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The Budweiser Diet
March 31, 2006 04:38 PM
That meal entry generated a lot of comments. I enjoyed reading them and seeing the varied approaches to eating of all those who commented.
People take eating somewhat seriously; after all, we are all experts in what we eat and why if we have taken any interest in the subject. And my apologies as well as my sympathies to those females who do cook creative and healthy meals only to have a (likely insulin resistant) male ask, "where's the potatoes?"
It so happens that I had a lovely lady bring over an elegantly simple meal (she knows how I eat) of boiled Alaskan crab legs done with lemon, blanched asparagus drizzled in olive oil, and fresh berries and melon. We were going to make the salad here, but we didn't bother.
As for my caloric intake, I don't have a clue. The calculation I made was at my former body weight (205) as opposed to my current body weight (195, just what I weighed at 16). And, it assumed the Cordain et al hunter gatherer energy expenditure for an active day.
I have many days of languid play and rest. Even my work out days are like that; a brief, very active and enjoyable, but high expenditure work out, and lots of easy fun walking, playing with my grandchildren, riding one of my various toys, washing and polishing the Range Rover, doing light yard work, hitting golf balls, playing at sunset while walking a few holes. Not fair, I know, because I am retired and do what I wish.
But, no one has suspected my total caloric intake because they have not reckoned with alcohol, nuts, fruits, and oils. The studies show that young men get about 20% of their total calories in alcohol. I haven't a clue to mine, but here is a hint.
I was in the store yesterday to buy a dozen eggs. A small quantity, but I am leaving for more than a week to speak at two different conferences on home runs and (not) aging. Budweiser beer happened to be on sale.
So, I checked out with a case of Budweiser (24 cans) and a dozen eggs. I told the (insulin resistant and could-be-cute but for carbs) checker that I was on the Budweiser diet. Budweiser and eggs. She laughed and so did the three women in line. I said look at all the weight I have lost and if you don't lose weight you don't care. We all had a good time.
It was nice to have Robb Wolf comment and he made his usual good sense. As he, I obtain a lot of calories from nuts, fruit (I eat about half a melon at breakfast and an apple at lunch, but nothing at dinner so as not to shut down sleep generation of HGH). And alcohol. I have maybe a beer or two a day, a martini before dinner, and a glass or two of wine with my meal.
So, I do not have a clue to my caloric intake and I do not care. My energy expenditure is so high and, yet, so easy that I can trust my appetite. And then, of course, I ignore all those signals that tell you to eat more that one encounters in this world. They do, after all, call on ancient adaptations that many cannot ignore.
But do remember, if you are not expending far more energy than modern OfficeWorker-Homo Sapiens expends then your appetite is not going to give you a clue. You will be off into metabolic never never land. Carb-swilling endurance atheletes are not far behind you.
LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (5)
How Much Should You Eat?
March 30, 2006 02:14 PM
What should your energy intake be to stay in homeostasis?
This depends on your energy expenditure, which depends on your lean body mass and activity levels. Let’s go through the numbers.
Basal metabolic rate (BMR in Cals) is on the order of BMR = 70 Mass (Kg) ^0.75. There is some controversy about this relation within species, but it does hold across species. For my ratio of lean body mass to Mass, the 70 factor should be increased because I am so lean. BMR is more closely related to LBM than to Mass.
So, at 205 lbs or 93.18 Kg, my BMR is about 2099 Cals per day, probably higher because my LBM is a higher than average portion of Mass.
I have not finished my review of HG activity patterns, but Cordain, Gotshall, and Eaton compiled a typical range for HG males (I am trying to see more about the peak to base variation, not just the average and that is hard to do). Let's use their figures.
They say that HG males spend from 19.6 to 24.7 kcal/kg/day in physical activity. Take 22.0 as an indicative value and convert to Cal/lb and we have about 10 kcals per lb spent in daily activity. At my weight of 205 that is 2050 Cals. Adding basal and physical activity means I am in the over 4100 Cals per day range if I live something like a HG male. I think I come pretty close many days. We do know that many HG males get a lot of day time sleep and hunt just a few days per week.
Low activity levels explains most of weight gain
In my paper, Why We Get Fat, I show that energy expenditure is far more effective at reducing excess fat and body weight than is the equivalent of calorie reduction. That is, spend 100 more calories or eat 100 less calories and see the effect. You will be less fat and far more healthy expending energy than restricting it.
Here is a very nice natural experiment on the free-living energy expenditures of women who maintained weight or gained it. You can see the results from the abstract, but the conclusion dramatically illustrates the power of activity. The low total energy expenditure AEE of the weight gainers explained (a regression coefficient) 77% of their weight gain. They gained an average of 9.5 kilograms in a year.
The abstract follows:
Read More »LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (3)
If You Can't Do This, You are Doomed to a Female's Tastes
March 29, 2006 07:21 PM
This is a meal I tossed together with Cleo Lane (The Voice) and James Gallway (The Flute) playing in the background and nature playing in the foreground out my window.
If you don't love this, you don't get it.
There are no recipes for meals like these, you just have to do them. And, if you can't do this on the fly how are you ever going to be lean and healthy?
Salad: romaine lettuce, fresh ginger chips, flowering kale, with romano caesar dressing and a bit of romano/provolone chips over the top. With fresh, ground pepper.
Pork loin done on the grill with some Jim Beam mustard over it.
Asparagus, steamed. It is the King of vegetables.
Sliced mushrooms sauteed in olive oil and cumin.
Dark red wine.
Really good and loaded with antioxidants, phytochemicals, protein, not much fat, and only the most complex carbohydrate in the asparagus. No female comfort food, but genuine quality and nutrition. I hate to say this but I don't think a female can conceive of this meal. I hope I am wrong. Female readers (yes the shirtless shot is coming) tell me if I am wrong.
Learn to do this. And enjoy it.
LINK · Everything ~ · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (22)
Gene Expression and Muscle Glycogen, Part 3
If the last three posts don't convince you that you ought to deplete muscle glycogen to enhance the training response, then this article ought to really do it for the skeptical or merely habitual glycogen replentishing, sugar consumers among you.
