Guest Post: Mobility Training

Recently I have been doing more and more mobility training. Lots of times it is just Maxwell's Daily Dozen but more often I will use Scott Sonnon's Intu-Flow moves, many of which are in a free ebook. After mentioning my use of Intu-flow, Adam Steer got in touch and offered to write a post explaining a bit more about this system and how it integrates with other physical training. I agreed, happy to learn more about the background to this system.

Thanks Adam! Here is the post:

The Circular Strength Training® System’s Integrated Approach To Joint Mobility & Health

In my early teens, my grandfather did everything he could to encourage me to participate in sports and physical conditioning. As he put it, he was trying to keep me out of trouble, but he set me on a path of physical culture which has shaped my personal and professional life ever since. A fascination with movement and with physical development led me first to a career as a ski coach. Then, as I continued my own journey of strength and conditioning, and began to take care of the training of my ski athletes, I eventually grew into my second career as a trainer.

Although I was loving every minute of it, and from all outward appearances was fit and healthy, a few years ago I have to admit that I was pretty banged up. I was strong and had good endurance. I looked good. But I started to realize that my training methods were not going to be sustainable in the long term. Among other things, I was dealing with cyclical bouts of shoulder impingement troubles. I lacked hip mobility to the point that I could not sit on the floor with my legs stretched out in front of me and keep my back straight. Things were starting to give. It was at that point that I ran across the work of Scott Sonnon, founder of the Circular Strength Training® system.

I’d never seen anyone move the way Coach Sonnon did, with such fluidity and ease. But what caught my attention was his insistence that anyone could move that way by following his systematic approach to health and fitness.

With two decades of conventional training experience under my belt, at first I was still a bit reticent to fully launch into this new “health first” training paradigm. I figured I would just order some material from Coach Sonnon and add it in to my existing training. But my aches, pains and limitations finally overcame my fears and I decided to jump straight into the deep end and fully engage in my practice of Circular Strength Training® (CST).

Within weeks my shoulder was noticeably better. And as the months went by I was amazed at both my increasing mobility, but also at the overall functionality of the strength and conditioning I was building through the unique mix of modalities brought together through CST. Nowadays, I receive comments daily from clients about the quality of my movement and my impressive level of mobility and flexibility.

A Multi-Pronged Approach

The secret to my success was in Coach Sonnon’s mult-faceted approach. CST addresses the health of the joints through its Intu-Flow® family of movements. The proper balance of the muscle and connective tissues are tackled through the Prasara Yoga wing of the system. And finally the entire unit is put under load using various tools in order to strengthen the entire body through its fullest range of motion. The signature tool for this wing of the system is the Clubbell®.

Recovery Is Training

Many people make the mistake of regarding recovery as a secondary thing that we do outside of our training if we have time. On the contrary, to make optimal progress, with minimal breakdown, and maximally reduce our risk of injury, recovery must be considered an integral component of the training process and be scheduled and periodized appropriately.

“You’re As Old As Your Connective Tissue”

The above is a quotation from Coach Sonnon. Our current understanding of the body’s system of locomotion has come a long way in a short time. Gone is the idea that each muscle works in isolation in a lever based system. We now know that the entire body is enveloped in a continuous network of connective tissue known as fascia. This creates a sea of tension pulling in against the bony struts pressing outwards. Where this network of fascia is tacked down to the skeletal system, we can think in terms of muscle origins and insertions. Packed within this system of fascia is the electrically activated goo we know as muscle tissue. And when we move our bodies in space, we are activating tissues all along lines of tension bound together by this facial net.

Bags Within Bags

As we develop from our earliest embryonic state, we form what can be thought of as a double bag of connective tissue. The innermost bag surrounds the bones and joints and goes by the terms periosteum and joint capsule respectively. The outer bag is what we generally refer to as myofascia (fascia of the muscles) and it contains all our muscle tissues.

The Health Of The Inner Bag

It is primarily with the health of this inner bag that the Intu-Flow Joint Health and Mobility wing of the CST system is concerned. Joints, with few exceptions, have no blood circulation. The only way to wash out toxins and flush in nutrition is through the synovial fluid. It is only through moving the joint systematically through all of its degrees of freedom that we can wash it adequately with this synovial fluid. And if we do not move them, they can also become compressed, further decreasing the availability of nutrition to the joint. Over time, joints will become dry and brittle if this is not addressed.

For this reason alone, not only do my clients use Intu-Flow daily as part of their warm-up routines, they have days where training is devoted exclusively to joint mobility work.

Owning Your Range of Motion

In addition to washing out the joints, Intu-Flow® is also arranged in a systematic way which allows us to regain control over our natural movement patterns. The sequence of movements in the system is specifically arranged to follow the developmental pattern of the nervous system. Thus, consistent practice of Intu-Flow® allows you to gain full control of the range of motion you possess at each joint. Stretching a joint may give you more range, but if you can’t actively control your movement through that new range, then you do not own it. Intu-Flow® allows you to take ownership.

Not long ago, I attended a MAT Jumpstart course. Throughout all the muscle testing, the instructor was blown away by both the range of motion I had and the control and strength I possessed at the extreme ranges at each joint. The sole exception was my ankles. It wasn’t until afterwards that it dawned on me that I had been neglecting my ankles in my Intu-Flow® practice during the previous months. This realization brought home just how important this part of training is. It is easy to neglect something so seemingly insignificant as ankle circles. But if you think about the importance of your ankle stability and mobility in almost any physical movement, you can imagine what consequences may arise from such neglect.

We Move Not Only In 3 Dimensions, But In 6 Degrees Of Freedom

The fitness industry has made great strides in recovering from the two dimensional paradigms of the bodybuilding craze towards a 3 dimensional approach to exercise. But in reality the human body moves in 6 Degrees of Freedom. This concept is most eloquently explained in the field of aeronautics. Essentially, if we take the three axis of conventional movement plane descriptions, we can think about moving both along and around those axis in order to take advantage of all 6 degrees.

• Heaving: Moving up and down the vertical axis
• Surging: Moving along the front-to-back axis
• Swaying: Moving along the side-to-side axis
• Yawing: Moving around the vertical axis
• Rolling: Moving around the front-to-back axis
• Pitching: Moving around the side-to-side axis

Sandbag in 6 degrees video

Applying The 6 Degrees of Freedom to Each Joint

By looking at each joint within the framework of the 6 Degrees of Freedom, we take advantage of a powerful tool. Instantly we are able to assess and address the range of motion restrictions that may be inhibiting our sports performance, increasing our risk for injury or affecting our health.

Let’s take the example of pelvic mobility. Take a look at this YouTube video in which I am tilting the pelvis around the “X” axis (pitching).



This would be an example of Pitching from the 6 Degrees of Freedom. Let’s say this degree of freedom shows a restriction when tilting the pelvis to tuck the butt under. This is the first cue which allows us to cascade through the rest of the system.

From there, we would use various Prasara Yoga movements to flush out the cause. We might start with some form of Pigeon pose to assess whether the hip flexors are tight. If not, we would check the firing of the gluteals through something like the Shoulder Bridge.

At each stage, we are checking back to the Intu-Flow movement to assess any progress. This process would continue until we found our culprit. At this stage, it is important to go one step at a time to make sure you know which exercise is making a difference in the performance of the reference Intu-Flow Joint Mobility movement.

Bringing It All Together

Whatever Prasara movements are found to improve the original mobility movement restriction will become part of the overall re-balancing plan. The mobility work continues in order to ensure control over whatever ranges of motion are opened up and to control whatever strength is developed through the complete range of motion.

Also, as control of the ranges increases, and the basic Intu-Flow® Joint Mobility exercises become ingrained, we follow the path of Increasing Sophistication in order to make each Intu-Flow movement more and more challenging on a neurological level. In this way, we go from work capacity to work sophistication and eventually to work specificity. The latter step involves programing movements specific to the lifestyle or sport requirements of the individual.

Structural Reinforcing

The final component of the process is to add appropriate load to these ranges once they are completely under pain-free control. One of the best tools for this job is the Clubbell®. This tool has several advantages in the framework of a health-first system. First off, it provides significant distraction of the joints, which complements the Intu-Flow and Prasara progress. I credit this aspect of Clubbell® swinging with a significant role in the rehabilitation of my shoulder.

Because the Clubbell is such an open skilled strength building tool, it creates a lot of torsion in the body and forces the practitioner to provide all the stabilization throughout the exercise. The more stabilization the training tool provides, the less your body learns about doing this work for itself. And we all know that in life and sport, the body needs to perform on its own.

The Clubbell also allows you to go where no other tool can. As you regain your natural movement capacity through joint mobility and Prasara Yoga, the Clubbell provides the perfect training device for loading difficult to address ranges. As my shoulder began to heal and my range of motion steadily improved, I was able to incorporate gentle exercises which took the Clubbell® behind my back, forcing me to stabilize with the shoulder joint. Then, step-by-step, through the unique CST methods of Incremental Progression and Increasing Sophistication, I ended up not only doing extremely complex exercises through those ranges of motion, but performed those exercises to a level which allowed me to become the International Champion of the RMAX Internal Power Challenge

The Magic Of Synergy

On its own, each of the three major component pieces of the CST system can provide huge benefits for anyone interested in health and fitness. But together, they form a cohesive and holistic paradigm for personal physical culture which can, and does, impart extraordinary results for people from many walks of life and from varied backgrounds. Only by carefully balancing higher intensity training with systematic methods of recovery can we ensure consistent progress towards our physical goals. Recovery is part of training and must be treated as an essential component of the overall program design. Methodical use of the three wings of the CST system will ensure that balance.

Digg this?

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Adam Steer is a Circular Strength Training Head Coach If you’d like a ton of free information about Circular Strength Training®, head over to Adam’s Better Is Better blog and sign up for the free Kick-Start Package. There are several interviews with Coach Sonnon and other industry experts. There are two e-books, one on CST inspired bodyweight training and the other on Clubbell training. And Conditioning Research readers may also be interested in the exclusive interview with Brad Pilon, author of Eat Stop Eat, the definitive guide to Intermittent Fasting.

Adam is a Circular Strength Training® Head Coach. He trains clients in CST through his Momentum Training business in Quebec City, and has shared CST around the globe through workshops in Singapore, Australia, Washington State, Philadelphia and New York City. You can check out Adam’s bio here .

Intervals don't take long...and can prevent diabetes?

Interval training. Periods of harder exercise separated by periods of rest or easy movement. I've written about it a lot on this blog. Over the last 10 years or so it has been touted at the panacea to all training problems. If you google "tabata" you find over 2 million pages. Admittedly lots of these are about Japanese people called Mr Tabata, but most are about the exercise protocol.

In some corners of the internet there has been a bit of a backlash recently, with people like Mark Twight and Rob Shaul noting that while intervals can do a lot to benefit aerobic capacity, if you want to go long, sometimes you will need to train long too. ( I point to some of the discussion here). There was even a study recently that I saw some people jump on to say that intervals were nothing special or at least that they had been over hyped.

Effect of High Intensity Interval Exercise on Lipid Oxidation during post exercise recovery

The scientists compared intervals with a steady state session with respect to the effect on the amount of fat burned after the exercise was concluded. There was no difference.


Be that as it may this new research caught my eye.

Short bursts of intense exercise every few days could dramatically cut the risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, according to an expert.

Rather than slaving away for hours in the gym, people should focus their attention on quick "sprints" with each workout lasting just a few minutes.
James Timmons, Heriot-Watt University professor of exercise biology has studied the effects of quick exercise.
He recommends 4 x 30 second sprints on an exercise bike three times a week.
He said people could reduce their risk of diabetes and heart disease substantially with short, intense workouts - with such "time-efficient" exercising appealing to busy workers.

The research that is referred to is here and the full paper is avaiable too.

Extremely short duration high intensity training substantially improves insulin action in young sedentary males

Background
Classic, long duration aerobic exercise reduces cardiovascular and metabolic disease risk but this involves a substantial time commitment. Extremely low volume high-intensity interval training (HIT) has recently been shown to cause similar improvements to aerobic performance, but it has not been established whether HIT has the capacity to improve glycemic control.

Methods
Sixteen young men (age: 21+/-2 y; BMI: 23.7+/-3.1 kg * m-2; VO2peak: 48+/-9 ml * kg-1 * min-1) performed 2 weeks of supervised HIT comprising of a total of 15 min of exercise (6 sessions; 4-6 x 30-s cycle sprints per session). Aerobic performance (250-kJ self-paced cycling time trial), and glucose, insulin and NEFA responses to a 75-g oral glucose load (oral glucose tolerance test; OGTT) were determined before and after training.

