Conditioning Research

Lyle McDonald has a nice piece on his blog -  Information vs Application.   The idea is that most of us already know most of what we need to know in order to improve our health, performance or body composition.  The problem is that we do not apply what we know. He is right, especially about how the internet has exaggerated this problem.

here is another recent one on dairy, this time pointed out to me by reader Matthew Clarke: Hepatic accumulation of intestinal cholesterol is decreased and fecal cholesterol excretion is increased in mice fed a high-fat diet supplemented with milk phospholipids So eat a high fat diet, but don't get a fatty liver.....because you shit out the cholesterol, if you are also eating milk phospholipids ... ( and if you are a mouse) The whole paper is available I like the last sentence of the paper: Whether or not this is of therapeutic relevance in man remains to be determined. maybe something that should be written about every animal study out there!

I met Naeem at the MovNat clinic in Edinburgh in December.  His website - Running Engineer - has some good material. Here he is playing with some logs in MovNat style

There is another good piece on firing the glutes here:  Hamstring Dominance The phenomenon of “gluteal amnesia” is most commonly due to overactive hip flexors.  When the hip flexors (psoas, iliacus, rectus femoris, tensor fascia latae) become tight from poor training and/or prolonged sitting/driving, their antagonists (gluteus maximus, primarily) tend to become weak.  This mechanism is known as reciprocal inhibition.  Basically, when the muscles on one side of a joint become tight, this alters the joint kinematics and shuts down the muscle(s) on the other side of the joint. Now you must be asking yourselves, what in the world does this have to do with tight hamstrings?  It has everything to do with it, of course!  The human body is an amazing piece of machinery and will find ways to accomplish movements regardless if some muscles aren’t functioning to their capacity.  It learns to compensate and calls upon other muscles to perform the movement to ...

Advanced Glycation End producst (AGEs) are interesting.   AGEs are the end-products of glycation reactions, in which a sugar molecule bonds to either a protein or lipid molecule without an enzyme to control the reaction.   Think about caramelised sugar..... There is a good summary AGEs, where they come from and what they do here: What Are Advanced Glycation End Products? Anyway, I saw this abstract today....the more AGEs in the skin the lower the levels of strength.  Skin advanced glycation end product accumulation and muscle strength among adult men. Aging is associated with decreased skeletal muscle function. Increased levels of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) in skeletal muscle tissue are observed with advancing age and in diabetes. Although serum AGE level is negatively associated with grip strength in elderly people, it is unknown whether this association is present in adult males. To determine the relationship between AGE accumulation in ti...

The controversy around milk still continues in my mind.  I can see the standard paleo arguments against, but the chemistry is a bit more complex.  Studies keep popping up about the health benefits of milk fat (I long  ago gave up any idea that saturated fat was unhealthy). Here is another:   a fatty acid in milk fat is associated with a substantially lower risk of type 2 insulin resistant diabetes. The excellent Future Pundit blog has a good write up .

I was skimming around different blogs this afternoon and came across this: How to Optimize Posterior Chain Power: Glute Activation There is some realy good material here. Excessive sitting shortens your hip flexors. This stretches the opposite muscles: your glutes. They become dormant. You can’t fire your glutes properly anymore. The solution is glute activation exercises. Here’s how. The image doesn't have much to do with the article.....but there are glutes: