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Evolutionary Fitness, Super Mike's Way: Part 1

December 22, 2007 12:02 PM

From SuperMike,

Art,

Here are the details of my workouts and EF lifestyle that some of your readers requested.
At work, I’ve often been called, “The man that doesn’t age.”

I get a lot of questions from friends and co-workers about what I eat and what’s my secret, but their faces usually glaze over by the time I get to the part about avoiding pasta and baked potatoes.

I’m 5’11”, 175 lbs and by my cheap skin fold calipers, about 6% BF.

I’ve attached a disgusting “before” picture and an “after” picture that shows my front and back at once. No retouching, just the front and back merged into one.

I call the second picture a “Work of Art.” (Art De Vany, that is.)

Thanks again for all the useful information.

Keep writing,

Mike

Here is the "before" picture of SuperMike.

Here is the "after" picture.

We know from the posts I put up earlier that not all this progress can be attributed to Evolutionary Fitness. He had worked out in a body builder style before beginning EF. The after is after practicing EF for a year, having worked for an unspecified period before.

Nonetheless, the progress is astounding and does show that working out can make a huge difference in appearance and health. The final polish to his appearance came from the year of EF.

I will post more installments later. Too busy now to do it all at once and too much to read at a single sitting, not to mention the load on my server.

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Meals · Comments (5)

Jogging is hard, play is more effective

December 21, 2007 02:08 PM

One of our readers, Chris H, put a link in his comment on Ancestors as Runners. It refers to a soccer versus jogging study that he discusses on his great blog.

Soccer does seem to be a power law sport. And, I have seen the distribution of the length of tennis points and it is a power law. Most points are over rather quickly, but a few are extraordinarily long.

The sprint part of any form of play does recruit far more muscle mass and, particularly the inefficient FT fibers. Far more anabolic drive is created as well. No wonder the soccer players fared far better in the study Chris examines.

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A Few Things

December 20, 2007 11:19 AM

I note this insight in a comment by Tuesday. I knew this and yet had not tied it together this clearly. It is regarding the Ancestors as Runners post of a few days ago where we discussed the mixture of continuous running, walking or trekking, and sprinting. I had argued that the distribution of these activities would have been more concentrated on walking, possibly at a high pace, and sprinting. Continuous running would also have been done for some periods. In fact, in my Essay, I argued that monitoring of wild animals and fish has been used to show that the distribution of these mixtures of activities follows a power law, to a good approximation. Now Tuesday puts this together nicely to make this argument:

"I know I've seen a study on the subject, though I can't seem to find it at the moment. Because walking and running/sprinting are more efficient gaits than jogging, they can be sustained for longer periods before complete rest is required, so over long periods of time (days/weeks) a walk-run pace does indeed cover more distance than a continuous pace."

I have seen the studies too, and have posted on some of them in the past, though I can't take the time now to find them. But, the point is that this mixture, with some time in the continuous mode, is likely to be more energy efficient. Why didn't I put it this way?

Further evidence comes from studies of intermittent versus continuous exercise and there the verdict is that a human can do a lot more work if done intermittently than if done continuously. Or, put another way, you can do a lot more work in a given period of time if the work is done in an intermittent fashion. This gain in time versus energy expenditure efficiency, as you know by now, is one reason Evolutionary Fitness makes use of intermittency in eating and energy expenditure. I think it is the ancestral pattern too, as this evolving discussion seems to indicate.

Does that mean that continuous running is out of the picture? I don't think so, but it ought not to be done to the exclusion of the others, as seems to be the practice of many joggers and marathoners seeking to keep their heart rate in a zone. The power law spreads activities over all zones and intensity, but it is concentrated on something close to walking/trekking with bursts into the other zones. The energy spent in the zones is greater in the walking/trekking and in the sprinting zone, using the mobility example, but there is a portfolio which ought to include some continuous running, as another commenter noted.

My model is to use the gym for my "fight or flight" zone and to take long walks for my "easy" zone. My sprinting now is pretty much confined to tennis which is a nice mix of high and easy work; play in other words. An hour hitting tennis balls on the ball machine set up to launch from side to side and hitting baseline returns with occasional rushes to the net for volleys is a nice work out.

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Evolutionary Fitness, Intermittent Fasting, EvoSport and Football

December 18, 2007 06:57 AM

Dan, who is pictured in the photo, has been following EF (Evolutionary Fitness) for quite some time. He plays football at the elite college level and tells this story about finally adding IF (intermittent fasting) to EF. In addition he uses a system I am not yet familiar developed by Jay Schroeder called EvoSport. It seems everyone is getting into the evolutionary way of thinking. Of note is the drop in body fat with no loss of lean body weight when Dan added IF to his program; most of the weight loss was in a drop of waist size of 4 inches. But, he had to drop the 4 or 5 meals a day mentality often held by body builders and athletes.

Dan's characterization of his set up in the picture is excellent: "Notice the athletic position in one picture. Hamstrings pulling into the ground, torse erect, chest separating at the pectorals. These are hallmarks of the efficient athlete." Young athletes should pay close attention and also understand that he has excellent technology at his disposal in EF, IF, and EvoSport.

Here is Dan's description of his methods:

"First off, I've been reading your blog since it's inception (and am now re-reading from the archives because of some free time), but just this past summer began applying IF principles to my lifestyle approach. Despite being a long time reader, I somehow had been reluctant to apply episodic caloric deprivation. I create a demand for calories unlike many others, I had reasoned. This is true, but my physiology still evolved like everyone else. I soon found I would benefit greatly from IF. I dropped approx. 4 inches 4-5 weeks, while maintaining the same weight. I went from 34 to 30 w/ little effort. In pictures that will follow, people always remark about how skinny my waist is. For the past several years I had eaten meats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts as the bulk of my diet but had difficulty shaking popular fitnesses' 4-5 meals a day. In retrospect, how silly. Because of the stressful demands of the football season, I gained a few inches back and my lean mass dropped a bit. Not good. However, I did not diligently apply IF because of concerns about caloric deprivation and the demands of the season. Probably, not well reasoned. "

On EvoSport, he has a brief insight into the theory; it is fight or flight made systematic in my estimation. Pretty sound on those grounds at least.

"Consider this, Jay has found ways to eliminate the normal symptoms of overtraining by working the body at high load, high velocity, and high volume. More specifically, this is done by training the body's reflexive systems. Think fight or flight! He accomplishes this w/ iso-extremes, rebounds, and altitude drops amongst other methodics. These inhibit the GTO, inhibiting the bodys protective mechanisms, thus allowing elite performance. I could write about it hours, but it is a little food for thought. The body's reflexive system can be trained to elicit the same performance over and over and over. It's quite remarkable. Much of it in line to what you already know to be true..."

I include a couple more pictures below. Did you ever see a leaner, more balanced and graceful looking athlete? His physical goals are impressive: "My goal at the Northwestern combine... weigh in at shredded 210 (only to impress scouts, weight is really irrelevant) and a 4.3 40 yard dash and 35 plus vert. jump. Only accomplished w/ the help of the two best technologies avaialble, EF, IF, and Evo-Sport. I am taking a cue from you here and perhaps creating some incentives (everything is economics) for myself to adhere the best I can to these goals and the demands of living the proper lifestyle. "

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Sports · Comments (12)

A woman's back and a man's beer belly

December 16, 2007 04:32 PM

It is not surprising that evolution designed women to carry the load of a pregnancy in front without forcing the contraction of back muscles with the attendant shear loading. Check this out.

Men, on the other hand have not yet evolved an adaptation for beer belly. The weight out front is countered by a contraction of the erector muscles in the back. Back ache and eventually shear stress are the consequence.

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (1)

Ancestors as Runners

December 14, 2007 01:45 PM

I enjoyed this elegant comment from a reader, but I have to disagree with the interpretation. I have read many of these accounts of explorers, trappers, anthropologists and even a physiologist working on the frontier. They all relate profoundly compelling stories of the physical prowress of our ancestors, or as near as we are likely to observe them in modern times. I will inteject my comments at the appropriate place.

"I've noticed much discussion among the members of this forum on how best to emulate the typical exertions that were part and parcel to our ancestors lifestyle. Here is a fascinating excerpt from a book I'm reading that I thought would be of interest to some of you. The anecdote was part of an address to the National Geographic Society by Theodore Roosevelt in which he detailed much of his adventures during his Safari in Africa in 1910. He spent years collecting wildlife samples for museums and encountered rare glimpses into tribal lifestyles that until then, were virtually unknown to westerners. He spoke of a specific instance where he was allowed to follow a group of Nandi spearmen (a branch of the Masai probably as old as the dirt they walk on) on a lion hunt. He described the group of hunters as a "splendid race physically, tall and sinewy warriors". On horseback, he followed the group of men as they chased down a massive and fierce lion for 4 hours until it stopped. At this point the men would create a large circle around the beast, armed only with a hide shield and their heavy spears. Slowly, they would creep closer and closer, tightening the loop until the lion became so agitated by their encroachment, it readied for an attack. The lion would then rear and charge at what it thought was the weakest part of the chain of men. The warrior who would bear the brunt of the attack would then poise himself against the hide shell and when the charging lion was within six feet he would raise his shield and with a powerful underhand throw plunge the spear into the beast as it lunged and sunk it's claws into him. Then in a flash the hunters to the side of him assailed the beast with more spears until it reared back and died. When I read this vivid portrayal of tribal life I had to stop and think about what these hunters were doing. Running barefoot for 4 hours, then knowing that one of them, probably the one who appeared smallest, would have to bear the brunt of the lion's attack himself. Absolutely remarkable. I can see why the worlds top runners all come from Africa. Running was their weapon, their methodology."

The Masaii are a beautiful, tall and linear people. They are pastoralists who live by keeping cattle whom they bleed for nutrition. They mix some kind of anti-coagulant in the blood lest they choke to death when it coagulates in the throat, as Jack LaLanne nearly did. They move by WALKING at a very high pace, unless they are on the lion hunt. The lion hunt is a ritual of manhood and also deters predation on their cattle. I used to have a Masai spear.

But, it is wrong to portray their running, if that was the intent, as the kind of running marathoners or even joggers do. Their runs are of the same sort the lion does. Usually, it is a male lion they are hunting because they prize the mane and the large trophy. A male lion is huge and capable of great sprinting speed. But, it has little endurance. So, the run these hunters made would be of a burst-rest kind, just the kind of running Evolutionary Fitness recommends. A four hour hunt would have been a series of sprints by the lion with a chase and then a stealthy tracking to find the animal who would then sprint off again. The massive musculature of the lion would have required this pattern of running. It would be incapable of prolonged running, save at a trot. So, I agree this is a natural pattern. But it is nothing like a long jog or marathon.

By the way, there are no marathoners or successful long-distance runners who are Masai to my knowledge. They are primarily Kenyans and a few Ethiopians as far as I know and have a tradition of running and live a higher altitude.

"I hear a lot of negative criticism toward long distance running and how our bodies were not meant to do it. This site seems to relish counting the bodies of dead marathoners and runners and continually shrouds running in a banner of impending death. This focus is narrow and the sphere of opinion is based upon limitations by those that don't run."

I do not relish reports of these deaths. I do wish to prevent them and call attention to the dangers. More importantly, I want to question the focus of far too much fitness advice on running. Excessive running of the sort that passes for running these days is a poor choice, as the research and increasing recognition of premature deaths documents. But the playful running of games and Evolutionary Fitness training, which is similar to the Masai lion hunt is beneficial. I think conventional advice is what is properly called narrow in the sense of excluding or even denigrating the more healthful alternatives to excessive running.

"I keep wanting to send clippings I keep about a runner in our town named Ed Whitlock who is 73 and a multiple marathon world record holder. He still runs a sub 3 hour full Marathon, and trains by running 20k a day in the local cemetery, ironically enough. Ed is paleo man. He is the modern day Nandi warrior."

What would he do if he actually caught up to a lion? He would have no chance as he has little musculature and no fast twitch power which the hunter requires. He could not hold a shield against the charge or thrust a spear with force. The Masai spear is quite long and heavy and would take strength to handle and to move quickly. It would take a fair amount of power to throw as I can attest to having thrown mine. I am afraid you warrior qua marathoner would not have the speed to sprint to position or to move in coordination with the other hunters which is essential to their success. Most hunting is tedious tracking and very hard and physical sprinting and throwing or thrusting against great force.

"I could go on to quote the journals of yet another explorer, Cabeza de Vaca who wrote of the Texas Indians, "The men could run after a deer for an entire day without resting and without apparent fatigue. . . one man near seven feet in stature. . . runs down a buffalo on foot and slays it with his knife or lance, as he runs by its side." So for those of you that think it's all about strength, I hope I may have exacted some second thoughts. If true "Evolutionary fitness" is what your after, put down the weights and crank up the miles, lots of them. Our ancestors were ultra runners, nothing less."

I recall a story of Indians who could sprint to catch a deer as well. The deer takes a curved path that the hunter learned to intercept. It was a sprint though, not a jog.

The powerful indian who kills the buffalo does so by sprinting, not jogging. And he has the power to kill a powerful beast with a strong thrust. Then he has to do the hard work of butchering and carrying the kill back to camp. I recall a story of 5 indian males who ran buffalo of a cliff into a pit and then jumped into the pit to kill them. Then they hauled these 2000 pound beasts out of a 10 foot deep pit. Running a deer or horse down is a common tale you hear and it was done over a long period of sprints and slower trecking, keeping the animal from water so that it dehydrated and dropped with exhaustion.

I do appreciate these stories as they point to the magnificence of ancestral humans. They could play in the NFL easily with their power, speed, and endurance. Ancient humans of the last 100,000 years were much larger than moderns with the present generation Americans only now reaching a similar stature. They could see the moons of Jupiter without a telescope, bite a nail in half with their powerful teeth and jaws. They had no traces of modern diseases such as heart disease, poor teeth, oesteoporosis, or lesions on their skeletons that showed infectious disease such as tuberculosis or anemia.

Yes, we should celebrate the magnificent animals that human beings are. No other animal can do the things humans can do. We live in more varied altitudes and climates than any other creature. We can run down a horse and kill or worship it. Climb a tree or swim a river. And we are more playful than the adult versions of other animals. Our minds are a gift beyond those of any other animal. I enjoy these gifts and celebrate them.

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Evolutionary Fitness in Australia

This really is a nice story, one I am proud of. It is nice to know that the blog has been helpful to others. I share Seamus' wishes that his story will inspire others to enjoy the health and peace of an Evolutionary Fitness Lifeway.

"I've been a regular visitor for a while now and figured I'd post my story here, and hopefully give some inspiration to your readers.

I am a 182cm tall, 34 year old male, and at the beginning of this year I was a walking time bomb. An ex-smoker, I have been an exercise minimalist most of my life. Since childhood I have abused food, and my body as well.

I ceased eating a regular breakfast in my early teens, and in an effort to control my weight generally starved myself everyday until dinnertime. Then I would consume the most extraordinary amount of calories to make up for it. All of my meals had to be loaded up with either pasta, rice or potato for me to (hopefully) feel full. High in saturated or trans fats was my preference. A snack would be a whole packet of crisps to myself. I would finish my meal and go back for seconds or thirds. I used to suck on tubes of sweetened condensed milk for a sweet treat...or knock off a block of chocolate in an evening. These were patterns that began in childhood, and only got worse with age.

Early in 2004 my weight peaked at 255 pounds. I was facing the onset of a host of chronic diseases, or even worse. I had never been more miserable. I find it relatively easy to build muscle, so I bought a home gym and some free weights from a friend, and begun lifting around 3 times a week. Most sessions were pushed to complete failure, and it was a real grind most of the time. Over the next 8 months I lost some weight and built some good muscle...all of it buried under a lot of body fat though. After a few nasty shoulder strains (due to a lack of rest and recovery), I took a break. My weight of course began climbing again, almost back to 255 pounds.

In December '04, and in utter desperation, I decided I would start cycling to work. I live 15.5 miles away from my place of employment, and really had no idea how taxing that would be for someone in my condition. I got myself a hybrid bike anyway, and took on the challenge. For nearly two years I kept this up, riding as much as 155 miles during the week. It was a real grind most of the time, but I was committed to it rain, hail or shine. Over the next 18 months, I managed to bring my weight down to around 195 pounds. I enjoyed people noticing all the weight I had lost, but was even more thrilled that I didn't have to change my diet to do this. That's right - I still ate and drank absolutely anything I liked, and the amount of riding I did kept all that weight off. I thought I was in heaven!

That was, until I stopped cycling. I could no longer face the regime of another 6am rise to get on my bike and ride the 90 minute journey to work anymore, let alone the trip home at the end of a busy day! I couldn't give up my eating habits either. By the end of '06 my weight had ballooned out to 228 pounds again.

At the beginning of this year, inspired by the weight loss of a collegue, I gave a something called the CSIRO diet a go (you may have heard of it). Developed by Australian nutritional scientists, it was given a fairly positive press response, though there were some who say it contains 'too much protein' - a charge that seems to be laid against anyone who minimises grains in their diet. In retrospect, it is very similar to 'The Palolithic Prescription' with it's focus on lean meats, fresh fruit and vegetables - with a smattering of grain & dairy. I lost around 33 pounds in the first 5 months, and felt great for it.

But the highlight of the year has definitely been finding your blog Art, and reading your essay. I have been an advocate of the EF way since the first day I begun reading through your site. The truth and logic that is inherent in EF has struck a chord in me. I stumbled across you after Googling paleolithic eating, something that I had heard about, but knew little of. I immediately progressed from CSIRO, dropping pasta, cereal, bread and rice from my diet. I also minimised my dairy, and cut out refined sugars. Breakfast now might be raw nuts and seeds...some fresh fruit for lunch...and some kangaroo (exceptionally lean) with fresh salad for tea. I no longer worry about measuring amounts, counting calories, etc. Food intake is now governed by a natural metabolic flow that I have never been in touch with before. I have also embraced intermittent fasting, and have tried to replicate a hunter gatherer way of times of lean and times of plenty. I now allow myself to feel hungry - something that filled me with dread when I was overweight. I have never felt better! EF helped me to lose even more weight, and I am now 183 pounds. I believe I will drop a few more pounds and % body fat, as I have only just begun exercising again. I am sprinting for the first time since I was a kid, and have embraced your style of gym workouts with brief, intense sessions. I don't work to a regime anymore, but by the laws of spontaneity, intensity and brevity. My best friend has embraced EF wholeheartedly as well, and together we try to come up with workouts that mimic paleolithic activity in their variety. Even my dad, who's 54 this year is taking an interest. I have shown him the pictures of Super Mike, and I think this has inspired him (as it would inspire anyone!).

Again, many thanks for all that you share of yourself, your intellect, your years of accumulated knowledge and wisdom Art. I hope that I am able to undo some of the damage I have done to my body, and look forward to reaching 70 with at least some of that same vitality, strength and essence that you possess!"

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Halfway through the Mitchell report on steroids in basball

December 13, 2007 05:07 PM

So far the report is a bore. No science save the usual references to the harm associated with steroids and protecting "our kids" the mantra of the new social engineer/prudes/and semi-fascists who want to make us do things their way.

It is a sleazy document so far, and thus gets much press coverage for the naming of names and locker room gossip. One section actually is devoted to sports writer comments on baseball and steroids, just about the least credible group on anything. All they want to do is to be noticed and to sell their story, an admission made by the sports writer who castigated Ted Williams, one of the greatest and most ethical of baseball players.

If I find some statistics that purport to document the surge in hitting, I will take a good look at them. So far there is nothing but an allegation that hitting surged in 1996 with no specifics.

Mitchell was not my favorite senator when he was senate majority leader and he is not winning any more admiration with this, so-far, sleazy report. Some of the usual antagonists to steroids also appear in the report, as they do in the Senate hearings. The same crew of witnesses keeps recycling, making the same statements.

Steroids are not that dangerous. They don't kill people. The people who overuse them already have significant problems. Most of the effects are reverseable, though not always for women. Steroids, as the research I have discussed, are only moderately effective.

LINK · Endurance Training: Death, Injury, and Risk ~ · Everything ~ · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Sports · Comments (1)

Intermittent Exercise, Fasting, and OB Gene Expression

December 12, 2007 09:07 AM

So many seem to doubt the benefits of exercise for weight reduction or, more importantly, body composition, the true measure of fitness. They focus on caloric balance and the apparently small effect of exercise on energy balance, but that is only part of the equation for body composition. Hormone drives, stress resistance, and insulin sensitivity are all driven by exercise. Provided one doesn't go too far into the unhealthful range for exercise, all these contributing factors to body composition are favorably altered by exercise. Moreover, caloric balance studies are all confounded by incorrect reporting of total intake and even errors in energy expenditures. These are so difficult to do in free-living humans, that little confidence ought to be placed in them, least of all a pessimistic conclusion as to the effects of exercise.

But, there is more. Exercise affects gene expression in a highly favorable way. Exercise induces transient changes in energy balance and this is a signal to gene expression. Intermittent exercise, in the Evolutionary Fitness style, does not go "over the curve" into the destructive range for exercise and induces a down regulation of the fat gene expression, the OB gene (short for obesity gene). Intermittent fasting also down regulates OB gene expression. Eating the EF Way reduces insulin and down regulates OB gene expression. Living a low stress lifeway by not over doing exercise or obsessing over food and practicing intermittent episodes of brief intense exercise mixed with languid rest and "just doing" simple things also turns sympathtic tone up and down intermittently and, in turn, closes down insulin and OB gene expression. Looks like the EF combination, which aims at all these events, is great for attaining and keeping your healthy body composition.

Have a look at this abstract...

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Death by Exercise

December 8, 2007 11:25 AM

Thanks to an alert reader of the blog in Toronto we have a well-researched article on exercise-related deaths from Men's Heatlh.

It adds new statistics and explanations for the benefits and risks of exercise. As with nearly everything in human physiology, there is an increasing, but concave, benefits curve; the benefits of exercise rise, reach a peak, and then decline. There is an optimum or a range of optima; to be below or above the optimum range is harmful. Exercise beyond the optimal region is destructive and dangerous. 6 METS is a good upper limit for continuing activity. One can hit 8 or even 12 METS briefly in weight training. The hormesis concept tells us that these very brief stresses make us more able to tolerate the real stresses that life brings.

Weight lifting shines for its benefits and low risk. Running can be truly dangeous. Other aerobic endurance activities share the risks of excessive running.

LINK · Endurance Training: Death, Injury, and Risk ~ · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Sports ~ · Uncertainty · Comments (2)

Proof of Concept

December 7, 2007 09:58 AM

One of the many interesting people I have met as a result of this blog is a distinguished physician/psychiatrist who treats people who have metabolic problems and are overweight or obese. He argues that I am a proof of concept for my Evolutionary Fitness Way. That is to say, I am an exemplar who represents an outcome of following the EF system, an existence proof of the efficacy of Evolutionary Fitness. Everything I say here is also true of Wonder Woman who celebrates her 70th birthday today.

In that spirit, I wanted to compare my body mass, strength, lipid and hormone profile to the 28 year old experienced weight trainers studied in the NJM article I discussed earlier this week. I want to show that the conventional wisdom that aging causes a decline in muscle mass, increased obesity, a fall in testosterone, and an unfavorable alteration of blood lipids is not true. So, what are the relevant facts?

The experimental subjects were from 23 to 32 years old, with an average age of 28. As you know, I am 70.

The tallest group was 181.0 cm tall and weighed 85.5 kg. Their body mass index was 26.2. I am 192.8 cm tall and weigh 90.49 kg (199 pounds). So, my body mass index is 26.43. Thus, there is no difference in body mass between us, evidence that I have retained my lean muscle mass (of course it could be fat, but it isn't as I think you know).

Thus the loss of lean muscle mass with aging need not occur.

LIpid profile. The subjects had HDL readings between 36 and 42 (group averages). Mine is 92. Their triglycerides were between 125 and 155. Mine are 40. Their LDL was from 113 to 133. Mine is 98. My readings are superior in every respect according to the research and what your personal physician will tell you.

Thus the unfavorable alteration of lipids with aging need not occur.

Hormone profile. Their total testosterone, without injections, ranged between 431 and 667 (after exercise with no injections). Mine was 660 in my last test. This is right in the upper range for these weight lifting 28 year olds.

Thus the unfavorable decline in hormone status with aging need not occur.

After 10 weeks of training, the highest average bench press and squat are 119 kg and 151 kg. I don't do bench presses, as I have shoulder injuries from motocross racing and don't like the look it produces or the risk to the rotator cuff, but with a few weeks of work I could readily do that weight. I don't do much squatting anymore either, but could readily do 151 kg. As evidence, I can easily leg press the max weight on the Cybex or other leg press machines in the gym, even on the last set of a hierarchical set and then lower it seveal times with one leg.

Thus the loss of strength usually attributed to aging need not occur.

My conclusion is that aging research is flawed; it is not the aging process but the poor eating and lack of exercise that is responsible for the general decline we often see with aging.

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The Horror

December 6, 2007 01:36 PM

This pile of boxes was outside the gym after they had restocked the "health food" section. They picked it up later (it is a very clean place), but I caught the horrifying sight on my iPhone before they cleared it out. How much sugar or high glycemic fructose did those boxes contain? Too much, but "heh" they are protein bars aren't they.

Don't eat anything that comes in a box.

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Steroids, Gains and Costs

December 5, 2007 01:16 PM

From the New England Journal of Medicine comes this authoritative assessment of the benefits and costs of steroid use. Previous studies have had a number of faults in failing to control for caloric intake, dissimilar subjects, and so on. This study controls for the most important of these factors. I just want to highlight the quantitative measures of improvement in this table.

The subjects were about 28 years old and were experienced in weight training. They were around 5 feet 8 inches tall and had a body mass index of 24 to 26.

First note hormone profiles of the subjects under the four treatments: no exercise with placebo and testosterone, and exercise with placebo and with testosterone. With no treatment, their testosterone is in the mid to upper range around 500. The first finding is the drop in testosterone among the placebo group who did not exercise. Given that they were experienced lifters, the lack of exercise caused their testosterone to fall. Their free testosterone did not fall, though their SHBG did. This is not suppossed to happen according to the conventional free versus total T theory. But, we know that is flawed.

The exercise/no T group had an increase in T and an increase in Luteinizing hormone. The real news is the rise in T in the exercise with T injections group and the scary fall in Follicle Stimulating and Luteinizing hormones. The testicals of these guys are shutting down and their sex drive is plummeting. The sex hormone binding globulin falls substantially in both the groups of men who received T injections, another sign of emasculation.

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Perfectionists

Have a look at this NYT article Perfectionism before you buy that next self-help book.

I have learned to get along with my slight perfectionism. I find my best work is always done with a sense of effortlessness and enjoyment. Blogging, maybe not my best work, is completely effortless. I sometimes look back on a post and wonder how I did it.

Perhaps the deepest link to eating disorders and an exessive concern with body image is with perfectionism. Most steroid users are ordinary guys looking for a perfect body image, not athletes. Eating disorders seem to come from the same sort of excessive concern with the opinions of others or a critical parent from the past that you still carry around in your brain and in your self-talk.

My perfectionism appears in sports more often than elsewhere. I often expect to perform at a high level which is really kind of silly when you think about it. So I turn it into a learning experience to enjoy the study of technique and science behind a sport.

I think an element of Zen teaching is to get the student's ego and perfectionism out of the way. We could all do that in everything we do.

LINK · Complex Systems ~ · Everything ~ · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (2)

An Evolutionary Fitness Evangelist

December 2, 2007 10:42 AM

Not every one reads the comments, understandable because the link is faulty (and will soon be fixed when my new site design is finished). So, here is one that no one should miss or ignore.

"I'd adhered to the 6-meals-a-day, positive N2 balance, high carbohydrate/insulin releasing post-workout meal(usually a meal-replacement shake)mantra since I was approximately 15 years old. I'd coupled that with murderous, 2-hour a day, 6-day-a-week (body-building style/with a football player's mentality) workouts. I avoided all manner of fat. I snacked whenever I felt the slightest hunger pang or when my energy waned -- both of which occurred often throughout the day. I definitely looked fit -- though much too smooth for the invested time and effort -- but I didn't feel nearly as good as I thought I should. My joints had begun to ache (especially my knees and elbows). And my blood pressure was curiously elevated. I'm an athlete, I thought, what the hell? I felt, that at 43, time had caught up with me and I'd have to (1)really get serious about my eating and (2)back off the workouts a shade. Both prospects bummed me out.

