Conditioning Research

I had a post up a few days ago about low carb diets making people happier . And then there was the post about cholesterol and mental function . Here is another: Schizophrenia, gluten, and low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diets: a case report and review of the literature It is a case study of a schizophrenic who is "cured" after adopting a low carbohydrate diet. Very interesting stuff.

Mind....body.....it is all connected. A few times here I've pointed to stuff about the importance of limiting chronic stress because of the hormonal consequences of stress. Here is a study that explains that simply being mentally tired can limit your physical performance - because it seems harder. Mental fatigue impairs physical performance in humans Mental fatigue is a psychobiological state caused by prolonged periods of demanding cognitive activity. Although the impact of mental fatigue on cognitive and skilled performance is well known, its effect on physical performance has not been thoroughly investigated. In this randomized crossover study, 16 subjects cycled to exhaustion at 80% of their peak power output after 90 min of a demanding cognitive task (mental fatigue) or 90 min of watching emotionally neutral documentaries (control). After experimental treatment, a mood questionnaire revealed a state of mental fatigue (P = 0.005) that significantly reduced time to exhaustion ...

I've had posts before about the way in which a low carb diet seems to be effective in treating cancer. Cancer cells need sugar to survive so starving them of glucose starves them. Richard has had good posts on the same lines too. Anyway I spotted this story today: New findings measure precise impact of fat on cancer spread Researchers at Purdue University have precisely measured the impact of a high-fat diet on the spread of cancer, finding that excessive dietary fat caused a 300 percent increase in metastasizing tumor cells in laboratory animals. interesting....it might put you off eating fat! BUT when you read on a bit beyond the headline you find out that it is not all fat that is the problem....it is polyunsaturated fat! That is supposed to be the healthy fat. The researches used the imaging and cell-counting tools to document that linoleic acid, which is predominant in polyunsaturated fats, caused increasing membrane phase separation, whereas oleic acid, found in mono...

Just wanted to point to a couple of recent pieces on cholesterol. Cholesterol-reducing Drugs May Lessen Brain Function, Says Researcher If you try to lower the cholesterol by taking medicine that is attacking the machinery of cholesterol synthesis in the liver, that medicine goes to the brain too. And then it reduces the synthesis of cholesterol which is necessary in the brain," said Shin. In his experiments, Shin tested the activity of the neurotransmitter-release machinery from brain cells without cholesterol present and measured how well the machinery functioned. He then included cholesterol in the system and again measured the protein function. Cholesterol increased protein function by five times. Chris Masterjohn's been saying the same thing for years. Anyway, I do not want statins! Peter had a great post as well looking some of the dodgy science which gave rise to the whole cholesterol is bad thing.

Here is another mobility / agility drill that is pretty similar to something that Rannoch and the guys from the IKFF taught us last week.

One of the things I keep coming back to on this blog is the need for enough decent sleep in the dark. Way back on this blog I mentioned a book - Lights Out - which went into some of the detail: one of the key problems we face in the world today is that we do not get enough sleep nor - importantly - enough darkness. It looks at how various hormones in the body are promoted by sleep and darkness and how others are released in response to light. The premise is that today we live in an environment where we are almost always in the light. Our bodies and their hormones think we are living in a perpetual summer. Anyway, Jimmy Moore has just put up an interview with the author of the book. It is worth a listen! By the way I find Jimmy really frustrating. He is a nice guy and gets some great interviews, but his own diet drives me mad as it is full of artificial sweeteners and "pretend carbs". He could do so much better if he sorted his food out and started exercising a bit more...