.

Tactile Sensitivity

Tonight at Krav we did a lot of this sort of drill, moving from Exuberant Animal Style heckling onto stick work. Great fun in the rain led by Rannoch


The video by the way is from Ritchie at Streetfight Secrets.

What a surprise

You might have seen the adverts....this stops you from absorbing fat and so you are supposed to lose weight:

Fat is high in calories but if it isn't absorbed, it can't contribute to weight gain. The unabsorbed fat passes naturally out of your body in your stools.

Note you will also avoid all the vitamins that are in the fat.

Barry Groves has discussed this stuff before:

If you want to lose weight using alli, you still have to eat a low-fat diet and exercise, which is probably what you are already doing and, if you're doing that, you don't need alli. If you don't also cut your fat intake, you'll spend a lot of time sitting either on the toilet or in very messy, fatty pants. The fat that alli has stopped your body absorbing has to go somewhere; it leaks out of your nether end!

There are lots of nasty side effects (see this woman's experience) but here is a big one:

The US Food and Drug Administration has received more than 30 reports linking the drug to serious liver injury.

Forget the fat phobia - fat is good for you.

25 Reasons Fasting Can Improve Your Health and Well-Being

We haven't mentioned Intermittent Fasting for a while. (I still recommend Eat Stop Eat if you want to find out more)

Here is a new post on The Health Hut :

25 Reasons Fasting Can Improve Your Health and Well-Being

We might not agree with all of the stuff there, but there is some interesting research

No Time?

This is lazy as a blog post, but I was looking back through some of Bryce Lane's articles and there is some treasure there.

This article needs some exposure:

Fast Iron

Everyone I know complains about time, its “The great American excuse”. “I’d love to lift but I can’t miss the bowflex informercial”, I really expect to hear this someday.

Anyway here are some workouts that give you some mighty big bang for the buck in fifteen minutes or less, two or three times a week. The tricks are:

1.) Not to think in reps and sets but in time sections
2.) Think of one exercise or compound for the shoulder/arm area, lower back and upper legs if you have something that effectively covers more than one, then great!
3.) Pay attention to loading, make your exercises progress from light to heavy or heavy to light with no reverses so you don’t waste any more time changing plates than need be.
4.) Use the same equipment for everything, That way you you can stay in the same spot and not kill time cleaning up more than you have to.

Let take a first example:

2 Db Clean and press-As many as you can do in 3 min
Rest 1 min, add more weight to one DB
1 Db swings-As many as you can do in 3 min switching hands every 5 reps
Rest 1 min, add more weight to the other DB
2 Db toe squats- As many as you can do in 3 min

Try and use a weight where there aren’t many gaps in the 3 min. Work towards a certain number like 12-20 and then increase the weight.

Or with a barbell:
Floor press—As many as you can do in three min
Rest 2 min and add plates
Bent rows—Same
Rest 2 min and add plates
Deadlifts—Same


With one dumbbell:
DB swings or windmills--Same
Rest 1 min.
DB side presses switching sides every two reps—As many as you can do in 3 min.
Rest 1 min.
DB overhead squats –Same switching hands every five reps

For anyone interested in O-lifts:

Pwr Snatch— work up to near max single in 5 lifts, in 4 min.
Rest 2 min add more weight.
Pwr Clean and push press-- work up to near max single in 5 lifts, in 4 min.
Rest 2 min add more weight.
1 Clean then Front squats—As many as you can in 3 min. with best clean weight.

I’m sure you get the idea.

If you don’t have fifteen minutes sometime in your day, then you really need to re-examine your lifestyle. Its easy also to set up a simple home gym with a homemade 6’ exercise bar and plywood platform sheet or a pair of dumbbells on a rubber mat somewhere in a corner of your house, yard or garage. These kind of workouts are effective and won’t cut into your Sci-Fi channel time much at all.

Bryce Lane, Visalia Ca. 2003

Of course a HIT session can be just as fast.....


Also check out:

Hi-NrG! - I used to variations on this quite often and it is a killer.


Have it all! - the Famous 20 minute thing - For twenty minutes you do as many reps as you can of your chosen compound exercise, squats, deadlifts, power cleans or snatches, clean & presses etc. You do this twice a week. You use the same weight throught the twenty minutes. About 75-80% of your gym-maximun in good clean form is fine to start. Begin with something you can easily do and add as you can.

Do sets of twos, threes or even fives or tens, your choice, mix it up if you need to. Do a set and when you are able to focus again, then do another. When you can get the right number of reps in that twenty minutes then up the weight 5-10% next time and work up again. I like 10% jumps since I tend to do better with a bigger drop in volume and more of a challenge with the weight. However if you like the more gradual approach then by all means, use it.