Results
Following 2 weeks of HIT, the area under the plasma glucose, insulin and NEFA concentration-time curves were all reduced (12%, 37%, 26% respectively, all P<0.001). p="0.058)." style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusions
The efficacy of a high intensity exercise protocol, involving only ~250 kcal work each week, to substantially improve insulin action in young sedentary subjects is remarkable. We feel this novel time-efficient training paradigm can be used as a strategy to reduce metabolic risk factors in young and middle aged sedentary populations who otherwise would not adhere to a classic high volume, time consuming exercise regimes.

I think the conclusion there is a really important thing. Intervals have a profound effect metabolically, they can have a major effect on health but they do not take long: 4 x 30 secs with some rests between sees the session over in 7 minutes a week. It is hard to claim that you do not have the time to do this. Some people are put off exercise because of the perceived time commitment but they need to know that they can exercise in such a way that they can benefit their health without needing much time.

Maybe other training protocols can have a similar impact....but none are as time efficient. I'd also argue that intervals are more natural and playful, but that is a different discussion.

The researcher here explained how intense intervals can help:

"Think about diabetes as being glucose circulating in the blood rather than stored in the muscles where it should be.

"If we take out the glycogen from the muscles through exercise, then the muscles draw in that excess glucose from the blood."

"If you go for a jog or a run you oxidise glycogen but you are not depleting the glycogen in your muscles.

"The only way to get to this glycogen is through very intense contractions of the muscles.

"If we can get people in their 20s, 30s and 40s doing these exercises twice a week then it could have a very dramatic effect on the future prevalence of diabetes."

Maybe the tide is turning and rational exercise (and diet) will oen day be mainstream? The video is worth watching.

As usual the NHS is sceptical!


More here

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Statins are bad....

As we have been saying already.

Dr Briffa here discusses the danger of cutting your cholesterol....

and there is also this new review of the nasty adverse effects of statins:

First comprehensive paper on statins' adverse effects released: Provides evidence for reported side effects including muscle and cognitive problems

"The risk of adverse effects goes up as age goes up, and this helps explain why," said Golomb. "This also helps explain why statins' benefits have not been found to exceed their risks in those over 70 or 75 years old, even those with heart disease." High blood pressure and diabetes are linked to higher rates of mitochondrial problems, so these conditions are also clearly linked to a higher risk of statin complications, according to Golomb and co-author Marcella A. Evans, of UC San Diego and UC Irvine Schools of Medicine.

Fasting and GH

This is quite an interesting video from Brad Pilon.

Growth hormone or 'GH' is a very important hormone that regulates the release of fat from your body stores so that it can be used as a fuel source.

Traditionally we have been taught that to burn fat you need to keep our insulin levels 'normal' or 'under control'. It turns out that the release of body fat is controlled by GH....

Intermittent fasting of course increases GH levels as explained here

I like Brad's eat stop eat book on fasting which explains this among other stuff..

Lots of us in the paleo / evolutionary fitness community are regularly practising fasting. Richard often fasts as does Keith - pictured below.





Keith - in this post explains how fasting has added the finishing touch to his physique:

Essentially, we are designed to be intermittent eaters, but continuous metabolizers. We operate in a slight energy surplus during the day, followed by a negative energy balance during the night. In a healthy, lean individual, energy pool stores are constantly turning over; individuals whose insulin level is chronically high, however, cannot adequately access fat stores and, therefore, for them, the fat continues to accumulate, unabated. Insulin resistance can therefore be considered a survival mechanism, in the fact that it develops as a result of the body’s cells’ requiring protection against the continual onslaught of excess nutrients; a protection triggered due to the cells being already stressed from excessive nutrient content. The excess nutrient intake also serves to shut down autophagy, the consumption of damaged tissues within the muscle cell which fuels repair and regeneration. Growth Hormone release is stunted, and muscle gene expression is down regulated. The ancestral environment did not support chronic, elevated nutrient ingestion, nor was there ever “a window of feeding opportunity” subsequent to a bout of energy expenditure (exercise, for us modern-day Paleolithics) to shovel in carbohydrate replacement drinks and protein powders.


Ideally, we’d eat only when the energy substrates in the blood fall to the point of triggering a need for replenishment. The true hunger signal is an elegantly simple energy management system, and one that you would, in fact, expect from evolution. Contrary to the continual drumbeat of mainstream “experts”, there is no “set point” level for body fat, body mass or metabolism. What evolution has endowed us with is a simple feeding strategy that endeavors to keep us on a random energy intake-to-expenditure path that favors the survival (and thriving, if conditions are right) of the organism. Now, if we’d only get out of the way and let this fabulous mechanism take its course.

Brad's book is a great introduction to the science behind all this.

Drugs in the water?

I thought this was interesting.

A study conducted by Université de Montréal researchers on downstream and upstream water from the Montreal wastewater treatment plant has revealed the presence of chemotherapy products and certain hypertension and cholesterol medications.

So the drugs that people are scoffing are getting pee'd out and then are entering the water supply. We now have fish swimming round in a soup of medication.

If you have read elsewhere on this blog there are major health risks associated with statins. Yet with the widespread use of these drugs it seems that we might be getting to a point when they are hard to avoid.



Read more here: Hypertension and cholesterol medications present in water released into the St. Lawrence River

Jumping Gates

This superb clip comes courtesy of Asclepius . Even computer geeks can jump!

Cotter jumps

You know I like jumps.

These look amazing. Steve Cotter is using these moves to help prepare his legs for an upcoming kettlebell contest.





He says

Trying to prepare the best I can for the first-ever Arnold Sports Festival Kettlebell Championship on March 7th. It has been awhile since I’ve trained like an athlete, for an event that I want to perform well in. Any serious athlete is going to have to train the legs and kettlebells is definitely a serious sport.

Interesting pushup variations

From Scott Sonnon

Gymnastic Bodies

Inspired by Asclepius I've bought a copy of Chris Sommer's book Building the Gymnastic Body.

I might put a proper review up soon, but I am really enjoying the book. you can tell he publishes it himself in that it is not the best quality printing or binding, but it is good enough. His contention is that gymnastic training is actually the most effective means of building strength and he provides a series of progressions to get you to be effective at a range of gymnastic moves.