After you read this and take the last three posts together, where does the research support the all-too common practice of glycogen loading, replentishment, and excess concern for the whole topic if not the drink and supplement industry and the health experts it hires to write the articles urging you to get that sugar hit every time you work out or train. As I have said before, this first order thinking does not go far enough down the chain to come to anything more than a superficial understanding of the process that is involved.
The authors are:
Hansen, Anne K., Christian P. Fischer, Peter Plomgaard, Jes-
per Løvind Andersen, Bengt Saltin, and Bente Klarlund Ped-
ersen.
The title:
Skeletal muscle adaptation: training twice every second day vs.
training once daily.
The citation: J Appl Physiol 98: 93–99, 2005. First published
September 10, 2004; doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.00163.2004.
Abstract
—Low muscle glycogen content has been demonstrated to enhance transcrip-
tion of a number of genes involved in training adaptation. These
results made us speculate that training at a low muscle glycogen
content would enhance training adaptation. We therefore performed a
study in which seven healthy untrained men performed knee extensor
exercise with one leg trained in a low-glycogen (Low) protocol and
the other leg trained at a high-glycogen (High) protocol. Both legs
were trained equally regarding workload and training amount. On day
1, both legs (Low and High) were trained for 1 h followed by 2 h of
rest at a fasting state, after which one leg (Low) was trained for an
additional 1 h. On day 2, only one leg (High) trained for 1 h. Days 1
and 2 were repeated for 10 wk. As an effect of training, the increase
in maximal workload was identical for the two legs. However, time
until exhaustion at 90% was markedly more increased in the Low leg
compared with the High leg. Resting muscle glycogen and the activity
of the mitochondrial enzyme 3-hydroxyacyl-CoA dehydrogenase in-
creased with training, but only significantly so in Low, whereas citrate
synthase activity increased in both Low and High. There was a more
pronounced increase in citrate synthase activity when Low was
compared with High. In conclusion, the present study suggests that
training twice every second day may be superior to daily training.
substrate availablity; 3-hydroxyacyl-CoA dehydrogenase; citrate syn-
thase
Text from the first page that is more readable than the abstract...
Read More »LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Sports · Comments (2)
Mountain Climbing
A question from Jim in the comments:
"My sport is mountain climbing. Summit day on a big mountain may entail performing at a very high level for as long as 12 hours or more. If you don't refuel at each rest stop (roughly every 1 to 1/2 hours), you don't have a prayer. The norm is to eat some sort of carbs at each stop. After reading this, I am very confused. What should one ingest to survive this activity?"
Some of my comments on this practice:
1. If you eat carbs for refueling you will crash 1.5 hours later. You are on a carb/insulin rollercoaster, which will be exhausting over the course of a long day. The carbs raise blood glucose which is then followed by a large insulin release. This, in turn, reduces blood glucose, quite possibly to low, bonking levels. People who drink sugary or high fructose soft drinks throughout the day go through the same, exhausting pattern of a sugar rush followed by a blood sugar crash.
2. You are not accessing your fat stores when you eat like this. This is clearly shown by the preceding articles that show that sugar-loaded muscle does not express genes that mobilize and use fat for energy. So, your largest store of energy is not being used when you follow this carb replentishment practice.
3. Where did this come from anyway? From manufacturers of trail mix (almost pure candy) or energy bars (very close to candy and likely inferior to a plain old Snickers bar that at least has some fat as well as antioxidants in the chocolate).
4. Your largest store of energy is in your stores of fat. Second, in your muscle. Eating the sugar shuts down fat utilization and ups sugar burning. Guess where the sugar comes from between those carb loading sessions? Your muscle. Your body breaks down the protein in your muscle and turns that into sugar to get you to your next hit. You are like a sugar junkey, burning up muscle until you can get to the next sugar fix. What a waste. Eat something that will let you burn all that energy you carry in your fat.
5. What do the real mountaineers do, that is the Sherpas? They tend to be sort of chubby fellows who carry and access a lot of spare energy in their fat. I don't know what they eat, but I bet it is a bit like pemmican, dried meat, yak (?) fat, and berries mixed together. It has it all: protein, fat that is not much saturated, and some light carbs with antioxidants in the berries.
6. I do worry about the oxidative load you are exposing yourself to with all this aerobic hiking at high altitude (which promotes a low oxygen state and extra generation of free radicals) and eating sugar which is highly productive of free radical reactions. I would say this is not all that healthy over the long term.
I would turn myself into a fat burner rather than a sugar burner. You save your muscle this way and have access to enormous stores of energy in your fat, even if you are quite lean (though I would bet you are not because of this hiking and sugar bingeing). I would eat real pemmican, not the junk they try to pass off in "health food" stores.
LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (9)
Those Glucose Guzzling Cyclists
March 27, 2006 02:40 PM
And just in case the last post about muscle glycogen and gene expression made you give some thought to the Body Builder Mags and all that glycogen replenishment nonsense, here is one of the powerful reasons cyclists and marathoners are not all that lean. It also points to a way by which they might better their performance.
The hidden point here is that carb ingestion of the sort that most people do these days turns off genes that increase fat metabolism. FFA is liberated by exercise when in the fasted state, but not when you are in the filled-with-glucose state. And who isn't these days between eating donuts for the under-exercised and ingesting glucose for the body builders and endurance sports participants. I don't know any marathoners or middle distance runners who don't eat junk. That is almost all they eat so concerned are they with glycogen loading and replenishment.
Note that little know uncoupling protein again. UCP3 is turned down by carb ingestion. One of these days I will explain UCP3 or I may just leave it for the book.
Read More »LINK · Endurance Training: Death, Injury, and Risk ~ · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Sports · Comments (4)
Gene Expression and Muscle Glycogen
I said it before and I say it again now: filling your muscles with glycogen is nonsense. I have pointed out how gene expression is altered by your activity and your stores of nutrients, among other things. And I have argued that body builders and runners and others who rush to refill their muscle with glycogen right after a work out are actually turning down the training response.