All I can say is that I wish I'd stumbled upon Art's site sooner. Like, back when I was 15. While I can't say that I follow the EF way of life to a "T" (I drink too much coffee during the day, too much beer in the evening and have an occasional sweet treat), I do, for the most part, follow Art's eating advice. I feel better than I can ever remember feeling. I look better now than I ever have. Strangely (or, maybe not so), although I am by leaps and bounds more cut than before, I actually weigh more than I did before I began "easing" into the EF way of life. I say "easing into" because I've still got lots of room to improve. And even yet, the results are remarkable.

I was initially most skeptical of the brief (albeit, intense) workouts. I have always sprinted and have always leaned toward more power/Olympic type weight lifting -- though, I know now, the volume was much too high. What a difference the last 6 months has made on my body and mind. At 6ft, 210lbs, I've got the muscular definition I always thought was possible, but heretofore could never achieve. Now it is (muscularity, definition & "feel good" factor), by comparison to my previous lifestyle, effortless. My obstacles remain more in the realm of the socio-situational (eating influences of wife, friends)and limitations imposed by my working-life responsibilities. Every day, though, I strive to move another step closer to EF "perfection". Once you've had a glimpse of what the EF lifestyle can do for you, you can't help but to desire more of the same for yourself and for anyone else.

I can properly be called an EF evangelist, now."

Of course, there is no "perfection", just a new way that you can follow as far as you like. As I say in my Essay, it is so easy you will think you are cheating; it is extremely productive because it is high technology based on evolution and modern science. Just let it happen. Give up the Soviet-style command and control, linear approach. Your body and mind will thank you for the freedom and pleasure.

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Muscle Mass, EF and IF

December 1, 2007 10:04 AM

Here is a question most people who follow the received wisdom about diet and muscle mass probably ask themselves.

"I've been particularly intrigued by pictures of those who follow the evolutionary fitness way, including yourself and Mike who was recently mentioned on the site. I'm 48 and would say that I'm close to where Mike was in his first picture (minus a few pounds of muscle) I have to admit that I eat plenty of carbs--post workout shake, etc but plan to change my ways. When I've tried to lose a little weight with the intention to get to his third picture, I tend to lose significant muscle gains. In his pictures he looks like he really lost fat and didn't lose hardly any muscle mass. How is that possible? He says that he may have a caloric deficit on 2 out of 3 days. If I did that working out at the gym 3 days per week, as I do, I'm afraid I'd whither away and lose the gains that I've made in mass. I don't do any cardio (hate it). In brief, could you explain how E.F., perhaps combined with I.F. would let one lose weight yet not lose a lot of mass if that's true. Thanks so much for any info on this."

The "fear" expresses is a fear of rejecting the old idea that you have to eat the TupperWare meals and supplements consumed by most body builders. It has nothing to do with the science or the evidence, as demonstrated by Super Mike or myself. We both retain muscle mass and carry low body fat and eat the Evolutionary Fitness Way (EF) and practice intermittent fasting (IF).

I have calculated (see my paper Why We Get Fat under the research link above) that our ancestors were in caloric deficit one third of the time. They were in caloric surplus two thirds of the time. Over a longer interval, they were in caloric balance. So, there is no need to drop total calories greatly in order to carry low body fat. Only if you are far too fat to begin with must you go into a longer term caloric deficit. And this is close to impossible to do if you practice the TupperWare and supplement protocol of six meals and snacks a day of basically lousy food and high glycemic load.

The worry expressed by the question seems predicated on the old belief that you must always be in nitrogen surplus to build or retain muscle mass. Neither is true. And the evidence is clear, just using Mike or many others as an example. In truth, a lot of the so-called muscle mass that many fear losing if they eat differently is fat, not muscle.

The bulk these people carry is high intramuscular triglycerides, a known contributor to insulin resistance. The muscle appears large because it is loaded with fat deposits laced between the muscle fibers and intruding into the connective tissue and muscle fibers. That, and the thick skin from subcutaneous fat, is the reason so many bulky guys look so smooth. They carry almost no muscle definition or cuts.

What is so hard to face about losing some of this intrusive and harmful fat? How bulky do you have to appear in order to be happy with your appearance? Is the smoothness that comes with the bulk worth it? Are the health risks worth it?

Just eat good food as shown on this site. Eat to a sense of satisfaction, but not fullness, two days a week and go hungry one day out of three. You can fast completely on the third day, but I don't see that as productive if you have to drive and earn a living. So, just under eat on that day, going hungry especially in the evening when it is safe for you to do so. [This caution is for those who are insulin resistant and may fall into low blood glucose when they do an afternoon fast.]

As you do this your insulin will begin to drop, your testosterone will increase, and your GH will rise. You will also sleep better, which will further the GH increase. Stay active on the IF day so that you signal your system to retain muscle and burn fat.

I think what the concern in the question indicates is that you have been a bit brain washed, as we all have been, by conventional fitness advice.

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Meals · Comments (5)

Super Mike Again

November 30, 2007 12:45 PM

More evidence on the TupperWare eating protocol (my take on the 6 meals a day with supplements and shakes or usual Fitness Trainer-advised eating program). This time from 54 year old Mike. He shows three pictures from four birthdays, ending with his 54.

Here is his statement:

Art,

You hit the nail on the head again.

What you described today about the six meals plus supplements is
exactly how I ate before I discovered Evolutionary Fitness.

Here's visual proof of how it makes you look.
Photos taken yearly on my birthday. (I think it's interesting how I'm
only smiling in the 2007 photo.)

With intermittent fasting and eating your way, I think I'm in a
caloric deficit two out of three days. And never felt or looked better.

Mike

And the visual proof (click on the picture to see all 3 years).

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (5)

Unproven Protocol

November 29, 2007 10:08 AM

A comment from a reader (not posted on the blog) got me thinking:

"Thanks for your great site, I hope to use your material effectively. Sadly my wife has joined a gym and gotten a trainer who handed her lots of supplements and bars (she's supposed to eat this junk food 3x/day as a healthy snack) and is prescribing frequent long workouts. Hopefully I can demonstrate to her with my own success that there is a better way)."

I had just spoken with a young guy who spent a summer training at a gym in San Diego. He looked no different than when he left. He followed the Unproven Protocol or what I like to call the TupperWare eating scheme. Have you seen how some of the trainers carry loads of TupperWare containers around with them containing their 6 meals? I suspect they hold TupperWare parties they have so many of them. (I have a previous post on this that I don't have time to look up right now.)

Eating all these meals prepared in advance along with the protein mixes, drinks, and bars is a completely unproven protocol. There is no research that I can find that documents its efficacy. It is more an article of faith, promolgated by the "fitness industry." I have read many criticisms of it by some leading scientists. And they point to the incentives of the industry and supplement makers to promote this disastrous eating regimen.

A primary concern is the total caloric load as well as the glycemic load of the scheme. Imagine a person who is in the gym to lose weight who is told to add supplements to a diet that has made them overweight. If they add supplements, then they have to cut calories elsewhere. The time they spend in the gym is not enough to put them into negative caloric balance in itself. If they then add supplements and shakes to their intake, they will go further into positive caloric balance.

Then there is the glycemic load (the glycemic index of the intake times its mass) of the supplements. Not only are the carbs in the supplements a source of calories, they are insulin driving calories that reduce insulin sensitivity and trigger metabolic pathways that direct nutrients to fat and shut down the body's access to its own fat sources. In fact, many supplements deliberately trigger insulin with simple carbs because the protocol reasons that insulin is an anabolic hormone. It is, but mostly anabolic for your fat deposits rather than your muscles. The hormonal profile created by this protocol is one that is favorable to storing fat rather than making muscle.

My main point is that there is no research that I can find that supports this weird eating pattern. How does it become part of the mainstream of fitness advice? No wonder so many people give up on the gym after they fail to lose weight. Following the TupperWare protocol makes it impossible. And, boy does it take time and kill your appreciation for good food.

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (1)

Fat Men Can't Hunt

November 28, 2007 07:49 PM

Thanks to one of our readers for this link, which is derivative of the link he sent, both are fantastic.

Fat Men Can't Hunt.

The also great link our reader from England is Teens.

I still sometimes dream of the camp I would start for teens to live an evolutionary fitness lifeway for a month. Borneo might be too much, but Wyoming or Colorado or Utah might be nice. Some day when things are finished, including the book.

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How Long Did Hunter Gatherers Live?

November 21, 2007 04:01 PM

Many people compare the longevity of paleolithic humans with modern humans and conclude that the stone age life was perilous and brief. Often, the argument is made by vegans who want to show that meat eating clearly practiced by paleolithic hunter gathers is not healthful. People who are rightfully skeptical of the longevity consequences of a more paleolithic style of life such as I advocate and practice myself also question the longevity of our ancestors. A skeptical argument would be that our ancestors lived brief and nasty lives and we live longer and more pleasant lives than they so why should we emulate aspects of these ancient lifeways. The argument is sensible, but misdirected. The proper comparison is between paleolithic life expectancy and life expectancies of humans in the era before industrialization and greater wealth and before modern sanitation and medicine. The evidence is that neolithic and later humans lived no longer than paleolithic humans until well into the Industrial Revolution.

Empirical data shows that life of paleolithic humans was perilous, but it was no briefer than the life of neolithic farmers, romans, or modern humans until the advent of public sanitation and antibiotics. Remarkably, life expectancy in the city of London was so brief that the city relied on migration from outlying areas to sustain its population; the intrinsic rate of population growth was negative. It was only in the latter stages of the Industrial Revolution that the life expectancy of Londoners began to improve.

Ward Nicholson has done a fine job of assembling life expectancy figures from the scientific literature in his Life Expectancy

Bjorn Lumborg shows a remarkable graph in his The Skeptical Environmentalist that reveals the ups and downs, and remarkably brief, lives of humans over the ages. In the City of Rome, life expectancy was just 21 years, well below paleolithic levels.

Ward's life expectancy table follows, note the general decline in height as well as the change in longevity. Modern humans are only now approaching the height of our paleolithic ancestors.

Read More »

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Trainers and Bars

November 20, 2007 07:21 PM

WW is taking a Yoga Pilates class at our club. Nearly all the participants are trainers, young and still slim and teaching exercise and nutrition classes. She is the oldest in the class by far and seems to be able to do everything demanded. It took a few weeks but she is doing well and liking it. They do a few dangerous moves, using the legs and arms as long levers to stress the spine, but generally it is a good class.

The trouble starts when she discusses eating with the class members. She said today that she would probably skip dinner tonight because we were having a solid lunch. Right away three of them said oh no, never skip a meal. Eat a Whatever Bar, but don't miss a meal. It turns out that they go from class to class, teaching or taking, and seldom eat a real meal. They live on shakes and bars and protein mixes.

They have only the most trivial argument in favor of not skipping a meal, mostly derived from nitrogen balance considerations and a sensible, but misplaced, concern for small meals in order to diminish insulin spikes (if they could have explained it correctly). All this comes from body building/endurance athlete practices which have worked their way into mainstream practice with little or no scientific evaluation. So, instead, they eat what is pretty much junk food, disguised as health food. Moreover, they fail to understand that frequency of carbohydrate ingestion is also a contributor to insulin resistance. And, the stomach never gets a rest and begins to degenerate (sometimes called the diabetic stomach because diabetics depend on frequent meals and emergency snacks which add to the load on the digestive system).

Fortunately, they are young and very active and will be able to eat this junk food for some years before they take a toll. I know many coaches and athletic teachers who spend long hours on the teaching tee, tennis court, or gym who eat PowerBars, ProteinBars, and whatever they are called by the bushel basket. Far too many of them are covered with a deep layer of subcutaneous fat and others are frankly fat.

To a large degree, they are rationalizing their poor practice and making unsubstantiated claims for their goofy eating. It is an attitude widely shared in the "fitness community". And they are all too ready to argue against other methods. WW doesn't even bother to explain things to them anymore; their minds are closed.

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Meals · Comments (3)

Today's Workout

November 19, 2007 08:27 PM

After posting my blog entry regarding hierarchical workouts I went to the gym and did one. I was in and out in no time and felt great leaving and for the whole day after. There really is nothing more productive and the research is just now beginning to document what is evident (to me at least) from the physiology and the evolutionary record. But, you must see the Essay for more on that. And, yes I do the db rows alternating sides; one set on one side and then one on the other. As for the question about GH I will say that GH is known to be a protein conserving hormone that shifts metabolism away from protein to other sources of energy. Thus, with my work outs and rest and deep sleep favoring GH release I am able to fast (a fast releases GH also) and still retain or even build muscle mass.

For my work out today here is what I did. (I can't believe how good I feel even now from this work out and all I did today beyond it).

!. I did 30 leg presses to warm up and went straight into the 15, 8, 4 protocol. I ran out of weight on the leg press machine, but stayed with it anyway. I had to peg the machine on the last set and could have done far more than 4, but went to a slight burn anyway. Then I pressed up with both legs and lowered with one for 4 more negative.

2. I did standing leg curls in the same manner. 15, 8, 4 with increasing weight and speed with each set.

3. I did incline bb presses on the Smith machine in the same manner, but with no negative. Just 15, 8, and 4 to a good burn in each set.

4. I did the same protocol in the bent over deltoid raise through the legs that I have described in other posts.

5. Then I did a drop set of Arnold presses for the deltoids; as many as I could with a heavy weight (only 40 pounds by that stage), then a lighter weight for as many reps as I could, then a still lighter weight to slight failure.

6. I finished with a few curls on a machine, one set only and some crunches in the correct way and some bird dog poses on the bench press bench.

Then a nice walk in my neighborhood after a short drive home from the gym.

It was so easy, yet hard for a moment. This kind of work out gives you a toughness that makes life seem so easy. Every set hurt a bit and then came a harder one. But, when you move to the next exercise the pain goes away and you are ready for another hit.

I love it.

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The Best Work out

The work out I always come back to and the very best for all round strength and muscularity, not to mention leanness is the hierarchical work out.

Briefly described, it is done in a hierarchy of movements and weights. Its objective is to ascend the fiber hierarchy from ST to FTa and FTb and then finish with an eccentric movement or explosive movement. A long discussion of this type of work out may be found in my Essay under the Research link at the top of this page.

The rest interval is nil, just long enough to change the weight on the bar, cable or machine. New research now confirms that this style of work out is best for muscle mass and for strength. It is equally effective in comparison to other routines for power. Of course, the researchers did not add the finishing touch that I do and I suspect they would have also found that my routine gives an edge for power as well.

Read the essay for a discussion of the theory behind the hierarchical work out. The essence is to promote a maximal anabolic hormone response and to shut off the stress hormone response through its brevity and relatively low volume.

You begin with a target of about 15 reps with a weight that is challenging, but do not go to failure. Just use the "burn" to know when to move on. Lower the weight more slowly than you raise it and increase the pace of the movement as you progress through the reps.

Then, with no rest, increase the weight and aim for about 8 reps with the same protocol. Then increase the weight again and aim for 4 reps in excellent form. Then do a couple of negatives if you can do so safely in that particular lift (few meet this standard, but some do). Then do an explosive move similar to the exercise or do drops.

My favorite way to do this was with squats, but there is no way to do negatives with squats and, for safety, you should not descend to full depth on the last set. If you alter the depth, progressing to less depth with the heavier weight, you will hit all the fibers in the hips and quads and at many angles and extensions. Hitting all the mass is the only way you will get a fullness and completeness to your musculature.

An example where this is quite safe is to do leg presses on a seated machine. Not one where you may get trapped under the weights. Do 15 presses, increase the weight and do 8, increase the weight and do 4. Then increase the weight or with the same weight press out with both legs and lower with just one leg. Do only 2 negatives this way. Then do some leaps either dropping off a bench to a rubber floor or holding a squat bar, placed on the rack, leap up as far as you can while holding the bar. Do as many as you can. Alternately, find a high bar you can leap up to and grab. Drop off and do it again, as many times as you are able.

You can do a similar protocol with a cable row or one-armed db rows. With the db rows, I do the first three sets, the ascending 15, 8, 4 and then just go down the rack doing one rep. Go right down the rack to the heaviest db you can do in excellent form. Don't try this until you have prepared with light weights. You will get so sore you might stay in bed a few days, not worth it. Perfect form always, stop as soon as form begins to break down.

Here is a recent abstract on short rest intervals. I am trying to obtain the other article I came across that further documents brief rest intervals for strength and mass gains. I am heading for the gym to begin my new sessions of hierarchical work outs. I am not recommending them for you; you must make that choice yourself. I used to work my 78 year old mother out this way. It is safe if you plan and take care. And the results are unbelievable. Keep it brief and do only 3 such movements in a single work out and get out of the gym. If you leave tired, you over did it. You should feel fresh and alive.

Read More »

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Today's Breakfast

November 17, 2007 11:13 AM

As you can see, this is some leftover steak with fruit. I may skip lunch as the meal was very satisfying. I do skip meals often with absolutely no concern that I am "losing" muscle through negative nitrogen balance. My GH is so high that my body conserves protein and consumes fat. And, you already know that the microphagy consumes damaged proteins and fuels their replacement with new, undamaged protein.

Those who may think my diet is lacking in carbohydrate will see that there is adequate carbohydrate in the fruit. But, it is loaded with nutrients and potent antioxidants and phytonutrients, something that is lacking in flour-based and carb-drink sources.

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Meals · Comments (4)

walking Running Jogging

November 16, 2007 11:07 AM

Two researchers at Princeton have modeled human energy expenditure over a wide range of movements. It turns out that the most efficient form of locomotion is walking, followed by running, followed by a slow plodding run that resembles a very tired jogger.

Human Movement

Of these, I much prefer the first two and, remarkably, they are a bit more efficient. And a whole lot more fun.

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Surf and turf EF style

Barbecued pork ribs with one King Crab leg and WW's home made cole slaw. We got several meals out of one box of crab legs, so the expense was not that high. The ribs we just enjoy so much we have them about once a week. The leftovers are great for breakfast or lunch the next day.

P.S. my new camera is higher resolution and I have to weaken the image. Let me know if the pixel count is too high and slows the download too much.

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Meals · Comments (2)

Powerful Hunter Gatherers

November 10, 2007 01:57 PM

These pictures of New Guinea highland males (part agriculturalist and part hunter gatherer) and the sketch of North American Indians are an interesting contrast to the playful Photoshop picture of the body builder ultimate from a previous post.

Wig master, an older male.

Mud men, prime age warriors.

North American Indians, powerfully muscled (early lumber jacks?).

An older modern hunter gatherer male who looks familiar.

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The Ultimate?

November 9, 2007 09:05 AM

Never my model.

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Over Training and sudden death

November 7, 2007 02:34 PM

I have searched for a good source on sudden death in athletes for some time now. Finally, I found an excellent one put up by the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation Sudden Death in Athletes.

The most common cause is Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM). That large, slow-beating "athletic" heart may kill you. So can alcohol, energy drinks, and steroids. Which activity is most dangerous? You may see why I play tennis now. Weight lifting didn't make the grade, but competitive lifting is such a small sport. In part, the sports with the most participation rank highest. The incidence per athlete in the sport is not really known.

According to the Institute:

"Systemic training in endurance (dynamic, aerobic) or isometric sports (static, power) has been known to increase cardiac mass and dimensions, and trigger structural remodeling in many athletes (18-22). This form of hypertrophy is physiologic and is regarded as an adaptation to systematic athletic training, and therefore was termed "athlete’s heart." The changes include enlargement of left and right ventricles and left atrium; however the function of the heart remains preserved. Physiologic increases in cardiac mass vary in magnitude according to sporting discipline. For example, the most extreme cavity dimensions and/or wall thickness have been reported with rowing, cross-country skiing, cycling and swimming. Weight lifting and wrestling have been associated with abnormal increases in left ventricular wall thickness disproportionate to cavity size."

I noted the disruption of contraction pulses, ischemia or blood loss and consequent damage to heart muscle in an earlier post. That damage is then infiltrated by scar tissue and, as a result, the contraction waves become disorganized and arrhythmia may follow.

Read More »

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Mood Change after a work out

An interesting question from a reader that I have had to sort out for myself too. I find, as does Joe, that if I work out very intensely that I have a mood change a day or two later. Strangely, the hard work out seems to happen because I feel so good at the time that I want to do more. I have learned to avoid this feeling as Rodney Dangerfield advises, I sit down when I get the urge to exercise.

For me it is the second day that hits me most. Of course, this is the interval for DOMS, or delayed onset muscle soreness as it is called in the literature. A very hard work out damages a lot of muscle tissue and triggers a surge of stress hormones, activates macrophages to consume damaged proteins (a benefit as it recycles the material to fuel rebuilding and renews the cell), triggers inflammation in the sore tissues. But, it is likely that the cytokines are the real culprit. Just how they do this and promote soreness is something I have not been able to discover.

Why go through this? There is no need and the loss of time and mood change is not worth it. It is likely that so much damage is done in this sort of hard work out that any progress you are seeking is set back; I suspect it leaves you worse off physically than if you had followed Dangerfield's advice and done nothing. So, I don't work out that hard any more. I just feel challenged and that I am up to the challenge.

But, Joe's discussion highlights other matters that we should pay attention to. One of them is how close to exhaustion many people live as a result of their obsession with exercise or fitness. It seems Joe did this for years, mostly as a result of excess running. Another is the sugar obsession many runners have or develop from their excess reliance on carbohydrates to fuel their high activity. Another is the longer term depression or mood suppression that can develop from chronic over training of any kind. Mike, our 54 year old wonder from the last post, also had what seems to be a generally depressed mood and was drowsy often during his body builder/high cardio days. He was even going to up his cardio load because he was too fat from the body builder diet and eating pattern he was on.

I really do think most chronic body builders and runners are way over training, damaging themselves and their mood.

Read More »

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From Body Building to Evolutionary Fitness

November 6, 2007 09:33 AM

I will just let Mike tell his story about his conversion from a body building approach to Evolutionary Fitness. He is the leanest, most muscular, and fit 54 year old you may ever see.

Take a look and then read his story below.

Art,

It’s been a little over a year since I seriously started following your evolutionary advice. I wanted to write you earlier, but I thought I would give it an entire year before I did. Plus I wanted to get the results from my annual physical.

Before I started reading your website, I was in pretty good shape. Good strength… but soft looking. Especially for as much as I worked out. 4 days of weights a week with 2 days of cardio. But, I just didn’t feel good. I was tired a lot. Not as sharp mentally as I felt I should be. And I couldn’t seem to get lean and be strong at the same time.

After following your writings, I see why.

Read More »

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Reader Comments on my latest workout

November 5, 2007 10:33 AM

Some have wondered whether my work out exceeds my general rule of No More Than 40 MInutes. There is a lot of volume in the work out, at least for my usual work out. But, I do it in about 35 minutes with no rush. I refuse to look at the clock as I work out or to rush in general in anything. As Nassim says, don't run for trains. I don't.

I generally do not like the Smith machine, but use it for safety and would not recommend the work out with out keeping the safety of my readers in mind. The movement is a bit unnatural, but the Smith machine does make things go quickly and in safety. You can do the squat pullover cycle, the rows, and the incline presses at one station. And it goes to quickly you don't tie the machine up for others the way some people do.

I don't do all the sets all the time. Right now, just 3 cycles on the squat pullover as I ease into the work out. My training up until now has been softball and sprints with some hitting off a tee. So, this is a new work out for me at this time. On the curls, I do only one set of concentration curls, including the negatives. I do not like thick arms and find they get in the way. So, that is plenty. I do include a Romanian Dead Lift to make sure my posture is locked in. Just a light one with emphasis on form. I bottom out when I feel a bit of tension in my hams and then straighten back out. I also do crunches and the Horse at the end of the work out, one set each. And, I stretch my damaged (from a motorcycle crash racing motocross 10 years ago) shoulder on a bench just before I leave.

If the work out takes more than 35 or 40 minutes, then pick up the pace and don't rest so much between sets as you are told to do by the BB mags.

I find it is an easy and fun work out that leaves me feeling fresh. I will get too big on it and will move to something else in a few weeks.

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Running to Death

Several people sent links to the running death of Ryan Shay. Mark Sisson sent it and so did PaleoGal. Mark also sent a link on Alberto Salazar, a premiere runner who has run himself close to death several times. He had at one time been described as "a man who once heard testers declare his cardio output to be the greatest they had ever measured." Note also the severe loss of muscle mass associated with marathon training, one that Salazar tries to avoid in his trainees. No wonder they look like ghosts. When I saw some of the participants of our recent Huntsman Senior Games Marathon in St. George, they looked like the walking injured and near dead. If I can be a bit whimsical about it all, remember my Top 10 Reasons Not to Run Marathons. One of my most important (and criticized) posts. It may be sinking in. The evidence is close to overwhelming.

LINK · Endurance Training: Death, Injury, and Risk ~ · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Sports · Comments (4)

Calorie Restriction Society

November 4, 2007 05:28 PM

I spoke at an earlier conference of the CR Society and really enjoyed the discussion and the other presentations. Their San Antonio conference is coming up November 11. If you have a chance to go, it is well worth your time. Dr. Krikorian is the organizer, a name you will recognize from earlier posts. Go to the link anyway to learn more about CR.

LINK · Complex Systems ~ · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Meals · Comments (0)

Poor Eating and Depression

I received this uplifting, though still sad, comment from a reader. It points to the often discussed linkage between poor eating and depression. Yet, it points, not in the usual way from depression to poor eating, but the other way from poor eating to depression. That is to say that poor eating can be a cause of or contributor to depression. It also adds to the discussion of the merits of eating vs. exercise.

Take note of the issue with green tea. It is known that the source of green tea is a region of China that produces tea that is high in sulphur and other allergenic substances. I wouldn't drink it myself.

Another issue is the linkage between an allergic response to a food, such as wheat bread, and craving. Humans seek the slight "high" that comes with ingesting an allergenic food or drink. The high comes from a burst of adrenalin in response to the allergenic substance as the body arms itself against this stressor. Food is surely one of the major stressors in one's life: toxins, allergens, and carbohydrates that abound in our food put the body into an inflammatory response. The surge of insulin is the body's attempt to save itself from the damage of excess blood glucose and the stress hormones kick up the heart rate to burn off this toxic sludge. At the same time, the stress response lessens insulin sensitivity. A dangerous self-reinforcing feed back loop occurs each time you binge on simple carbs or fat. A few such shocks can create such a large and powerful feedback that you undo much of the months or weeks of good eating. Remember, it is the big events in life that shape it. A binge is a major determinant of your metabolic fitness. The body "remembers" these big events as they are imprinted on your hypothalmus and insulin receptors.

"Greetings.

Your blog is the greatest! If I had the need for a Bible of some sort, your blog would be it.

Two years ago, in November, I discovered the book The Rosedale Diet. Then, within a month, I read Loren Cordain,the book 'Neanderthin' and Candace Pert's audio tapes "Your body is your subconscious mind" and her book "The Molecules of Emotions".

Rosedale having convinced me, never mind a few internal contradictions in his advice, I very loosely applied the principles and I dropped from 245+ to 205 in about three or four months. I did that *without* exercise. I work from home. I am also quite depressed, and have been subject to intense panic attacks. I'm male, 45, with a scientific university education.

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Robb Wolf's report on exercise vs. diet

November 3, 2007 09:25 AM

Continuing the discussion of diet v. exercise, Robb sent in this case study.

He included these "before" and "after" pictures of his friends.

Two very attractive people who were encased in a layer of flab transformed into their natural types. So many people you see today have this same "before" appearance, puffy and misshapen, sort of swollen and with a touch of inflammation showing in the face. Note the improvement in their skin in addition to the bodies. I would guess their blood lipid and hormone profiles are profoundly improved as well.

The "before" and "after" test here is not as clear as it could be to separate the diet or exercise elements because his friends had only been following the CrossFit program for a couple of months during a period when they were eating appalling food. They were, however, quite active in their work detailing cars and boats.

So, the "before" pictures are 2 months into CrossFit, but still eating badly. The "after" pictures are 3 months (a correction of my earlier post Robb pointed out to me) later of CrossFit and Paleo/EF eating. I just show the pictures here. Read Robb's full discussion here in a Word doc.

The results are convincing that EF or CrossFit Paleo works wonderfully. And, it is clear that an active job combined with terrible eating doesn't give you a good body composition or appearance. As to the importance of one or the other, I don't see a clue to point one way or the other. But, no one following the blog would attempt to eat terribly and engage in EF training. It is a package and a way of life that will transform anyone. I have another report coming up soon from a mid 50's practitioner who achieved sensational results by changing from a body builder style of exercise and diet to EF.

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Gaining Mass

November 2, 2007 07:21 AM

The problem Minger describes in this quote from his comment is not atypical.