What I really want to achieve is a planche....just because they look so cool. I'm currently using the progression in the article here. It will take a while but I am progressing.

There are some amazing articles on YouTube from Sommer. For all you jump fans,check out this one:

Heart Cancer?

In the past I've noted that there is some evidence for treating cancer with a low carb diet. Cancer cells need glucose to survive and if you starve them of it they die. Richard pulled a lot of the references together here too.

Here is an interesting post noting that you never hear about heart cancer.

While the heart muscle can use sugar as fuel, many experts claim that the hearts preferred source of fuel is saturated fat and ketone bodies.

In fact, Richard Veech MD has shown that the heart works 28 percent more efficiently using ketones as a fuel than it does using glucose. Therefore, more than likely the experts are right that fat is the 'gas' of the heart.

Cancer needs sugar to survive. No sugar, no cancer. Your liver is the creator of glucose (sugar) and liver cancer is one of the worst forms of cancer you can get. You pretty much don't get better once you have liver cancer.

I tried to help my mother who died of lung cancer a few months ago to adopt a no sugar diet. She didn't or wouldn't. Same for my father who died of liver cancer.

I've noticed that people with cancer eat a lot of sugar -or drink it.

And when you are in the hospital taking chemo to treat your cancer, you tend to lose your appetite. And what does the hospital give you to eat since you do need to eat? They give you a drink called Nutrament. The primary ingredients in Nutrament are carbohydrate and sugar to the tune of 52 grams and 49 grams respectively.

Seems to me the thing to do to help combat cancer is to remove sugar (carbs) from the diet. Eskimo's never got cancer. And they never ate sugar. A coincidence? Maybe, maybe...




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Weston Price

A short film about the work of Weston Price.



If you are interested in this approach, the book Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon is a good application of all this stuff.

Check out these powerpoint presentations about Traditional Diets too: parts ONE, TWO and THREE

Natural Messiah's mobility routine.

I've put a few posts up recently about the importance of joint mobility. In particular I've pointed towards Maxwell's Daily Dozen and Sonnon's free IntuFlow booklet.

Blogger Asclepius of the Natural Messiah blog had a good post up today on his own warm up / mobility routine. It is a really good approach to warming up and promoting mobility: Warm up Routine


All good dynamic stuff. Which is important because research keeps coming that indicates that static stretching is not a good warm-up strategy!

Here is a new study: Effects of Static Stretching on Repeated Spint and Change of Direction Perfrmance

Conclusion: These results suggest that an acute bout (4 min) of static stretching of the lower limbs during recovery periods between efforts may compromise repeated sprint ability performance but has less effect on change of direction speed performance.

More benefits from a low carb diet

If - like me - you are interested in low carbohydrate diets,you might like this new bit of research:

Low-carbohydrate diet burns more excess liver fat than low-calorie diet, UT Southwestern study finds

The low-carbohydrate dieters, however, got only 20 percent of their glucose from glycogen. Instead of dipping into their reserve of glycogen, these subjects burned liver fat for energy.

The findings are significant because the accumulation of excess fat in the liver – primarily a form of fat called triglycerides – can result in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, or NAFLD. The condition is the most common form of liver disease in Western countries, and its incidence is growing. Dr. Browning has previously shown that NAFLD may affect as many as one-third of U.S. adults. The disease is associated with metabolic disorders such as insulin resistance, diabetes and obesity, and it can lead to liver inflammation, cirrhosis and liver cancer.

"Energy production is expensive for the liver," Dr. Browning said. "It appears that for the people on a low-carbohydrate diet, in order to meet that expense, their livers have to burn excess fat."

Results indicate that patients on the low-carbohydrate diet increased fat burning throughout the entire body.

Dr. Browning and his colleagues will next study whether the changes that occur in liver metabolism as a result of carbohydrate restriction could help people with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Previous research has shown a correlation between carbohydrate intake and NAFLD.

Interview with Erwan Le Corre

Following my recent posts on natural movement and the particular approach of Erwan Le Corre's MovNat Erwan himself contacted me to clarify some issues and to respond to some of the comments. The videos in the previous posts featured Erwan and I asked him if I could interview him for this blog. He kindly agreed.

This is a great and very informative interview, covering movement, diet, sleep and a lot more! Enjoy:

1 Who is Erwan Le Corre? Can you give us some idea of your background in sports / fitness

My first "personal trainer" was my dad. Though he had never really practiced any specialized sport himself, as a kid his favourite activity was one of frequent and instinctive physical expression found in exploring his surroundings. Then as a young father he naturally thought it was important to pass on this simple way to me. In his mind, an essential aspect of his role was to have me toughen up physically and mentally, that's why he frequently had me following him for hours through the woods from a very young age, whatever the season. He would push me to climb trees or boulders and sometimes reach impressive heights for a young boy. He would ask me to control my fear and trust his guidance. In the summer, we would train distance jumps, drops in the sand, swimming and also holding breath and lots of other natural games and challenges of this kind.

I believe that's where everything starts. It wasn't sport, it wasn't fitness, but it was real education. Apart from judo and some collective sports at school I went on knowing almost no other physical activity than that until I was 15.

Now later on, and without giving too many details, the significant experiences in my sport background includes mainly judo, karate, rock climbing, Olympic weightlifting, Brazilian jiu-jitsu and long distance triathlon, each of them bringing their share of benefits to my overall experience and knowledge. I have tried many other things, too many to mention, but didn't really like them.

I practiced a training and philosophy called "Combat Vital" for 7 years in Paris, which had many similarities with the Methode Naturelle. That's when I started training barefoot. We would train most of the time at night so as not to be seen, climbing bridges, balancing on the top of scaffoldings, kicking walls to toughen our bare feet, moving on all fours, swimming in the river even in the freezing cold of the winter...some kind of "Fight Club" of natural movement if you will! They are unbelievable memories: quite a conventional-wisdom-defying kind of philosophy and practice.

When I discovered Methode Naturelle just at the end of my triathlon period, it felt very logical to me that I had to finally go back to my initial natural approach and fully embrace it again - this time for good and with the clear intent to spread the word in a constructive manner.

2 How did this background bring you to your current philosophy and approach to exercise?

As I mentioned my childhood movement and nature exploration is the first most significant influence behind my current approach.