Now, here is an interesting article that measures gene expression and it shows that it is turned down when your muscles contain a lot of glycogen. You reduce the magnitude of the adaptive response to exercise if you are in a hurry, as so many body builders and runners are, to replenish your glycogen stores. They are not thinking at all about gene signaling and adaptation. They are in the linear thinking mode and must reason in a simple (dumb) inventory framework. Use up the glycogen and refill it right away.
This is one of those non-linearities. If you replace the glycogen right away you turn off the gene expression that builds more muscle and does other complex things in muscle tissue. Note the article speaks of TRANSIENT genetic induction, not a steady state. Inducing transients is the essence of the intermittent approach of Evolutionary Fitness.
The abstract follows... There is something very important about uncoupling protein UCP3 that only I and a few others know about and I may be the only person to incorporate respiratory chain uncoupling in anti-aging model and practice.
Read More »LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Sports · Comments (8)
Evolutionary Fitness: The Original Essay
I have decided to put my original Evolutionary Fitness Essay in a more accessible place. It can be found in the archives, but it is easier to find in my Research section (the link is at the top of the page) where it now resides. This version is lightly revised from the original 1995 essay.
This is what started it all and is a slimmed down version of the program I have followed for the past 20 or more years.
LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (4)
How Hollywood Chews up Naive Investors
March 23, 2006 03:50 PM
Patrick Kiger did a nice job putting his interview with me and others on how Hollywood draws investors and what happens to them if they don't know what the business is like or what the uncertainties really are. The town has taken money from a lot of shrewd business men from Hearst, to Hughes, Joe Kennedy, Bronfman, Morita (head of SONY Corporation), and Mercier when he ran Vivendi (a highly connected French water and sewage company---you would have thought that might have worked, a lot of the sewage could have gone straight to the screen).
I put the Time Magazine article under the Research link at the top of the page. See Kiger's fine article "Chew. Spit. Repeat."
Not only have large corporations and moguls from other industries been chewed up, largely because they do not understand the business or the stable Paretian distribution. Many smaller investors and would-be creative people are chewed up too. Here it may more often be dishonesty rather than the deadly outcomes under the Pareto distribution, though both are at work.
Aleck, who has never sat in a class with me, but must be my best student on Hollywood because he combines experience there with what he has learned from my book [he has lost a lot of weight and inches too from following Evolutionary Fitness], told me a Hollywood joke, a wry comment that a lawyer told a client. "You should take his money before he learns you are going to steal it from him."
LINK · The Movie Business · Comments (4)
John Lott, on personal defense after Katrina
March 22, 2006 08:37 PM
I think John Lott is a remarkable economist and scientist. He has persisted against all odds in academia to achieve a research record that he and any scientist could be proud of. In left-wing academia, he held his own and his research on personal safety stands as the standard. I would be proud to hold such a rank. Note, that he, like so many scientists whose conclusions go against the prevailing, group think, academic elilte are in think tanks rather than universities. AEI, where John and Charles Murray, among many others are located, are not in the tradition of the academic researchers who promote one another rather than what is true, scientific, refutable knowledge.
I think you might want to see this eminently sensible article by John. Of course, if you read this site, you will decide for yourself. But, largely through John's research I have decided to buy a gun. My grandson and I are often far out in remote places with my RV and our motorcycles. Tempting targets to many, whether they seek our machinery or my beautiful grandson. So, I have chosen to do the training and courses in order to be armed against---well, you never know.
John Lott's straight-ahead article is posted here with his permission....
Read More »LINK · Everything · Comments (6)
Remember Shakespeare
March 21, 2006 07:10 PM
Many of the things that are said about Bonds, Sosa, and McGwire were once said about Shakespeare. In fact, they are still said.
It was thought that no ordinary mortal could have written these towering dramas of English literature; the most enduring language of all. It was thought that perhaps the polymath Francis Bacon had to have done it, as he had shown his genius in other ways.
Shakespeare was a mere mortal and actor who was writing plays to keep his production company in business and to supply material for the two theatres his company owned, the Blackfriers and the, oh I forgot. In some ways, he was a production writer, much like a modern television writer, geared to producing material that would fill the houses, where they held pit fights between pit bulls and bulls to fill the house when they did not have plays to present. [Yes, pit bulls were bred to fight.]
It is all quite ridiculous. Genius cannot be explained. One simply has to sit back and enjoy its rare presence. Bonds is the Shakespeare of baseball, nearest to the Babe of all mortals who have ever played the game. Relax and give him his due. You will not see another for as long as you and I live. Maybe never. And, you may not, but I love his dismissal of the sports press.
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Around the Bases, One More Time
I was once an expert witness in a case where the plaintiff made the same argument many proponents of steroids make. Their expert claimed that they had been damaged and it was plain to see that the damage was large because the company spent so much money trying to prevent the damage.
This is completely circular, as are so many of the steroid arguments. The conclusion, the damage, is already in the premise. To make this more clear I said this is like saying there are a lot of ghosts in my house because why else would I spend so much money on ghost detection devices and ghost prevention services. I never saw a judge laugh so hard. End of case.
To make the same claim for steroids is equally silly. Because some athletes take them they must work. Look these guys are not rocket scientists and neither are the people who may be advising them. What Joseph rightly did was to say look at the evidence over all steroid and non-steroid hitters, or a sample of them. This is how a scientist would test the proposition. And, he pointed to the large number of steroid users who failed to accomplish anything.
Too many people fall for this Michael Jordan effect; I'll go buy his shoes and play like him. New shoes will not give you a vertical leap of 40 inches. And a few steroid shots won't give you the skill and quickness to hit home runs.
Just because it is chemistry and not simply shoes, some people may fall for the Michael Jordan effect. And there is slightly more to it in this instance. But, there is no talent in that juice, just a testosterone derivative that will change many things in your body, not just your muscle. Your testes will begin to shut down because there is a feedback between their output and what is in your blood. Excess testosterone will aromatize (body fat is the big factor here) into estrogen, so you will find your feminine side. You may find that big breasts get in the way and slow your bat speed. There is almost no experimental evidence on this issue because there are so many risks of trying to do an real scientific test. The one I could find from 1996 showed negligible effects of steroids in a controlled experiment.