I'm an ecto(upper)/meso(lower), 5'10 145 lbs, 11% bf. I biked and ran stairs a lot as a kid so my legs are much larger and can gain muscle there easily; didn't do much with the upper body -- and can't do much with it now.

This categorization has been overstated for a long time. While it is true that genes and activity shape the body, none of this is fixed. Remember the German twins whose pictures I discussed quite some time ago (see Twins in the search engine); one was a runner, the other was a strength athlete and they looked as different as Dorian Yates and an Ethiopian distance runner.

It is more a matter of what stimuli you give the genes that express muscle. One thing you may be doing is too little volume to build mass. Evolutionary Fitness is designed to produce lean fast twitch muscle and athletic builds. To develop more FT mass you have to do more volume and convert the FT 2 into FT 1 fibers. This will make the ST fibers proliferate. Body builders are mostly ST and FT 1 types from their high volume workouts. Their high vascularity is a direct result of increased ST mass as this muscle type requires a higher blood flow than the FT fibers. Moreover, the sheer volume of work with little down time does not permit the overexpression of FT 2 fibers that I rely on in my EF work. Long intervals of other activity and between work outs permits the regression of FT 1 fibers into FT 2 fibers. The FT 2 stage seems to be the natural state of muscle, owing likely to the first moving creatures who relied on fermentation as an energy source in an anaerobic environment such as mud.

Another odd thing is that to build upper body mass you have to do squats since they are the largest mass of muscle and stimulate a large GH response. So, as others suggested I think Minger ought to do something like the following to build upper mass.

1. The first objective is to expand and lift the chest cavity or rib cage. Do this with a squat pullover cycle. Do 2 cycles at first, then progress to 4.

One cycle is a breathing squat followed by a db pullover with deep breaths. Do 15 to 30 deep knee bends on a Smith machine. Set the stops so that you can drop out of the squat if you need to and stay safe. Take a couple of deep breaths between each squat and expel the air on the lift up. Then go directly to db pullovers. Lie across the bench put a db in both hands with your shoulders on the bench. Arch your back and take a deep breath as you lower the weight and drop your hips a bit. Work up to 4 cycles, but be careful if you get dizzy from over ventilation.

2. Next get your upper traps, deltoids, and lats, another large muscle group that will aid the GH release. Do a series of rows at varying angles. Use the Smith machine again so you don't strain your back lifting the barbell off the floor. Set the stops at heights that permit you to fully extend your arms when you lower the bb. Start bent over slightly with a wide grip on the bar. Raise the weight up, but never more than to a right angle at your elbow. Do 15. Then, with a brief rest to increase the weight and set the stops lower, bend at about 15 degrees and do another 15 reps. Then reset weight and stops and bend 30 degrees and do 15. Then bend to 45 or 60 degrees and do it all again. Then all the way to 90 degrees. That makes 4 sets in one cycle. Do 2 at first, and progress to 4 cycles. (Getting the idea about what volume is?)

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Nassim Taleb

October 29, 2007 04:38 PM

Many of you know Nassim Taleb from my site and from other venues, particularly his fine books Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan. He also was a Wall Street trader and the founder of the kurtosis fund Empirica.

He sent me this nice comment today "Of all the blogs I've read in the past couple of years, I can certify that yours has been the most consequential for me."

As for how he is doing on his version of Evolutionary Fitness, he says:

"I am at my best. I don't work out much anymore (I lift once a week on average) but cutting all carbs (outside of ancestral food) changed me. I am better condition than when I used to ride 100 miles a week.

Ciao,
Nassim"

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A WW TAco

October 27, 2007 01:11 PM

WW has Evolutionary Fitness meals down pat. This is chicken, various chiles, cabbage (red and white), and her secret ingredients. Too bad, it is only for me.

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Food or exercise?

Given Robb Wolf's experience with many clients who train in his Cross Fit program, which I think is close to evolutionary patterns, I think it is instructive to see what has worked for his trainees. Quoting his (lightly edited) message:

...we need activities and foods that mimic those we are wired to do and eat. Which is more important, food or activity? Which actually leads weight loss? Taubes thesis, and I wholeheartedly support it, is that food is the larger factor here. I'd wager the only factor. The literature seems to support this and it is absolutely the truth in our training practice.

We can start nit-picking whether or not my clients are training in an evolutionarily smart manner but the fact is I can stratify our clients into a few categories:
1-only activity is with us.
2-some activity outside our training.
3-loads of activity outside our training.

Among ALL these folks, if they have a body fat issue it WILL NOT resolve unless they remove dense carb sources from the diet. It's an insulin issue. Like I said in my blog post, I wish this was not the case for the simple bodycomp shifts but in my experience this is absolutely the case.

This is NOT to be mistaken with general health improvements with exercise. There is no doubt about that, but that is not the question at hand. Much evidence exists that overweight people who exercise are healthier than those who do not. Smokers who exercise are healthier than those who do not. No arguments there. The question posed is: Does exercise contribute significantly to fat loss? I'd have to say no. Food is the larger factor.

If we look at the effects of exercise on things like hormone status it is a middling thing compared to insulin levels. Insulin potentially affects reproductive hormones, leptin hunger...the essence of life. It's not surprising food plays such a potent role.

My own experience is that food is a key factor. It is the foundation for metabolic health. But, it is far too complex to place a weight on food or activity. It is like trying to quantify factors that separate life in the wild from modern life.

Yet, I do not doubt Robb's basic point that without altering the eating patterns of athletes and other high volume trainers, they are unlikely to alter their body composition. After all, he has the data, which I would encourage him to spell out a bit more. The problem is that when people begin to train they start to take the supplements and adopt a strange eating mentality that may even make them fatter than when they began.

Nearly every body builder that one sees in the gym is too fat and that is because they drive their insulin levels with poor food intake. They are fat in spite of often heavy training (though of a non-optimal type and excessive). Many of the friends I have encouraged to follow Evolutionary Fitness began with changes in their eating and dropped large amounts of fat even without the exercise component. I can go long periods without gaining or losing weight or unfavorable changes in body composition without exercising.

Runners, cyclists, tennis players, football players, swimmers, and athletes of other sorts tend to eat poorly and have poor body composition relative to the optimum. In spite of their high activity, they carry too much fat because they rely so heavily on carbohydrates. Sports drinks, "replenishment" and "gainer" drinks, protein bars, carbo loading, and so on are far over-used in these sports and the consequences are excess body fat, particularly in the abdominal region. They also tend to obsess about eating often, which lessens insulin sensitivity. I doubt any of them would go a day or so without eating and many even get up during the night to eat for fear of going into negative nitrogen balance.

It is almost comical. So, of course, they can't lose fat with training. In fact, because they are training, they pursue these poor consumption choices and practices. And, training does make you more hungry, which seems to be something these athletes fear and work hard to avoid. So, all too often, beginning an exercise program sets many onto a deleterious, carb-laden way of eating. Or, they just eat more of the same poor diet that brought them into the training program in the first place. Recall all the athletes we have catalogued here over the past few years whose programs led them to become diabetics. It is an untold story of how many body builders and endurance athletes are diabetics or near-diabetics.

But, I think it is not productive to place weights on diet or exercise, that is far too narrow. We have to unwrap the mind set that associates training with high carbohydrate and protein intake and with incessant eating. The sports supplement industry has promoted this association to our detriment.

Think of what happens to a hunter-gatherer when they leave the traditional life and go to the city. Both their activity and their diets change. They quickly become diabetic or pre-diabetic, whether they are Australian aboriginals or Eskimo. In the bush or wild their diets differ dramatically, though their activities are equally demanding. This supports Yuneek's point. Yet, they share the same fate when they leave the bush for the city. They exchanged their evolutionarily adapted way of life for something very different. And, both suffer similarly. When they go back into the bush or tundra, they recover their health and strength. Which is the more important change? Their food or their activity? There is no answer because they are intertwined in metabolic networks and gene interactions that are far too complex to separate or assign degrees of "importance" to. And their living patterns are more closely matched to those of the environment with its variation and occasional bursts of drama. So, I say "live as though you were in the bush".

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Carbs drive insulin drives fat

October 25, 2007 10:25 AM

This article in New York Magazine by Gary Traub, the author of Good Calories, Bad Calories, is part good, part not so good. He fails to note that exercise increases insulin sensitivity and, therefore, reduces the amount of insulin circulating in the body, which, in turn, directs nutrients to muscle and organs rather than fat.

And, it turns out that well-prescribed exercise, in conjunction with diet, does reduce fat and increase lean muscle mass. The Washington University group has established that point convincingly. A further point is that at low energy expenditure the appetite mechanism has no resolution, as an evolutionary argument makes clear (see my Why We Get Fat under the research link). We fatten cattle by confining them and still they eat beyond their energy expenditure. At higher energy expenditure, appetite and energy expenditure are well-matched. We must "learn" the disconnect since, as children and infants, we are able closely to match intake and expenditure.

Still, the article might have been written by yours truly when it comes to the thermodynamics. I wonder if Taub reads my blog.

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Evolutionary Fitness for 25 years

October 23, 2007 10:01 AM

Though I can't pinpoint just when I began Evolutionary Fitness, it was about 25 years ago. I added much along the way, but the intensity, brevity, variety, and eating style were there from near the beginning. The Power Law and elements of chaos and order came soon after and then the intermittent eating.

It has worked pretty well and I am OK at 70 years of age. I just did a physical and blood panel and had a long talk with my doctor. (He hasn't seen me in nearly 3 years.) I weighed 197 pounds, just what I did when I was 16 -- 20.

My metabolic panel is fine. My insulin is below the test limits of the lab, which is to say less than 2. (So is Wonder Woman's because we eat and exercise in a similar way, even though we pursue different kinds of exercise.)

My lipid profile puts me at zero cardiac risk: cholesterol at 200, triglycerides at 49 (the range is 55-149), HDL at 92 (above the range 40-75), VLDL 10 (low for the range 11-29), and LDL at 98. Cholesterol/HDL is 2.2. But, more importantly TRIG/HDL is 0.53. With a blood pressure of 118/70 my doctor says I will live to be 100.

The low TRIG comes from being lean, since most TRIG comes from one's own body fat. High HDL keeps blood vessels clear (and scans confirm this for me) and the very low VLDL assures that these easily oxidized particles cannot stick to lesions and become clots. Even if you worry about my total Cholesterol of 200, you shouldn't because the HDL is so high and I read the literature in a way that suggests TRIG/HDL is more informative. On this ratio, my tests are spectacular.

Testosterone is 660 (lab range 350-720), the highest the doctor has ever seen for someone 70, or even 60. This goes with the low insulin since insulin depresses testosterone production and also puts on fat that aromatizes testosterone into estrogen. Free testosterone is right in the range but on the low side at 78.4 (range 50-210).

In addition to low insulin and low body fat as contributors to high testosterone, I should mention sleep. I sleep well, which is important for GH and testosterone production. Both these are released in pulses or bursts that primarily occur during REM sleep or early morning.

I don't worry about the moderate free testosterone reading. It is well known that there is little evidence, other than theoretical reasoning, to suggest that free testosterone is biologically more active than bound testosterone. Bound testosterone is transported by sex hormone binding globulin, not inactivated by it. Moreover, it is known that the tests have serious errors (partly because the formulas are wrong and for other reasons). The gold standard is a dialysis form of test for free testosterone and this shows that the other tests may error by 400 percent.

In my reading of the literature (and according to two of my doctors who think the Mayo Clinic research points to total testosterone as the crucial variable), total testosterone is what counts. It seems to work for me as I have lost no bone density or muscle mass over the years. I see little change in energy as well.

For those who think genes are the answer I just want to point out that both my parents had high blood pressure, both had high Cholesterol, and my father died at 72 from a heart attack. My mother made it to 90. As I say, it is how you express your genes and that can be managed by eating and exercising the EF Way.

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The disease network of obesity

October 20, 2007 12:08 PM

Have a look at the complex interaction of genes, friends, spouses and families in this network of diseases associate with obesity. Obesity is linked to 7 other diseases. Friends and spouses are to a significant degree proxies for diet, activity, and how we live life. The complex network of genes, behavior and metabolism is slowly being pieced together. It is not a pretty picture. Behavior and genes drive the metabolic network, which in turn, shape gene expression and behavior.

I think this picture strongly supports Evolutionary Fitness and its strategies. Stay lean and you stay out of this destructive network.

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A nice summary of complexity and self-organization

This is one of the more readable and thorough explanations of self-organization Complexity and Self-Organization

The ideas are highly relevant to fitness and health, and life, as I have tried to show.

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Cherry Garcia: Peter Huber's Thoughts on Socialized Medicine

October 15, 2007 01:02 PM

Peter Huber is one of my favorite writers and thinkers. I know him only from a few conversations and several of his books, Galileo's Revenge, and Hard Green. He is always fresh and analytical, being an MIT engineer and head of his own law firm.

In this Cherry Garcia and the End of Socialized Medicine he shows how complex modern "disease" is and how a one-size-fits-all socialized medical system of the kind being proposed by various politicians, would fail. Politicians are not thinkers, nor should we let them be social engineers. They see the world in an odd way. Better, they see an odd world that bears little resemblance to the world we live in.

How can socialized medicine cure people when it is individual biochemistry driven by a personal mixture of genes, diet, activity and disastrous living habits?

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A 12 Year Old Boy on Evolutionary Fitness

October 13, 2007 09:47 AM

A father who is dedicated to his son's health and fitness contacted me. His son is a talented athlete and trains hard to be the best football player he can be. The father knows a lot about training (and reads the blog regularly) and uses the best techniques to help his son train. When the boy hit 12, he began to gain weight and slow down. His foot speed dropped and his weight increased. They were both a bit frustrated and asked me what they should do. From what they told me I could see that they were over training. The boy was also going through a growth spurt and needed more rest and variety. He wasn't eating right either.

Because he was over training, his nervous system was dulled or perhaps even exhausted. The fall off in his speed was as much from nervous system fatigue as from the weight gain. And the weight gain almost certainly was from the insulin resistance fostered by the high level of stress hormones induced by over training. He was snacking on chips and eating too late at night as well.

I advised them to drop most of the sprinting and plyometrics and do one hard down hill run a week. The overspeed training would stimulate the nervous system to maximize muscle recruitment and would train the FT fibers to fire more completely. It would also increase his stride frequency, the most important part of speed. More rest would regenerate his neural responsiveness. I also suggested some strength training, which they do using bands that are easy on the joints and promote nerve firing through isometric contraction.

On the diet side, I suggested pure Evolutionary Fitness eating. They stopped his late eating and he eats nothing after 8pm. The chips and potatoes are gone and he mostly eats meat, fruit, vegetables and nuts.

In about 5 weeks or so he went from 139 pounds to 127. His waist dropped from 31 to 27. His speed has improved significantly. He is starting to show "cuts" in his musculature. He is more energetic and has even taken up tennis in addition to his football.

I often tell people that over training is the route to becoming fat and slow. It may seem hard to believe, but only because people seem to subscribe to the "body as machine" theory of fitness. Over training is so easy to do, most people don't even know they are doing it. And modern fitness advice promotes over training. It is the primary cause of injury and resignation to a life of poor health and fitness after the injuries pile up. More is not better and routine training is joyless and lifeless.

The last group of marathoners and triathletes who came here for the Huntsman Senior Games looked haggard and injured. I was in the crowd when I registered for softball and I did not feel as though I was in a group of athletes at all. They just looked like a bunch of old people.

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Weightlifting is Dangerous Too

October 2, 2007 06:06 PM

If I have talked a lot about the dangers of jogging, long distance cycling, and marathoning it is because they are so often held out as models for good health by the fitness industry and media. The danger is in doing these things when you have an undiagnosed heart condition. Beyond that there are the dangers of excessive oxidatitive damage and poor diet.

Weight lifting has similar dangers. If you have a pre-existing heart condition, it can be fatal to experience the sudden rise in blood pressure that is caused by a heavy lift, as this Cardiology article points out. I think it is important to not grimmace and grip too tightly as both raise your blood pressure when you lift a heavy weight. Nor do you want the sudden denial of blood to your heart when you hold your breath and pressurize the chest volume so high that the blood does not reach your heart.

I don't agree with either chronic running or chronic weight lifting and think there are far better models for health. You know that by now.

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Comments on Comments

October 1, 2007 10:25 AM

It really is fun to see these intelligent and interesting comments on the last two posts. I should be doing something else right now, but will take a moment to go over them.

Home runs. The real straw man is the unfalsifiable hypothesis that Bonds and others "must have done or taken something" to do what they did. There is no amount of evidence that will make it false. I have looked and fail to find any evidence that steroids will prevent the end of season fatigue that the comment rightly points to as a possible factor. If there is some, I would like to see it. On the other hand, prolonged steroid use carries so many side effects that they might create their own problems. One, seldom pointed to, is the loss of mental discipline. This would be highly unproductive for a hitter. Bonds has never shown a loss of his remarkable plate discipline. My main point is that the statistics are so wild that no one has or is likely to find convincing evidence that the performance of Bonds, McGwire, Sosa and others is beyond the variation that is always there in the elite world of exeptional home run hitting. There is no norm as is posited by those who make the argument that they must have done something.

Walter's interesting comment prompted others pointing out he may be getting too few calories and that adaptation takes a couple of weeks. I also think that one huge meal a day is counterproductive; the surge of protein and carbohydrate, along with fat, is a shock to metabolism and kills insulin receptors by the score. Better to eat every other day, spread over several meals than to do this. And, be careful what kind of fruit you eat; most modern fruits are excessively sweet. I prefer melons of all kinds with splashes of other fruits only for variety and color, not as a main element of the meal.

The bonus was Chris H's posting of this link Ketogenic Diets and Physical Performance from Nutrition and Metabolism. Its creative commons license permits me to post the link and gives you access. The Innuit diet it discusses is not for me, but the controlled studies do show that the modern high carb diet for endurance athletes is over rated (and other evidence shows that it is harmful) and the low carb diet works just fine for real world endurance.

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Stasis non-stasis

September 30, 2007 07:53 PM

I think that the way I work out and eat has given me an adaptive capacity that I sometimes wonder about. For example, it has been weeks since I worked out. Sore joints, many long auto trips, lots of personal and business details to take care of and even a brief bout of my first real sickness in years have all somehow conspired to keep me off my (admittedly random) routines for exercise and eating.

Yet, I have not gained an once and have kept my weight and musculature within ounces of their usual levels. I feel strong, though not quite as strong as usual, and well (now that I have beaten my illness, the first to put me in or close to bed for many years). I had no explicit strategy. I did vary my eating far more than usual, trying to put the amoebic dysentery or giardia (or whatever I caught in Mexico) behind me. And I ate a cup or two of Activa yogurt now and then.

I have wondered why so little had changed regarding my weight, muscle and energy levels. One explanation for maintaining my (chaotic) stasis is the variation I have always practiced. This has just been a longer interlude than usual in my workouts. I increased the variation in my eating I think because my appetite seems to match closely my energy expenditure. This, I think, is a consequence of living at a relatively high energy expenditure level, where our evolved appestat is accurate and has real precision. Another is having low insulin and high insulin sensitivity; I experienced no hunger pangs or dizziness even when I did not eat for 2 days and only lightly the third. I did get a headache one day and had a small bit of dark chocolate just to make sure my blood glucose was not too low. That fixed it and was a signal that I was ready to begin light eating again. I think I kept my muscle mass and leanness because my GH is so high and went higher during the stress of the illness. So, now I plan to resume my sprinting and push ups. I do think that push ups are very good, not only for the chest, shoulders and arms, but also for the trunk and for posture. You have to maintain a solid posture and strong core doing the bridge for the push ups. If you do them with perfect spinal position (slight lordosis) you train your core muscles and nervous system for perfect posture.

So, my conjecture is that my stasis is due to my non-stasis way of exercising and eating.

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New Discoveries of Homo Erectus

September 28, 2007 05:18 PM

Our understanding of H. Erectus has relied on the skeleton of a tall, strapping young male who would have been 180cm tall had he matured. He was built for covering distance with long legs and feet evolved for walking rather than grasping.

Now there are new finds of shorter, but still long-legged H. Erectus or their close predecessors reported in Science Magazine. These fossils suggest that the brain evolved to the taller H. Erectus size after the development of limbs suited for covering distance. More discussion of these finds are here Science News.

Are you walking and running?

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If you could only do one thing for your body

September 20, 2007 11:14 AM

You should sprint for your exercise. It is fun, builds coordination, and will make you stronger and leaner. The damage to your joints is far less than jogging and it is more effective than walking. Sprinting trains anaerobic and aerobic pathways, but with less oxydative load than jogging.

Interval sprints, mixed with walking are my favorite way to make my "come backs" when I have been traveling or busy. Even when my joints get a bit sore from working out. Yes, I have reached the age where I sometimes have joint soreness from working out. I find there is no better way to ease the load on the joints and come back to the gym with fresh energy than to sprint and walk.

Sprinters and athletes who engage in sprint sports like football (both kinds) and basketball are uniformly leaner, stronger, and more muscular than joggers or bicyclists. Nearly all effective training programs for endurance athletes now contain a sprinting component.

A recent study summarized in Peak Performance compared sprint training with plyometrics over a 10 week period. Both groups improved their jumps but the sprint group also improved their isometric squat strength, their speed and agility. The sprint group had a 6.1% reduction in body fat while the plyometric group had none.

If you want to lose fat, I can think of no better exercise than sprinting mixed with intervals of walking. If you want to get "cut" or lean out, add sprinting to your work outs (and cut the work outs a bit). Many sports include sprinting: I enjoy sprinting in the outfield for fly balls during batting practice or tossing a football with children where we alternate as receiver or passer. But, I think you really need to do a couple of sprint sessions a week beyond sports play. Right now I have taken to sprinting exclusively for my training. I'll keep at it until I feel ready to start lifting again.

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A WW Evolutionary Fitness Breakfast

September 19, 2007 08:18 PM

WW has the EFit meals down pat.

Here is her variation on a meal I would cook for myself. She has an Italian slant on Evolutionary Fitness meals; it is amazing and delicious. It may have more phytonutrients than my own meals would contain. But, it all starts with the EF Way. She has many more healthy and nutritious variations on the EF Way. No wonder I married her.

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A Picture of 70

August 30, 2007 02:57 PM

I am doing this to memorialize my 70th birthday. It is my first picture with my shirt off. Actually, I take my shirt off often, but I don't like people staring at me, which they often do. If you saw me in my clothes you would not guess how much muscle I carry beneath them. This is at 196 pounds, just about a perfect weight for me now.

I had no one to take it as I spent my birthday alone and I did not have my camera. So, I shot my reflection with my iPhone in the gym at Punta Esmeralda, where my place here in Puerto Vallarta is located.

It is all a bit strange, but I felt it was important to note how I look on my 70th and this was the only way to do it. For me, 70 is a nice age; I can do whatever I want and feel wonderful. And I have learned a bit over the years.

The picture follows...

Read More »

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Sweet Fruits

August 27, 2007 06:46 AM

Nassim Taleb sent me a few thoughts and observations on fruits . His historical observations are especially interesting.

I sent him this reply: It is true that fruits are far sweeter than in times past and sweeter here than in Europe. I am in Mexico right now and I find that fruits are as sweet here as in the US. Perhaps that is because they sell so much product to the US market these days.

The process for producing sweetness and tenderness is selective breeding, as you note, and selection for neotony, the retention of juvenile traits in the adult. Ah, it seems that is true of people these days as well. Many fail to achieve adulthood. On the other hand, humans evolved a form of neotony and retain their juvenile traits of playfulness and pleasure longer than chimps and other animals. It was an advantage for our large-brained, highly social species to retain aspects of youthfulness.

Seedless fruits, watermelon for example, are grown by selecting for neotony. Vegetables are going through the same process; strong tastes and texture are being selectively bred out of modern versions of vegetables.

I suspect the phyto-nutrients, often the source of strong tastes and colors, are being lost through this process.

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Carbs on Display

August 26, 2007 09:30 PM

I have noticed that Mexicans here in Puerto Vallarta are a bit heavy, with a sort of uniform mild obesity that seems to affect a high percentage of the populace. On the other hand, I have seen no extreme cases of obesity of the kind you can encounter every day in most American cities.

Wandering into a grocery store gave me part of the explanation. Here is the display I encountered. It was staggering to see in person. My iPhone only captures part of the towers and towers (at least 8 of them) of donuts, breads, sweet breads, cakes, cookies, and other products that pass for food.

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Shopping and Gathering

In my experience, a woman is a far better shopper than a man. My wife can shop until I drop and I can never remember where the last dress she tried on is located in the store.

So, I found this research interesting and entirely in line with evolutionary reasoning Gathering is Shopping.

It is especially interesting that women were 9% more accurate in depicting the angle of departure to the market location, since this geometric representation is more a male's model of space than a woman's. Had the research asked what stalls are near the location or a sequence of stalls to pass leading to the destination I think women would have done even better.

As to a preference for pink in the female brain, the answer is fascinating; check the article for the evolutionary explanation.

Speaking of shopping, I find that the cuban cigars are not better than the Nigaraguan cigars that I favor. They are expensive even here in Mexico and harsh.

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (3)

Cellular Autophagy

August 24, 2007 09:16 AM

T. J. Hall sent a link to an article describing the relationship between nutrient status and autophagy that you should read. I have been reading about the same process in a review of Cancer and Aging that I will comment on soon.

Autophagy (self eating or consumption) is a crucial process in the cell. The cell consumes and recycles damaged internal material; this is an energy sparing process and important for scavenging old and damaged material within the cell. Autophagy is an important element in energy management and damage repair. The energy and protein content of damaged material is used to fuel rebuilding and cellular energetics.

The process seems to be triggered when the energy content of the cell declines so that the cell literally consumes itself. It goes after the damaged materials first, so there is a strong link between repair of damaged tissues and fasting or low energy state in the cell. So, it you are over-fed you down regulate cellular repair. You want to go hungy episodically to turn on cellular autophagy and repair those damaged tissues.

This makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary perspective. When the energy in the cell declines, the cell eats the damaged tissues for energy and that recycles the damaged tissues to make new material. The result is a healthier cell. It is efficient for the cell to turn to damaged materials first as a source of energy, thus sparing healthy tissues. So, in addition to fat, damaged internal materials of the cell are a source of energy. A fat person has a lot of damaged tissues inside cells and never recycles and repairs them because there is too much energy in the cell.

Of course, exercise has the same effect because it lowers energy stores in the cells and also because it damages muscle cells, causing them to repair themselves through autophagy.

I am in Puerto Vallarta moving into my new house; with the long drive down and getting set up I have not had time to say much on the blog, but I felt this was important enough as a subject to take a moment to tell you something about this crucial process.

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (4)

Bioidentical Hormones?

August 15, 2007 09:35 AM

I read this interesting article in this week's eSkeptic issue.

This is a "therapy" I would not do myself. And how many times do you see the claim that Big Pharma is blocking this or that alternative treatment? It reminds me of the old claims that the Big Automakers were blocking a carburator that would deliver 50 miles per gallon. Just yesterday I received a magazine that claimed the FDA was blocking known cancer therapies. I have no love for the FDA, but the level of cynicism and destructiveness required for it to act this way are unthinkable. It is time the personal testimonies of stars count for less than the science. Harriet Hall's article is a worthy debunking of the genre.

In this week’s eSkeptic we present Dr. Harriet Hall’s most recent column in Skeptic magazine (vol 13. no. 2) on bioidentical hormone treatment which has been touted by Suzanne Somers on Larry King Live but looked at skeptically by the mainstream medical community. In this column Dr. Hall, Skeptic’s resident expert on all matters medical, examines the evidence carefully.

Bioidentical Hormones
Estrogen is Good. No, It’s Bad. No, It’s Good
by Harriet Hall, M.D. (a.k.a. The SkepDoc)

Menopausal women used to have no escape from the sufferings of the dreaded “Change.” In the mid-20th century, they were offered a reprieve. They could take a pill to replace their missing hormones, and feel back to normal. That was good in itself, but then they found that replacing estrogens could prevent osteoporosis and hip fractures. We knew there were some risks, but we thought the benefits outweighed the risks. Some doctors recommended all menopausal women take estrogens to “stay young.” Then there was more good news: evidence seemed to show that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) could reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, and cancer in postmenopausal women.

The optimism came to a screeching halt in 2002, when the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study said, “OOPS! It looks like hormones do more harm than good.” Thousands of women were scared into going off their hormones. Sales of Premarin dropped from $2 billion to $880 million. Some of these women tried other remedies and then went back to Premarin because it was the only thing that worked for them. Doctors learned to prescribe more selectively, and sales are rising again.