I try to shoot for fifty in that twenty minutes since that number both keeps up my heart rate and breathing and makes it possible for me to use heavy weight in the 75-85% range. However the number you choose could just as well be anywhere between 20 (anything less than this isn't really doing much) and 100 reps (higher than this and the weight may be too small). If you can do 100 reps with 1.5 x bodyweight in 20 min. in the squat then you are one very conditioned individual with plenty of useful strength as well. That’s something to shoot for; or 50 reps 2 x bodyweight in 20 min. in the squat or 50 reps x bodyweight in the barbell clean and press are other worthy goals. I'm sure you can see the idea.

and

Mobility, Stability and Capacity

The Martial Art

Bryce Lane is a great thinker in this field of training and conditioning. it is worth reading though his many articles.

Carrying on from the previous post, his article on The Martial Art is an interesting read:

When you are taking this look consider simple things, like "could I really throw a roundhouse kick anywhere in this place"; "will going to the ground only expose me to every pointy or steel toed boot in the room, while making extricating myself from this mess impossible"; "Is it more likely any of the stuff around me can trip me or my opponent better than either of us could trip or throw each other in the dojo? What you will start to see is that no matter what your skills, half or more of them are useless or a detriment already. You will see that your environment can do-you-in likely far quicker than your opponent. Throw a crowd in an area that is already an obstacle course who become "hostile obstacles" if excited and now you likely just can't
imagine what to do. Cops hate this sort of situation, but police have something of a solution. They can order up more police, which is a luxury you likely don't have.

When martial arts schools start training in areas set up more like restaurants, crowded parties with furniture and sporting events, then the art is alot more complete. This is a whole lot more than just "keeping up your SA" (situational awareness). It is learning to use a situation to your advantage with what you have and wherever you happen to be, in fast and fluent detail. If that isn't "art" in every sense of the word, then what is?

Understanding the enviroment and how to use to your advantage what it contains is at least as useful a tool as decent oil paint, a fine leica camera or a good right hook. Without developing the understanding of where you are and what to do with where you are, no art of any kind is possible.

Avoiding Trouble

A few weeks ago I was talking to someone after Krav Maga class and we were discussing the need to lose the ego. Doing self defence training makes some lads think that they can take on the world when the sensible thing to do most of the time is simply avoid the trouble. Don't go to places where it might kick off. If you are in a bar and something feels wrong, just leave. I think that is something you learn as you get older.

Often drink exaggerates the problem. With a couple of pints you might feel like Bruce Lee but in reality you will be more like Bruce Forsyth.

Not wanting to sound like Kenny Rogers but usually it is the sensible thing to avoid trouble

Doug McGuff's recent post got me thinking about this again.

He works as a doctor in what we in the UK would call Casualty / or the Accident and Emergency part of a hospital and was commenting on dangerous activities that kill people. His Dirty Dozen included:

5. If you are walking down a sidewalk and are approaching a group of loud and apparently intoxicated males, cross to the other side of the street immediately. If anyone tries to start a fight with you, the first step should be “choke them with heel dust”.

The other ones are good to reflect on too, e.g.

1. Drive the biggest vehicle you can afford to drive. Your greatest risk of death comes from a motor vehicle accident. Despite all the data from the government on crash test safety, I can say unequivocally that in a 2-car accident, the person in the larger car always fairs better.

11. If you are in any personal or professional relationship that exhausts you or otherwise causes your recurrent distress, then end the relationship immediately.

Vibrams joke

Davie posted this on Facebook

One for the HIT boys

from Pure HIT

A strong guy.....

Hat Tip to the Bar barians

Meat, eggs, or dairy products as risk factors for breast cancer

Well despite what you may have read:

Conclusions: We have NOT consistently identified intakes of meat, eggs, or dairy products as risk factors for breast cancer.

Eat a carb free diet and you make your own glucose...

Gluconeogenesis - is a metabolic pathway that results in the generation of glucose from non-carbohydrate carbon substrates such as lactate, glycerol, and glucogenic amino acids.

So if you don't eat carbs, you body can still make the sugar you need to survive....

This study looked at why a high protein low carb diet incereases your resting metabolic rate....and explains much of the increase as accounted for by gluconeogenesis.

Draw some conclusions.......

Gluconeogenesis and energy expenditure after a high-protein, carbohydrate-free diet

Background: High-protein diets have been shown to increase energy expenditure (EE).