For all the fears of steroids, there are no reported cases of baseball players dying of cancer or showing any health problems. There is likely to be a higher level of steroid use on your local high school football team than on a professional baseball team. And these insecure young males who lack the knowledge and balance to deal with challenges are the most likely users who then go on to become abusers.
And let's let poor Lyle Alzhedo rest in peace. He has been made the poster boy of steroid abuse. Abuse is far different from sensible use. There is no evidence that steroid use promotes brain cancer. More Boston Marathon runners (4 that I know of so far and there are doubtless more) have died of brain cancer than football players who were known steroid users. And, in the case of marathoning, the chemical messengers and mechanisms are known (see my Top Ten Reasons Not to Run Marathons).
I repeat: there is not a shred of evidence that steroids improves home run hitting. How I looked at the issue...
Read More »LINK · Everything ~ · Sports ~ · Uncertainty · Comments (4)
Steroids and Home Runs: The Attempt to Deny Bonds his Greatness
March 18, 2006 09:46 AM
One of the things I am proudest of about my site is my smart readers. I could name many of you and a look through the comments will show the good sense and intelligence of many of them. There are many others who do not comment directly, but email me directly now and then.
I want to share with you, with his permission, a letter that Joseph (I withold his last name) sent to the San Francisco Chronicle regarding their poor and unbalanced treatment of Barry Bonds, one of the great gifts to baseball fans who know the sport.
Editor,
The "illustration" on page 64 of your March 17-23 issue shows" Barry Bonds, Major League Baseball Record Book and other fairy tales" without any follow up. Obviously the illustrator, and your paper are suggesting to your readers that Bond's records are tainted or are not to be accorded credit because of the allegations that Bonds Home Run Records are tied to his alleged use of steroids. In addition to the upcoming "tell all book" by two S.F. Chronicle staff writers, the papers, nation wide, and politicians hungry for free exposure, are on the attack against Bonds.Because I believe these attacks are a combination of ignorance, sloppy journalism, or possible racial prejudice (see the total lack of articles regarding alleged steroid use by Mark McGuire), I have challenged Bruce Jenkins of the S.F. Chronicle and Jon Sarecono of USA Today, two of the "accusers", to do their job and research the issue of whether or not steroid use contributes in any measurable way towards hand/eye coordination; ability to judge, in say 2-3 seconds, whether or not one should swing at a ball thrown from 60 feet, 6 inches away at 90 miles per hour and to decide that said ball is in the strike zone. They also were requested to demonstrate and how much more distance, if any, a ball will travel if hit by a MLB player using steroids.
I sent to Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Saraceno an article written by Arthur De Vany, Professor Emeritus, Institute For Mathematical Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA. (attached) that, in my opinion, totally refutes a connection between "use of steroids" and the ability to hit home runs. For some reason, (probably because they were caught with "their pants down" or laziness or apathy), Jenkins and Saraceno never responded to me or made any reference to Professor De Vany's presentation in any of their columns. Their failure to "explain" and cite scientific proof and/or statistical evidence to support their judgment that Bond's alleged use of steroids is directly related to his home run production, after being provided with Professor De Vany's detailed, statistical, refutation of their allegations, is not only telling but also demonstrates that they are cowards and lazy ,and that they choose to hide behind their one sided, subjective, positions rather than seek out and report ALL THE FACTS!
The San Francisco Business Times, having published the "illustration" that implies that Bonds' home records are "fairy tales", owes it readers and subscribers a balanced report on this issue that is constantly in the news. You also owe Bonds, a significant contributor to the economic well being of San Francisco, an objective report that gives both sides of the issue.
Please "step up to the plate" and give your readers and subscribers an in depth look at all the factors involving steroid use and it's ability or non-ability to enhance the performance of a major league baseball player. You might want to start with the records of those major and minor league ball players who tested positive for steroid use and never hit more than 20 home runs in any one major league baseball season!!!
Sincerely,
Joseph
Joseph's last point is a killer. For those of you have have not read my paper "Steroids, Home Runs and the Universal Law of Genius" you can find it under the Research link at the top of the web page.
LINK · Everything ~ · Sports ~ · Uncertainty · Comments (9)
The Environmental Wars
March 17, 2006 09:51 AM
This looks like a great conference. I have just registered for it.
The Environmental Wars sponsored by the Skeptics Society (of which I am a member).
LINK · Everything · Comments (2)
Conquest and the Beauty Gene, Part 2
March 15, 2006 08:58 PM
I had a bit of brain fade, something that happens to motorcyclists in a race (and more often to bicyclists when they bonk). There is nothing in my model of fierce males and beautiful females that suggests that the males will be beautiful. That may have been a throwaway line when I said Russian males are beautiful too, like their females.
There is nothing about a ruthless and self-interested killer that would select for beauty. A killer need not have any look. So, the marauding males who killed everyone but the beautiful females need not have any look at all. I was way out there in error space when I said that. They might, over time, inherit through generations of breeding, some of the features of the females whose husbands and children they murdered for nothing more than the personal gains of looting and the pleasure of killing.
If Russia, even today, has males of this fierce ruthlessness, even while the females have the beauty of those who were spared the killing of the marauding Mongols, then Russia will always be a place of great sadness. One with rulers who are heirs to the genes of ruthless killers. It is no wonder that Russian females want to get out. It is not only the scarcity of males, but the scarcity of caring males that would drive them out.
I think that Russia will always be a place of grey and great sadness, offering more sadness than any Russian play could guarantee (Irving Berlin I think).
Second point, and this continues the story of The Town of Really No Cleavage. Two neighbors missed me as they set out on a hike in the cliffs above Colorado City, the fundamentalist community south of here. Good thing for me. They got lost and only found their way back when they came upon a dead horse that had been there so long that it was known to be just above the trail head leading back to civilization.
They told their story to a local FBI agent who is also a neighbor (yes these guys and gals lead pretty normal lives when they are not doing FBI things). The agent told them 1. they were lucky, 2. they could have been killed because the town folks are agitated and suspicious of strangers because of the investigations and attempted capture of the creep who ran the place, and 3. that they might have attempted to steal their sperm had they been captured.