Now all of a sudden hormones are being touted as a miracle cure for whatever ails you. Suzanne Somers has a new book, Ageless: The Naked Truth about Bioidentical Hormones, recommending everyone take supplemental hormones, even men. My local newspaper has been advertising seminars by an MD on hormones for menopause, weight control, and romance: “Skinny Hormones, Happy Hormones, Youthful Hormones and Sexy Hormones.” Anti-aging clinics and longevity doctors are promoting bioidentical estrogen and progesterone along with testosterone, thyroid, and human growth hormone to prevent aging. What’s going on?

The claim is that Premarin and Provera, the drugs studied in the WHI study, are artificial and harmful, while bioidentical hormones are natural and harmless. Some also claim that bioidenticals prevent aging and the diseases associated with aging and make people feel better than they ever did before. What is the evidence behind these claims?
First we need to understand what the WHI study really said. It has been misrepresented and misinterpreted. Media reports gave the impression that HRT was killing women. Not so. Over 10,000 person-years, women on estrogen plus progestin had 7 more coronary events, 8 more strokes, 8 more pulmonary emboli, and 8 more invasive breast cancers than women who didn’t take hormones; but they also had 6 fewer colorectal cancers and 5 fewer hip fractures, and the same number of deaths overall.

So women weren’t dying because of HRT, but they were increasing their risk of some diseases while reducing their risk of others. Overall the risks exceeded the benefits. Current recommendations are to use HRT for a limited time only to control menopausal symptoms, and not to use it for disease prevention. Most of us think these recommendations will be altered in the future as we learn more about risk factors and genetic susceptibility. Meanwhile, we try to individualize advice: your doctor is more likely to recommend HRT if you are at very low risk of cardiovascular disease and at high risk of osteoporosis or colorectal cancer.

Evil Big Pharma Plot?

The bioidentical folks tell us that Premarin and Provera are unnatural and harmful substances cynically foisted on us by Big Pharma to make profits. They don’t seem to realize that all doctors are either women, married to women, or sons of women, who presumably are more concerned about women’s health than about Big Pharma profits, and that doctors have read all the same information they have. They recommend estrogens and progesterone from natural plant sources. Premarin comes from pregnant mare’s urine: that seems more natural to me, since we’re much more closely related to a horse, another mammal, than we are to a plant. And the plant isn’t used in a natural form; it’s used as the basis of laboratory synthesis. And there is a reason that we started giving women progestins like Provera instead of natural progesterone: natural progesterone is not absorbed well. Progestins were reliably absorbed and dosage easily controlled.

“Bioidentical” is not standard medical terminology. It’s their way of saying it is the same exact chemical compound found in the human body. But there are lots of different estrogenic compounds found in the body, including estriol, estradiol and estrone. Nothing we do is likely to replace all the estrogenic compounds in exactly the way they occur in the body. There are around 30 different estrogens in Premarin. One, equilin, is present in horses but not in women. Curiously, that “unnatural” element appears to be neuroprotective and is being studied as a possible treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. There’s no solid evidence that any supplemental mixture of hormones is ideal. Anything that has hormonal effects may have hormonal side effects, and for all we know good old Premarin and Provera may be less harmful than some other mixtures.

Compounding pharmacists make up the bioidentical remedies, often in the form of a cream. Advocates themselves recognize that there is inconsistency between pharmacies, and they may have tried two or three different compounders before they hit on one that seems to work consistently for them. In one survey, about a third of the compounded samples tested had substandard amounts of drugs. The FDA is concerned about the growing popularity of compounding and the need for better regulation.

There are hypothetical reasons to think “bioidentical” hormones should be superior to Premarin and Provera. But there are also hypothetical reasons to think that they may be no more effective and no safer. The only way to know for sure is to test them in a properly designed placebo-controlled trial. Until this is done, most of us feel more comfortable with the devil we know than the devil we don’t know.

What other options are there for hot flashes? Several other prescription drugs have been tried, including antidepressants, but they don’t work as well as estrogen and they all have side effects. A number of alternative natural remedies have been tried, from chasteberry to wild yam. According to The Natural Medicines Database there is insufficient evidence to support any of these but black cohosh, soy, and flaxseed; and these are only rated “possibly effective” and “possibly safe.” Black cohosh was the most promising — until a recent well-designed study found black cohosh no better than placebo.

Bioidentical Insanity

Suzanne Somers and others keep harping about “balancing” your hormones. I have difficulty understanding this concept. Hormones are complicated. There are lots of different estrogens; estrogen levels are higher early in the monthly cycle and progesterone peaks later in the cycle: if you graph them, you see that each follows a curve, and the ratio between estrogens and progesterone is constantly changing from day to day and hour to hour. So what can the bioidentical advocates mean when they say they are “balancing” your hormones?

I finally realized that they don’t have any idea what they’re “balancing.” When they do lab tests, they use salivary levels, which they think are more reliable (most endocrinologists disagree). Since they know the test only reflects one instant in time, they feel free to disregard it except as a rough starting point. Instead, they have the patient report any symptoms such as insomnia, dry skin, or lack of energy, interpret those symptoms as signs of unbalanced hormones, and adjust the dosage.

It would be bad enough if they stuck to menopause, but Somers recommends hormone regimens for every age group, including adolescents, and for both men and women.
This creates a scenario where wishful thinking and testimonials take precedence over science, where quackery can go hog wild. Patients get to obsess about every little ache and sniffle, doctors get to tweak their prescriptions, and if patients don’t improve, they just say the balance isn’t quite right yet and they try again. Lots of personal attention and caring. Certainty that they have the answer to all their problems. Enthusiasm over a new method. Oh, and they combine the hormone therapy with all sorts of diet and exercise advice, and with handfuls of supplement pills, detoxifications, homeopathic remedies, and of course the FaceMaster machine that Suzanne sells and uses regularly for electrical facelifts. If you’re still not feeling perfect, you can try going to sleep at 9 PM. And sleeping in total darkness. Or add some testosterone just for the heck of it. There’s always something more to try; there’s always a satisfying explanation for everything.

The doctors who support these true believers are creating an elite following of self-absorbed, self-deluded, obsessive-compulsive health nuts. I suppose it’s nice for these people to have a hobby.

Can Hormones Prevent Aging?

Women produce estrogen until menopause, then they get old. Men produce less testosterone as they age. Maybe a lack of estrogen and testosterone is what makes them age. Maybe if we give them estrogen and testosterone, they will stay young. Maybe not.
Children drink milk and they are young. Adults don’t drink much milk, and they get old. Maybe a lack of milk is what makes them age. Maybe if we give them milk, they will stay young. Maybe not.

The adult body is not the same as a child’s body. Milk gives some adults bloating and diarrhea because their body no longer makes the lactase it did in childhood. A 70-year old body is not the same as a 30-year old body: maybe hormones good for the 30-year old body are not so good for the 70-year old body.

In 1889, Brown Sequard injected himself with the crushed testicles of young dogs and guinea pigs. Early 20th century doctors transplanted goat glands. Patients in both treatments got wonderful results … which were later shown to be placebo effects. Anti-aging medicine remains a will o’ the wisp. I wish Suzanne Somers were right. I wish hormones were the answer. But the evidence just isn’t there.

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LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Uncertainty · Comments (4)

EFit Meals

August 14, 2007 11:00 AM

A few recent meals showing WW's touch on the EFit way of cooking. They are self-explanatory.

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Meals · Comments (2)

A Vegan/Aerobicizer Hits the Wall

August 5, 2007 10:51 AM

I ran into a guy at the gym whom I had not seen for a couple of months, maybe more.

He was in the gym hours on end (when I used to see him) doing aerobics. He did so much treadmill work that he constantly limped and had a brace on his foot, sometimes on his knee. He had poor posture from walking slumped over looking at the track or the monitor. Nothing in his work outs addressed his posture and his aerobic work only reinforced it. He worked out every day as far as I could tell because he was always there when I came in.

He was a pure vegetarian. He ate a lot of beans and spinach and always told me how fresh he felt from his food. He had no muscle and was a "fat-skinny" jogger or treadmill addict. Sklnny arms, little legs and a bony back.

I was a bit shocked though to see how his appearance had degraded in the few months since I had last seen him. He had gotten quite thick around the waist, but not anywhere else. Still no muscle and a tired, haggard look and slumped posture. At least he was not limping and had no braces on. Rather than ask him if he had been ill, I just asked how he was doing. He really didn't answer but he did say he had been gone 2 months working on a cabin.

I don't want to speculate, but it does seem to me that his diet and training make his fitness vulnerable or brittle. He is poised on a razor's edge in a sense that any small change in diet or exercise sends him down a steep slope. He quickly loses fitness and his body composition quickly fades if he changes either his diet or his exercise. I doubt that his diet changed. So, it is likely his energy expenditures and particularly his peak expenditures that changed. It was easy to see that his insulin sensitivity had declined because all the new weight was gathered in the abdominal area. Maybe he had an illness or went through a major stress. On the other hand, there is seldom a "cause" for human physiology is so complex it is not possible to trace a major change of this magnitude to a single factor.

What I am driving at is that his approach to diet and fitness left him vulnerable. He has to stay on that treadmill or he falls hard. Even on the treadmill, though he managed his weight, he was on the boundary of good health. Not enough nutrition or rest and doing the wrong sorts of exercise. He looked depleted then and even more so now.

I am sorry to see this happen, but I don't think I can do anything about it. If there is any lesson here it is to adopt a fitness approach that does not leave you vulnerable to damage, poor nutrition, or unusual stress. If you are on the edge in terms of nutrition (either trying to "bulk up" or lose weight or eating a narrow range of foods) or exercise (over training and doing repetitive work outs), you become vulnerable. You are living on the edge. An easy approach mixing intensity, variety, and great food is more healthful and leaves you poised to adapt to stresses that are bound to occur.

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (7)

Glutathione, Aging and Cancer

August 4, 2007 10:18 AM

Here is a bit more on why I think supplementing with glutathione (GSH) is a good practice as we get older. The mechanisms through which GSH reduces aging and prevents cancer are described (to the extent they are known, there may be others such as preventing cell senescence of cells by reducing oxidation of telomeres so that the Hayflick limit is not hit).

I have only quoted part of the article; those of you who have access can read it all. GSH detoxifies numerous metabolic products that promote aging and cancer, particularly toxins and carcinogens. I think it may be true that the aging we see in excessive runners is due to the depletion of GSH. Almost surely, depleted GSH is a factor in inflammation. A high carb diet supplies little GSH or other natural antioxidants and promotes a burst of free radicals that deplete GSH and other endogenous antioxidants. It also damages the HPA axis (the hypothalmic, adrenal, pituitary network) which is ruinous. Perhaps the only reason slightly better longevity is found in runners is that the rest of the subjects (the controls) live so poorly; with almost as bad a diet and too little exercise. Do recall that the mortalilty curve is J-shaped; it declines with exercise, hits a bottom and then rises. The over-exercised fare no better than the underexercised.

For those of you trying to gain muscle mass, be reasonable in your goals: wanting too much mass and too quickly is a prescription for getting fat and is unhealthy in so many ways. But, do note that GSH is important to muscle synthesis. I can put on muscle, even at my "advanced" age, just by looking at a barbell. I think GSH is one of several reasons for my response to exercise.

The text from the article is below...

Read More »

LINK · Complex Systems ~ · Endurance Training: Death, Injury, and Risk ~ · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (2)

Sudden Death in Athletes

August 3, 2007 01:58 PM

Coming on the heels of the death of a 51 year old marathoner is the news that PaleoGal sent regarding a young man trying to become the World's Strongest Man. See also Jesse Marunde's Workouts and Diet.

While the media looks for reasons in Jesse Marunde's training and diet (and even speculate about what it means to be a man), they say nothing like that in the death of Brian Maxwell, the marathoner. It seems few journalists question the health benefits of marathoning, when it kills far more people than the bizarre lifting and eating that Jesse Marunde did. Of course, neither are worth the cost or the risk.

In Jesse's case, it is likely hypertrophic cardiomyopathy that killed him. It is the most common cause of death in young athletes, accounting for 34% of such deaths. A heavy blow to the chest is the next most common cause, accounting for about 20% of deaths in young persons engaged in athletics. Coronary artery malformations are found in about 14% of such deaths. Barring a blow to the chest then, congenital heart problems account for the greatest number of deaths.

Mocarditis, inflammation of heart tissue, is the cause of just over 5% of athlete deaths. Viral infections are the leading cause. So, it is unwise to run or train when you have a cold or the flu. Another cause of heart inflammation is overuse as might occur in a chronic runner. Perhaps that was a factor in Brian Maxwell's death as myocarditis kills cardiac muscle and induces arrhythmia and sudden death.

Heat stroke and possible drug use also cause sudden cardiac death, but I don't think anyone has the numbers to say how many. For a small fraction of sudden deaths the cause is not known. It is also well known that heavy muscle contraction raises blood pressure and that competitive lifters tend to develop enlarged heart muscles and thickened arteries. While you may be tempted to think this makes for a strong heart, an imbalanced musculature in the heart may alter the cascade of impulses across the heart tissue and alter the contraction pattern. I don't know if this contributes to arrhythmia, but it may.

Jesse Marunde's eating patterns can only be described as bizarre. They are probably not very dissimilar to some other strength athletes, who are not likely to have good longevity. The old adage that to be big you have to eat big or be in positive nitrogen balance has never really been tested. Eating excess calories puts on fat, not muscle. The heightened muscle gene expression caused by a work out is dampened in a high carbohydrate environment. Thus, the "window of gene expression" is closed if you ingest gainer drinks during the "window for replenishment."

LINK · Endurance Training: Death, Injury, and Risk ~ · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (6)

I'll Run It Off

July 31, 2007 04:08 PM

Many of WW's former co-workers, male and female, are runners. She often ate in the cafeteria with them and learned what they liked. It was CARBS CARBS and CARBS. One woman had pasta, bread rolls, and mashed potatoes on her tray for lunch. She was a doctor to top it off.

When the conversation got around to what WW ate and what they ate, many of these runners merely said: "I'll run it off." Of course they won't and can't. The 1200 calorie, high sugar muffin they have in the morning will take about 2 hours of cross-country running to run off. As for the doctor's lunch, well there is no way for her to run it off and still do her work.

But, even if they could burn up the calories, this is a seriously misleading and incomplete picture of the problem. The high carb shock is still there and the deadened insulin sensitivity it produces is a lasting problem contributing to weight gain and poor blood sugar control thereafter. Burning off the calories is a good way to feed free radical damage to the mitochondria and other vital tissues, including your brain. You don't burn this dangerous high sugar fuel without paying the price of oxidative damage. So, even if you do manage to burn off all those calories, you have done damage to your body in multiple ways.

This is a problem with the "calories in, calories out" theory of weight management. True as it is in a long-run thermodynamics sense, it misses the bigger picture of sustainable health. And many studies do show that the weight loss in low carb diets is greater than can be accounted for in the caloric reduction which they promote. This shows that the thermodynamic model is difficult to apply to the human body and that accurate measurement of energy expenditure is yet to be fully accomplished.

With all the promotion of "energy drinks" it is difficult for many to understand that the kind of fuel you are making your body burn when you eat these carb-laden meals or drink these so-called energy drinks is a sort of fuel that burns fast and hot and does real damage. And you do further damage just putting it in your tank because it wrecks your metabolic health.

You would not run nitrous oxide or alcohol in your car to double its power output without expecting to pay the price. Why do people fall for a theory just about that dumb when it comes to how they "fuel" their bodies?

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (9)

Ultrathione

July 29, 2007 11:15 AM

I have been taking Dr. Demopoulos formulation of glutathione, called Ultrathione, for about 20 years. Naturally, there have been some questions about the absorability of glutathione and the safety of commercially available sources. Dr. D recently sent information on these points for scientists and physicians. I want to share a bit of it with you.

1. Ordinary glutathione is poorly absorbed and may be dangerous. Glutathione has an exposed thiol (-SH) group that oxidizes rapidly outside the body. Once it oxidizes it can desulterate, leaving behind a highly toxic end-product, ophthalmic acid and has the odor of rotten eggs. It can block enzymes and receptors that utilize authentic glutathione, leaving tissues vulnerable. These include brain, muscles, heart, liver, and the immune system.

2. Ordinary glutathione has an electric charge that prevents its passage across cell membranes. It is, therefore, poorly absorbed and has a life of only 3 minutes owing to rapid clearance by the kidneys.

3. Ultrathione is charge neutral and rapidly absorbed. It is stable outside the body because it is neutral and it is packed in nitrogen in packets that prevent oxidation.

Any other questions? Go to www.glutathionescience.com.

Rather than take Ultrathione by itself, I prefer to take it with the co-factors found in the Performance Pack. I take one or two of these a day along with Mark Sisson's Damage Control formulation (see his ad on the right sidebar). Of course, I vary this.

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Training and Aging

Mark Sisson has an excellent post Training and Health summarizing well all the arguments we have come to know about over doing endurance training. He really ties it all together. Though his article is addressed to an audience of over-trainers, it has lessons for all of us. As we also have come to know, his article received a lot of negative comments from the committed over-trainers.

LINK · Endurance Training: Death, Injury, and Risk ~ · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Sports · Comments (0)

Lifespan among Hunter Gatherers

July 27, 2007 11:42 AM

Marios is a medical student who has been following the blog for some time. There are many others in medical school or who have begun to practice who have taken to the evolutionary approach as a result of reading the blog. Their patients should be grateful and I would very much like to find such a doctor myself. Darwinian or Evolutionary Medicine has become a small, but influential field. Williams and Nesse in their important book Why We Get Sick have a lot to do with this, but so have other researchers such as Cordain and Simopulous.

Marios sent me an email about a talk he heard about Amazonian tribes that I want to partly share with readers.

I just came back from a Wilderness Medicine conference at Snowmass in Colorado, where Mark Plotkin, an ethnobotanist involved in conservation of the Amazon, gave a wonderful talk.

Someone asked him what the average lifespan of these tribes he works
with was, and he mentioned that the Shaman he worked with was 107
years old. He did note however that many infants and young children
die of infections that were introduced to them by modern man, and that
this reduces the reported average lifespan of these people.

I went to talk to him after his talk, and asked him about the
lifestyle these tribes lead. He wasn't particularly interested, but
did mention that these people worked hard, sweating a lot, and then
rested for a few days, only to work hard again. He also noted that
they eat off the land as hunter gatherers, and don't eat any white
bread.

I think the point about infection and infant mortality is very well taken. Prior to agriculture, infection rates would have been low among hunter gatherers. Evidence is in their skeletons, which show low markings for infectious diseases. Even infant skeletons. Settled agriculture created favorable conditions for infectious diseases because settlement created stable environments for disease, a larger population group gave pathogens a more stable source of hosts, agriculture promoted rats as a vector for disease, living with animals so closely create opportunity for diseases to cross over to humans. The first instances of mass starvation also came after agriculture and the dependence on one or a few, vulnerable crops. I could go on but the point is made.

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (1)

Science and Staying Young

July 25, 2007 10:34 PM

I met with an estate lawyer today to change my will and make the necessary changes to my trust in view of my dear Bonnie's death and my marriage to the wonderful Wonder Woman.

That is incidental in a way, except that my attorney just about fell out of her chair when I answered her question of how old I was. She just could not believe that I was just 30 days short of 70 years old. This happens all the time, but it has an easy explanation, which I briefly made to the attorney (after all we were talking on my dime).

I said I use science to stay the way I am. Not like Ray Kurzeweil, who tries to do it by taking hundreds of pills a day and doing, what I think are, strange things. I don't know what science he is relying on, but it can only be partially true, if at all.

What is true and is undeniable is that we are animals evolved from a deep evolutionary past. We are trying to live in a world that is very different from the one our genes are programmed for and that almost sets us up for failure at each turn. Since I watch so little television, I am largely immune to the claims and quick fixes that so many fall for. I read selectively, and critically, and largely in the scientific literature.

The way I eat is wonderful and highly nutritious. My lean, and pardon me if I say it, muscular condition makes my metabolic health excellent. Poor metabolic fitness is the number one cause of modern diseases. Add inflammation, which poor metabolic practices cause, and you are past the barrier and into good health. I have absolutely nothing wrong with me from a health standpoint and am happy and content with my life. I do live in the moment, for that is your only moment of power and decision, but I always recall the past to learn from experience so that I can make good decisions that put me on planned future, but always stochastic, courses.

It is really so simple. I love who I am and respect everyone around me. I truly believe I have made no enemies in the way I lived my life and there is no way an enemy could hurt me anyway for I am not envious or excessively prideful. I can acknowledge error and learn from it. I do have an ego, which many readers have commented on, but is only a trust in myself and in my ability to learn and to grow and adapt.

Health is the first principle of a good life and living well and honestly is the way to excellent health. Not well by modern standards of publicity or fame or the opinions of others, but well in the sense of honoring oneself and others.

Applying good science to one's health does seem to start with diet and exercise. There is little good advice that one may find in these areas, as you may know by now. I think I have found a Way which I have tried to share here. My practices may not work for everyone. But, they work wonderfully for me. There is nothing fadish or out-of-the ordinary in what I do. Good science is the foundation. But, it is hard to cull what is good from all the abstracts and claims that the media and blogs put out there. This is where the Evolutionary Model helps to cut through the fog and show the truth. At least for me. Maybe not everyone else.

I wish everyone a 70th birthday as healthful and wonderful as mine will be. I will celebrate it with my new love, WW, in Mexico. Once there I will take up the long-lost book project. The blog and the book are labors of love and I do not expect or even hope for commercial success. I have to do it, that's all.

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Crab for breakfast

July 19, 2007 07:49 PM

OK, it really is that fake crab that is made from fish and coloring. But, it is a mild tasting fish with plenty of texture. So I had it cold with a sliced hard boiled egg and some fruit. A light, nourishing, and fresh tasting breakfast. As always, there is lots of color.

LINK · Evolutionary Fitness ~ · Meals · Comments (4)

Intermittent High Intensity Walking

July 18, 2007 11:55 AM

Chris sent the link to this abstract on the benefits of intermittent over steady walking. I have gotten the study and read it as well. This is another in a long line of articles that demonstrate that mixing higher intensity intervals into any recreational or training activity is a superior technology. You should note, but you only get this from the full version of the study, that the high intensity interval walkers spent only 85% of the time walking as the moderate walkers. Yet, they used an equivalent amount of energy. They lost slightly more weight as well. These were 66 year old men and women on average. So, the high intensity walkers got better results and used less time to do it. This efficiency is one of the most compelling reasons to do intermittent high-intensity training and a principle of Evolutionary Fitness.

Many would argue that high intensity walking or any other form of high intensity activity is not helpful or may even be harmful to cardiovascular health. After all, those charts in the gym tell you to keep your heart in a training zone that is a function of your age. Nonsense. There never was any evidence of effectiveness of steady zone training and this study shows that cardiovascular fitness was improved more for the interval group than the others.

There was a harmful aspect to this training zone idea as well --- the heart never got a rest. The heart is not a clock or a machine; it is a chaotic device that depends on a fractal dynamics to function and for its health. Metronomic training in a narrow frequency band is harmful to the heart, as we now know from the growing evidence of cario events among joggers, marathoners, bicyclists and other steady kinds of activity that compress the variation in the beat intervals of the heart.

The abstract from the Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

OBJECTIVE: To examine whether high-intensity interval walking training increased thigh muscle strength and peak aerobic capacity and reduced blood pressure more than moderate intensity continuous walking training.
PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: From May 18, 2004, to October
15, 2004 (5-month study period), 60 men and 186 women with a
mean ± SD age of 63±6 years were randomly divided into 3
groups: no walking training, moderate-intensity continuous
walking training, and high-intensity interval walking training.
Participants in the moderate-intensity continuous walking training
group were instructed to walk at approximately 50% of their peak
aerobic capacity for walking, using a pedometer to verify that they
took 8000 steps or more per day for 4 or more days per week.
Those in the high-intensity interval walking training group, who
were monitored by accelerometry, were instructed to repeat 5 or
more sets of 3-minute low-intensity walking at 40% of peak
aerobic capacity for walking followed by a 3-minute high-intensity
walking above 70% of peak aerobic capacity for walking per day
for 4 or more days per week. Isometric knee extension and flexion
forces, peak aerobic capacity for cycling, and peak aerobic
capacity for walking were all measured both before and after
training.
RESULTS: The targets were met by 9 of 25 men and 37 of 59
women in the no walking training group, by 8 of 16 men and 43 of
59 women in the moderate-intensity continuous walking training
group, and by 11 of 19 men and 31 of 68 women in the highintensity
interval walking training group. In the high-intensity
interval walking training group, isometric knee extension
increased by 13%, isometric knee flexion by 17%, peak aerobic
capacity for cycling by 8%, and peak aerobic capacity for walking
by 9% (all, P<.001), all of which were significantly greater than
the increases observed in the moderate-intensity continuous
walking training group (all, P<.01). Moreover, the reduction in
resting systolic blood pressure was higher for the high-intensity
interval walking training group (P=.01).
CONCLUSION: High-intensity interval walking may protect against
age-associated increases in blood pressure and decreases in thigh
muscle strength and peak aerobic capacity.
Mayo Clin Proc. 2007;82(7):803-811

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A Decade of Inertia

July 17, 2007 10:13 AM

I have deleted the names in this email because I have not sought permission to use them and see no point in doing so. But, the message is inspiring. I still recall the interview with Mr. KABC and the wild phone calls from the vegans when I discussed my ideas (I think some of them were B complex-depleted, something that takes several years of veganism to develop).

There is a consistent theme in the emails I get; it all begins with cooking and eating. To gain control over your metabolic health you have to cook for yourself. I think that is why the pictures of meals WW and I prepare have become so popular. Add some intensity and fun in your activities and you are well on your way to Evolutionary Fitness.

Ten years ago, when I was but 15 years old, I heard you when you were "Hangin' with Mr. KABC" in Los Angeles . Your views on diet and fitness were so powerful, sensible, and clear, that I was compelled from that moment to start living a new life. I was especially intrigued by the Evolutionary Fitness outlook, because my father was (and is) overweight and with health problems, and I saw these methods as a means of turning his life around. I even remember emailing you in frustration, after my father's doctor forbade him from eating and exercising in the ways I was suggesting. (His doctor told him to eat no meat and do lots of walking.)

Anyway, try as I might, I found myself unable to stick to an Evolutionary diet, largely because I was living at home, and the food I ate was not under my immediate control. Even so, those were the healthiest months of that period of my life. There is no excuse for the bodily abuse that followed in the next 10 years, but they are over and there's nothing I can do about them. I can just learn the lesson that inertia can be so strong that it can last for a decade.

About a year ago, I discovered your blog, and was reinspired to take control of my life. I shared your work with a close colleague of mine in India, and he was similarly thrilled. This time, I know it will stick. I've only been living this way purely for about a month, but the impact on my life has been dramatic. I cook delicious, hearty meals, full of a wide variety of vegetables, lean meats, poultry, and fish, usually in 10-15 minutes.

Exercise and play have become a consistent part of my life. I no longer have cravings for candies, breads, etc --in fact, I was astonished at how quickly those cravings vanished-- , and I don't miss their presence in my life. I have boundless energy, and a newfound love and respect for my body and mind. (Not that this was something I ever lacked!) My weight and blood pressure have gone down, too, but this is not something I really monitor: I just happened to be at the drug store today and they had a little diagnostic test there. Best of all, I haven't gotten sick in about 6 months, even though for the past few years, I would get sick every 1-2 months!

I especially like how I'm gaining more conscious control over my body. This is something that has been very important to me for awhile now, and is part of the math/pedagogy work I am a part of. (You might glean some of that at our website, www.mathmeth.com .)

My ways of living are starting to spread to friends and family, mainly because I cook for them. Something that has been harder to share is exercise techniques, especially because I understand the principles so poorly myself. I don't have a gym membership yet, but for now I've been doing some "impromptu" exercises, namely superset crunches, and alactic (1/5s) pushups and one-legged squats. I'm not sure my form on the squats is right; I've tried several adjustments but it never feels quite right.

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Origins of Bipedalism

There have been a number of explanations offered for the advantages of upright, bipedal mobility to humans: better temperature regulation, greater height for viewing over the savanna, freeing of the hands, and even goofy ones like frontal exposure for sexual mate selection. Knowing the energy demands of ancient life, see my Why We Get Fat paper under the research links, has made me favor energy efficiency and the added foraging range that permits for ground-dwelling humans.

That position seems to receive more support from this Research on Bipedalism. We are a lot more efficient when we walk than are four-legged animals or chimps. The advantages go away when we begin to run. Extended running is quite demanding energetically and was not an efficient way to cover the extended range that human energy demands required. Some of the most well-known hunter gatherer runners, the Tahahumara (they really are now agriculturalists or pastoralists) and the Ache, run in spurts, not like they are in a 10K.