Objective: The objective was to study whether a high-protein, carbohydrate-free diet (H diet) increases gluconeogenesis and whether this can explain the increase in EE.

Design: Ten healthy men with a mean (±SEM) body mass index (in kg/m2) of 23.0 ± 0.8 and age of 23 ± 1 y received an isoenergetic H diet (H condition; 30%, 0%, and 70% of energy from protein, carbohydrate, and fat, respectively) or a normal-protein diet (N condition; 12%, 55%, and 33% of energy from protein, carbohydrate, and fat, respectively) for 1.5 d according to a randomized crossover design, and EE was measured in a respiration chamber. Endogenous glucose production (EGP) and fractional gluconeogenesis were measured via infusion of [6,6-2H2]glucose and ingestion of 2H2O; absolute gluconeogenesis was calculated by multiplying fractional gluconeogenesis by EGP. Body glycogen stores were lowered at the start of the intervention with an exhaustive glycogen-lowering exercise test.

Results: EGP was lower in the H condition than in the N condition (181 ± 9 compared with 226 ± 9 g/d; P < 0.001), whereas fractional gluconeogenesis was higher (0.95 ± 0.04 compared with 0.64 ± 0.03; P < 0.001) and absolute gluconeogenesis tended to be higher (171 ± 10 compared with 145 ± 10 g/d; P = 0.06) in the H condition than in the N condition. EE (resting metabolic rate) was greater in the H condition than in the N condition (8.46 ± 0.23 compared with 8.12 ± 0.31 MJ/d; P < 0.05). The increase in EE was a function of the increase in gluconeogenesis (EE = 0.007 x gluconeogenesis – 0.038; r = 0.70, R2 = 0.49, P < 0.05). The contribution of gluconeogenesis to EE was 42%; the energy cost of gluconeogenesis was 33% (95% CI: 16%, 50%).

Conclusions: Forty-two percent of the increase in energy expenditure after the H diet was explained by the increase in gluconeogenesis. The cost of gluconeogenesis was 33% of the energy content of the produced glucose.

Old and in hospital.....it is better to be fat!

Carrying on the theme thinking about age, this has just been published which I thought was interesting.

For old people in hospital, it is actually better for them to be fatter.

Fat mass protects hospitalized elderly persons against morbidity and mortality

Background: It is well established that the combination of protein-energy malnutrition and low body mass index (BMI) increases the risk of death in elderly patients, but recent studies indicate that the risk of death may decrease with higher body weight. However, these studies did not perform direct, separate, and reliable measurements of fat and lean mass by using a reference technique.

Objective: Our objective was to evaluate the relation between body composition, based on the 4-compartment model, and morbidity and mortality in hospitalized elderly patients.

Design: This prospective study enrolled 125 elderly patients evaluated at admission for body composition on the basis of BMI plus fat mass, lean mass, appendicular skeletal muscle mass, and body cell mass indexes (calculated as the ratio of the mass to the square of the height) measured by X-ray absorptiometry and bioelectrical impedance analysis. Outcomes were assessed 6 mo later by using a score system that takes into account complications (pressure ulcers and/or infections) and 6-mo mortality.

Results: The fat mass index correlated positively (r = 0.19 and P = 0.023 adjusted for sex; r = 0.18 and P = 0.043 adjusted for sex, albuminemia, and C-reactive protein) with outcome score (1: death, 2: complications, 3: no complications). There was no significant correlation between outcome score and BMI, lean mass, appendicular skeletal muscle mass, and body cell mass indexes.

Conclusions: This study clearly indicates that the generally accepted rule that overweight is associated with morbidity and mortality does not apply to hospitalized elderly patients, for whom fat mass is associated with a decreased risk of adverse events.

unbelieveable

Make sure you check out the video that Asclepius pointed to here.

The move at 35 seconds is unbelieveable.

A test

Krav Maga tonight had a fitness test: pushups to failure then squats to failure. I made 44 pushups and 105 squats. Thought I did OK - my form was good and I could have done more squats.

To me a pushup is chest to floor (or close to it / elbows at 90 degrees) and full extension of the arms at the top. Squats are as below.

Ageing....

I spent some time with my Dad this last weekend and it really got me thinking about the whole process of getting old.

My Dad is 75, probably not that old in the scheme of things but I really noticed over the last few days, probably for the first time that he has become an old man.

How much of ageing is just inevitable? What can you do to prevent some of the major problems associated with getting older?