Now, there may be pleasant ways to steal a man's sperm (there are) but not if the receptor is a victim of the same violence to which the donor is exposed or if the sperm is taken in strange ways that I do not know about and would not even guess about.
Read More »LINK · Everything ~ · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (4)
Conquest and the Beauty Gene
March 14, 2006 06:36 AM
The sun came out and the three days of snow melted into the ground. High scattered clouds moved across the sky rapidly, but there was only a gentle breeze below. I had to stop working on my Tucson paper and head out to the golf course. After hitting some balls I walked the first 6 holes absolutely alone and having the course all to myself. What a great afternoon.
As I walked to the parking lot, I struck up a conversation with some guys who had come up from Las Vegas to play. I said I will be there in a couple of weeks. They said you have got to go to Sideways, a club for gentlemen, you would be welcome there. Thanks I thought. And then they started talking about this Russian girl there; she was unbelieveably beautiful and wild.
I said she comes from a place where only the most beautiful women survived the Mongol conquests and mated with the wildest, fiercest males. I described the shape of the head and eyes of these women and likened them to the bust of Lenin, a wild, fierce man who was strikingly handsome as well. A touch of a Mongol brow over a European head, with a high forehead and a slight triangular shape, rounded at the top. I said she also had an hour glass shape because a woman must have wide hips to deliver a baby with such a head. Put these factors together and you have a real beauty. I said maybe there is something to this Russian bride thing and I think we all went away thinking we might see if we can find a web site. (Actually, Russian males are very handsome too; there are just too few of them relative to females because of their excess mortality. Same sad story for black males in America.)
They seemed kind of stunned by my lecture and I drove home (about one minute) thinking more about the issue.
You also get such women in other parts of the world where conquest and beauty come together; in the regions of France that the German tribes overran often (my part of the world, being German and French, with a French name). In Constantinopol where the Mongols killed everyone but the beautiful women. Images of Afghanistani women (now that they are free to shed their burkas) show this kind of wild beauty; they are Caucasian, not Arab, but come from a hilly terrain where local wars and wife stealing has gone on for eons. In the regions of Europe where the Vikings pillaged I bet you would see the same kind of beauty and fierceness in the people. Men's Journal claims that the most beautiful women on Earth are in Greenland. Not so much a place of conquest as one settled by a people who stole women from many parts of the world. Combine this with a narrowing of the gene pool amongst a small population subject to brutal conditions and you get survival of only the most beautiful women. (I told some buddies about this and they actually went there. Alas, I could not go with them.)
I call it the gene for beauty, but...
Read More »LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (9)
Epigenetics
March 13, 2006 05:42 PM
You have heard me say often enough that genes are not destiny and that what you do and eat and even your environment turn switches on and off. Gary Marcus writes of the genes as "If Then, Else" switches meaning what is expressed depends on conditionals, not just dumb on off switches. Cascades of gene switches can accomplish tasks of arbitrary complexity. This is likely why we are able to get by with "only" 30,000 genes. Combinations of genes, on and off, arrayed in series switches can function as a universal computer, encoding programs of great complexity.
I turn my genes on and off all the time with deliberate actions. So does every one else, but they may be activating wholly different programs. One of the basic elements of my approach is that we are active genotypes, our genes encode a phenotype that must be active to turn on healthy and adaptive genetic programs. Some of my posts on FT and ST muscle describe how the genes in the muscle express heavy chain or light chain myosin depending on the kinases they are exposed to and the oxygen and acid state of their environment.
Now, thanks to Cardozo Bozo, here is a very interestingj piece on epigenetic (beyond the genes) research. I wanted to call attention to what he has given us by putting it in a post. Thanks Cardozo. Here is the link on Epigenetics in The Globe and Mail.
LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (5)
Limits
I don't give medical advice nor do I recommend supplements or doses.
These are up to you and your doctor or nutritional advisor.
I sometimes tell you what I do and why and point you to the research that relates to my theories or practices.
As for aminoguanidine, I take a 75mg pill about 2 days out of 3, but always a bit randomly. I have done it for some years, ever since I read the research and had been having some spine stiffness. I have solved this issue, perhaps through the aminoguanidine and, most importantly, through a program of less static stretching and more specific muscle strengthening. Please don't ask for specifics until I am able to make that book chapter available.
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Odds and Ends
March 12, 2006 10:27 AM
It is kind of awkward answering questions on the comments, so let me do a few here.
1. Two girls have called my bluff. They want me to take my shirt off. So, I will, but it will be just for the ladies to see. I will have to trust the rest of you not to look. I have arrangements to make and want to get at least a little sun. Then...
2. I do use the aminoguanidine from the Pro-Found-Products.net source. Because it is a wholesale source, you have to buy a lot at one time. That was not a consideration when I was caring for Bonnie. It may be now. I may look for a retail site that has the same product so that you don't have to buy 100 at a time. Anyway, I have used the product for several years.
3. I am booked to ride Scott Harden's Nevada Rally III. That is me next to Scott on the far right. I am by many years the oldest guy in the group. They were a great group of guys and Scott is a superb rider and was an economics major in college. Got to sign up for one of his Adventure Camps too. If you get a chance to go to one, take it. Scott has a gorgeous wife too.
4. My doctor, who would be lonely if he had to depend on me as a patient, tells me he wants to look and be just like me when he grows up. He said I am an inspiration. I said it isn't hard to do if you know the science (actually many sciences are involved, so it is a bit harder than you might think). I will reveal all in the book. He actually reads the medical journals, so many doctors seem to be so busy I don't see how they have time to read the journals. Isn't this one of those paradoxes where you get the opposite of what is intended? Medical malpractice is supposed to help instill incentives in doctors to provide good care. But, it has driven so many doctors out of business or detered new entrants that existing doctors, who have big insurance premiums to pay, may become so busy as to hover on the margin of good and poor practice. We have interesting conversations.
5. I am booked for a May motorcycle tour of the Dolomite Alps from a base in Bolzano, Italy. In April, Bonnie and I would have been married 48 years. It will be good to have something to look forward to as April comes upon me.