Are you still jogging or running marathons? I think this study, along with other studies of the bioenergetics of running and walking, increasingly say that jogging or marathoning are not natural activities for humans.

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A Study of the Evolutionary Diet -- It Works

July 14, 2007 04:10 PM

This is a rather long post because it is so important. If you are interested in your health and want evidence regarding the Evolutionary Diet, you should read it.

Dr. Krikorian sent me an abstract of what seems to be the first experimental, controlled study of the Evolutionary or Paleolithic Diet that systematically compares it with the Mediterranean Diet. It has not been published yet, but I managed to get the pre-publication version. The only published studies of the Evolutionary or Old Stone Age diet are not experimental; they come from ethnographic studies of Eskimos (Lundborg lived on an all meat diet patterned after the Eskimos he had studied for a year), and studies of various humans living in near Paleolithic environments or with diet and activity levels that correspond to ancestral patterns have documented the near absence of modern diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, ischemic heart disease, or other markers of metabolic syndrome. Because it is a controlled experiment of the Evolutionary or Paleolithic diet, I urge those of you who are struggling with diets to take note. And, not also that the subjects are already sick and have quite poor metabolic fitness as the underlying common factor (and likely cause) and still responded very positively to the diets.

The purpose of the study is to examine the Paleolithic Diet relative to the diet usually recommended to subjects with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) or ischemic heart disease (IHD). According to the authors,

Standard dietary advice for patients with IHD and/ or IGT generally includes whole-grain cereals, low-fat dairy products, vegetables, fruits, legumes, oily fish and refined fats that are rich in monounsaturated fatty acids and alphalinolenic acid while low in trans-unsaturated fatty acids [15– 17].

However, the optimal dietary treatment of IGT and insulin resistance is a matter of debate, including the preferred amounts and types of fat, carbohydrate and protein [16, 18–21], and amounts of fruits [22] and sodium [23, 24]. Since nutritional science is hampered by confounders, an evolutionary approach has been suggested. It is postulated that foods that were regularly eaten during primate and human evolution, in particular during the Palaeolithic (the ‘Old Stone Age,’ 2.5–0.01 million years BP), may be optimal to prevent insulin resistance and glucose intolerance [25, 26].

A Palaeolithic diet includes lean meat, fish, shellfish, fruits, vegetables, roots, eggs and nuts, but not grains, dairy products, salt or refined fats and sugar, which became staple foods long after the appearance of fully modern humans.

We have all seen the standard diet recommended by most doctors and diet books and it is the one most people have a hard time sticking to. Yet, they cling to it, ostensibly because everybody recommends it, but really because they can still eat the bread, cereal, yogurt, ice cream, potato chips, even cookies on the grounds that they are eating grains. They really are sabotaging their metabolism and deteriorating their glucose tolerance (a test of insulin sensitivity and response). A typical response from someone when I tell them it is not so great to eat grains is that they eat whole grains. They really don't. You cannot get whole grain readily and it is almost always laden with milled flour for binding, flavor, and texture. And, whole grain wheat is so bitter that breads made from them are apt to be loaded with sugar.

The key distinctions of the Evolutionary Fitness diet from the consensus recommendations for a healthy diet is the absence of grains and cereals (including rice), dairy products, salt, sugar (and sugar substitutes or artificial sweeteners), and processed fats or oils. I go further and include no beans.

The subjects in the study were male IHD patients with a large waist (>94 cm) and high blood glucose or diabetes. Not a very healthy group to be sure. I note from the tables that they all had average fasting blood insulin levels of 102 (Paleolithic group) and 123 (Med group). [My fasting serum insulin is from 2 to 3. Now you see why I suggest you measure your insulin.]The variance was much higher in the Med group. The Paleo group were quite uniform in insulin level as shown by their low variance. The Med group had higher triglycerides. The subjects were randomized to the diets.

How did it go?

Read More »

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Does Muscle Attract Women?

July 10, 2007 05:17 PM

This research claims to show that women find a muscular male silhouette more attractive than a body builder or a non-muscular silhouette.

It is plausible. Many women express a distaste for a body builder type of build, though others are attracted to it. So are some attracted to a slim, almost to the point of feminine (think Calvin Klein models), builds. But, in both cases, the result may be due to a confounding celebrity with build. That is to say, they may like Arnold's muscular build because he is Arnold or Mick Jagger's slim profile because he is Mick. Then again, both are wealthy and women know it.

Using profiles is a nice procedure because there is no association between build and celebrity or wealth. Similar results have been found by Singh on female silhouettes. Men, he shows, prefer hour glass shapes. If women prefer a V-shaped man, then they are on solid grounds. Such men are healthy in general for abdominal obesity is a sure sign of poor metabolic health. And, a straight build, with little muscle to give some shape to the torso, is likely to be a sign of poor metabolic health as well. This is the shape of a fat, skinny person with little muscle, but deep visceral fat.

The problem with profiles is that they do not show the texture of the musculature and the leaness that goes with it if one has excellent metabolic health. Two men with the same silhouette may differ substantially in muscle density and leanness. This would only be visible if one could see the "cuts" and definition in the muscle.

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Deep Cores, Climate Variation, and Weight Loss

I have made the point several times that natural climate variation is so large that the climate models, forecasts, and conclusions about climate change have little foundation. Variation is too large to draw any conclusions and they are left completely out of forecasts. You never hear about the topic of variation from the press on climate, stock market movement, home runs, or any topic. Of course, any complex system, of which all these are examples, have a lot of variation. So, have a look at this article on Deep Cores and contemplate and relish the variation that is in all natural things.

As in climate variation and in the variation in our lives, the same point is true. We are here at this point and there are many paths before us. And, we have no control over the climate or any other natural process. We have some influence on the likelihood of moving along an ensemble of paths, but no control. The choices we make influence the probabilities of the paths on which our evolving lives will move. But, that is all.

To close on the problem of weight control, I find that many people who embark on a weight loss program expect to have far more control of the process than is possible. If you weigh yourself every day or even every week and want some kind of uniform or dramatic change, you are setting yourself up for failure. You have to just live the new way and let it happen. It will happen. But, excessively monitoring your progress or perceived lack of progress is a prescription for failure. It is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: if you obsessively measure your weight, you will perturb the natural process. You will be fooled by the random variation and draw pessimistic conclusions that are not valid. Focus instead on what you do or eat and let it happen. It took many years to wreck your metabolism. Evolutionary Fitness will transform your metabolic health. If you want to measure your progress then focus on how you feel and your insulin level. If you feel better and your insulin declines, you are moving along a good path.

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Zen Again

July 7, 2007 04:40 PM

I happened to see Al Gore being interviewed (very briefly) and he mentioned Zen. So, I thought it was time to put my thoughts on Zen up one more time. All You Need to Know About Zen.

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Scallops for Lunch

July 2, 2007 02:13 PM

This is what became of the scallops left over from dinner two nights ago. I chopped them and put them over kale, romaine, red cabbage, calmata olives and green onions. A bit of balsamic vinegar and olive oil for dressing made it delicious.

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Scallops for Dinner

I did these scallops on the barbeque and then WW (Wonder Woman for new readers) touched them up in the pan with olive oil, flakes of dried hot chiles, and wine vinegar. You also see some asparagus, steamed cauliflower, and grilled squash. The salad was large, with avocado, red cabbage, tomatoes, olives, and celery over romaine lettuce and some fresh anaheim chiles.

That is a glass of Pinot Grigio.

The left over scallops in the pan were eaten for lunch today (next post).

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But, you could eat a bagel or donut?

The other evening while out with neighbors for dinner I mentioned that I had pork chops for breakfast the day before. Her response: I couldn't eat a pork chop for breakfast. So, have a look at my breakfast. Would you rather eat breakfast cereal, a donut or a bagel like she does?

She does struggle with her weight and her rejection out of hand of nutritious food in favor of the convenience and her long experience with lousy carbohydrate-laden food is one reason for her struggles. You don't give up anything when you eat the EF Way. You gain new foods and variety along with nutrition. And the weight just falls off.

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A "Healthy" Doctor Runner with Heart Disease

Following on the Salazar post on marathoners is another less dramatic story, but with the same plot: Excessive Running. The doctor who looked the picture of health and was a runner was expected to ace his treadmill stress test. Yet, he flunked and was found to have calcified arteries Hidden Heart Disease.

Note that by using vitamins C and E, natural antioxidants, the doctors treating the patient were able to partially reverse the disease. Don't run excessively (or only when you sprint briefly in my opinion) and do take antioxidants, especially if you do run excessively.

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An Elite Marathoner's Heart Problem

July 1, 2007 10:14 AM

Mark Sisson sent in this report about a 3 time NYC marathon winner Salazar.

We wish him well. I hope the marathoners are listening. It is injurious to your health and not at all helpful to your heart. How is it that such a dangerous activity has been promoted as healthful? Does it send up alarms about the soundness of health advice and research? I think so. But, the best research has already documented the many problems of over-training among runners (see my Top Ten Reasons Not To Run Marathons). If you love to run, then do so playfully, not obsessively. That medal on your chest may signal something deeper inside that is not right with your heart or your psyche.

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Asthma

June 30, 2007 05:30 PM

I was reading a review on the status of asthma through out the world and was struck by the strong correlation between obesity and the incidence and severity of asthma.

The bulk of the rise in asthma around the world seems to be diagnosis; that is, subjects see doctors more and are diagnosed. The criteria have also changed a bit. So, overall, more cases are diagnosed (this is true of almost any diseased these days and is a good sign that more people are gaining access to medical care).

The "clean environment" hypothesis, which says you need some exposure to pathogens to develop immunity, is only weakly confirmed. Generally, the diagnosis is hyperactivity of the constriction of the airways.

Asthma is a general condition of inflammation of the airways and lungs. Triggering events may be many, but the general condition of inflammation is the underlying and unifying trigger of asthma events.

I do think that inflammation is the broadest and most prevalent cause or symptom of disease in our time. From heart disease, atherosclerosis, Alzheimer's, lupus, MS, and so on the common issue is inflammed tissue. I would speculate that aging falls in that grouping too.

The most powerful sources of inflammation are obesity, excess production of free radicals, and lack of antioxidants in the diet. Obesity triggers many free radical pathways and the resistance to insulin that accompanies it accelerates the damage through the poor metabolism of fats and excess glucose in the blood (it oxydizes every tissue it reaches). Excess production of free radicals comes from drinking soft drinks and alcohol and consuming excess fats. It also comes from excessive aerobic exercise (many distance runners have asthma). The lack of anitioxidants comes from a poor diet, lacking in protein (a consitituent of antioxidant enzymes), too high in simple sugars and starches (they deplete antioxidants and contain few), and a lack of co-factors that stimulate enzyme action.

In the review I read, there were few conclusions to savor or try to use. It failed to look at the generalized inflammation hypothesis which I suspect is the most promising. When diet, activity, environment and obesity promote inflammation, then it is just a matter of which tissues are most susceptable and how weak the person's defences are to the latest stress. Chronic free radical stress from all the sources I listed push the most vulnerable tissues into a chronic state of inflammation. Specific therapies aimed at those tissues are not sufficient. A more general approach to attacking inflammatory producing processes at all sources seems more promising to me.

I do live this way. I always have in mind the inflammatory load associated with anything I do, eat, or drink. It is working, at least for now. I am looking forward to my 70th birthday with relish. I will celebrate with my new wife (WW) and new home in Mexico.

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Breakfast and Dinner

June 27, 2007 11:26 AM

This was a nice breakfast that WW fixed. Some thin ham strips burned lightly on the grill. Scrambled eggs with provolone on top and Anaheim chiles mixed in. A bit of the famous WW tomato salad with vinegar and hot chile flakes. And fruit. (I see a paper napkin; I prefer cloth).

For dinner WW made mussels with Italian red sauce. The covered bowl is full of mussels too. We ate a ton of them. That was all we had, except for my Dos Equis beer.

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Harder Than HIT

June 25, 2007 02:42 PM

I glanced at one of the muscle magazines in the store this afternoon because one had a headline about a "new" kind of training that is "beyond HIT". You know what HIT is, it is the Arthur Jones, Mike Mentzer, Dorian Yates high intensity training for body builders. I have lots of posts on these topics in the archives, just use the Search function to find them.

Evolutionary Fitness uses this approach also, on the grounds that intermittent and intense activity was the Way of our ancestral life. And, research shows that the stress must be brief but acutely intense to trigger gene expression to build muscle and adaptive capacity. Training long and often won't accomplish this and risks fatigue and repetitive injury stress.

So what is this harder-than-HIT training? It is the hierarchical exercise that I have used for years, but not as intense. So, as intense as this "new" training is, it is not as intense as Evolutionary Fitness. The initials for this "new" training is DC training (DC stands for DoggCrapp in the doggerol of body building so you must forgive me for using this phrase).

In DC training you do a set to failure, take 15 deep breaths and do it again, then take 15 more breaths and do one more set. It is, in essence, three sets done to failure in rapid succession. The main difference between HIT and DC is that you train more often with DC so that you hit a body part more than once a week. The other difference, and it makes sense to me, is that in DC you train even more briefly than in a HIT program, where you might do more than three sets. DC permits a body part to be worked more than once a week because you do less in a session for a muscle group.

In other words, DC is more intermittent than HIT. From an evolutionary perspective and in view of the research literature, this makes sense. A hunter gatherer will not have the luxury of training a body part only once per week and DC comes closer to HIT in achieving this. In addition, the briefer training per work out more closely resembles the evolutionary pattern. The research clearly shows that intermittent intense training done within a time period is more effective than working continuously over the same interval at a lower intensity. It is also clear that intermittent intense work outs more effectively exploit the body's metabolic energy pathways: oxidative, oxidative-glycolitic, and glycolitic/phosphate which correspond closely to the three muscle fibers: ST, FTa and FTb. So, DC is sound in theory and evolutionarily. But, it isn't Evolutionary Fitness which takes the intensity higher and is fractal, so that it mimics the rhythm of the natural order.

The key here is the Power Law, the frequency distribution of activity of free-ranging predators. See the graph above which exhibits a high frequency of low level activity such as sleep, rest, easy walking, and playful activities and a low frequency of highly intense, but brief intervals of activity. Note, also that there is no typical frequency, activities are spread all over the scale. There is no average and the variance does not even exist. All the data that have been gathered through monitoring the movements of wild animals, birds, and fish show that the frequency distribution of activities are power-law distributed. So too are the activities of athletes in competitive games such as soccer, football, basketball, or tennis. These are all "burst, rest" or "fight or flight" types of activities.

So, how does EF go beyond DC and HIT?

Read More »

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Ferritin and Insulin Resistance

June 22, 2007 10:55 AM

A reader, John, sent in a letter from a research team to the Annuals of Medicine that contains the following brief extract:

Background: Increasing evidence points to an association between increased body iron storage and type 2 diabetes mellitus, even outside the context of hemochromatosis (1, 2). A small intervention study provided preliminary evidence that bloodletting, which resulted in 50% reduction of serum ferritin concentrations, improved glycemia and insulin sensitivity in patients with type 2 diabetes (3). However, interpretation of mechanistic studies in patients with overt type 2 diabetes mellitus are complicated because glycemic control itself influences serum ferritin concentrations (glycosylated ferritin has a longer serum half-life) and primary effects on insulin sensitivity or ß-cell function can no longer be studied.

There is a bit of circularity in the theory, but it is surely true. Poorly controlled insulin leads to glcycosylation of ferritin and extends its half life. This leads to an elevation of ferritin in the blood, which alters the sensitivity of the beta cells so they respond poorly to elevated blood glucose. It is the elevated blood glucose that causes the glycosylation (oxidation of proteins in the ferritin) which extends their half-life and, thus, elevates total ferritin (oxydized and non-oxydized) in the blood.

Thus, ill-controlled blood sugar and reduced insulin sensitivity exert a positive and non-linear response. Low sensitivity glycosylates ferritin, leading to beta cell toxicity and poorer insulin control. Blood ferritin rises and insulin sensitivity falls still lower. Each cycle worsens glucose control. The rise is ferritin is really secondary, so the research seems to indicate, to the loss of glucose control. You can wash out some of the excess ferritin by bleeding (something our ancestors probably did more than we, suggesting elevated ferritin is a maladapted ancient genome in a modern world), but the non-linearity suggests that promoting insulin sensitivity and diminishing glycosylation is far more powerful.

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Cardio Life

June 21, 2007 09:50 AM

You may know of Mark Sisson by now. I have posted some of his comments, coming as they do from a recovering cardio suffer. He has a nice post summarizing his experience and the evolutionary reasoning that under pin the Evolutionary Fitness Way. Have a look around his web site too. Go to Mark's Daily Apple.

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WW's Fast, Easy Meal

June 18, 2007 02:58 PM

WW did this delicious, clean dinner the other night. As you can see, it is asperagus, King Crab legs, part of a sweet potato done in a pan with olive oil, and her Italian tomato salad. The salad is sliced tomatoes with a bit of wine vinegar with sliced red onion, fresh leeks and celery. I think she had small flakes of dried hot chiles in it too.

We find crab to be satisfying, but light. I would have a yam in place of the sweet potato, and I think she would too. It took no time to prepare.

I met one of WW's former work colleagues in the gym today and she has lost 50 pounds over this past year. She began eating the EF Way (lite) when she saw WW dropping dress sizes. She works out nearly every day, mixing Pump classes with cycling and treadmills and some more intense weight lifting. I work out far less often, but her cycling and other things are the sorts of things I do in my playing. It is easier for her to do it in the gym and it works for her. It might for many of you who find it more difficult to be active when not in the gym.

I start tennis lessons this week, picking up a sport I dropped a long time ago. I am letting the softball go for a while. I may play a little golf too. I go to Mexico soon and the cooler golf courses there are a lot more appealing than the hot desert courses here in Utah at this time of the year.

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Responses to Alcohol Questions

June 16, 2007 03:39 PM

I am back, in case you did not notice, from 5 days of MC riding through Wyoming and Colorado. I covered just more than 2200 miles in 5 days, which was pretty tough. I really dislike that freeway pounding and am inclined to do almost no touring in the future. Too much sitting and immobility, even though I move around when I am on the mountains.

I do think the research on alcohol and HDL fails to distinguish between acute and chronic ingestion in stating that alcohol rasises HDL. It does, to some extent, on an acute basis by shutting down production of LDL in the liver (among other effects). That may be at some cost to the liver because it is dealing with the toxicity of alcohol. But, chronic use is never good in my estimation, and the research doesn't really deal adequately with chronic alcohol use and LDL/HDL to justify daily dosing. This stuff is mostly based on diaries, which are pretty close to useless, particulary where alcohol use is concerned.

A beer is better than a coke, but neither should be done routinely.

What I do with alcohol and cigars is to use them episodically. For example, on my trip I used no alcohol and smoked no cigars. I don't get addicted to anything because I don't routinize intakes of any substance. I even skip my antioxidants now and then.

I just don't see that the human body could ever have been designed for routine or chronic uses or intakes. Well, maybe with the exception of sleep and walking and other metabolic processes. Surely eating was never a routine, chronic, and completely predictable behavior, nor was activity.

The problem is that there are saturation thresholds in all sorts of processes. When the metabolic pathways, detoxification enzymes, and antioxidant stores are depleted through chronic challenges, they break down and can no longer keep us healthy. If you diversity your toxins by varying what you eat and intermittently stress your metabolism and genetic responses through activity and hunger, you are living in the evolutionarily adapted way. So, variety truly is the spice of life.

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Question about alcohol

June 15, 2007 09:59 AM

Here is an interesting question from a reader:

I am a big fan of your blog. I have also read your PDF articles in relation to Evolutionary Fitness, which i must tell you, is extremely fascinating. I am fervently looking forward to the book BIGTIME! I have a quick question for you about alcohol if that is okay. Here goes:

I eat the evolutionary fitness way and like you, enjoy a couple of alcoholic beverages on a daily basis. As such, you can imagine how happy i was to discover on your site that alcohol can increase T-levels, especially since you often hear the opposite, that is, alcohol, namely beer, can increase estrogen-related activity in one's body. I drink anywhere from one-to-three bottles of beer a night or either some wine. I don't however drink these beverages with food, but rather, on an empty stomach, as this helps really relax me for sleep. I was wondering whether or not you think drinking in this fashion is beneficial or detrimental in terms of increasing Testosteron levels? Perhaps drinking on empty stomach prior to bed may slow the release of growth hormone.

My brief response:

That is too habitual to be good for you.

I don't see how it can relax you for sleep when it puts your digestion into action and swells your stomach.

Remember, it is the acute and non-regular mild stress that releases the T, not the routine and expected, which becomes a drug-like inducement.

Check your insulin level next time you see your doctor, not your glucose tolerance, but your fasting insulin level. If it is over 8, you are doing something not helpful. Mine is between 2 and 3.4 (the latter in a non-fasting state).

And, by the way, the beer before bed will reduce your GH response to deep sleep and probably impair your deep REM sleep, which is when GH is released.

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Its Only Water

June 9, 2007 11:25 AM

Among the comments and congratulations was a message from Ty who has been on Evolutionary Fitness for two months and has lost 9 pounds. At 43 he feels the best he has in years. Why not? It is easy with the right technology.

Some may say that the loss is only water, as though this is a bad thing. It is true that fairly rapid weight loss is accompanied by water loss. But the critics seem to think that the weight will come right back when you start drinking water again. It has almost become a mantra to say that rapid weight loss is mostly water loss, seemingly as a criticism of dieting or weight loss. I think this criticism is over-stated and likely in error.

Individuals losing weight do not typically drink small amounts of water. They usually drink more because the water loss gives them a slight feeling of dehydration. If they hit a new steady state weight, their water intake and use go back into equilibrium and they do not gain or lose water or weight from that point on.

The water loss that accompanies some, but not all weight loss, has not been extensively studied, but is surely a good thing. Unless there is a loss of tissue (fat or muscle), the water loss must come from extra-cellular sources. This means that blood volume drops and tissues in nooks and crannies all over the body lose some water, including the skin.

A drop in blood volume would be beneficial to most overweight people because it lowers blood pressure.

The question is, what is binding the excess water that releases it when excessive caloric intake ceases or when the body goes into negative energy balance. I don't think many know or have researched this question. Salt is a factor. Fatty acids in the blood stream are somewhat resistant to water, though they do incorporate water in their interior. So, it is unlikely that the reduction of blood fats contributes to water loss. Muscle is another source and this, indeed, does carry water. But, a loss of weight on Evolutionary Fitness is not accompanied by a loss of muscle. Indeed, Ty likely has gained muscle even as he lost those 9 pounds.

So, some substance that is binding water to cells is the likely source of the water loss. I suspect it is the carbohydrate. A gram of CHO binds about 9 grams of water. Flush 100 grams of CHO and you take as much as 900 grams of water with it. Where is all the water? In the blood stream bound to sugar coated cells, on proteins in the muscle, skeleton, and organs bound by the sugars stuck there. All over skin cells that are on the verge of glycosylation. In short, stuck on nearly all cells by gummy sugars lodged there from excessive intake.

Evolutionary Fitness eating also drops salt intake since you eat no prepared or manufactured foods.

Then there is the inflammation that is produced in over weight individuals. This makes all tissues swell (water retention) and the blood vessels become more permeable and leak contents into interstiticial tissues. Inflammation is like a balloon of water that becomes leaky all over. That is your body on inflammation. I suspect that the reduction of inflammation is a major source of loss of water. When you lessen inflammation by reducing excess caloric intake and dramatically cut simple starches and sugars on Evolutionary Fitness, all that puffiness that is a sign of water retention through inflammatory processes disappears. Your body volume drops when you reduce inflammation, which is how you can lose many belt or dress sizes in so little time. The abundant antioxidants of the Evolutionary Fitness way of eating further reduce size by inhibiting inflammation.

I think a loss water is a good sign so long as you are retaining muscle as you lose weight. Or, preferable, as you lose fat and reduce inflammation. It is body composition, not weight that ultimately is the goal. The lean look will only come when you have successfully reduced your body's inflammatory burden.

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Meals 3

June 5, 2007 11:03 AM

A quick dinner last night. Shrimp cocktail and half a NY steak for me, same for Wonder Woman. Red pepper done on the grill. WW's "french fries" aka grilled squash cut thin. Asparagus spears and some tomatoes with olive oil, red onion, and oregano. Light on meat and a bit heavy on vegetables as I had a softball tournament to play beginning at 8:30.

Breakfast this morning. We used the left-over peppers, tomatoes, and asparagus to make an omelette.

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Dr. Krikorian On Intermittent CR and Exercise

Dr. Krikorian has a response to Yuneek's question and my brief reply. It is better to hear it from him than from me. The key point is the consistency of using intermittent calorie restriction (CR) and intermittent exercise. Then there is the additional point that intermittent, anaerobic exercise of the EF type also produces results similar to CR. Both produce negative energy balance, intermittently, and are mild stressors. Here is Robert's reply:

Hello Art:

Sorry I missed the comment to my post on your blog. But, you covered it nicely in your post of June 3. I do what I can in my workouts, both with respect to strength training and anaerobic work (interval sprints), to emulate the Evolutionary Fitness paradigm. I don't get to do much recreational exercise except to ride a bike to work most days and occasionally play one-on-one basketball with my son. The point I was trying to make in the blog post was the obvious one that trading some visceral fat for muscle would be very beneficial.

Thinking about Evolutionary Fitness, I'm reminded of when I first contacted you in 1998 (about 18 months after beginning CR). I was very excited when I discovered what you had published on the web about EF and the application of power law. I wrote to you at that time about my wish to merge EF with CR . I had the intuition then that the two could be combined, despite the apparent incompatibility. Now, I understand that there really is no incompatibility. Intermittent hunger and intermittent exercise produce moderate stressors, and there is no reason they can't be combined in one's lifestyle. As you have noted, in the environment of evolutionary adaptation, our ancestors were exposed to calorie deficit an estimated one-third of the time.

By the way, nice reference to the study on resistance training in the elderly. We are thinking of adding a resistance training arm to one of our existing studies of memory in older adults. I hope we can get it going.

-Robert.

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The Doctor's Exercise

June 3, 2007 02:45 PM

Yuneek had asked what sort of exercise Dr. Krikorian does in view of the concerns he expressed in his fine post on this site.

I doubt that he has seen the question as he has not emailed a response to me. But, the answer is easy. He told me personally that he does Evolutionary Fitness and has done so for some time.

When he was President of the Calorie Restriction Society he invited me to speak at their convention and there we talked at length about our shared views on diet and exercise. We also talked extensively on our hike up to Angel's Landing in Zion when he came to Utah. He is an advocate of the intermittent high intensity exercise that I have advised for many years and follow myself.

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Gene Expression and Resistance Training in Older Persons

June 2, 2007 02:20 PM

This is not the first study to document the proven results of resistance training among older individuals, nor is it the first to document altered gene expression as a result of exercise. Yet, it is another strong data point on the road to finally getting people off the tread mills and into the weight room. See Gene Expression in Muscle.

Thanks to two readers for sending this link.

I would like to point out that many people seem to think that only aerobic exercise improves mitochondrial function. They are wrong, as this study shows. The error is in reasoning theoretically that the mitochondria are involved in aerobic metabolism and, therefore, one must do aerobic work to stimulate the mitochondria. This is not true. I think this shows the perils of theoretical reasoning that does not have an empirical underpinning. Besides, the mitochondria are stimulated, with less oxidative stress, by post exercise excess metabolism as a result of anearobic resistance training.

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Aging and Rewards

One of the things I noticed during my trip to Reno for a softball tournament was the high proportion of older people gambling in the casinos. I don't gamble myself, but in Nevada many of the hotels and restaurants are located in casinos. So, you are exposed to gambling whether you seek it or not. Why are there so many older people there gambling?

Well, they have the time since they are likely to be retired. But, they have finite earnings capabilities too and are less able to recover from losses. Since, in the long run, all gamblers lose to the house, there is a bit of a puzzle as to why older people gamble with a higher incidence than younger people.

So, I checked some of the science literature and found some interesting research that posits that the perception of "time left" in life shifts focus toward reward relative to loss. According to Laura Carstensen's abstract

The subjective sense of future time plays an essential role in human motivation. Gradually, time left becomes a better predictor than chronological age for a range of cognitive, emotional, and motivational variables. Socioemotional selectivity theory maintains that constraints on time horizons shift motivational priorities in such a way that the regulation of emotional states becomes more important than other types of goals. This motivational shift occurs with age but also appears in other contexts (for example, geographical relocations, illnesses, and war) that limit subjective future time.