Looking at my Dad I noticed a few things:

• A loss of muscle - I remember him as a big man, with a huge barrel chest and some lean mass around his upper body. Somehow in recent months that has gone. The muscle is disappearing.
• Posture - he is bending over. The tonic muscles are getting tighter and he is bending at the hips and neck...stooping.
• Confidence - he is starting to be less confident in his own abilities, physically and mentally.
• Balance - he looks unsteady.

I think training could remedy much - posture, muscle mass, balance. In Body by Science, McGuff and Little talk about a study done into resistance training for the elderly and how it can actually reverse ageing in human skeletal muscle.

Resistance Exercise Reverses Aging in Human Skeletal Muscle

Human aging is associated with skeletal muscle atrophy and functional impairment (sarcopenia). Multiple lines of evidence suggest that mitochondrial dysfunction is a major contributor to sarcopenia. We evaluated whether healthy aging was associated with a transcriptional profile reflecting mitochondrial impairment and whether resistance exercise could reverse this signature to that approximating a younger physiological age. Skeletal muscle biopsies from healthy older (N = 25) and younger (N = 26) adult men and women were compared using gene expression profiling, and a subset of these were related to measurements of muscle strength. 14 of the older adults had muscle samples taken before and after a six-month resistance exercise-training program. Before exercise training, older adults were 59% weaker than younger, but after six months of training in older adults, strength improved significantly (P<0.001) such that they were only 38% lower than young adults. As a consequence of age, we found 596 genes differentially expressed using a false discovery rate cut-off of 5%. Prior to the exercise training, the transcriptome profile showed a dramatic enrichment of genes associated with mitochondrial function with age. However, following exercise training the transcriptional signature of aging was markedly reversed back to that of younger levels for most genes that were affected by both age and exercise. We conclude that healthy older adults show evidence of mitochondrial impairment and muscle weakness, but that this can be partially reversed at the phenotypic level, and substantially reversed at the transcriptome level, following six months of resistance exercise training.







I wish my Dad would train. However while I think training could do something, maybe we are also fooling ourselves. We are going to get older and we will deteriorate.

The other thing that seeing him made me think about was the shortness of life. No matter what you do for your health - exercise, diet, whatever - you will die. This will end.

There is a passage in the Bible (Ecclesiastes 7:2) that says:

[It is] better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that [is] the end of all men; and the living will lay [it] to his heart.

Going to a funeral is better than going to a party because it makes you appreciate that all men will die. It makes you take to heart your own mortality and the fact that you will not be here forever.

What do you do with that? Appreciate what you have now. Reflect on eternity.

Monte on over-use injuries, muscle imbalances, or alignment.

Here is another guest post from Monte Hueftle (you may remember my interview with Monte recently). Monte talks again about stress and tension causing physical pain.

This update is geared towards runners or active people who are battling what they think are over-use injuries, muscle imbalances, or having a body that is out of alignment.

I can confidently state to you that in most cases (90%+) your injury is being caused by inner stress and tension and it is not a physical problem. Let me qualify that statement. I am speaking about chronic pain or a chronic injury pattern. Meaning you have had your injury on and off for 2 months or longer. Or you have a chronic injury like sciatica for three months and then it goes away but now you are battling pain in your hip or back or butt. You win these injury battles but there is always a new one challenging you. You have tried numerous treatments and medical specialist but no one knows exactly what is wrong or how to fix it. If they do, what they are prescribing is not working. Does this sound familiar? These are very common experiences of people living with tension-induced pain.

I get a ton of questions about how do you know the difference from pain symptoms that are caused by inner tension and ones caused by physical deficiencies. Here are some guidelines.

1. Does rest, ice, self-massage and anti-inflammatory products provide relief and continued progress? If the answer is yes then this is a good indication it is physical—Diligently stick with what you are doing.
2. Have you tried many different treatments (doctors, chiropractic, massage, injections, physical therapy, new shoes, medications, etc) with mixed results and the bottom-line outcome being you are still in pain or fighting a new injury pattern? This is a good indication your pain is likely caused by inner stress/tension.
3. Does your pain or injury act exactly like you think or believe an injury should act like if it was caused by a physical problem? If so, I want you to understand that tension or stressed induced pain will have you swearing up and down that it has to be a physical cause because of the way it feels and how you became injured. Most likely you first noticed the pain/injury while in your activity or following a workout. This can be more perfect reasoning for you that it has to be a physical cause, right? No, this is also quite common in tension-induced pain. Realize that pain symptoms will in many cases locate in a part of your body that is dominantly being used in an activity. Tennis = shoulder or elbow; rowing = shoulder or back; running = knee, hip, piriformis, sciatica and back; typing = hand/wrist; sitting = piriformis, sciatica, hip; bending over and lifting = back.