6. Speaking of looking forward to things...
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Aminoguanidine
March 10, 2006 05:02 PM
I have been asked about aminoguanidine. This is a substance that dramatically reduces diabetic retinopathy, the reason I had Bonnie on it for several years before she died. She had experienced some bleeding in the eye, fixed by laser, but she had no further problems after I put her on aminoguanidine. See, Pharmacological Inhibition of Diabetic Retinopathy Aminoguanidine and Aspirin, Timothy S. Kern1 and Ronald L. Engerman, Diabetes, Vol 50, 2001.
I had been on it before that because, not only does it prevent cross linkages from forming in the collagen---the major reason people get stiff and brittle as they age (it is aging, not from it)---it also dissolves cross-links that may already exist. I believe this is one of the reasons I am not stiff or brittle. I don't walk, stand, or move like my contemporaries, who are actually old men because they have gone through the oxydative glycation through poor diet and management of glucose that I have largely avoided. Hence, I move like a young man (of course I am one because I have not taken that trip down the oxydative/glucose promoted aging cascade).
Sugar and oxygen are a potent combination in the human body. Short sugar chains are produced by digestion of sugars and starches. When they meet oxygen, they go into a burst of high powered oxydation and tissues nearby are hit with a free radical dose. This is one of the causes of advanced aging in aerobic athletes (but you won't find it reported that way) who are subject to heavy oxygen loads and consume a lot of simple sugar. Aminoguanidine is a powerful subtance against this lethal dose. Aminoguanidine is known to protect against sugar toxicity, the oxygen and glucose interaction that alters proteins and produces toxic molecules.
For many years, I have used diet, exercise (anaerobic, which produces a low oxygen burst and low proton leakage from the mitochondria), and intermittant fasting to manage my blood glucose. My high antioxidant and aminoguanidine intake kills the interaction of glucose and oxygen that most people experience on a regular basis, given their high blood glucose and appaling diet that is rich in starches and simple sugars.
Below I include some text from "Superoxide Dependence of the Toxicity of Short Chain Sugars," Ludmil Benov and Irwin Fridovich, THE JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY Vol. 273, No. 40, Issue of October 2, pp. 1998 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc. Hard reading, but something you should try to understand if you are to avoid the sugar/oxygen disease that is at the heart of what we call ageing.
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A Nice Breakfast, A Beautiful Morning
This morning's breakfast. A large pork chop with snow covered rosemary on top. Grapes (too many, I didn't eat them all), and a bit of melon. A cup of black coffee.
Through the window you can see the overnight snow that fell. Unusual for this time of year or really any time of the year.
Here is a shot.
I love it here, even if it is The Town With No Cleavage (see below).
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The Town with No Cleavage
March 9, 2006 09:56 AM
I call the place I live The Town with No Cleavage. I think that is the title to an old Clint Eastwood movie, isn't it? A spaghetti western with Eli Wallach playing, way over the top, and badly a very bad guy mexican sidekick. I may be confused on that, please correct me if I am wrong.
I call it (music comes up, Clint squints) The Town with No Cleavage because women are not able to celebrate their bodies here. The religious influence is palpable and there seems to be a morosness that covers the place. A place of little culture is a Town with No Cleavage, because women are not free to dress as they choose. A woman's freedom is expressed in many ways, but one of the important ways is in how they dress and present themselves.
Farther south is another place where women have even less freedom and there is no cleavage whatever. It is the fundamentalist community so much in the news recently, Colorado City, AZ. I wandered into the grocery store there once, not knowing much about the place, looking for a bottle of wine. That really shows how little I knew about the place. People stared at me as an outsider not welcome in (Clint squints and lights a cigar, Eli looks apprehensively at him) The Town with Really No Cleavage. The striking thing, since I am a close observer of women, is that every woman looked the same. Same hairdo, same basic, covered everywhere dress, walking the same distance behind her male. You never see women do this when they are free to express themselves. They hate it when they see the same dress on another female and express themselves through their hair, make up, posture, and countless other ways.
Not in Colorado City, AZ. A documentary could be made about the place and the title The Town with Really No Cleavage would so accurately describe, not the barrenness to a male, but the lack of free expression and freedom of a female living there. Many try to get out to avoid being assigned like chattel to an older male. I am slowly giving Bonnie's beautiful clothes to groups that shelter young women escaping this older male-dominated, barren place. The first thing they want to do is take a good shower and put on something pretty. My mother had to do the same thing many years ago in Iowa; refuse to be dominated or assigned and escape to a freer place.
The young males have it no better in The Town with Really No Cleavage. They are thrown out, especially if they are good looking and accomplished, so the older males don't have to compete with them for young women. And because the older males take more than one wife.
On the other hand, there was a time that Hollywood could have been called (music comes up, Clint squints and the local hot widow tears open her bodice) The Town with No Cleavage.
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My Readers
March 8, 2006 05:03 PM
I learn so much from the people who read and then comment on the blog.
A few comments on the comments.
My 2 iron is a Ping G3 high loft fitted to me. Toe up one degree, shaft one half inch longer, D5 swing weight, one oversize on the grip, stiff shaft with the shock absorbing cells that Ping offers. With the Austin swing you can swing a heavier club because you drive with the legs and spine, the levers, and just let the club carry itself through the hitting area. Easier said than done as I found out today, the first time I took the swing to the course and first time I have played in a month or two. When I tried to manipulate the club head in the hitting area, not trusting the swing, I got into hooking. Relaxing the hands fixes it, but just try to do it when things are working out so well.
Institutionalized, large schools do seem to take children out of the age mixture and confine them to their peers. My youngest son's wife home schools. I think it is good and do what I can to help out.
The Glutathione Health Packs that I take are not a miracle. But, first I would say if you are having any stress or feel vulnerable you should take two packs a day. I take two a day almost always, but for some randomization. Don't take them too close to bed or they may keep you awake. Then, I would add that you must get enough sleep. Insufficient sleep shortens the repair work the body must do and it also means that you will burn less fat because you release less growth hormone. Further, I would point to the obvious things people know but sometimes forget. Wash your hands and keep them away from your face. Don't put pencils, etc in your mouth. Keep your teeth and mouth clean. Brush your tongue now and then.