Here are some parts of her study and another one from Neuroscience that confirms differences in brain activation in loss and gain situations between young and old.

I saw no less distress among our older players at making an error in the game or failing to get a hit in a critical situation than I see in the young. That may be due to the fact that both face a similar time constraint, the last inning, in a softball game. The reward to the older softball players seems focused more on the social aspects of the game and the travel with wives and friends. Few of the players are in even reasonable condition and really ought not to be playing softball. In fact, I think the older softball players are in worse condition than a typical person of their age. And, it definitely does not favorably alter their body composition: they are almost universally fat. Perhaps they do have this diminished sense of loss relative to gain. Good for them.

That may be an explanation for why these players do not make mechanical changes in the way they hit, throw, or field. Some of these guys have been playing and practicing for years, but have very flawed mechanics in their playing. A little skill development would go a long way in improving their play, but they don't do it or even think about it.

Science 30 June 2006:
Vol. 312. no. 5782, pp. 1913 - 1915
DOI: 10.1126/science.1127488
Prev | Table of Contents | Next
Perspective
The Influence of a Sense of Time on Human Development
Laura L. Carstensen

A second index of time becomes salient as people grow older, namely the subjective sense of remaining time until death. Although correlated with chronological age, this subjective sense of time gradually becomes more important than time since birth. Because goal-directed behavior relies inherently on perceived future time, the perception of time is inextricably linked to goal selection and goal pursuit. Socioemotional selectivity theory (SST), a life-span theory of motivation, is grounded fundamentally in the human ability to monitor time, to adjust time horizons with increasing age, and to appreciate that time ultimately runs out (7). SST maintains that time horizons play a key role in motivation. Goals, preferences, and even cognitive processes, such as attention and memory, change systematically as time horizons shrink. Because chronological age is correlated with time left in life, systematic associations between age and time horizons appear, but findings from experimental studies show that when time perspective is manipulated or controlled statistically, many age differences disappear. In short, across many dimensions, older and younger people behave remarkably similarly when time horizons are equated.

Events like the attacks on September 11th and the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in Hong Kong completely eliminated age differences on some measures of motivation (8). Young men who suffered from HIV before effective treatments were available seemed to view their social world in the same way that very old people do (9). In all of these cases, the fragility of life was acutely primed. The subjective sense of time left was affected and, in turn, equated age differences in preferences and desires.

SST maintains that two broad categories of goals shift in importance as a function of perceived time—those concerning the acquisition of knowledge and those concerning the regulation of emotion states. When time is perceived as open-ended, goals that become most highly prioritized are most likely to be those that are preparatory, focused on gathering information, on experiencing novelty, and on expanding breadth of knowledge. When time is perceived as constrained, the most salient goals will be those that can be realized in the short-term, sometimes in their very pursuit. Under such conditions, goals tend to emphasize feeling states, particularly regulating emotional states to optimize psychological well-being. SST predicts that people of different ages prioritize different types of goals. As people age and increasingly perceive time as finite, they attach less importance to goals that expand their horizons and greater importance to goals from which they derive emotional meaning. Obviously, younger people sometimes pursue goals related to meaning and older people pursue goals related to knowledge acquisition; the relative importance placed on them, however, changes. Indeed, differences between young and old are most striking when goals compete, such as situations in which expanding horizons also entail unpleasant emotional experiences. According to SST, in such cases younger people are far more likely than older people to pursue their goal despite the negative emotional burden. This theoretical shift has helped to make sense of a number of findings in the literature previously referred to as the "paradox of aging" (10). Older people were observed to have smaller social networks, to be drawn less than younger people to novelty, and to reduce their spheres of interest; at the same time, however, they were as happy as (if not happier than) younger people. This makes sense if motivational changes with age lead people to place priority on deepening existing relationships and developing expertise in already satisfying areas of life.

However, according to SST, such differences are not due to "age" but to differences in the perception of future time. There are clear age differences in preferences, and these differences can be eliminated by selectively expanding or constraining time horizons (11, 12). For example, asked to choose among three social partners who represent different types of goals (13), the majority of older people reliably choose emotionally close social partners. Yet when asked to make the choice after imagining that they just received a telephone call from their physician who told them about a new medical advance that virtually ensures they will live far longer than expected, older peoples' choices resembled those of younger people (12). Similarly, when younger people are asked to imagine that they will soon move to a new geographical location, they "look like" older people: they, too, now choose emotionally close social partners (11). Thus, endings need not be related to old age or impending death. They need simply to limit time horizons. Preferences long thought to reflect intractable effects of biological or psychological aging appear fluid and malleable.

Recently, research has indicated a special preference for emotionally positive information over emotionally negative information in memory in older adults (15–17). This is particularly intriguing because it has long been known that younger people find negative information more attention-grabbing and memorable than positive information. Indeed, many have posited an evolutionary basis to a preference in memory and attention for negative information. Negative material is richer in information than is positive material, which often soothes instead of arouses. If the value placed on learning new information changes with shrinking time horizons, however, this preference should dissipate across adulthood. Our research team has coined the term the "positivity effect" to describe a developmental pattern that has emerged in which a selective focus on negative stimuli in youth shifts to a relatively stronger focus on positive information in old age (16). Although in some studies, the effect is accounted for primarily by younger people remembering relatively more negative material than positive material, and in other studies the effect is accounted for by older people remembering more positive than negative material, a shift in the ratio of positive to negative across age groups has nevertheless emerged as a reliable finding in the research literature (18, 19).

Of particular interest is recent evidence that older people process negative information less deeply than they do positive information (20). While in a brain scanner, older and younger people viewed images of positive, negative, and neutral stimuli. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, activation in the amygdala was measured in response to the different types of images. Consistent with the results of the behavioral studies noted above, whereas younger adults showed heightened amygdala activation in response to both positive and negative images compared with neutral images, amygdala activation in the older adults increased only in response to the positive images (Fig. 2). Thus, not only at recall but at very early stages of processing, older adults diminish encoding of negative material.

Read More »

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French Fries and "Gotta Have" Food

May 23, 2007 08:25 AM

This was my dinner. Two pieces of Mahi Mahi done on the grill with olive oil and Teriyaki with broccoli and grilled squash. I put some olive oil over the squash during the grilling to keep it moist. A big salad. It was so much food that I did not finish it and will have the leftovers for lunch.

I do think that reminding yourself that the part of the meal you do not eat is as important as the part you do eat. Since you can have the rest later, there is no temptation to eat it all at once. Over eating is so harmful that it ought to be considered to be dangerous. Metabolism is stressful and many people who die do so after a large, carbohydrate-laden meal. The body mounts a stress response to the high blood sugar that occurs after a high carb meal.

Wonder Woman's meal is grilled salmon with the rest the same as mine. She calls the grilled squash her "french fries" and they have completely replaced any thought of actually eating a french fry in her mind.

So, you don't really "give up" things you think you must have. You find something that replaces and eventually surpasses it. This true of bread and other things that people seem to think they cannot live without. There are real foods that a good substitutes and that you will eventually see as far better.

If there is anything "you can't live without" you may actually be allergic to that food. An allergic response to a food will release adrenaline so that you feel a hit that is like a reward when you eat it. Bread is particularly allergenic if you are moderately celliac, yeast intolerant, or inflammed due to insulin resistance or obesity. These are all inflammatory processes, even obesity (which may be the worst), and are, therefore, allergenic. You are setting off your immune system and may suffer collaterol damage as it begins to attack your own tissues in addition to the alllergens.

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Reader Meals

May 21, 2007 08:31 PM

Readers are getting into this Evolutionary Fitness meal preparation. These meals are from Chris with his very nice comment:

We've been enjoying your recent meal pictures and have been doing our best to cook the EvFit way. For fun, we took our own pictures of lunch and dinner yesterday. We thought you might be interested in seeing them.

On picture #1, the meal on the left is steamed broccoli over a bed of spinach, with chunks of red apple and avocado and some cuts of chicken sausage. A little lemon-tarragon dressing on top. On the right is steamed broccoli over a bed of romaine lettuce, with chunks of apple and avocado, all sprinkled with a small amount of Parmesan cheese. In the center of the plate is some chunks of roast beef with a good quality
mayo.

On picture #2, for dinner, we had a little steamed broccoli (I had carrots as well), along with a nice cut of salmon marinated in white wine, topped with Parmesan cheese, pine nuts, and sun-dried tomatoes.

Thanks for the inspiration!

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Black Swans and Evolutionary Fitness

Nassim Taleb understood instantly when I told him a few years ago that his exercise and diet were not good. He was living in Mediocristan when he should have been living in Kurtocristan. He was training in the central part of the intensity distribution, too much "average" activity and too little "out in the tails" rest and intensity. (Remember, the distribution has two tails, one with languid rest and the other with high intensity activity. You have to spend time at both ends.)

In plainer tone, he was doing the same diet and exercise that chronic bicyclists seem to do: high volume, mild intensity, repetitious, over-training with no real intensity. Worse yet, this is what the "traders" whose charting, self-deception and other foolish activities he exposes so accurately and caustically in his Fooled By Randomness.

Yet, he was the founder and architect of trading strategies at the hedge fund Empirica that sought low probability, high-consequence events out in the tails of the distribution; those Black Swans that he so ably describes in his latest book, The Black Swan. He just didn't apply those ideas to his training. I told him he had to use kurtosis in his training, just as he did in his trading.

I think you will enjoy Nassim's discussion with the blogger at KnackeredHack.com during his Lunch with Taleb. I did.

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Meals 2

May 18, 2007 10:21 AM

A light breakfast. Just fresh fruit and some bacon (we didn't eat all of it and will use it to crumble over a salad).

Then a simple steak dinner, a small New York steak. Some grilled squash and spinach done with garlic and hot little red peppers. A small salad and then an experiment in the form of red and white cabbage, cut in chunks (I like to crunch things when I eat them) along with some fresh leeks and a bit of white vinegar. It was really good.

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The Cost of Eating

May 17, 2007 01:22 PM

My daughter had some thoughts on my recent meal posts. I agree with them though I won't be putting the cost of meals up here. She has known for years how I eat, but it seems the pictures have helped her see more clearly what a good meal looks like. The picture series is popular; yesterday there were 60,000 hits on the blog.

About the blog. I have been really sticking to the meats, fruits and vegetables for the last four days and all ready I am seeing a change in my body. However, you have some people concerned with the overall cost of making the change to better eating. Please somehow incorporate the cost with your photos as people think it is expensive to eat better. I should know, since we have a house of seven people it is less expensive to feed them just meat, vegetables, and fruit as you really are more satisfied. Yes, you could be right about expense if you are eating way more meat opposed to vegetables. Once you get the portions worked out it is more expensive to eat poorly.

Also, if you want to look at it this way, you pay (a bit) now or you pay later for bad eating habits. If you would invest in a doughnut and a coke or coffee you could just as easily grab some fruit and water or coffee. This is new to my family and I do realize change is not easy but we decided we love our family and ourselves enough to REALLY make changes in our eating habits as we are not happy how we look but mostly how we feel. I do also see just what your readers mean when they state photos really do help. Somehow simplicity is so far removed from our minds we have a hard time visualizing how easy this can be.

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Visceral Fat

May 16, 2007 07:44 PM

From my friend and blog reader Dr. Robert Krikorian come these thoughts on the toxic fat deep in the viscera, even in "skinny" individuals:

Robert Krikorian, PhD Department of Psychiatry University of Cincinnati College of Medicine 231 Albert Sabin Way Cincinnati, OH 45267-0559 http://www.psychiatry.uc.edu/cdc/

I saw the reference on your blog entry of May 11 (Fat and Thin) to the article entitled, Thin People May Be Fat Inside. I am particularly interested in this phenomenon because it highlights so many important health issues in our society, and they are framed by the apparent irony that thin-appearing individuals can have toxic fat deposits. As you know, visceral fat in the omental depot drains into the portal vein that infuses the liver. This fat is much more insulin resistant relative to subcutaneous fat. And, it stimulates the liver to generate inflammatory enzymes that circulate throughout the body, increasing risk for all sorts of conditions like heart disease and Alzheimer's. Of equal importance (and the issue that the "thin but viscerally fat" person exemplifies) is the loss of conditioning, sarcopenia, and general ill health that are linked in these individuals. In my lectures on lifestyle and age-related memory decline, I have use the attached image (Gustav Klimt, Three ages of women) to discuss frailty. The older woman on the left shows signs of the frailty syndrome – decreased muscle mass and excess abdominal fat. Frailty and high visceral fat tend to occur together, especially in aging adults. Unfortunately, in our times, it is beginning to appear in younger people and even in some putatively elite athletes, ie, the heavy mileage runners with little muscle who get old quickly and sometimes die young, as you have noted. I also suspect that some who practice calorie restriction also may have this syndrome.

I believe this has become a crucially important issue in our culture and that it's related to many if not all of the chronic diseases of civilization. The antidote of course is the right kind of exercise to increase muscle mass and strength. I see a fair number of late middle-aged and older adults who have developed mild to moderate depression, poorer memory function, and problems multi-tasking and organizing their daily affairs. We diagnose the neurocognitive problems, but there is no silver bullet pharmacology to help them. It comes down to altering diet and doing the right kind of exercise. Many are deathly afraid of Alzheimer's (and, indeed, they do have increased risk), but few are able to commit to changing lifestyle habits to try to save their brains and improve quality of life. It's difficult for me to imagine why anyone would not follow these suggestions, but they don't. It's almost as if they are trapped by their lifelong habits and a sense of incapacity to change.

This is the amazing image by Klimt "Three Ages of Women" Robert sent.

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A Big Breakfast and Light Dinner

This was breakfast; two large links of hot Italian sausage and two eggs with some fruit. Quite filling.

This was a somewhat light dinner of orange roughy and spinach with a large salad.

For some reason readers like to see these meals.

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Calories

May 15, 2007 05:03 PM

Some of the comments on my meal posts question how I can keep my body weight at 200 pounds when I appear to consume too few calories to do so. Today I weighed 197.5, a bit above the 195 I decided to put my weight at several months ago. So, rather than lose weight, I actually gained just a little on the meals you saw posted along with the other meals and foods I eat.

I have eaten this way for so long and have weighed between 195 and 208 for over 40 years, so whatever I am eating and doing, I am in no danger of losing muscle mass or getting fat. Right now, with the hot weather coming and the way I feel at this weight, I am quite satisfied at weighing between 195 and 200.

So, what are we to think of the calculations that tell us how much we must eat to stay in energy balance? Not much, in my opinion. As you may know, I never calculate my energy expenditure or my energy intake. I couldn't care less about these numbers as I think they are very unreliable. Here are some objections or reservations on that subject.

1. Calorie measures of various foods are taken by burning them in a bomb calorimator. That has little to do with the calories the body might extract from the food. It is, after all, a biological process, not an unreal firing of the food in a vessel. There is reason to be skeptical of caloric values as published.

2. Caloric intake in a day (not a biologically relevant time interval may I say) is notoriously hard to measure. There is close to zero compliance in diet studies and only heavy water measurements reliably indicate caloric intake. People forget, misrepresent, fail to record, and just mess up their food and energy take big time.

3. Even when you know what you ate, you may have a faulty measure of energy intake. For example, the bacon strips you saw in the last breakfast I put up were at least twice as thick as the usualy bacon strip. Instead of 75 calories, they were more like 150 to 200 calories each. I had 4 of them, so the bacon alone probably contained 400 more calories than you might calculate. The eggs were huge too, another source of mis-estimation.

4. Few studies find that individuals remain at steady state weight when the calculated energy intake and expenditure are equal. That at least some of them do provides some support for the energy body weight homeostasis theory, but there are so many counter results that one must be skeptical. Scientists may blame their subjects for failing to lose, maintain, or gain weight on various diets and work out programs by saying that they "cheat" or fail to follow "protocol" (a euphisim for a sub-human intervention that few free-living humans ever live by). That is just scientists (using the word loosely) trying to get published and getting their flakey study past the referees. It is not science. If the metabolic researchers were to seriously address the calorimic measures and energy intake and expenditure measures, they could not get published. Well, at least I think so. Admittedly, just my hypothesis.

5. Why is it that so many body builders, who try to remain in positive nitrogen balance, are so fat? Have you thought about this? I have little doubt that it is true, having spent 50 years in gyms. The measurements must be in error, for all measurements are. They go far over caloric balance as they try to remain in positive nitrogen balance. So, lets face it, most "body builders" only look "good, reasonable, ugly" depending on your point of view (and I have seen a lot of them in the gym or on the beach) when they are in dehydrated, starch deprived (and they need this stuff, that is why the overdose on cookies when the contest is over) when they are in "contest" trim. That means an over lean, dehyrated condition in which they are capable of sub-optimal, non-survival modes of response to stress. They are already so over-stressed by getting into contest trim that they could not respond to other, life-stressing stresses.

5. I could go on, but why bother. You wil make up your own mind. My caloric intake is 1. unknown, 2. adequate to maintain my optimal body composition, the only verifiable measure of survival and functional value.

Lesson? You are probably eating too much. The charts on energy intake and expenditure may not be right for you (we are unique). I easily maintain my weight at my intake. The meals I show are only part of my intake. I do have some meals that are "over the top" in intake (like whole rack of ribs with no sauce and vegetables). Intermittency is the only rule. So, that means no rule can prescribe a steady intake or expenditure. Think about the idea that I am eating too little, by conventional ideas, and yet my weight and, more importantly, my body composition, is ideal by my standards.

As always, do what you think is right. This is not advice. It is skepticism, science, and (perhaps most of all) my take on what is right.

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Wintercrest

I had a line drive hit me in the shin the last day of the softball tournament (Friday). It swelled instantly and by the time the game ended I had a large hematoma on my leg. It so happens that the sponsor of our team is Wintercrest. It is a healing balm with DMSO, oils and propolis in it among other ingredients. Most of the guys on the team use it, but I have been skeptical.

I had a sample and put some on the hematoma right after the game. By the time I had driven home, about 45 minutes, it was gone. The swelling had diminished completely and I had only a skin abrasion to show for the painful injury. Even now, some 4 days later, you would never know I had such a painful and disfiguring injury. I have never had a hematoma heal so quickly or show so little sign of injury so soon after it occured. And I have had plenty of them from dirt biking and other sports. Usually I put ice on them to lessen the swelling. This time I used no ice and the swelling just went away with Wintercrest.

I had earlier become less of a skeptic about Wintercrest when I tried it on an inflammed tendon in my knee, the one at the lower end of the ilio band that I injured when I was listening to a trainer and doing something I should have known I ought not to be doing. It killed the inflammation overnight, though there is still some soreness because of the tightness of my ilio band even now, some 14 months after the injury.

Now I have tentatively accepted the hypothesis that Wintercrest is effective in modulating inflammation, at least in those areas where cutaneous application has the potential to deliver the oils and antioxidants contained in the balm to the injury. The DMSO (a solvent) and oils in Wintercrest do have the ability to penetrate deeply into the skin and may go deeper to the underlying injured tissues.

One of the ingredients in Wintercrest, propolis, has been shown to alter gene expression of tumor necrosis factor, a primary agent in inflammation. It is a very powerful antioxidant too, which may account for some of its gene signalling effects. A hematoma produces a lot of free radicals and the immune system adds to the burden. Yet there is little potential for an infection to occur if the skin is not broken, so the immune system response may actually increase the injury of tissues.

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Dinner

May 14, 2007 12:03 PM

What you see here iis dinner for WW and myself. Crab legs, on sale for 7.99 a pound, broccoli, a big salad for me and a smaller one for WW. That is balsamic vinegar and olive oil for dressing, along with the same ingredients mixed with Italian spices in the smaller bowl. Alongside that is some slightly hot cocktail sauce. My salad has fresh leeks, tomato, avocado, red cabbage, celery and a bit of spinach greens over romaine.

The two pounds of crab was more than enough and there are leftovers for my lunch today. So, the meal was not expensive. More expensive than, say, two plates of spaghetti with salad, but less expensive than two restaurant meals or even a couple of decent (there are none) frozen dinners. The cost per unit of good nutrition is very low compared to any of these alternatives.

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Some Meals from this week

May 12, 2007 01:40 PM

I know there are many new followers of the blog. They tell me their most difficult problem is knowing what to eat. Partly this is because after years of eating more common foods, packaged foods, and restaurant food one experiences a loss of imagination when it comes to food. The most reliable aesthetic for a good meal (for me) is color. Next comes texture. Then aroma. One must not have too many separate foods in a single meal; ordinarily three to four foods create a nice color and texture contrast. And no more than one or two spices. Beyond that point flavor, color and texture are lost.

My lunch today. Left over baked salmon, fresh leeks, tomatoes, celery and a few grapes along with the ever popular Budweiser.

WonderWoman's lunch today. Some canned crab, leeks, tomatoes, celery, and leftover spinach aioli with a few grapes. She put some balsamic and olive oil on the celery and tomatoes.

My dinner last night...

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Thin and Fat

May 11, 2007 04:34 PM

I had read this article and thought little of it. Then Tim sent it to me and I decided that it is worth my readers time to have a look. See Skinny Outside, Fat Inside.

You know how I feel about BMI (misleading, though of some value). Most warnings about BMI are for people who are obese are headed there. Yet, there is another group of people with low BMI who are fat where they should not be and it is unhealthful. They are fat inside even though they appear to be thin (even models have this problem).

Their organs are surrounded by deep, internal fat and are themselves streaked with fattty deposits. If you diet aggressively or deliberately under eat (or even practice caloric restriction somewhat seriously) you may still have a large amount of internal fat. It is more dangerous than surface fat because it so strongly affects your metabolic profile.

Dieting can reduce internal fat, but most people go for appearance and may appear to be thin (super model) and yet have a lot of internal fat. Appearance or BMI are not reliable guides. In order to assure that you have little internal fat, you have to exercise. If you are slender and muscular, then you will have little internal or subsurface fat. Lean and muscular is best of all, even if your BMI is high (as mine is).

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Yet Another Breakfast

May 10, 2007 08:19 PM

This one was so easy and delicious, healthful too. Smoked salmon and a bit of fresh fruit. Light, but nourishing. I know several of my readers who eat this for breakfast, one who lost 12 inches off his waist.

Some people seem to have an aversion to combining fruit and meat, as Charles Staley noted in his comment. Aside from what you are used to eating, I know of no reasons not to combine them. Some may have read the book by the Diamonds a few years back that cautioned against combining fruit and meat on the grounds, if I recall correctly, that this mixture would contribute to putrification of the meat. This has not been demonstrated. It seems in the colon some degree of putrification may take place, but that is not harmful. It is due to the bacterial colonies in the colon and a slow transit time through the gut.

Fresh fruit provides roughage to speed transit and, on the whole, is beneficial in other ways. The French and Italians often eat fresh fruit for dessert. With a moderate amount of meat, I see no problem with this. Surely, mashed potatoes are not better. Nor is bread. These mushy foods slow transit time and alter gut bacteria adversely for digestion in all parts of the gut.

On the other hand, if it doesn't feel right and leaves you bloated or suffering poor digestion, then listen to your body and don't combine fruit and meat in a meal. Break them up into separate meals. Before I began Evolutionary Fitness I ate breakfast cereal and had a sore or troubled stomach later in the morning. Possibly, I was a bit adverse to cereals (maybe moderately celiac, as many are without knowing it) and I do know that I was lactose intolerant or learned that I was because when I cut the milk, all my digestive problems went away. Had I listened to my body I would have dropped milk and cereal far earlier than I did.

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Another Breakfast

May 7, 2007 08:46 AM

I am always amused that readers have such a hard time preparing breakfast. The cereal advertisers have been at it so long it is hard to get past one's own history of browsing over the cereal box and its ads.

This time breakfast was part of a grilled ham steak and some fresh fruit. It had an attractive appearance and was filling and nutritious. Try it. Give up that cereal with the banana and watch your fat melt.

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Leftovers for breakfast

May 6, 2007 11:37 AM

Here is my breakfast this morning. Not really leftovers per se, but things I keep around for a quick meal. I think it looks great, with lots of color and texture. Plenty of variety too.

Roasted turkey breast is a great snack and I always have some around. There is a Hebrew National hot dog and a little piece of Jarhlesburg cheese too. The leftover part of the meal is a bit of pork loin roast that I made two days earlier. The fruit makes it look good and has those valuable antioxidants and plant-based substances that are still being discovered.he fruit is red grapes, strawberries, cantelope and apple. This was a very filling meal. I may not eat lunch.

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New Evidence on Intermittent High Intensity Training

This NYT article is a little breathless in its praise of interval training. This kind of result has been around in the literature for a long time and you know well from Power Law Training that intermittency is the stuff of life. But, for doubters, the article does review some recent research on the power of intermittency. Note the dramatic increase in fat burning from the higher intensity work. This kind of work can only be done in bursts. Yet, in the same amount of time you might walk on a treadmill at a moderate pace (in the "fat burning zone" all the charts and trainers say) you can do far more work and burn far more fat by doing hard intervals within that same time period. High intensity bursts, as documented in this article, promotes a higher level of fat burning (36% more in the research reported here).

"Metabolic stalling" is a nice phrase one of the authors uses to describe the accumulation of fats and glucose in the blood, largely because muscle tissue is filled with glycogen and triglyceride. When the muscles are full there is no place for them to go but into fat stores. Note also the subtle questioning of relying on glucose for sustained energy expenditure; muscle triglyceride is a surer and safer source. More soon on that.

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Glutathione

May 4, 2007 11:05 AM

Here is part of an article posing an hypothesis regarding the role of reduced glutathione and aging. Whether you accept the hypothesis or not, and that is all it is at this stage, you will find the many functions of glutathione of great interest. Small wonder I take it. One of our commenters pointed out how the HMP ultrathione may have helped to detoxify his liver which was harmed by chemical exposure. Now, you know I generally do not buy the theory that hormones, enzymes, etc decline with age (chronological age). They do decline with biological aging though. Biological aging, I suspect, is partly cell senescence (nearing the Hayflick limit on division) but inflammation is deeply involved at all levels. This is why glutathione supplementation makes sense. But, the precursor and promoter of inflammation is the loss of metabolic fitness. Generalized inflammation depletes glutathione.

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Germs

May 1, 2007 09:07 AM

Peter Huber is an exeptional writer and thinker. I know him from his work in spectrum and his book Gallileo's Revenge, which showed how junk science had entered the court room. He is a lawyer practicing in intellectual property and a Ph.D. in engineering. His book Hard Green is shows a way to clean the environment.

Now he turns his eye to germs. This is a deep and utterly chilling look at the new environment of public health that germs will exploit to our peril. Germs and the City.

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Don't Do This

April 30, 2007 09:41 AM

I came upon a web site that linked to mine and read a sad story, one that could progress to tragedy. A 345 pound man was embarking on a kind of last ditch effort to lose weight and regain health. He lays out his program and it is setting him up for failure and may seriously harm his health. I have a sense of how desperate some people become in attempting to control their weight. It is a microcosm of their deeper attempt to control their life or their mind.

Filled with guilt and even a somewhat repressed self-contempt, people will put themselves on a severe program that will test their will. And that their bodies cannot sustain. They are setting themselves up for failure which they must know deep in their mind. This top-down, central planning Soviet model cannot work. By making a program so arduous that the body and mind rebel they are dooming themselves to failure.

This individual will be eating protein almost to the exclusion of other nutrients. Some Omega 3 oils are tossed into his ill-conceived diet. He will become malnourished because his diet is lacking in variety, bulk, and essential nutrients. With so little plant material his diet will promote excessive oxidation and the ensuing inflammation will lesser his already marginal insulin sensitivity.

His exercise program is mind-boggling. It will wear him out and make him fatter. High volume work, done repetitiously and without real intensity or variety will promote fat, not leanness. His diet will damage his kidneys through ammonia poisoning. Believe me, your kidneys are very important. I saw that in my wife's decline and subsequent death. The kidneys do much more than filter your blood of liquids; they are crucial for homeostasis in many other ways, not just fluid balance. In particular, they emit a hormone essential for red blood cell balance. Damage your kidneys and you will become anemic, among other things.

It really isn't that hard...

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A Frenzy

April 28, 2007 08:56 AM

Wonder Woman and I took some friends out to dinner last night. It was a fine meal prepared by a talented Hungarian chef with training in several continental cuisines. I had the bison fillet with broiled chard and a nice variety of grilled vegetables. WW had the Chateaubriand with the same complement of vegetables. Our friends ordered similar meals, but with the garlic potatoes or the rice. They ate ample bread before the meal, unlike WW and myself.