Then my background in Combat Vital, which was more specifically a holistic philosophy and lifestyle addressing the issue of the modern, domesticated human condition, though Combat Vital has never become a formal method.

Then my study and experience of Methode Naturelle.

Then to a lesser extent my personal background in other physical activities and research about other training or conditioning concepts.

The more I was thought about it, the more I thought that while the core of the 100 years old method was excellent, an update of the pedagogy and methodology of Methode Naturelle was needed; it also became clearer that my personal approach couldn't and wouldn't avoid addressing the zoo human predicament and the many issues modern humans have to deal with regarding their body and mind's health and quality of life.

My recent and catalytic encountering with Lee Saxby confirmed this ultimate intuition. He has recently joined me with his scientific background and expertise in the field of gait analysis, nutrition and evolutionary biology and we're now working together on the elaboration of a certification system with this unique approach of rehabilitating the zoo human and based on natural principles and backed up with science.

So despite the core practice being natural movement skills, MovNat is not only an approach of exercise but also a more holistic education system. Not a guideline, certainly not a set of morals, but both an experiential and conceptual knowledge: an array of solutions and alternatives people can learn and apply to an extent that is entirely up to them.

3 Your website talks about us being "zoo humans" – far from our natural habitat and lifestyle. How do we start to escape from the zoo – what might be the first steps in this approach?

The first step is a change of perception. It is becoming aware of this predicament, because you can never change something you deny or for which you take no personal responsibility. Understanding what our true nature is from a biological and evolutionary perspective and understanding the workings of the zoo is the first step.

The zoo is not just an environment, it is a phenomenon, a process, which is designed to keep you a captive of both external and internal cages. It is something that conditions many of your behaviours: clearly it is to me a domestication system, no less. The zoo impairs our ability to experience our true nature which is to be strong, healthy, happy and free.

We're not born to be weak, sick, depressed and enslaved and, more than that, we should never accept this becoming the norm or a "fatality" (our fate). So the first step is a reaction and a form of resistance, it is a life-affirming reawakening. Once your perception is changed and that which is commonly regarded as "normal" is not acceptable to you anymore, it is time to look for rational alternatives, to find ways to apply them in order improve your own experience of life.

It requires critical thinking, knowledge, time, commitment and - depending on individuals - a tremendous courage.

So first step? I would say that being ready to defy conventional wisdom is a fundamental start.

4 "Evolutionary Fitness" has gained some popularity recently, but somehow the prescription often leads us back into the gym, lifting weights, using machines or sprinting to fixed intervals. This seems a long way from nature. Should we abandon the gym and go to the playground?

Look for movements that are most relevant to our evolutionary bio-mechanics or to the practical needs of real-life situations; you want to perform truly natural movements and efforts. If your starting point is an evolutionary fitness theory but you end up seated on a machine counting reps and getting bored, it's not that the evolutionary theory is wrong, but that the application of the theory lacks naturalness. Usually, true evolutionary action is enjoyable simply because it feels very natural and this natural feeling is precisely what the wild human animal inside of us is willing to experience.

Personally, I have in fact an inversed/inverted approach. I mean that my starting point is instinct, experience of the practical and observation. My training principles don't stem from theory and while theory may validate my training, my training is certainly not an attempt to validate any theory or conform to any of them. In the end what matters most to me is the practical outcome, the situational perspective MovNat stands for.

So it is not the gym per se that is a problem to me, but what you're going to perform in a gym. Bringing a leg extension machine into the woods won't make your training more natural, but crawl on the floor of a gym and there you'll start to unleash your inner animal. Ideally of course, you want to be in touch with nature, breath good air, expose your skin to natural light, capture the energies of the vegetation around, well, spend as much time outdoors as you can. Thing is, it would be really difficult to recreate natural conditions in a gym, such as mud, wet surfaces, unpredictable dangers etc...which are also essential parameters that require specific adaptation.

That's the difference between capability and adaptability. The more your movement skills are adaptive, the more you'll expand your comfort zone in dealing with a variety of real-world circumstances. So the more varied is the environment where you train, the more you'll increase your movement adaptability.

Now because of modern lifestyle, or because of really bad weather conditions or simply if you don't have access to a suitable outdoors area, it is sometimes more convenient to train in a gym, and it can be actually a great place for a safe transition from domestic physical apathy to wild training outdoors.

I think gyms will evolve more and more anyways, which they already have started to do. I see them become more minimalist and less sophisticated. I predict an increasingly sharp difference in the fitness industry between "zoo-oriented" gyms and "natural movement oriented" gyms focusing on natural, evolutionary and practical movement. In the first kind you'll find people exercising on machines and just thinking their sophisticated program is a boring chore but that is their only hope to get the physical appearance they are dreaming of; in the second you'll find gyms without mirrors or machines and filled with exuberant people that have truly fallen in love with movement again in a quest to unleash their wild human animal inside and recover their evolutionary birthright of natural movement skills and vitality.

I see this split coming: a so-called "upstream" but in fact downstream, super zoo approach of fitness going on on the one hand, then the come back of an upstream, though so far too often seen as backward, wilder and healthier fitness orientation on the second hand, that will produce new generations of amazing natural athletes or if you will of strong, healthy, happy and free individuals. No doubt. To me, the revolutionary is now in the evolutionary.

Remember, we're all born to be wild!

5 I've seen your ideas presented as an updating of the "Methode Naturelle" of Georges Hébert. From what I've read, his philosophy is holistic – much broader than exercise. Can you indicate some of the wider consequences of the motto - - Être fort pour être utile"--"Being strong to be useful."

Methode Naturelle was not only a physical but a moral education based on altruism, hence the motto "to be strong to be useful". But I personally have a problem with morals or ethics when it comes to deciding what is good or what is not good for me, what is done and what's not, what I should do or what society expects me to do or would like to impose to me as some form of duty.

After all, a tool is useful, a cog in the machine is useful right? I accept no institutional duty. Free will is the most precious thing in my eyes. If I choose to be helpful to others, which I in fact often do because I tend to like others, it is because I decide so and not because I have to. The problem is, many people often think of altruism as sacrificing oneself or one's resources unconditionally for others, even for those that are total strangers to you or even if it's going to be seriously detrimental to yourself. I prefer to impose no moral code in MovNat and leave it up to each individual to decide for themselves what is best when it comes to investing their energy or risking their physical integrity for others, because each situation is different. MovNat training will greatly increase your preparedness so that, in time of need, you have the ability to respond efficiently to practical challenges. Now if your goal is to save lives it's best to consider becoming a firefighter for instance. These guys save lots of lives!