One of the big huge points that I want to emphasize to you is that pain/injury caused by inner stress/tension is very real pain. Yes, the cause has psychological components, but in no way, shape or form is anyone suggesting that it is not real or in your head. This is one of the reasons that I never refer to this chronic pain disorder as a psychosomatic disorder. There are too many misconceptions and negative connotations associated around that word and it causes people to avoid the subject all together.

Simply put, tension or inner stress induced pain is caused by behavior patterns (usually type “a” such as: striving, people pleasing, controlling, perfection, worry and being self-conscious) and the thoughts that you think when you are in these behavior modes. Not everyone who is a type “a” person generates chronic pain, but that is not the point. If you identify with these qualities and you have chronic pain/injuries then you need to investigate this disorder.

Another good way to look at this pain disorder is cause and effect. If you are behaving and thinking in ways that are (closed-off, resistant, non-allowing, un-flexible) then through the mind–body connection your body is feeling (closed-off, tight, stiff and un-flexible).

It can be helpful for many to understand the bio-chemical process taking place that is generating pain and other symptoms. When you communicate stress or tension through your thoughts and behaviors, automatically this is received by your autonomic nervous system and your nervous system responds accordingly. Your nervous system constricts blood vessel walls and less blood is now flowing to muscle and nerve tissue. You now have less oxygen reaching your tissue (oxygen deprivation) and this is pain (burning, shooting, constant or spasm, on/off, and moving locations).

What you really want to know is, “how do I stop or reverse this process”. This can be the big, huge, challenging part for athletically minded people who put significant focus on their body and how it is performing!

1. You must begin to accept this diagnosis. At the very least, enough to genuinely engage in the key points below.
2. You have to stop your physical treatments. Why? If you are treating pain caused by psychological factors with physical treatments then you are not treating the cause. You are not changing the whole mind-body dynamic that has you in this chronic/pain injury cycle.
3. Regard the pain symptom as a Signal that is trying to distract you or keep you from the real psychological cause. Choose not to be distracted by focusing on the pain or physical treatments.
4. Instead, ask yourself a psychological question like, “what is going on with me right now, or what is causing me to feel stressed right now, or which one of my type “a” patterns am I in”. When you do this you are not distracted and you are identifying the cause. This one step can break your pain cycle!
5. Begin to practice being in the flow or present-moment based in more areas of your life. Start listening to or observing your thoughts and behavior patterns. When you catch yourself in these patterns ask yourself if there is a more open or more flexible way that you could be thinking and acting. This is important because it takes you out of the patterns that generate inner tension more and more often.
6. Resume or continue your physical activity as long as you are not in so much pain that all you are focusing on is the pain. While in your activity you do not want to be focused in your type “a” patterns and you do not want to focus on the symptoms or on what is wrong with me and how am I going to fix this self talk. Remember, you now know what is going on and you are choosing not to be distracted. Pain is your signal to think psychologically. If you are not sure---email or call me with your questions.
7. Start a practice of journaling about your behaviors, thoughts and feelings. Again this is an example of addressing the psychological factors that are generating inner tension and it opens you up psychologically as well as physically.
8. Begin a practice like power yoga or root lock. Root lock is the breathing and muscle contraction used in power yoga without all of the postures. This is not a physical treatment. These are mindful, highly focused practices that allow you to release tension in the body without creating more tension with your mind!
9. Now with all of this, do it or be it without having it be a treatment that is fixing your pain condition. It is, but as much as possible, take the striving, controlling, perfection, analyzing and worry out of it.

I understand that you just want to run or workout or train and not be in pain. I also know that you want a “quick fix” that prompts you to search anywhere and everywhere for something that has worked for someone at one time or another.

Here is the truth and bottom-line with these physical pain disorders caused by inner tension/stress. The steps that I outlined above can be the quick fix to your symptom. They can also be not quite as quick as you want them to be. I can absolutely tell you that these steps are the permanent solution to end chronic pain/injuries that are caused by inner tension/stress.

This information will resonate with you on some level or not. If it does but you are not quite sure drop me a note. If not, “no worries”, keep it in the back of your mind for future reference if need be.

Stay the course,

Monte Hueftle

www.runningpain.com

P.S. If you would like a personal response from me on your pain/injury situation and the psychological factors that could be involved, fill out this brief survey

Barbarian

This guy is amazing

Attitude

Positive attitude is really important.

Don't be like this

Apetite - it is all hormonal

Here is an interesting study. It all depends on the hormones.......normal weight and obese people has different hormonal reactions to food and different resultant appetites.......