They did not finish their meals, nor did WW. I did and brought her meal remains home for my lunch today (I never bring my meals home because I eat everything). So, I was surprised when our guests ordered desserts. They could not finish their meals but still ordered desserts. Imi, the chef, pilled on the desserts because he treats us like honored guests and we eat there often. You should have seen the feeding frenzy that followed. As WW and I watched, our guests attacked the dessert as though they were starving. The forks were flying and it vanished before our eyes. It was almost frightening to see. It was addictive behavior for sure and the intensity of their movements was beyond anything I have seen in their actions before. They were helpless, or so it seemed, to control the pace at which they consumed the dessert.

So, here we have two people trying to control their weight and well aware of healthy eating patterns from many conversations with me on the subject. But their forks were flying over the dessert. The good food they could not finish. But, the bread and dessert vanished.

They actually ate far more calories than I and I ate all my meal, just not the junk. I don't think they were the least bit aware of what they had done. Nor do I think they were capable of controlling what they did. They were helpless in a way. As though they were addicted.

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Subsidizing Obesity

Thanks very much to a reader for this link to an excellent NYT article on how Congress promotes obesity through agricultural subsidies Fat in the Pork.

It is not so well-known that even though the fructose produced from many of these crops, particularly corn, does not elevate blood glucose the way sucrose does, it produces obesity through another metabolic pathway that also triggers many secondary problems. So, the glycemic index is not a reliable guide to obesity-producing foods. There are obesity pathways that are not related to insulin. Fructose uses one of them. More later.

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My Own Breakfasts Again

April 27, 2007 09:59 AM

Eating breakfast in Italy was a problem. Salty cold cuts of meat and cheese, with the worst scrambled eggs were the basic choices. No fresh fruit at all. Yogurt, cereals, and rolls and bread of every kind were the other choices. Actually, dinner was not a lot better. I always skipped the Primi Piatti as it is a pasta dish. The second plate was all I ate along with the antipasto, which is the dish that precedes the all-important pasta dish.

So, I consistently ate less than almost all the people there even though I was one of the taller, heavier ones at the table. Except for the Germans, that is. They were large, jolly, ate like mad, very friendly, and for the most part fat.

I felt like I had too little fresh ingredients of all kinds and have been eating a lot of salads, celery, and fresh fruits since returning. I was longing for my own breakfasts.

This is my breakfast this morning...

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Humans as Runners

April 24, 2007 11:38 AM

A reader sends this article on humans as runners.

I have mentioned that humans can run down a horse over the course of days, primarily by keeping the horse from water and forcing dehydration fatigue. They can do the same with wild turkeys by throwing objects to keep them flying until they drop.

Neither of these activities is jogging. Running is very different from jogging or marathoning. Running is a series of bursts of varying intensity over the course of varying time intervals. Just what we are made to do. The evidence is pretty convincing: jogging just doesn't work. Running does. But, you have to have some power when you get to the prey. Joggers have little power.

The article partly makes my point: humans ruled the hottest part of the day when the largest predators were forced to rest. Extended running during the hottest part of the day is not necessary to get prey and doing hours of it would make the hunter vulnerable as it would extend beyond that safe period. A human had to be capable of sprinting, throwing, climbing and all those things that joggers are not effective at doing in order to survive the cooler parts of the day when they were more vulnerable. Besides, jogging is a solitary activity and human safety depended on being in a group.

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Dieters Gain Weight

Have I said this before? Dieting will, in the long run, compromise your metabolism and make you fatter. It takes a while, but that is the result overwhelmingly documented in studies long enough for the new equilibrium to emerge.

Here is another bit of evidence on this hypothesis from my old Alma Mater UCLA diet study.

So, what do you do?

1. Increase your insulin sensitivity and muscle mass through exercise, intermittent fasting of brief duration, avoiding fructose and glucose-laden and starchy foods (rice, beans, potatos, pasta, etc), eating only fresh vegetables and fruits, nuts, and seafood, chicken, and lean meats.

2. Brief, intermittent activities that are challenging and fun along with a bit of intense (for you) muscle building exercise are all the excercise you need. Forget dull and damaging aerobics, but exercise at a high enough pace to gain aerobic fitness. Most of all play at exercise; don't do these serious, highly repetitive things like golf (I find it is hard to "play" at golf) or jogging.

3. The more fun you have outdoors, the leaner you will be. And, get some sunlight every day, just a bit.

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1866

April 16, 2007 06:54 PM

A doctor Harley in 1866 had it right. Cut the starch. He was speaking of the diet for diabetics, but it is for all of us.

1866 Diabetic Diet

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Scary Menus

April 15, 2007 08:42 PM

I have been looking over the menu from the cafeteria of one of our larger employers, a health conscious one.

What are they eating at the cafeteria?

Monday: Appetizer -- pot stickers. Grill -- California wrap (turkey, cheese, guacomole, bacon in a WHEAT tortilla). Lunch -- Layered Mexican casserole or Chicken breast over rice with a side of fried rice, mac and cheese or asparagus. (People always seem to think that wheat is ok as a source of carbs when almost all starches are made from wheat -- bread, pasta, cereals are made of wheat.)

Chicken and asparagus are all that I would choose. Maybe the wrap without the bacon.

Tuesday: Appetizer -- macaroni wedges. Grill -- hot dot with chili. Lunch -- Roast pork tenderloin or Lasagna. Sides -- mash potato, gravy, bread stick, broccoli.

Roast pork with brocoli are all I would eat.

Wednesday: Appetizer -- potato munchers. Grill -- none. Lunch -- Fajita skillet or burrito with bean and cheese smothered (and they mean it) in sauce and cheese and sour cream. Side -- beans, rice, carrots, corn or ranch pot.

The fajita, maybe, but I would pass on the bean and cheese and the smothering.

The rest of the week is similar, with spagetti and fettucini highlighting the other days. Bread sticks, beans, and rice are featured often as sides.

All in all, about what most people are likely to eat, when they think they are eating healthy. But, I do not think they are eating healthy on this menu at all. And, it shows. There are not that many lean and healthy looking people in the place, even among the young. And the menu does not begin to describe the heavy sauces. Even when presented with this array of choices you might be surprised to find how many choose three starchy foods and bread sticks and leave the chicken breast and asparagus. And then there are the jellos, pies, cookies and other deserts. Along with the juices and sugary soft drins.

It is amazing what the body will tolerate.

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Thrifty Gene, Active Gene

April 12, 2007 07:57 AM

I have always had a bit of a problem with the theory of the thrifty gene. The theory emphasizes the ability of humans, and other animals, to store excess nutrients against future famine. Many seem to believe that it is this gene gone awry in a modern world awash with nutrients available at little energy expenditure that produces the profound obesity that we see in many modern humans and the associated metabolic derangements associated with obesity.

It is surely true that humans, and even pets and other animals, have the ability to store excess nutrients. But, the thrifty gene hypothesis fails to include the implicit assumption that there must be a trigger to turn the genes on. Presumably, the trigger would be a situation of serious undernutrition in the presence of profound energy expenditure that would turn the genes on in the fed state. That is to say, the triggering mechanism would be as though a hungry hunter exerting profoundly in the attempt to find food would at last succeed. He/she would then be in a situation to over feed and restore energy balance and add beyond those requirements a reservoir of energy as fat stores.

But, what if the attempt were unsuccessful? How would the hunter go on hungry and under nourished? There must be something that supports activity in this state, which is far more threatening to survival.

I see several problems with the thrifty gene theory. One, modern humans, and our pets and domestic animals, never experience the profound energy drains that would trigger the over feeding mechanism. They eat whether they expend energy or not and they eat to a positive energy surplus regularly. There is no switch to turn the thrifty genes on.

Two, a thrifty gene that favors energy storage would produce a body composition that would not be adept at acquiring food or competing with more muscular individuals for mates and food. A fat, less muscular "thrifty genotype" would be less effective than an active genotype at attaining the state of excess nutrition required to survive and reproduce.

Three, a thrifty gene does an energy-depleted, tired and hungry hunter gatherer no good at all when these stores are gone. If you have no food and are depleted of energy, a thrifty gene that encourages over feeding does you no good at all when you have no food. Yet, you must go on in this state or perish.

What is required for survival in an energy-scarce environment where profound energy expenditure is required to find food is some mechanism that would permit the hunter to continue in an energy-depleted state. That is, an active gene that permits activity when food is scarce is far more valuable than a gene that permits storage in the fed state. The underfed state is far more dangerous and there must be some genetic mechanism that permits intense activity even in the underfed state.

A characteristic of humans is that they become more active when they are in an underfed state. This is, of course, essential if food is to be found. I think this is a key to understanding modern obesity and metabolic disease from a genetic perspective.

So, I think it is more important to look for the genetic components of modern obesity as a byproduct of an active gene that has gone awry in a modern world rather than as a thrifty gene gone awry.

Paradoxically, I suspect that the answer is to be found in a study of athletes, who are most comparable to ancestral humans in activity and metabolism than sedentary humans. What energy storage systems do their bodies exploit and how do their stores differ from sedentary humans? And, how do these systems go awry in sedentary, over-fed humans?

I think that by looking to the active genotype that we may find some answers that shape our understanding of metabolic disease. This exploration also leads to more fruitful strategies for improving metabolic health and performance. The thrifty gene theory just encourages us to give up because it promotes the idea that we are made to overeat. You can't fight Mother Nature. Later...

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Running Fast

A further issue about sprinting and attaining maximal speed is to consider stride frequency and stride length. Numerous studies show that animals run at the stride frequency that minimizes energy expenditure. Whether they are running slow or fast, they tend to run at that stride frequency. They vary speed by lengthening or shortening the length of the stride.

The stride frequency that mins energy expenditure balances the shock absorbing in the muscle (the eccentric phase) with energy recovery (the concentric spring phase).

To max speed you want to find your energy minimizing stride frequency and then find the longest stride length you can attain while maintaining that frequency. This applies to the phase of the run after you have reached max speed. During the acceleration phase there is less elastic recovery in the muscle and stride frequency is lower and stride length less.

You can get a good estimate of your stride frequency by hopping on one or two legs at the rate that is most comfortable. For full speed, hop with nearly fully extended legs. For acceleration, hop with bent legs. Once you find the optimal frequency, then work to lengthen the stride, but never going below your best frequency.

This model suggests that plyometrics have to be done at the right frequency to obtain maximal benefits. Most plyometric moves are done at too low a frequency for the best results. They are still beneficial, but one should do higher frequency hops, close to the optimal stride frequency, and try to max the length of the hop at that frequency. Pretty tough. Sounds like a nice, high intensity drill.

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Diets

April 11, 2007 09:08 AM

Are there enough of them yet?

There must be hundreds of diets, each with their own interpretation of some marginal science or an angle that appeals to human frailty (on this diet, you can "cheat" or some other wild promise). They all make promises that you can't keep and their failure rate is close to 100 per cent. Here is a link to some weak research on low and high carb diets (both diets are lousy) that really opened my eyes to the range of marketing and claims by diet promoters. Check the ads. It is wild. And, they all share the high failure rate that has been documented in endless research. Note, that the primary conclusion of the research reported at this link is that one diet was slightly more effective than the other over short time span, but they converged later on the same outcome. Note also that extraordinary effort was expended to insure compliance and, even then, there was considerable "cheating".

Worse yet, and not reported, is how you fare when you fall off the diet wagon; you are likely to binge and develop an unhealthy attitude toward food. You may damage your metabolism by losing muscle and organ mass and damage your health through organ or brain damage (anorexics have shrunken brains). When you add in the people who fall off the diet wagon and gain dramatic weight in the aftermath to those who merely fail to lose weight, then you realize that their high failure rate underestimates the damage done by diets.

Most dieters end up fatter than when they began. A thirty pound loss is often followed by a sixty pound gain. A thirty pound loss almost never stays that way. When you diet and fall off, you fall hard. You feel a sense of failure and the bulging hips and belly constantly remind you of your failure. I would never diet nor would I put anyone I cared about on one.

What do I do and how did Wonder Woman lose 6 dress sizes? (She can't walk down the hall without starting a riot at work. Yet, nobody believes what she tells them about diet and exercise.) How did my former trainer's wife go from going-on-pudgy to slim and sleek? (She did it on her own just by reading the Evolutionary Fitness Essay. It's free under the Research link above.) How did Queen T go from over-training and gym-culture nutrition to someone who is so inspiring that she can't get out of the gym without being besieged with questions? (No one believes her answers, either.)

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Sprinting

April 10, 2007 09:23 PM

This question is one of many I receive on sprinting. I know I have said many times that sprinting is part of the Evolutionary Fitness lifeway, for males and females. How otherwise would our ancestors survive the predators and other enemies of the evolutionary environment? How else would they capture certain kinds of prey for food? They would go hungry jogging. And, is any other kind of activity as much fun as playful sprinting?

Here is the extended question:

I am writing to you today because I want to participate in club sprinting (I'm a law student three weeks away from graduation). Since I'd like to compete primarily in the 100 meters, I am very interested in your thoughts on power-law training as you seem to base much of your reasoning on power athletes.

I've noticed that in the past you have developed workout ideas for various individuals and I'm curious about what you might prescribe specifically for a sprinter. It seems to me that true sprinting, the way the pros do it, depends more on the glutes and hamstrings than the quads. Therefore, I'm thinking more along the lines of glute-ham raises and single-leg split squats in something like the Smith machine (with the rear leg elevated) rather than the typical back squat that is so frequently prescribed. I'm not sure how much the upper body contributes to sprint speed, but maybe some incline dumbbell presses and dumbbell rows which you seem to be a fan of?

First, sprinting is a natural and valuable human activity. If you look at hunter gatherers you will find that almost all the males and many of the females are capable of sprinting and at speeds that would rival college level 100 meter times. This is true of males whom we would think of as older these days and more likely to be in a Walmart mobile cart than running around. This is because necessity and the natural lifeway dictate that humans are free and active animals.

Muscle composition adapts to demands and is not set by genetic factors. Among hunter gather groups you find that they express a "true" genetic type because their lifeway is nearly identical. They all are capable of living in the environment that requires that they have similar capabilities. So, if you do sprint and must sprint, you will express the muscle fiber composition appropriate to sprinting. Most humans begin with about 50/50 FT/ST muscle composition, allowing for differences in the specific muscle fibers.

Some individuals will be better sprinters than others; that must always be the case as diversity was an evolutionary strategy. But, adaptation overrules genetic destiny and anyone can learn to be a good sprinter. And, anyone can express the fiber composition of a sprinter. Not, perhaps, the composition of someone who has sprinted most of his or her life. But, starting from the muscle composition that you presently posses, you can alter that to express more fast twitch muscle fiber (which all humans should naturally express, but do not in the current environment).

You tell your genes to express FT fiber when you give them a signal (through the mitogen activated protein kinases) that creates an acidic environment for the fiber expressing genes of the muscle fibers. Oxygen signals ST fiber. Acid expresses FT fiber. Jogging sends oxidative signals. Sprinting sends acid signals. Evolutionary Fitness work outs are designed to send acid signals to the muscles.

Sprinters are leaner and more muscular than joggers. They have higher HGH and more testosterone (good for females and males). So, I favor sprinting and walking to jogging.

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Low Carb Research

April 4, 2007 10:47 AM

My daughter in law sent me a link she came upon reporting subtle interactions between ketogenic diet and cancer that suggest a low carb diet may be of some benefit. I found the more general link to a host of research reports on the low carb diet. It is put up by a student Josh Yelon's Low Carb Research Links

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195

April 3, 2007 04:38 PM

I sometimes wonder if dropping to 195 pounds from a long time at 208 was a good thing. I still wear all the same clothes, but could drop to a 33 pant if I could find them and they had enough room in the thighs. And, I do think I look better and feel absolutely great. I don't get quite as hot at night either. So, all in all, I think it has been a real improvement.

Why did I carry 208 for so long? I really don't know to be truthful. I felt very strong at that weight, but still have more than enough strength to do what I want. It probably was the same sort of male mentality that expresses itself in the gym or any comparative environment: something like I am the best or strongest or... whatever. After reading Steven Pinker's History of Violence (see earlier post on Things are Getting Better), it does seem natural that a male would want to feel sufficiently dominant or dangerous that would-be rivals would want to think twice about attacking. Many days would be a fight for life in the evolutionary context and it is natural to carry over attitudes and appearances that would warn off others against an attack.

But, this can go awry easily and damage appearance and health. Far too many young guys in the gym go for way too much mass and end up thick and fat. Bigger is only better if muscle and body composition go with it. It is the power to weight ratio that determines sport performance. My power to weight ratio is better than at nearly any time in my life.

With the beginning of our evening softball league any doubts I had about dropping my weight to 195 quickly vanished. I am a bit quicker no doubt. And throw better. As to power, I hit one so far out that it hit high up on the protective fence at the playground 20 feet beyond the stadium fence (no andro, no steroids, just a smooth swing and great contact on the sweet spot). The ump said she had never seen anyone hit it out of that park (but I know a guy who did with a favoring wind of which I had none). No 70 year old does that she said.

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Nine Days, Six Pounds

Wonder Woman's sister came out from Philly to spend nine days with us. She lost six pounds eating the way we do (Evolutionary Fitness). It was mostly the eating since she was not well enough to do EFit work outs. I taught her a few things about posture and exercise, but she had only one quick work out on my home cable set. I had her do one legged squat presses, incline bench presses, and lat pull downs (hands in line with the forearm, not turned out with the knuckles up). I showed her the abdominal brace and how to do crunches the right way.

She said she never ate so much food and could not believe the six pound loss. Her face slimmed so much she looked younger. She could not believe the brevity of the simple work out I had her do. No one believes it, until they see the results.

The tricky part about eating at restaurants is to send the bread plate back, drop the croutons, and to have vegetables instead of pasta, rice, potatoes, or beans. You have to stay at it as the servers ply you with the stuff and few people turn them down. "Did you save room for dessert?" is a favorite ploy of servers. Why would I do that is my answer.

It was nothing more than habit that had her eating the way she did before she came to visit. Given the cost of the packaged foods she ate, she will readily afford the better food she enjoyed while here. It does seem that everyone has trouble dropping breakfast cereal ("But, I eat whole wheat or oatmeal.") and bananas. They are guaranteed to make you fat.

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Andro

April 1, 2007 01:05 PM

With MLB starting back up the topic of Mark McGwire and andro's contribution to his home run output comes up again. And, the investigations into steroid use continue and the trashing of Barry Bonds continues. It may become relentless this season as he approaches Hank Aaron's record of 714 home runs.

We can't definitively reject steroids as contributors to Bonds' past records and his approach to the life time record because the research is impossible to do. My paper on home runs raises hard questions and casts doubt on the role of steroids in home run performance. Really, it puts most of the discussion to rest because it shows that nothing has changed in home run hitting, once the number of games, at bats, and larger players is taken into account.

We can look at andro though because it is still possible to do the research and I came across a study, not yet published, done at East Tennessee State University in their Andro project that sheds light on the issue.

In a nutshell, andro does nothing for strength and power. The pituitary adapts to the increased testosterone from andro ingestion and begins to shut down production of luetinizing hormones that direct the testes to produce testosterone. At the end of the 12 week study, during which subjects took 200 mg of androstenediol or androstenendione, testosterone rose then declined and went right back to the baseline level at which they entered the study. The control subjects, who did the same weight training as the others, but did not take andro in either form, gained the same strength and power as those who took andro. And, they had slightly higher testosterone because of the stress of the work outs.

But, wait, it gets worse. Not only did they gain nothing, the andro users ended up feminizing their bodies. Their estrone and estradiol levels went up 47 to 92%. And their levels of HDL declined, producing an elevated cardiac risk profile.

They did not have the subjects try to hit home runs, but given that the strength gains of all three groups, including those who trained but without taking andro, were identical, there would be no gains there either.

In short, andro users gained nothing in strength and power (their pituitary learned to live on higher exogenous testosterone and shut down its own production) and they feminized themselves and raised their cardiac risk. Remember, it is all non-linear; what goes in isn't what comes out. Here it was the opposite: more male testosterone precursors produces a more feminine you.

Are you still reading those body builder mags and their ads?

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Cold Exposure

March 26, 2007 06:06 PM

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.

One of our readers, Marios, is a medical doctor who had this interesting comment on cold exposure:

I don't know if I ever mentioned this before, but about 4-5 years ago, I started taking cold showers to prepare for adventure races and 24-hr orienteering races. Having access to only what was in my backpack while in the middle of the woods at night, I had to find a way of increasing my tolerance to cold (I nearly dropped out of my two first races because of hypothermia). Having once read that polar explorers prepared by taking cold showers, I decided to try it. Though it's hard to tell if it was the cold showers, I never became hypothermic in any subsequent race.

Knowing my experience was purely anecdotal, I did some research to see if this was ever scientifically documented. What I found was much more interesting however, as it suggested that cold showers could increase resistance to oxidant stress.

The first article I found showed that people who took cold swims had higher levels of endogenous antioxidants (superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, and catalase). Though I was sold, there were no other papers out there supporting these results, or showing that the increase in endogenous antioxidants conferred a survival benefit. Being a medical resident, I considered writing a proposal to perform a few experiment on rats or other short-lived mammal, but I didn't think anyone would be interested in funding or supervising me given that most people wouldn't take cold showers even if they knew it would buy them an extra 20 years of health. Apparently, someone thought the idea was worthwhile, because I recently came across a paper which described an experiment in rats with similar results plus a survival benefit when the rats were injected with lethal doses of epinephrine. Still, it doesn't prove longevity benefits, but certainly does help support the idea.

There's a lot of anecdotal stuff out there with respect to cold showers and longevity. In fact, my mother had once told me about a very youthful and healthy russian patient of hers in his 90s, who told her his secret to longevity was that he never took a warm shower. Apparently he had to take care of all of his younger siblings, none of which shared his health in old age despite sharing 50% of his genes. Here's another anecdote from CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/04/24/living.well/.

Anyway, all this to say that you should read these two interesting articles - I know you have mentioned that you spray cold water on your legs following a shower to increase fat burning. There's also a body of work out there on cold shock proteins, but I haven't looked into it extensively enough yet to comment.

Enjoy, and keep the blog running,

I will report the results from the articles Marios sent me and make a few comments of my own. Thanks Marios.

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Chapter One

March 24, 2007 03:46 PM

I have made Chapter One of my book Evolutionary Fitness available free at the link on the right of the main page. As you may know, this is in response to some pitiful wretch who is duplicating my web site and selling my work for their own benefit.

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Insulin Action and Food Intake: A Discussion

March 7, 2007 11:02 AM

This is part of an open discussion by scientists on insulin action. Note, in particular, two things:

1. When individuals are fed all they want to eat of a low carb diet they decrease they caloric intake by about 30%. They find it impossible to maintain their weight eating all they want. This makes the Evolutionary Fitness diet a no-brainer.

2. Even more interesting is the discussion of the beliefs of the scientific community and the way the low-carb diet was rejected for years in the "consensus" of the community. Now the evidence is too compelling to let this consensus stand. Find this under the "Cosmic Truths" comment.

There is an obvious parallel to the global warming debate consensus is no way to do science and it directs funding and rewards to the consensus instead of the promising ideas that go against the consensus. The discussion is in this Roundtable Discussion

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Reengineering the Human Body for Longevity

What are the use-by dates on your body and your mind? Which one will wear out first?

There is a fascinating exercise in reengineering the body and mind that evolution gave us to make us last longer (and better?). The article appears in this issue of the on-line edition of The Scientist.

It is curious that no mention is made of gene expression and diet. The loss of FT fiber and de-enervation of these fibers is briefly dealt with. Especially interesting is the potential link between food odor and hormone drives; perhaps seeing and smelling food triggers pathways that turn on reproduction and turn down repair (daf up, sirt down).

I have long subscribed to the free radical theory and its related entropy gain theory; the progressive loss of coordination between the systems in the body through the loss of hormone sensitivity. That is why good dynamics are crucial; they alter hormones so they operate in a pulsate fashion and retain their signalling functions. The continuous, low level infusion of hormones, the drip drip of modern life in place of the surges of ancient life, are at the root of the loss of information and progression of entropy.

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Aspects of Metabolic Health

March 6, 2007 05:24 PM

Metabolic fitness is a key component of my approach to fitness and health. More and more diseases are found to be diseases of metabolism, ie. the way diet and activity affect gene expression and the kinds of products circulating in the body and how they are used. That is why episodic calorie restriction, exercise, and a diet low in saturated fats and trans fats is protective; these are the fundamentals of Evolutionary Fitness.

Here is the conclusion from a superb review of cardio vascular disease (CVD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) and their overlapping characteristics. They are both diseases of metabolism. The study is in Molecular Psychiatry (2006) 11, 721–736. doi:10.1038/sj.mp.4001854; published online 20 June 2006.

Title: Apolipoprotein E, cholesterol metabolism, diabetes, and the convergence of risk factors for Alzheimer's disease and cardiovascular disease

"In Western countries, obesity and type II diabetes are becoming very common conditions. These are both known to be risk factors for atherosclerosis and other CVDs, and now also AD. The Western diet, known to be high in fat, particularly cholesterol, is known to increase considerably the risk of obesity and type II diabetes. As factors such as abnormal insulin regulation and abnormal cholesterol metabolism have been discovered in each of these conditions, overlap in pathogenesis has been suggested. In support of this, apoE alt epsilon4 does not appear to be as effective as apoE alt epsilon3 or apoE alt epsilon2 in the maintenance of cholesterol homeostasis, and possession of apoE alt epsilon4 alleles can increase the risk of most of these conditions as well.137 The treatment of AD patients with cholesterol-lowering drugs such as statins, already proven effective in the treatment of CVD, has been associated with a reduced risk of AD.49, 94 This reduced risk may be associated with reduced brain cholesterol levels and reduced Abeta production, however improved brain oxygenation may be equally relevant. ApoE also appears to be intimately involved in Abeta degradation in the brain, Abeta clearance from the brain, Abeta deposition, neurite outgrowth, and sulphatide content. The relative importance of each of these roles in AD risk is not yet clear.223, 227

Caloric restriction and exercise,233, 234 and diets with low fat content and high antioxidant, trace mineral, and fish content have been associated with a decreased risk of AD.235, 236 Possession of APOE alt epsilon4 alleles often does not increase the risk for AD in countries where people have low fat diets and more active lifestyles, supporting the concept that modifiable lifestyle factors may contribute significantly to the risk of AD.

An assessment of AD risk that takes into account both environmental and genetic factors may well provide the most useful model for clinical management in the future, with the emphasis on prevention. With mounting evidence for a convergence of AD and CVD risk factors, it is also apparent that improving metabolic health more broadly may well pay significant dividends in reducing the burden of these diseases in the future."

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Glutathione

March 4, 2007 07:35 PM

Here is the summary of a research article summarizing the effects of glutathione on immune function and susceptability to disease. The title is THE ROLE OF GLUTATHIONE IN AGING AND CANCER and the author is JOHN P. RICHIE, JR. American Health Foundation, Dana Road, Valhalla, New York 10595. It was published in Experimental Gerontoloty. Vol. 27, pp 616-626, 1992.

I note for completeness that the glutathione used in the experiments was injected. The form I use is taken orally, but has been show to increase tissue levels. Note also that acetaminiphine was used to deplete glutathione in the experiments. I never take it. And, you do know by now that I take glutathione.

Summary

Our hypothesis is that a deficiency in GSH results in an increased susceptibility to neoplasia, based on the importance of this compound in the detoxification of a wide variety of exogenous and endogenous carcinogens and free radicals, as well as in the maintenance of immune function. Previous results support this hypothesis, as a GSH deficiency was found to be a general property of aging tissues and organisms. Studies in experimental animals have suggested this deficiency is due to a lack of the precursor amino acid, cysteine. Further, a causal role of the GSH deficiency in the aging process was suggested by the increase in longevity obtained when the GSH deficiency was corrected by feeding a Cys precursor. The impact of the GSH deficiency on detoxification capacity in vivo was established using the drug acetaminophen as a metabolic probe. In these experiments, old animals were at greater risk to the detrimental effects of APAP than were younger animals, apparently because of the loss of GSH. Finally, human studies have revealed that a large segment of the elderly population has low blood GSH levels. Studies are underway to determine if these GSH deficient subjects are at greater risk to specific diseases and environmental insults.

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Too Much Cardio and Long Workouts Make You Fat

One of many paradoxes about human fitness and body composition is that too much exercise makes you fat. How can this be since exercise burns energy? Well, because in the long run a lot of low intensity exercise does not burn energy and it redirects energy flow to fat. Human metabolism is highly adaptive; if you burn more fat, the body will resupply more of it.