MovNat stands for a different motto which is "Explore your true nature". First, people undergoing the zoo syndrome shouldn't think of helping others first but make sure they're recovering their own strength and vitality before anything. They want to rehabilitate themselves and get stronger and healthier before anything and this should be their absolute priority. They need a training and education that is liberating and empowering.

Again, I am convinced that our true nature is not only to be strong but also healthy, happy and free. If you become such an individual, then there's many ways you can help others, if such is your intention. It's entirely up to you.

6 What implications does your particular philosophy have in terms of diet? Sleep? Posture?

Evolutionary biology but also experience makes it clear we should go for a diet that is as close as possible to the one of our ancestors before the rise of civilization, agriculture, and more recently industrially processed food. Mostly raw, made of lots of vegetables, fruits, meat, fish, eggs, nuts and containing no grains and no dairies. Recovering true, natural taste and smell and the ability to fast sometimes.

Sleeping enough, resting frequently, going to bed early, leave a window open to make sure air is renewed, avoiding synthetic fabrics.

I personally like to sleep on the floor, not in a bed, not even on a real mattress. To me it's more comfortable this way, and this way I can sleep about anywhere without experiencing discomfort whenever I'm travelling.

Avoid staying still for too long, check body tensions frequently and relax, breathing well, slowly and deeply.

That's a few insights, though in my opinion no personal lifestyle should ever become an obsessive application of overly strict rules. It's all a matter of paying attention, of awareness, and when for some reason you know you're not really respecting the needs of your true biological nature, make sure you'll re-establish balance very soon.

7 One of the movement patterns that you recommend is "defence" – grappling / boxing etc. I've recently begun to train in Krav Maga and am really enjoying it for the coordinated /useful movements. But the social side is great too – supporting and helping each other in class. Is there a social side to movement that we also need to recover?

Obviously yes.

I believe the self-obsessed, cosmetics-driven fitness practitioner is missing an important point among others, which is a healthy, cooperative interaction with others. The result in thinking isolation is that in addition to isolating your muscles, you tend to isolate yourself. Is there any fitness machine designed for two people to work out cooperatively and coordinate their movements? Now imagine yourself as part of a small tribe 100,000 years ago, would you spend your time figuring out the most efficient strategy to build big guns fast? Or the latest scientific discovery that will allow you to get six-pack abs in no time?

No, you would rather find ways to work cooperatively with other members of the tribe and would expect all tribe members to do so!

It would be a matter of survival at individual and collective level. A lack of cooperation could have you banned from the band .......and an isolated individual would have been so much more vulnerable. Not the smartest type of behaviour.

So any intelligently designed training program should go beyond the only individual and integrate interaction between individuals.

In MovNat, there's drills that are cooperative so you have to pay attention to others in order to coordinate your efforts with them and to be efficient as a group and successful in performing a task collectively. You learn about reciprocal altruism too. You get to know if or when you can trust in someone else and reciprocally, which with respect and satisfaction makes the equation behind any healthy relationship between human beings.

Thanks for the interview Erwan - there is a great deal in these responses to reflect upon and learn from. I really appreciate the work you put into this interview, especially since English is not your first language.

There you go - some fascinating insights for you from Erwan. There is a lot of material in there to think over. (there is an account here of someone who trained with Ewan)

Plate Shifting

I don't know how "primal" or natural this is....but what a killer exercise:



The video is from Will Heffernan - a top strength and conditioning coach in Ireland.

Natural movement

Natural movement - is this what it is all about?



I mentioned MovNat a few days ago in a post called Real Evolutionary Fitness.

Here is another video of the guy behind the approach - Erwan Le Corre. Check out Erwan's comment on the previous post.

Fat people don't cope well with stress and it makes them stupid

Now this is what I call an experiment!



Sorry for the harsh headline, but that is me dumbing down the study below.

I've written about stress before and Dr Dan had a good post on the subject today too. Stress via increased cortisol can make you fat, but now this indicates that when you are fat you cope less well with stress. A nasty vicious circle.

Higher body fat percentage is associated with increased cortisol reactivity and impaired cognitive resilience in response to acute emotional stress

Objective:

Cortisol is elevated in individuals with both increased emotional stress and higher percentages of body fat. Cortisol is also known to affect cognitive performance, particularly spatial processing and working memory. We hypothesized that increased body fat might therefore be associated with decreased performance on a spatial processing task, in response to an acute real-world stressor.

Design:

We tested two separate samples of participants undergoing their first (tandem) skydive. In the first sample (N=78), participants were tested for salivary cortisol and state anxiety (Spielberger State Anxiety Scale) during the plane's 15-min ascent to altitude in immediate anticipation of the jump. In a second sample (N=20), participants were tested for salivary cortisol, as well as cardiac variables (heart rate, autonomic regulation through heart rate variability) and performance on a cognitive task of spatial processing, selective attention and working memory.

Results:

In response to the skydive, individuals with greater body fat percentages showed significantly increased reactivity for both cortisol (on both samples) and cognition, including decreased accuracy of our task of spatial processing, selective attention and working memory. These cognitive effects were restricted to the stress response and were not found under baseline conditions. There were no body fat interactions with cardiac changes in response to the stressor, suggesting that the cognitive effects were specifically hormone mediated rather than secondary to general activation of the autonomic nervous system.

Conclusions:

Our results indicate that, under real-world stress, increased body fat may be associated with endocrine stress vulnerability, with consequences for deleterious cognitive performance.

Getting Fit with Britain's medal winners

This weekend the Guardian and Observer had an interesting feature with a series of articles about the training routines of several of Britain's medal winners from the last Olympics.

It concentrates on Running, Cycling and Swimming. There are an interesting set of articles there if you like such stuff.

If you flick through the training diaries of the athletes I think it interesting how often they do powercleans and powersnatches. I also liked Diver Tom Daly's routine too. His warm up looked fun:

5.30–9pm: I start with a warm-up game of "wall tennis" with my coach (playing squash with your hands), then I start weight conditioning.....

I remember playing that game as a kid. Anyway, take the time to look through the whole feature - there is good stuff there.

Real Evolutionary Fitness

A comment from Asclepius at Natural Messiah got me thinking about this.



He pointed me to MovNat which is an updating of Methode Naturelle. I'd come across MN a few years ago - in connection to Parkour or Free Running - but had forgotten about it. Wikipedia explains:

A (Natural Method) session is composed of exercises belonging to the ten fundamental groups: walking, running, jumping, quadrupedal movement, climbing, equilibrism (balancing), throwing, lifting, defending and swimming.

The more I think about it, the more that I like this approach.

There is a blog here by a guy working on this template.

Gymnastics and Paleo

Natural Messiah is a good blog that I have have in my RSS Reader. It has a "paleo" bias in terms of diet and exercise, but the guy that writes it is a thinker who does not blindly adopt any template without thinking it through:

................ those who follow a paleo model - .......{must} maintain an evidence-base for their paleo-oriented beliefs. I want to make sure that my exercise and nutritional patterns are at worst non-detrimental to my health and so continually try to record, measure and adjust my current model as appropriate.

One of the things he was musing on today was whether basic gymnastic moves were "paleo", I think he concluded that they were not, but that fundamental gymnastic moves were still fantastic exercises:

gymnasts train with basic movements and holds that can involve contractions throughout the whole body. Planches, Body Levers, Muscle Ups and HSPUs are simply fantastic kit-free exercises. Add a sprint on to the end and you have a complete workout right there! ............I still want 'paleo baseline strength', but we can clearly gain from movements that would be curious to anyone in a loincloth!

I know what he means! I am constantly amazed by the strength and balance of gymnasts. Look at this young boy:









I keep meaning to Get Sommers' new book Building the Gymnastic Body to learn some basics.

Switch to intervals to maintain your fitness with less training?

Well that is the implication of this study as I read it.

The researchers took some endurance athletes and replaced their regular endurance style training with "frequent high-intensity sessions each consisting of 8–12 30-s sprint runs separated by 3 min of rest".

There was a big reduction in training volume but these guys maintained their fitness and actually got more efficient at using energy....

Four weeks of speed endurance training reduces energy expenditure during exercise and maintains muscle oxidative capacity despite a reduction in training volume

We studied the effect of an alteration from regular endurance to speed endurance training on muscle oxidative capacity, capillarization, as well as energy expenditure during submaximal exercise and its relationship to mitochondrial uncoupling protein 3 (UCP3) in humans. Seventeen endurance-trained runners were assigned to either a speed endurance training (SET; n = 9) or a control (Con; n = 8) group. For a 4-wk intervention (IT) period, SET replaced the ordinary training (45 km/wk) with frequent high-intensity sessions each consisting of 8–12 30-s sprint runs separated by 3 min of rest (5.7 ± 0.1 km/wk) with additional 9.9 ± 0.3 km/wk at low running speed, whereas Con continued the endurance training. After the IT period, oxygen uptake was 6.6, 7.6, 5.7, and 6.4% lower (P < 0.05) at running speeds of 11, 13, 14.5, and 16 km/h, respectively, in SET, whereas remained the same in Con. No changes in blood lactate during submaximal running were observed. After the IT period, the protein expression of skeletal muscle UCP3 tended to be higher in SET (34 ± 6 vs. 47 ± 7 arbitrary units; P = 0.06). Activity of muscle citrate synthase and 3-hydroxyacyl-CoA dehydrogenase, as well as maximal oxygen uptake and 10-km performance time, remained unaltered in both groups. In SET, the capillary-to-fiber ratio was the same before and after the IT period. The present study showed that speed endurance training reduces energy expenditure during submaximal exercise, which is not mediated by lowered mitochondrial UCP3 expression. Furthermore, speed endurance training can maintain muscle oxidative capacity, capillarization, and endurance performance in already trained individuals despite significant reduction in the amount of training.

Mr Spectacular

Rob keeps on coming up with interesting moves. He calls this "Mr Spectacular"

Complete a two handed kettlebell Clean & Press, set kettlebells on floor by feet, walk out on your hands, do a push up, walk back up, repeat. Killer!

I used a modified version of this tonight as part of a circuit.

I did a dumbbell snatch with the left hand followed by one with the right, then walked the hands out to a plank, did a pushup and walked the hands back. Did 10 reps, then 10 "slasher to halos" then 3 flights of stairs carrying a 25kg plate. Then repeated the whole circuit.



.

Beer Marinade?

IF YOU are frying a steak and mindful of your health, then marinate it in either beer or red wine. So say food scientists who measured amounts of a family of carcinogens found in fried steaks after steeping them in booze.

Interesting report in the New Scientist! I must admit I do like to marinate my meat, often in wine and olive oil. Maybe I'll try some beer. Steak in Guinness has been seen on pub menus.

Here is the abstract:

The effect of beer or red wine marinades on the reduction of heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAs) formation in pan-fried beef was compared. The cooking experiments were performed under well-controlled temperature and time conditions. The samples were analyzed for HAs contents using solid-phase extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography−diode array detection/fluorescence detection. Unmarinated samples cooked in similar conditions provided reference HAs levels. Marinating with beer or with red wine resulted in decreased levels of HAs. The amount of 2-amino-1-methyl-6-phenylimidazo[4,5-b]pyridine and 2-amino-3,8-dimethylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoxaline reduced significantly, respectively, around 88 and 40% after 6 h of marinating with beer or with wine. High variations were observed for reductions of AαC, ranging between 7 and 77%. Only beer marinade significantly reduced the levels of 4,8-DiMeIQx at 1, 2, and 4 h of marinating. Multivariate statistical treatment of results indicated that beer can be more efficient on the reduction of some HAs formation. In addition, results from descriptive sensory analysis of unmarinated and 2 h marinated beef samples, tested for by two trained sensory panels, pointed to beer marinade as the most adequate for maintaining the usual overall appearance and quality of the pan-fried steaks.

Carbs, Fruit, Veg and cancer...

Actually there is no evidence (in this study at least) that a higher fruit and vegetable intake reduces the incidence of cancer.....

However another study does suggest that a high carbohydrate diet is a risk factor for breast cancer

Such heresy....

Cold Showers stop you getting fat?