Pre- and post- prandial appetite hormone levels in normal weight and severely obese women

Background
Appetite is affected by many factors including the hormones leptin, ghrelin and adiponectin. Ghrelin stimulates hunger, leptin promotes satiety, and adiponectin affects insulin response. This study was designed to test whether the pre- and postprandial response of key appetite hormones differs in normal weight (NW) and severely obese (SO) women.

Methods
Twenty three women ages 25-50 were recruited for this study including 10 NW (BMI = 23.1 +/- 1.3 kg/m2) and 13 SO (BMI = 44.5 +/- 7.1 kg/m2). The study was conducted in a hospital-based clinical research centre. Following a 12-hour fast, participants had a baseline blood draw, consumed a moderately high carbohydrate meal (60% carbohydrate, 20% protein, 20% fat) based on body weight. Postprandially, participants had six blood samples drawn at 0, 15, 30, 60, 90, and 120 minutes. Primary measures included pre- and post-prandial total ghrelin, leptin, adiponectin and insulin. A repeated measures general linear model was used to evaluate the hormone changes by group and time (significance p < 0.05).

Results
There were significant differences between the NW and the SO for all hormones in the preprandial fasting state. The postprandial responses between the SO versus NW revealed: higher leptin (p< 0.0001), lower adiponectin (p=0.04), trend for lower ghrelin (p=0.06) and insulin was not different (p= 0.26). Postprandial responses over time between the SO versus NW: higher leptin (p<0.001), lower ghrelin and adiponectin (p=0.004, p=0.015, respectively), and trend for higher insulin (p=0.06).

Conclusions
This study indicates that significant differences in both pre- and selected post- prandial levels of leptin, ghrelin, adiponectin and insulin exist between NW and SO women. Improving our understanding of the biochemical mechanisms accounting for these differences in appetite hormones among individuals with varying body size and adiposity should aid in the development of future therapies to prevent and treat obesity.

barefoot goes mainstream......

Barefoot is healthy....it is how you were meant to walk.... and I've posted several things about the benefit of ditching the shoes.

It has even hit The Guardian.

The barefoot running movement has built up serious momentum over the last few years, as followers have raved about the joys of ditching your trainers in favour of your own two feet. The health benefits, they say, are numerous, avoiding such perils as aching knee joints and damaged foot tissue, associated with over-cushioned training shoes. Many, including RunningBarefoot.org founder Ken Bob Saxton, even run marathons barefoot.

The benefits of a positive attitude

Every know and again on this blog I talk about the importance of mental factors. I believe we often underplay the psychological factors of health - the need for us to minimise chronic stress, to have a positive outlook on life.

Here is an interesting story from the BBC

Optimistic women had a 9% lower risk of developing heart disease and a 14% lower risk of dying from any cause after more than eight years of follow-up.

In comparison, cynical women who harboured hostile thoughts about others or were generally mistrusting of others were 16% more likely to die over the same time-scale.

One possibility is that optimists are better at coping with adversity, and might, for example take better care of themselves when they do fall ill.
In the study, the optimistic women exercised more and were leaner than pessimistic peers.

Unhappiness, misery is unhealthy....it is not how things were meant to be.

The related story of course is that Divorce makes you ill

Cholesterol myth....

Apologies for the embarrassing Mercola sales blurb at the end



Rosedale's essay on insulin has been linked to on this blog since the start - required reading...

thanks

Exercise makes you hungry

Taubes said this a while ago. It is about diet.... you can't outrun a dodgy diet.

however it is worth reading what mc has to say

josef also has something to say....

a) exercise makes you hungry so you end up taking in more calories after you exercise because you overestimate how much you burned and
b) you justify eating more because "muscle burns more fat calories than fat".

Low carb a self fulfilling prophecy?

Interesting ideas:

The health benefits of a gluten-free diet might also be a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. It's well-known that our digestive system adapts its secretions (rather quickly) to whatever we're eating. A prolonged stint on the Atkins diet, for example, can make it harder to digest starchy foods. According to a 2006 study in Journal of the Pancreas, a colony of lab rats subsisting on low-carb, high-fat food pellets ended up with less pancreatic α-amylase, an enzyme that helps break down complex carbohydrates. Now imagine that you've cut out gluten from your diet completely—that means no bread, no cereal, no wheat whatsoever. Chances are you'll have reduced your total intake of carbs, and thus the amount of α-amylase in your gut. In other words, the mere fact of being on a gluten-free diet could make you more sensitive to grains and cereals—which would only reinforce your conviction that you're gluten-intolerant. Slip up for even one meal, and you'll pay the price with indigestion. (Same goes for people who don't eat meat or dairy: A momentary lapse can yield a nasty stomachache.)

Hat Tip to Seth

I've experienced that. Go low carb for a while and you can no longer cope well with carbs. Even if you used to be able to take them , you now struggle to tolerate them....and they seem unhealthy!

The rest of the article and its analysis is interesting although I'm not sure I'd agree with it! I do think that refined carbs (pastas, flours, breads etc) are not natural and we will not thrive on them.

A psychological back injury?

I've written before about back injuries coming from psychological stress - for example the interviews with Monte and Adam.

I thought about these principles after the English Wicketkeeper was hurt preparing for the test on Friday:

Wicketkeeper Prior then suffered a back spasm at 1000 BST shortly after the England players finished their football warm up and to make matters worse, England masseur Mark Saxby was struck on the head by a ball during Australia's catching practice.

Reflecting on his freak injury, Prior revealed it had been "really touch and go" over whether he would participate in the match.

"I had a bit of a shocker," he stated. "I've absolutely no idea how or why it happened, I was jogging along and suddenly had a back spasm. It was a tricky situation.

"The toss was pushed back 10 minutes and thanks to the Aussies for letting that happen. Ten minutes isn't a great deal to ask, but it was great they allowed it.

"The keeping was harder [than batting] but I should be fine. The good thing about a back spasm is that it can only get better. I will have a lot of massages this evening and carry on with the drugs this evening and I should be fine tomorrow morning."

Totally out of the blue......prior to a very very stressful situation.......

The Stress of Social Subordination

I've mentioned stress before. Psychological factors are I think under appreciated when it comes to health and fitness.

This story harks back to the ideas of Malcolm Kendrick - author of the Great Cholesterol Con - who sees the cause of heart disease as social stress rather than fat. He explained it in the videos here.

This study particularly looks at the stress of social subordination. I wonder how "natural" that condition is. Unemployment, poverty, nasty bosses, poor relationships, etc all bring such stresses

That is not how it was meant to be

New research links social stress to harmful fat deposits, heart disease

"We are in the midst of an obesity epidemic," Shively said. "Much of the excess fat in many people who are overweight is located in the abdomen, and that fat behaves differently than fat in other locations. If there's too much, it can have far more harmful effects on health than fat located in other areas."

She notes that obesity is directly related to lower socioeconomic status in Western societies, as is heart disease. So, the people who have fewer resources to buffer themselves from the stresses of life are more likely to experience such health problems, she said.

The researchers found that the stress of social subordination results in the release of stress hormones that promote the deposition of fat in the viscera. Visceral fat, in turn, promotes coronary artery atherosclerosis, the buildup of plaque in the blood vessels that leads to heart disease, the leading cause of death in the world today.

Metabolic and physiologic improvements from consuming a paleolithic, hunter-gatherer type diet

I can't remember if this has been mentioned before, but this has just been published.

Metabolic and physiologic improvements from consuming a paleolithic, hunter-gatherer type diet

Background:

The contemporary American diet figures centrally in the pathogenesis of numerous chronic diseases—'diseases of civilization'. We investigated in humans whether a diet similar to that consumed by our preagricultural hunter-gatherer ancestors (that is, a paleolithic type diet) confers health benefits.

Methods:

We performed an outpatient, metabolically controlled study, in nine nonobese sedentary healthy volunteers, ensuring no weight loss by daily weight. We compared the findings when the participants consumed their usual diet with those when they consumed a paleolithic type diet. The participants consumed their usual diet for 3 days, three ramp-up diets of increasing potassium and fiber for 7 days, then a paleolithic type diet comprising lean meat, fruits, vegetables and nuts, and excluding nonpaleolithic type foods, such as cereal grains, dairy or legumes, for 10 days. Outcomes included arterial blood pressure (BP); 24-h urine sodium and potassium excretion; plasma glucose and insulin areas under the curve (AUC) during a 2 h oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT); insulin sensitivity; plasma lipid concentrations; and brachial artery reactivity in response to ischemia.

Results:

Compared with the baseline (usual) diet, we observed (a) significant reductions in BP associated with improved arterial distensibility (-3.12.9, P=0.01 and +0.190.23, P=0.05);(b) significant reduction in plasma insulin vs time AUC, during the OGTT (P=0.006); and (c) large significant reductions in total cholesterol, low-density lipoproteins (LDL) and triglycerides (-0.80.6 (P=0.007), -0.70.5 (P=0.003) and -0.30.3 (P=0.01) mmol/l respectively). In all these measured variables, either eight or all nine participants had identical directional responses when switched to paleolithic type diet, that is, near consistently improved status of circulatory, carbohydrate and lipid metabolism/physiology.