More and more evidence comes forth of the bacterial causes of disease, h. pilori and chlamydia are implicated in ulcers and atherosclerosis. The pattern of heart disease is an almost classic picture of an invasion, early lethality and then accomodation of pathogen and host. The continuing decline of cardiovascular, disease as well as its rapid rise, looks like a pathogen is to blame. The mouth is an entry point to these pathogens.
Nearing 5 million hits.
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The Young American Male
March 7, 2006 07:59 PM
Seems to be an ESPNized, ill-mannered, ignorant, border-line obese creep. If fat females are not the best form of birth control then these jerks are next.
I sat in the bar of a local restaurant tonight to have a light meal out. I had steak Oscar, steak covered with crab, asparagus, and bernaise sauce. It reminded me of the Veal Oscar I used to love as a poor grad student when Bonnie and I went out to dinner once a month.
We sat there and loved the food and one another. No sports on TV or noise. Just the two of us. I heard nothing but games on TV and young males arguing in the over-heated ESPN style over sports. Quoting averages they just heard and knowing nothing.
I asked for my check early and got out of that mindless, noisy place as quickly as I could. My meal was pretty good, but I wouldn't go there again. I say that a lot about restaurants here, probably because they are populated and cater to the same mindless, sports nutty, creeps I saw there.
TV promotes the sports addiction, as though it is a sign of manliness. And young guys go for it, at least as I see it. I don't know what they have in the shallow semblance of a mind that they have, but it isn't going over with me, or with the females around. I spoke to the waitress and asked her what she thought of these young male customers. She sighed and said it was scary. She said there are no gentleman anymore. Is that what she has to deal with to find a father to her children?
The manager of the place came to ask me about the meal. I said it was fine, but what kind of ambience is this? He said you don't know what we have to deal with.
ESPN rules and males thrive on a false bravado, addicted to sports and silly, meaningless statistics (they don't have a clue about statistics). What is to become of their women and their children? Whatever happened to a quite dinner with your woman and making her the center of your attention?
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Smiling Again
I have always smiled a lot, but not as much in the past year. Guess I am healing as my friend Leigh caught me at the coffee shop in the village here in Coral Canyon. I do feel more sense of relief now, but still can't face going through the closet or drawers to remove Bonnie's things.
This should give you some idea of my condition even though I haven't taken my shirt off (not going to either in spite of numerous requests, unless maybe a girl reader on the site asks). A little light still, about 202, down from 208, but feeling good. Still little grey hair;
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Starting to Get It: The Austin Swing
This is the follow through to a 300 yard 2 iron. I know, Lee Trevino says even God can't hit a 2 iron. Well, I like hitting one. I guess it feels more like the length of a baseball bat to me and fits the pace of my swing better than a longer club.
I have come up a bit and am a bit too far forward, but then the ball is long gone. That shot was absolutely straight, high and landed softly. I will send the photo to Dan Shauger for his comments.
The conical action of the hands and club that Dan teaches are his improvements on the Austin swing. The hands are pretty relaxed and the power comes from the legs and spine action. Yet, the release is so full that there is a huge boost from the hand action with no risk of hooking or slicing (if the hands stay relaxed and release in the conical pattern). All very easy on your back too.
I may not use a driver again. Really don't need it. On the other hand, it sure is nice to put it onto the green on a par 4 with the driver. But, I will have to put in the time.
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Cavemen Preferred Blondes
March 4, 2006 10:36 AM
From one of our readers and fellow motorcycle nut comes this fascinating line of evolutionary reasoning reported by ABC News.
Research May Explain Why Light Hair Color Is So Common in Northern, Eastern Europe
By JONATHAN SILVERSTEIN
March 2, 2006 -- - Back in the ice age, Northern European cavemen got all the chicks.
Thanks to a food shortage and a man shortage about 10,000 years ago, men were in such demand they had their pick of mates.
With so much competition among women to find a mate, nature and evolution kicked in to give some cave women a distinctive look to attract the opposite sex: blond hair and blue eyes.
So says a new study published in the British science journal Evolution and Human Behavior.
Are Blondes Mutants?
The study's author, Canadian anthropologist Peter Frost, concludes that although blond hair and blue eyes started as a genetic mutation, men were pulled in by the golden locks and baby blues, thus populating the area with blond and blue-eyed children.
While the rest of the world has predominantly brown hair and brown eyes, Northern Europeans have the greatest variety of hair and eye color found anywhere, and Frost believes it resulted from the sexual appeal of these traits.
"When an individual is faced with potential mates of equal value, it will tend to select the one that 'stands out from the crowd,' the study said.
Still, the study admits it's unclear why the mutation happened in Europe and not elsewhere.
The theory is backed by several other studies, including one conducted in Japan that found that the gene responsible for blond hair appeared for the first time about 11,000 years ago.
The Grass Is Always Greener
Though a caveman bachelor may have had no problem finding a date for Saturday night, his existence was far from ideal.
According to the study, men of the time were forced to go on long hunting expeditions over vast areas to find their prey.
With no means to preserve food for the journey, an unforgiving ecosystem and the risks presented by the hunt itself, some men never made it back.
The ones who did were highly sought after.
To add to the difficulties, women weren't really equipped to gather food and the arctic environment didn't allow for opportunities close to home. Frost argues that if a woman wanted to eat, she needed a man.
Women had to attract men to survive.
Frost concluded that Mother Nature answered the call by introducing hair and eye colors -- like the more than seven distinct colors found in Northern and eastern Europe today.
If he is correct, it appears that even 10,000 years ago, blondes had more fun.
Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures
Of course, men are almost always scarce. Slightly more men are born than women, but male mortality is so much higher than female mortality that males become scarce by the time the cohorts reach their 30's. War has a major impact at times, reducing even younger males relative to females. Black women face a particular scarcity of males, given excess mortality and prison detention of young black males. It seems this pattern was typical of the evolutionary time frame too. Relative male scarcity would help explain why men seem more concerned with looks than women. The ones who managed to stay alive probably did have their pick. And the women would have been pretty desperate, at least at times.