Every now and again I come across the idea of cold water dousing as a method of promoting health in various ways. There seems to be a great tradition of cold showers and cold water bathing among old school "physical culturists".

On my desk as I write is a book with a handwritten date in the front of 20 September 1899: "Strength and how to Obtain it" by Eugene Sandow, which I found years ago in a second-hand book shop. There is a chapter in the book - "The Magic Cold Bath" in which the great Sandow recommends daily cold baths - pouring cold water over the head and body and then jumping in and out of the cold water (!)

This idea persists. Art DeVany's fabulous essay on Evolutionary Fitness has this paragraph:

Stay cool and exposure your skin to fresh air and sunlight. Don’t be warm and cozy all the time. End your shower with a cool rinse over your legs. Wear as little as you can tolerate for your workouts. If you can’t stay warm working out, you aren’t going at it at a high enough pace. (Carrying a trendy water bottle slows you down too and ties up equipment for others.) Expose your skin to fresh air by wearing shorts in cold weather to hike. Bare your arms to the air and the sun, but be sensible about the amount and intensity of the exposure.

He once wrote on his blog (26 March 2007 blog post, no longer available):

"I have long practiced forms of cold exposure. The brief shock of cold encourages a stress response and increases adaptive capacity to those exposures that are unplanned and more lengthly or severe. The adaptive capacity extends to other stresses as well and, thus, may protect you against a heart attack or a life-stressing event. Warm and cozy all the time is one of the many pathways to obesity in this comfortable, physically non-demanding we live in."

More recently he wrote:

Hunter gatherers have been observed to tolerate 50 degree temperatures without clothing and without shivering. They are lean and even Eskimo carry only 11% body fat. Fat does not protect from cold and the obese are prone to chills. The answer seems to be that HGs, and EFers, have high UCP3 content in the muscles from their high activity. This produces a heat response in the muscle even without shivering. And, the episodic cold exposure elevates their BAT (brown adipose tissue) activity and mass.

Mark Sisson also had a good post on cold exposure in June last year: Cold Water Therapy in which - looking at several pieces of research - he explains and examines the

...underlying premise of cold water therapy, ... that briefly and somewhat regularly exposing the body to certain kinds of natural stresses (like cold water) can enhance health.

I came across this new bit of research today that indicates that there might be something more in this practice

Control of blood vessels a possible weapon against obesity

Mice exposed to low temperatures develop more blood vessels in their adipose tissue and metabolise body fat more quickly, according to a new study from Karolinska Institutet. Scientists now hope to learn how to control blood vessel development in humans in order to combat obesity and diabetes.

The growth of fat cells and their metabolism depend on oxygen and blood-borne nutrients. A possible way to regulate the amount of body fat – in order, for instance, to combat obesity – can therefore be to affect the development of blood vessels in the adipose tissue.

A team of researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now demonstrated the rapid development of blood vessels in the adipose tissue of mice exposed to low temperatures. This is followed in its turn by a transformation of the adipose tissue from 'white' fat to 'brown' fat, which has higher metabolic activity and which breaks down more quickly.

"This is the first time it's been shown that blood vessel growth affects the metabolic activity of adipose tissue rather than vice versa," says Professor Yihai Cao, who led the study. "If we can learn how to regulate the development of blood vessels in humans, we'd open up new therapeutic avenues for obesity and metabolic diseases like diabetes."

Brown fat releases heat when it breaks down, and is mainly found in hibernating animals. In humans, it is found in newborn babies, but scientists believe by controlling blood vessel development that it might be possible to transform white fat to brown fat in adults as well..

If this is applicable to humans there is one more argument for the modern lifestyle making us fat - central heating....

Lance Swings

Lance Swings






and so does Ross:

Free back pain relief exercises

Here is one for you - a nice little free booklet of exercises to assist in correcting anterior pelvic tilt, a common cause of back pain.

I know that stretching out the psoas can often relieve my back pain and this booklet explains why a tight psoas can be a problem, tugging your pelvis out of position.

Mobility work is another route to loosening our muscles of course (as in Scott Sonnon's booklet). Anyway, check out the booklet:

4-essential-strategies-for-the-correction-of-anterior-pelvic-tilt

The guy that wrote that has some good free videos on Youtube too, for example

Stretching doesn't help the jump.....

Here is a fun video of a jump, then the news:




I have put lots on here previously about stretching - the general idea being that stretching does not tend to improve athletic performance. Here is another one in a similar vein. It might improve flexibility but doesn't improve performance.

Investigation into the long-term effects of static and PNF stretching exercises on range of motion and jump performance.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the long-term effects of two different stretching techniques on the range of motion (ROM) and on drop jump (DJ). DJ scores were assessed by means of a contact mat connected to a digital timer. ROM was measured by use of a goniometer. The training was carried out four times a week for 6 weeks on 10 subjects as passive static stretching (SS), and on 9 subjects as contract-relax PNF (CRPNF) stretching. The remaining nine subjects did not perform any exercises (control group). One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) results indicated that the differences among groups on DJ were not statistically different (F(2,27)=.41, p>.05). ROM values were significantly higher for both stretching groups, while no change was observed for the control group. In conclusion, static and proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) stretching techniques improved the ROM, but neither of the stretching exercises had any statistically significant effect on the DJ scores.

Supplementation with vitamin C, vitamin E, or beta carotene doesn't do much to prevent cancer

Antioxidant supplements do not help much! In fact there have been studies that indicate they might do more harm than good.


Vitamins C and E and Beta Carotene Supplementation and Cancer Risk: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Observational studies suggest that a diet high in fruits and vegetables, both of which are rich with antioxidants, may prevent cancer development. However, findings from randomized trials of the association between antioxidant use and cancer risk have been mostly negative....

Conclusions Supplementation with vitamin C, vitamin E, or beta carotene offers no overall benefits in the primary prevention of total cancer incidence or cancer mortality.

Sugary diets and cancer

I've posted stuff previously (here and here) about sugar and cancer 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.

Here is another side to it. Two new studies that say that sugary diets promote gut cancer in mice by other mechanisms too:

Dietary carbohydrate source alters gene expression profile of intestinal epithelium in mice.

High Sucrose Diets Promote Intestinal Epithelial Cell Proliferation and Tumorigenesis in APC(Min) Mice by Increasing Insulin and IGF-I Levels.