Conclusions:

Even short-term consumption of a paleolithic type diet improves BP and glucose tolerance, decreases insulin secretion, increases insulin sensitivity and improves lipid profiles without weight loss in healthy sedentary humans.

To sleep perchance to dream

I have been thinking a bit about sleep. I never feel like I get enough of it. And sleep is very very good for you. Previously I have referred to the book Lights Out (here and here and here). Sufficient sleep - in the dark - is not only good for you it is what you were built to need. Rob Wolf puts it as the third most important need you have after air and water.

Usually it is my own fault for not going to bed early and I have tried to think of ways, hacks, to get me to go to bed before it is too late. One is the idea of an Electric Curfew - all electronic equipment turned off by 11:30 or whatever....but I never really built the habit. There are other tricks out there too...but I really need more sleep

Anyway I was reading different stuff about sleep and came across this article on Greg Laden's blog: An Evolutionary View of Humans 2: Sleep

There are some really interesting ideas there:

A typical night with the Efe is, I strongly suspect, typical of any night with any tropical or subtropical forager group. At any given moment in time, somebody is asleep and somebody is awake. Those who are awake are often talking. Sometimes they are talking to each other, but often they are just talking. Telling a story that someone may or may not be interested in. I suspect that part of the constant noise making (and what may make Africa different from Australia) is that you don’t want to be too quiet for too long else wandering dangerous animals …. a leopard, a suid, an elephant … may stumble into your camp and cause trouble.

The person or persons who is/are awake shifts throughout then night. It is not systematic … people are not really keeping watch … it just seems to happen. Individuals sleep when they are comfortable, and become uncomfortable as the fire cools, wake up, adjust the fire, and either stay up for a while or fall back to sleep. If one child is keeping his or her family awake, this affects the entire group. And so on.

Naps during the day (as you might expect since everybody gets a poor night’s sleep by Western standards every night) are common.

Here it is in a nutshell. The Efe, and I again suspect this is typical for foragers, spend the entire 24 hour cycle sometimes awake and sometimes asleep. During the night, “asleep” is more common than “awake” and during the day “awake” is more common than “asleep.” To foragers, it’s all napping.

One could criticize this description by pointing out how it conflicts with modern medical views of sleep. But you would be wrong. It is the case that modern medical views of sleep need to be adjusted to take into account the realties of what humans have probably always done for hundreds of thousands of years (since the first control of fire, perhaps).

Really interesting stuff. I wonder if that is why I liek to fall asleep with the radio on....the hear the voices chatting away as I drift off?

Difficult to work this into my job in the Council though!

Avoid stupid mistakes......

Mark Sisson's Ten Primal Blueprint Laws include the following:

Primal Blueprint Law #9: Avoid Stupid Mistakes

I thought of that this morning. I had the day off and was planning to go hillwalking. Getting my shoes from the living room, I accidentally kicked a sledgehammer that was leaning against the bookcase.

Ouch.

It was sore but I was not sure that it was that bad.....I hobbled about a bit and while it was sore it didn't feel too bad.

I got in the car and drove north. An hour and a half later I changed shoes to head up the hill...it looked sore but not so bad.

I started walking. Did one hill (Morrone) which was about 2 hours, 10km and 430m of ascent. Nothing special but it was good to be outdoors, with nice views of Lochnagar and the cairngorms.



The foot was sore but not that bad....so I did another hill, Ben Gulabin about a 5Km round trip and a 450m ascent. Nice views again.....and the toe was sore but I was walking ok.


When I got home and took my sock off, it looked like this:


I was shocked at the bruising and went to the Minor Injuries clinic, where they X Rayed it.

It is broken - the top, distal bone under the nail. The nurse thinks that walking for 4 hours up 2 mountains was probably not the best idea! Probably the walking and constant motion caused the bruising, irritating a blood vessel.

Oh well! They can't do anything with broken toes....

Bar - Barians

On the subject of muscle ups...check out this from the bar - barians.

Extreme Muscle Ups

The Muscle Up has become something of gold standard in upper body gymnastic moves. CrossFit makes a lot of it. Usually done on rings - but also on a high bar - it is basically a pull up followed by a dip.


Fair enough.

These two are taking it to extremes. First of all a guy doing it with one arm.



Then the guy from Beast Skills - a great athlete by the way - shows a progression to this by doing a one arm muscle up with one arm assisting.