But, why are there blond blue-eyed males? Perhaps the gene conferred other advantages, such as superior photosensitivity, essential in a cold, northern environment where exposure to sunlight was limited.
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Batting for the other team
March 3, 2006 09:58 AM
This is so good, if you love movies as I do, that I had to share it with you.
Kimberley Strassel put this clever and masterful piece in the Opinion Journal at WSJ.com: Where have all the Hollywood Hunks gone?
Somehow, she overlooked Mr. Incredible a real Hunk, if maybe a bit too "sensitive."
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On Being an Evolutionary Fitness Male
March 2, 2006 08:11 PM
1. You protect and honor your woman. She carries your genes foreward in ways you cannot. Not as an alpha type of male, who has ulcers and high stress from being overcontrolling, but as a supportive and loving male. You have the confidence, i.e. realistic expectations and probabilities on events, that you do not expect to control outcomes, only inputs to the stochastic process.
2. Use the high technology to live long and full of muscle and hormones. You will not be ordinary male if you follow Evolutionary Fitness because, whatever your current state, you have advanced science and evolutionary history on your side. Ordinary males, who have no technology or science on their side, age and deteriorate more rapidly than need be.
3. Learn to cook for yourself. Females, if they cook for you, will go for high body fat foods. That is because they are evolved to reproduce and must have high body fat to do so. Cut the pasta, beans, bread, and other starches that women often call "comfort foods". They will age and emasculate you. I love cooking for myself and I approach the produce and meat sections as though I am hunting and gathering. I create meals on the fly and eat high nutrient, low caloric foods. I don't think a woman can relate fully to that.
4. Use all energy pathways, but rely on the anerobic pathway as your base. Forget the running crowd, they look so old and injured to me, and they are as the scientific literature clearly documents. If it were not for the aerobic bias in research, few people would rationally do these things.
5. Relax, you don't have to dominate anyone. Your superior technology will make something like that happen, even if you are not trying. And you shouldn't try. Attempting to beat or dominate someone else is a false goal. Live well and bring everyone along with you. They do not know the way.
6. Every female I meet eats junk and thus diets excessively. They want to look good, don't we all, but they do so little muscle-building exercise that they have to resort to starvation diets and plastic surgery to try to look good (ie reproductively useful to a male).
7. Life should be relaxed and easy. If you are confidant in the evolutionary fitness way, you know that you cannot control the outcome, only control your inputs to the process. Failure does not exist because you know you cannot make an arbitrary outcome happen. Thus there can be no failure. Enjoy and thrive on process, not outcome. In fact, failure only comes to those who think they can control the process. Only they can fail because they have false beliefs. This sets them up for failure on the very terms they specify.
8. Love science, truth and honor, children, women and yourself. And love action. Your moment of power is in the now. Live grounded in the now. Forget false hopes and notions of what you deserve or are entitled to. You are entitled to nothing, only what you create for yourself, your family and others you value.
9. Life is bigger than any of us. Use your gift of life well.
10. Pride is different from ego. Ego is harmful, pride is all we have.
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School Choice and Closing the Racial Gap in Learning
Choice is power. Its just basic economics. And there are few areas where choice is more restricted than in our public schools (health care choice is the other area of great importance). When parents and students have choices, they are empowered to bring about change.
Blacks have been failed by our public school system in ways that other groups seldom experience. Abigal and Stephan Thernstrom in their fine book, "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning," demonstrate how and why the public schools have failed our black children, and the rest of us. [Ironically, this title has been co-opted by the Utah education union to promote expansion of public schools in Utah. Are they really aware of this?]
Minneapolis is one of the leading cities in granting choice to parents and black parents are seizing the opportunity to get a better education for their children. The Opinion Journal of the WSJ has this article on the growing power of choice in the Minneapolis schools Black Flight.
It is time to give these choices to all parents.
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To Your Back Fitness and a Modern Golf Swing
March 1, 2006 12:20 PM
A reader has asked for more information on some of my sources for back fitness and the Mike Austin golf swing.
1. Paul Chek's book is The Golf Biomechanic's Manual. It is a technical book of great content meant primarily for practicioners and trainers. It is pretty expensive, around $90. The model of the golf swing used in the book is the rotational, PGA swing. It is also a two-plane swing, though the book does not make that recognition. However, the training and flexibility program will work for any swing, even though it is perhaps overly concerned about the physical demands of the rotational swing, which I no longer do and think is outdated.
2. Professor Stuart McGill's book is Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance. Also technical and expensive, about $40 or $50. But, it is very valuable. I have relied more on it than Chek's book in developing my back fitness routines. Mine are simpler than his and have been very effective. But he makes clear that the specifics of your training should address your specific problems and performance goals. Of the two books, I would suggest McGill's, though much of it is addressed to debunking through careful measurement and modeling myths that have believed for far too long. See my earlier post on spines.
3. Dan Shauger's book is How to Kill the Ball, the formula for power and accuracy. It is the best exposition of the Mike Austin swing by far, even superior to Mike Austin's tapes. Get the DVD that goes with it and you have a complete package for the chip, pitch, and full swing. It is quite deep and will require many rereadings along with the practice. I am surprised almost daily by another facet of the swing in my practice sessions and go back to the book to find that it is thoroughly covered. I just hadn't understood enough to see it at the time. Dan's products can be found at www.aperfectswing.com.
Mike Austin was a legendary character who had a golf show on TV in Southern California and taught many "celebrities" to play, Jack LaLanne for example (a 5 handicapper at one time). He has a Ph.D. in kinesiology (some say no, but in his book The Search for the Perfect Swing, Reed verified the degree). All you have to do is hear Austin speak about the swing on an old tape and you see that he is profoundly better educated than any golf pro you are likely to meet. He holds the Guiness Book of Records record for the longest drive, on level ground, in a PGA tournament. 515 yards at the age of 64. It was wind-aided, as are all longest drives and home runs.
The Austin swing...
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A New Complex Systems Resource
The New England Complex Systems Institute is hosting a new resource for researchers at NECSI.
I attended one of the classes some years ago and have read Bar Yaneer's (the driving entity of the Institute) books. Good stuff.
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