Why doesn't a lot of low intensity exercise burn off fat? It is easy to see in the gym that it doesn't. What are all the fat people doing in the gym? Walking on treadmills and cycling endlessly and at a very low level of intensity. The evidence is there for anyone to see. The same point is true of bicyclists and joggers; they have a high fat content (fat, skinny joggers). The point is equally true of guys who work out endlessly, doing multiple sets of high reps. Nearly everyone in the gym is too fat, not just in the real world outside, it is everywhere.

I made this point long ago in an interview with a performance publication; too much cardio makes you fat. Now just the other day I saw the point on a sign in Gold's. So I asked one of the trainers, who had no real explanation for it. Few likely do know how or why this happens and are less likely to see the same problem with body builders.

The basic reason is...

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"Got Milk?" Not early humans.

February 28, 2007 09:53 AM

Very informative article about gene selection in the neolithic Scientific American.

It seems there was severe environmental and evolutionary pressure to select for lactose tolerance in the Neolithic.

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A New Workout

February 27, 2007 08:43 PM

I have been doing something rather new in the gym lately. Just getting into it so I am not sure how it will work, but it is a take off on my old idea of Alactic Workouts, which I also called One Fives in my Essay.

If you recall that part of the Essay, I described alactic workouts as workouts that did not produce the abundance of lactic acid that my Hierarchical sets were intended to do. After a warm up on the particular exercise to lube the joints and get the muscles ready, I do 5 one reps separated by a 5 second pause. That means I lift a heavy weight one time, put it down, rest 5 seconds, and then do another rep. I continue until I have done 5-1 reps in all. Then I move to the next exercise.

When you first begin working out this way you may need 15 or 20 seconds to recover before you do another rep. Be sure you are ready for this. Nothing very heavy to begin. Practice excellent form.

I have lately seen this protocol mentioned elsewhere, though I forget where. It is an old idea if you know Evolutionary Fitness, but it now seems to be catching on a bit.

The theory and science behind this is to avoid the fatigue that comes with the build up of lactic acid in the muscle so that each rep is performed with little or no fatigue. This permits perfect form, quick movements, and the handling of heavy weight in a very safe manner. In my view, there is little meaning to the counting of reps. It is the quality of the movement and the execution of perfect form without fatigue that counts. And the challenge of recovering quickly from a strong exertion. If I want to lean out, then I use the hierarchical sets (15, 8, and 4 reps of the same exercise at progressively higher weight to release lactic acid and HGH). I am so lean now that I want muscle quality and power. So, I am doing 5-1 reps on all my exercises, followed by a negative for certain muscles.

This kind of workout is over in very little time and I find it to be immensely productive. It is a bit advanced, so you should introduce 5-1s gradually into your workouts.

Here is roughly what I am doing now (it always varies). As always, do this only if you feel you can do so safely and feel you are ready to handle it. In truth, this method is far safer than going to failure or forcing reps when your muscles are fatigued with lactic acid build up.

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Music

February 26, 2007 10:09 AM

I have music on most of the time in my home and in my car. Usually, it is jazz or a bit of country, with Sinatra and classical music mixed in. I am not sure why, but have often speculated that I am working my motor systems by practicing movements even when still. I surely do this when I simulate a baseball or golf swing in my mind or see a curve I follow on a motorcycle.

New research shows that when listening to music the motor areas of the brain are indeed active. Have a look at one of my favorite sites SfN.

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Brain Nourishment

February 25, 2007 09:59 AM

My daughter-in-law Christine sent me a very informative link to a Guardian news report on research investigating brain biochemistry and violent behavior. Many of the points raised by researchers will be familiar to readers, as I have written about them before. The crowding out over metabolic pathways and the importance of retaining membrane flexibility to maintain a healthy brain are key points of course. So is the unstated relation between membrane fluidity and insulin sensitivity. Even the brain becomes insulin resistant and thus Omega 3 intake is crucial to good nourishment through this mechanism. Earlier research, some of it done at UCI by colleagues, seemed to point to an imbalance of minerals in the brain, particularly of manganese, and violent behavior. Even this link may relate to fatty acid intake for minerals must enter the brain through the membranes and will be deficient if the membrane is not permeable.

I get my Omega 3s in fish and cod liver oil, though I do take Mark Sisson's Omega 3 tablets when I don't eat fish.

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Way Too Much Food

February 20, 2007 09:00 AM

An amusing, but ominous, prediction of the progress of the War on Fat from Way too much.

Off for a few days to ride my KTM 525 in the mountains of Eastern Nevada. Great discussion on failure and related things. Don't go to failure, it teaches failure, There is no failure, only feedback.

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Fatigue

January 31, 2007 11:49 AM

A reader, T. J., was kind enough to send me this summary of an article on fatigue, see below.

The tired, fatigued, exhausted continuum seems to me to be a useful one. They also have an emotional component, noted by Dr. Olson; when I am tired I am usually happy because I have done something challenging and fun and enjoyed the process, even if the result didn't turn out as I had intended (there is no failure, only feedback). If I am fatigued, a rare event, I known that I am probably fighting off a "bug" or doing something I do not enjoy (and probably do not have to do). So, I stop right there.

Exhaustion must be a terrible thing to deal with; it is a total loss of adaptive capacity and dangerous.

The idea that there is just so much energy in the body is certainly wrong; an exhausted person may have thousands of calories of energy stored in body fat and muscle. I don't like these mystical appeals to energy sources, energy pathways, and floating fields that the quacks and gurus of self help nonsense promote.

These states are not physical states, they are states of the nervous system in the advanced stages of fatigue and exhaustion. The nervous system is increasingly isolating the person from the external world.

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Steroids not so bad?

January 29, 2007 07:28 PM

This is a cautious, but informative article on steroids that suggests they are not as damaging as they have been made out to be. On the other hand, they are not as good as they have been alleged to be either. GH is better in almost all respects and is easy to promote through exercise, sleep, diet, glutamine and arginine, and brief stress (even the stress of fasting).

Steroids

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Oldest Persons

This subject has become more rigorous. Just a decade ago it was thought the people in a part of Russia were among the oldest living persons. Then it turned out that many of them had assumed the names of people who had died in order to prove they were too old to be drafted for military service.

The age of 120 looks to be close to an upper limit on human life:
Oldest Humans.

It is worthwhile to note that age at death among humans is not a normal distribution; there are outliers far into the upper tail that defy the outer limits of the normal distribution. When life expectancy is reported, there is usually a failure to note that the expectation depends, in the older cohorts, on the extremely old survivors. Another point is that if you trim off deaths in the ages at the beginning of a survival cohort, the mean rises by quite a bit, even though no one at higher ages may live any longer.

Given its non-normal nature, the oldest life can be expected to rise as the size of the sample increases. This means that most of the rise in longest lives is likely to be due to a more extensive sampling of ages around the world.

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Caloric Density

January 24, 2007 11:46 AM

Thanks to reader Mike for this great link exhibiting caloric density in various foods.

It is caloric density that fattens. The calories must accompany high nutrient density. Many studies show that people wildly underestimate their caloric intake when they graze on snack foods.

A wild bear in Montana who forages at the back of fast food restaurants was recently found to have diabetes. His hunger mechanisms did not protect him because the food was in plentiful supply and the caloric density was higher than would be encountered in the wild in such quantity.

Let's face it, evolution did not produce protective measures against excessive caloric intake. High energy foods were first on the optimal foraging list, but hard to obtain and episodic. A steady intake of high energy density foods would have been impossible to obtain. Now, it is the norm for most people. Diabetes is exploding every where in the world now, even in the wild.

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A Short History of Bodybuilding Nutrition

January 23, 2007 07:21 PM

I really enjoyed this piece on body building and nutrition.

Don't do what body builders do. Gironda comes across better than any of them for his practices and understanding. But, I wouldn't and don't follow his advice either. Jack Lalanne nearly killed himself drinking blood when it clotted in his throat. The Masai have worked out a way to do it, probably by adding an ingredient that is an anti-coagulent.

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Blood Types

January 18, 2007 07:56 AM

A number of health authors make dubious claims about the role of blood types; some advance the metabolic typing theory to claim that certain "types" are better adapted to hunter-gatherer or agricultural diets. It is mostly nonsense, with some slight evidence that suggests the theory to non-skeptical thinkers. After all, you can always find a bit of evidence to support even the most hair brained idea. The question is when does the evidence warrant provisional acceptance of the theory? And what are the other explanations for the pattern of blood types in the evolutionary record?

Now it seems that blood typing can be explained by the distribution of pathogens humans lived with. Blood type has to do with the sugars that attach to the blood cells and control binding to the cell of other agents. This brief piece in the NYT Blood Type discusses the new findings. Certain types afford better protection against bacteria (the A and AB types) and others against viruses (O type).

The slight correlation between blood type and diet would be an indirect relationship between pathogen and life style. Namely, farmers lived with a much higher and slightly different pathogen load than hunter gatherers.

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Sun Exposure Variation, Modern and Ancient

January 5, 2007 03:35 PM

One of the odd things about modern life is that we have dampened the routine exposure we get to sunlight through our use of shelter, clothing, and (now) avoidance of sun and sunblocks. This lessened daily exposure to sun causes our systems to down regulate vitamin D and melatonin production. Both are known to be protective of cancer.

Then we take the family to Cancun and lay in the sun for a week. Or, we hike in bright sun and thin air. Or, spend a week on Palm Springs golf courses. Or, run a marathon or two. This is quite a shock to a body that is adapted to low sun exposure. This kind of low-level exposure with intermittent big shocks may paradoxically be far worse than a higher level of more routine exposure. The protection thought to be provided by routine avoidance sets us up for greater shock and damage when we take the plunge of high exposure. This highly discontinuous variation in sun exposure is far from a natural rhythm of more constrained variation that would have been true in evolutionary times and even in the recent past.

Constrained variation dampens adaptive capacity. Discontinuous variation then becomes a potentially damaging shock to a system that has reduced adaptive capacity. I have made this argument before about exercise and eating and even alluded to the need for temperature variations too. All challenge and expand our adaptive capacity and are protective.

Of course, it goes well beyond that if you consider the kind of training that some athletes do, but here it is the continuous stress with too little variation that does the damage. In the end, it is all about healthy variation.

I happened across an article in by Anthony Yun, a radiologist at Stanford, in Medical Hypotheses that takes this point of view. It goes on to describe some of the pathways that are involved in the responses to discontinuous environmental variation in the modern world.

The abstract is below.

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Kinds of Fat and Fat Resistance

December 29, 2006 09:43 AM

I have been pretty busy the past few months on my invention and company. I have also been giving a lot of talks around the country. So, I have not been posting much. I thought I would end this year with a bit on fat resistance and with some encouragement for the New Year.

It is true that my diet is somewhat higher in fat than either the ADA or AHA recommends. But, my sources of fat are primarily in the Omega 3 and unsaturated fats such as salmon, tuna, nuts, and olive oil. PaleoGal may have a point in observing that by eating low fat meats or trimming the meat to reduce fat content, that there is a bit of an inconsistency in my diet. This is only an apparent inconsistency though.

I am altering my cell membrane fatty acid profile by choosing to eat this way. Membrane cholesterol content is important and my diet leads to flexible, permeable membranes with low cholesterol content. This has many benefits for cell plasticity and function, but it does make the membrane more susceptible to oxidative damage. Hence, the high antioxidant content of my diet.

Altering the membrane fatty acid profile alters its insulin sensitivity. Excess cholesterol content diminishes insulin sensitivity. This is one of the reasons the ADA recommends a high carb diet, though paradoxically, this induces insulin resistance too. A cholesterol laden membrane impairs insulin sensitivity and reduces the stimulation of GLUT4. Thus, we might call this lipid (fat) resistance. Trivalent chromium reduces membrane cholesterol content, which may be the pathway through which chromium improves insulin sensitivity. See the Abstract below for more details (it is almost unreadable unless you are a specialist, but I want you to know there is research that clearly supports what I am saying).

Thus, both elevated insulin. elevated membrane cholesterol, and elevated FFAs induce insulin resistance. Membrane cholesterol content is a contributing factor. So, protect your membranes.

It is sometimes said that fish is brain food. The connection may be that fish sources of fatty acids alter the membrane fatty acid content of brain cells, making them more sensitive to the action of insulin. Certainly, the more pliable cell membrane that results makes the brain cells more flexible and more apt to generate new connections. This would promote learning and brain metabolism. The areas of the brain most susceptible to Alzheimer's are the most insulin sensitive. Thus, the loss of insulin sensitivity through the mechanisms described may contribute to premature senility. I suspect the current epidemic of insulin resistant diabetes will be followed by an epidemic of Alzheimer's disease or insulin resistant senility.

Exercise induces GLUT4 upregulation and metabolism of glucose and FFAs. Why wouldn't you do it? A diet low in cholesterol and high in unsaturated fats gives you the right composition of cell membranes. Why wouldn't you eat this way? It is delicious and close to what our ancestors did. Add a bit of intermittent fasting, make the exercise intermittent, fun, and challenging and get leaner and smarter. That is the Evolutionary Fitness Way.

Try it this New Year. And have a good new year.

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Power and Performance in Children

December 27, 2006 11:06 AM

I have noted the relationship between power and performance to fat free mass before in posting results for wrestlers. At any body weight, those with higher fat free mass, read muscle mass, perform better. I also noted Lance Armstrong's changed body composition during his career which resulted in less fat mass and a slightly higher lean body mass.

Since power output is relatively constant per unit of lean muscle mass, it makes sense to focus on body composition as an objective for performance in sports and life. I have high muscle mass and low body fat; it makes life so easy.

A recent study notes this relationship in children, boys and girls. In the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine (2006) 5, 699-706, Slinger et al show that maximum power output and sports performance is higher in children of the "solid" build. These are children who have large muscle mass and low fat mass. This relationship still holds when adjusted for height (fat free mass per unit of height).

Power output was measured at maximum watts produced on a cycle and sports performance was assessed by a shuttle run. Want your kid to excel at sports? Help him or her develop muscle mass and low body fat. It fundamentally alters the power to weight ratio so essential to excellence in sports (and life).

There is little danger of stunting growth with strength building exercises with supervision. A far greater danger is that your child will be injured in sports with too little muscle mass to support a fat body.

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Losing Weight and Fractal Energy Balance

December 18, 2006 11:43 AM

It is not hard to understand that if you are carrying too much body fat, the real issue in being over weight, you have to expend more energy than you take in to lose it. Each pound of fat contains about 3500 calories and you have to, in some pattern, expend 3500 calories more than you eat to lose a pound of fat. Your energy expenditure and your energy intake must be changed in order to push your metabolism into negative energy balance.

Too many people, I think, emphasize the energy intake side of the equation. Do the simple math. If, say, your energy intake is 3500 calories a day, you have to 1. not eat for a day and then eat the same amount on the other days of the week, to lose a pound of fat a week. 2. eat, say, 500 calories a day less. Or, 3 expend 3500 more calories than your usual pattern per week.

The simple math also makes it very clear that no diet can make you lose 10 pounds of fat and lean body tissue in a week. That requires a negative energy balance of about 35,000 calories; impossible except through the most rigorous energy expenditure reached only by Six Days bicycle competitors. And they would have to not eat anything during the week. Of course, they couldn't do it. These high weight loss claims are bogus and only dramatic water loss could make you lose more than a few pounds a week. For that to happen you have to be binging on diuretics or have a huge stored excess water content. Some people may have that much water since they are carrying a high water load in their excess glucose because they are insulin resistant. The high glucose makes them thirsty. High blood glucose, high body fat, and large water intake to compensate makes them carry a lot of excess fluid. When they drop their glucose by binge dieting, they shed water and lose weight. Only to go right back where they were when they resume their eating and fail to exercise.

It isn't really what you eat that determines your energy balance; it is total energy intake and energy expenditure. Eating the wrong foods can alter your hormones in such a way that you will eat more and take in more energy. Simple carbs will elevate insulin and induce a drop in blood sugar that leaves you wanting more food. Becoming insulin resistant with high circulating insulin is a sure way to eat more because of this binge/crash cycle in blood glucose. Gaining fat makes this pattern worse because fat sabotages insulin sensitivity through many mechanisms.

But, in the end it is total intake and expenditure that matter, not what you eat. Eating nutritious, low energy density, low glycemic natural foods with high fiber content, and ample protein will lessen the blood glucose cycles that contribute to over intake of energy relative to expenditure.

On the other side of the equation, increasing your energy expenditure is extremely effective at promoting a negative energy balance. Not only do you lose fat, you up-regulate your insulin sensitivity and, thus, diminish the insulin spikes that drive your hunger. You also increase your tolerance for exercise so that you are able to expend more energy in spikes or on a daily basis. You also increase your lean body mass and expend energy continuously by elevating your basal metabolic rate.

So, what is this fractal thing?...

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Super Models and Caloric Restriction

If we wished to evaluate caloric restriction outside the lab and using other species than rats, we might look no further than super models. Claudia Shiffer, Naomi Campbell, and Twiggy might be in our study sample. Nearly all high fashion models practice chronic, long-term caloric restriction.

How do they fare? No one has studied their metabolic profiles or evaluated their health measures to my knowledge. This seems a natural experiment just waiting for a scientist to evaluate.

Press reports tend to play up the problems that some models have in controlling their weight. But, that is likely just the press doing what it does; making a big story out of an incident to sell papers. A few models have died from heart attacks that the reporter attributed to the over use of amphetamines or ephaedra. But, it really isn't known if they had pre-existing heart conditions, the most likely killer of athletes, would-be athletes, and, I would hypothesize, super models.

Popular opinion also seems to hold that these models are "wasting away" and in poor health. It is more likely that the opposite is true; they are more likely than the average slightly obese American to be in good health. Because they are not as sophisticated as some of the scientists who follow CR, they may be slightly malnourished or deficient in some nutrients. And, they may engage in questionable practices to maintain low body weight, to the detriment of lean body tissue. It is the poor practices, not the low body fat or body weight that is the problem.

For these reasons, I am inclined to discount a recent popular push to characterize low caloric intake by a female as an eating disorder. I think it is, on the whole, desirable for females (and males) to carry low body fat, while retaining lean body tissue. To label low caloric intake an eating disorder is a rush to diagnosis that is all too evident in popular accounts of medical issues. So, here is betting that a sophisticated super model who knows and practices good nutrition is much healthier than the slightly tubby, going on obese, women I see nearly every day.

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Epigenetic Factors in Evolution

December 5, 2006 08:53 AM

Quite a fascinating article exploring other pathways or evolution based on new genetic findings. I does seem to buttress what I have learned about epigenetic factors and their importance to gene expression. Gene expression is conditioned by what you eat and do. An active lifestyle of the playful Evolutionary Fitness sort is intended to express the active genotype that resides in all of us.

Here is the abstract:

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Intermittent Fasting

December 4, 2006 02:06 PM

I get so many questions about this that I thought I would give a quick summary and guide to my approach to intermittent fasting (IF). I am not recommending this, it is what I do and find works for me. Discuss this with your doctor, if your doctor knows anything about the subject. I find it is rare to find one who knows the subject. IF is safer than crash dieting or even than most diets that are out there, but it is really your choice.

1. The research has not established the benefits of IF conclusively. There are many studies by now, most of them done on rats (poor lab creatures that seem to have only a bit in common with our species or even the wild species). One on humans confirms the rat research. There are doubtless others by now.

2. Wild animals do IF. They cannot avoid it. So did wild humans, when they lived more like wild animals than they do now. So do I.

3. It is well-grounded in the evolutionary evidence as well. My study on "Why We Get Fat" at the Research link above reviews some of the papers on this subject and gives a detailed statistical model on paleolithic energy expenditure and intake. I find that the energy landscape (peaks and valleys of energy balance) is rugged like a fractal. There were deep energy excursions into stored energy and other periods of great abundance. None of this was chronic. It was all episodic, random with a seasonal component, and highly intermittent.

4. About one third of the time our ancestors were in negative energy balance. This is about what I strive for over a period of about a month. You can eat sparingly every third day, every 10 days, or every 15 days, and so on. A good model might be half of your normal intake on the "lean hunting" day and enough to make up for that on the other two days in a three day cycle. But, again, there should be no routine cycles; it should be randomized.

5. The test of effectiveness is your body composition and your insulin sensitivity or serum insulin level. If your blood insulin level does not respond and decline, then you haven't got it.

6. Your total energy intake needn't decline, it should just be made more random. Research does confirm this point on rats and humans (studies are cited in earlier posts).

7. Stay active on your "hungry" day. This signals a GH response, which conserves your protein stores and burns fat. Don't jog or run any distance, but do walk. You do not want to metabolize protein by running very far. A sprint burst - walk form of playful walk is excellent.

8. The hunger ought to hurt a little bit in order to evoke a mild stress response. It is theorized in the research on IF that by triggering an acute, but not long-lasting, stress response IF maintains this essential genetic and metabolic response for really stressful incidents.

9. It is also theorized that IF turns on genes that maintain and repair tissues and some of these genes are now being discovered. The evolutionary element is that when you are hungry you will not successfully reproduce so the genes switch to maintenance programs to keep you alive until you can reproduce later when times are better.

10. You will generally be more active when you are a bit hungry. This seems to be an evolutionary program that makes you look for food when you are hungry. When you are full, you become inactive.

11. All this will work better if you have elevated your energy expenditures into the evolutionary range. This seems to be the range to which the active genotype is adapted. Twice basal metabolic rate is about right for an average energy expenditure.

12. Similarly, if you are active your appetite will become a better guide to your nutritional requirements.

13. Many people may have damaged their hypothalmus with excess food intake and neurotoxins (some doctors think or claim that aspartame attacks the hypothalmus and contributes to obesity but I am not so sure). Giving the hypothalmus some "rest" instead of a constant assault of energy dense food may help to restore its function. Like other organs, the hypothalmus responds to pulses of inputs and puts out pulsate responses. The information in the signal is diminished through neural fatigue when it is constant. Try it yourself with a scent; after trying three colognes at the department store, you won't be able to tell one from another.

14. You will not become weak and get sick. Obesity is far more dangerous to your health and your immune system. In fact, prisoners who are underfed in prisoner of war camps get sick less often than people outside the camps. Or even their guards. Only when they lose so much muscle mass that their organs begin to shrink and decline are they likely to become ill.

15. Finally, IF will help to alter your attitude toward food. Living through a hungry day will make you look at food and how people eat in a different way. It helps you realize that you don't need all that food to feel good. You will see that being, like Cassius, "lean and hungry" is the way to live.

Mom wasn't right when she said eat to keep your strength or you'll get sick. Quite the opposite, particularly in the present environment of energy excess.

One of the most difficult parts of IF or Evolutionary Fitness eating is the social pressure and conventions. Restaurants are particularly difficult. If you eat out often, you are bombarded by cues that evoke your evolved senses and behavioral patterns. These are patterns evolved during a time of uncertain availability of food. If it is in front of you, you will eat it. Our ancestors had to do it. We don't. So, be careful what you let your server put in front of you. Send the bread back or ask that it not be brought to the table. Ask for fresh vegetables in place of potatoes, rice, beans, and other dense energy foods. Or just skip the side dishes and eat the meat with the salad (no croutons). Or, just skip that meal altogether.

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Women and GH

December 3, 2006 02:50 PM

My post just before this does suggest that women adapt to training through more reliance on GH than men. Men, after all, have both GH and testosterone to promote muscle adaptation.

Intensity produces both, though fatigue diminishes testosterone. On balance, it is at least as important for women to engage some intensity in their work outs because they rely more on GH. No woman is going to develop great big muscles working out this way, there is not enough testosterone in their system to do it.

Fatigue and over-training is probably the biggest block to developing muscle in a man. Both women and men, for the reasons I explained in previous post, will lose fat faster doing work outs that combine intermittent levels of intensity. For sure, that is how I work out.

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Women and Working Out

December 1, 2006 10:34 AM

I recommend the same high, but varying, intensity work outs for women that I do for men. Live according to the Power Law with languid periods of rest and ease and brief, intermittent periods of intense activity. This holds for all of us, men and women. Children too. Even your pet will love it. It is a whole lot more fun to do this playful exercise of varying intensity than it is to spend hours on a treadmill. And, it is far more productive.

Women must be cautious and protect their rotator cuff area since it is not a strong as a man's. Other than that, I see no reason to avoid some intensity in a work out for women. The intensity increases GH and post exercise respiration, which is evidence of elevated energy expenditure. And the muscle you build raises basal metabolic rate so that you burn more energy all the time. Intensity means that you use your very expensive FT fibers that burn energy at a rate some 6 to 8 times higher than ST fibers. You also increase your reaction and balance, both essential to a woman preventing a fall later in life. And, you get more bone density to protect you if you do fall. Finally, some intensity will challenge your nervous system to increase your coordination and adaptiveness to stress.

Thanks to a reader T. J. here is a nice summary of a study of GH release and exercise in women.

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Muscle Breakdown in an Elite Runner

November 30, 2006 09:27 AM

From Tom, a reader in New Jersey, this story.

rhabdomyolysis

This is one of the mechanisms that diminishes muscle mass in runners. This case was more severe. The breakdown is a continuous process during a long exertion in any sport. But, it takes a large effort to go this far. There may also have been other elements, as noted in the story.

Of course, elite runners ask too much of themselves. But, so do many of us in other endeavors. I have learned to play and enjoy what I do, not push limits.

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Kettleballs and a Dumb Exercise

November 29, 2006 11:32 AM

Back from a trip.

For those of you who are interested in Kettleball training, here is a new source of equipment and routines Kettleballs

Not to be overly critical here, but here is a dumb exercise from the same source. So, be skeptical of what you read even from sources that claim to be "scientific" in their recommendations.

Do this exercise at your peril. I would never do it.

Dr. McGill's research shows that this exercise puts a load on your spine that is above any of the loads his lab calculated, and the highest of these were almost surely damaging.

This is the exercise that hurt Wonder Woman. Look at the long levers sending their loads directly into the spine. Add the weight of the ball and wonder why anyone thinks this is good for you. As McGill says, most exercises that are done to protect the spine damage it.

I do have some concerns about the spinal loads of some of the loaded reaching movements used by Kettleballers. Remember, the spine must compress to keep the stack of disks from slipping. Compression combined with flexion is the surest mechanism McGill found for producing disk herniation.

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Diet or Exercise for Weight Loss?

November 25, 2006 09:36 AM

There has been a controversy over whether diet or exercise works best for weight loss. It has been a bit misguided, in my opinion, because it is caloric deficit or what I call negative energy balance that causes weight loss. I show this in my "Why We Get Fat" paper above under the Research link. Weight training exercise is the best way of all, but most weight trainers do not let themselves go into negative energy balance. This is because they are trying to add muscle mass. I think I may have convinced you that there is much that is wrong about theory and practice in body building, but the point applies with even more force when weight training is used to lose body fat.

Weight training that builds lean body mass when done in a manner that induces a negative energy balance is the superior way to lose fat and improve body composition. It is not a superior way to lose weight, but that is not the goal anyway. You do not lose as much weight because you build muscle, but you lose far more fat.

Improved insulin sensitivity, improved glucose clearance, and altered hormonal profile along with higher basal metabolic rate and improved exercise tolerance are the objectives of a weight loss program through weight training. And nothing works like Evolutionary Fitness in achieving those goals.

Here is one of the first studies to show that exercise is equally effective in weight loss and superior in hormonal action. Dr. Fontana, a member of the study team, was at the Caloric Deprivation conference where I also spoke. The clear goal of any exercise program is to induce negative energy balance and his protocol is the only one I know of that effectively does this in a well-designed experiment.

Here is the abstract and part of the introduction to the paper...

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Marathoners and Skin Cancer

November 21, 2006 12:59 PM

From a reader named Scott comes this interesting article about marathoning and skin cancer. The remarkable thing is the dose-responsiveness of skin cancer to training time; those who trained more showed more cancerous and pre-cancerous skin cells.

It may not be only sun exposure. More likely it is the combination of chronic exposure with suppressed immunity. Free radicals are behind the skin cancer --- a half hour in the sun depletes the Vitamin C content of the epidermis. Marathoners generate a lot of free radicals from their aerobic activity and their glucose-heavy diet. The loss of peripheral circulation (caused by rerouting blood flow to the muscles) would also be a contributing factor because this denies antioxidants to the skin during training.

The list grows...

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Negatives, Protein Requirements, and Turnover

November 20, 2006 08:37 PM

An odd fact about exercise and protein requirements is this: aerobic exercise increases your protein needs. Anaerobic exercise decreases them. How could this be true?

The answer also explains why aerobic training diminishes muscle mass.

It isn't that hard, when you understand exercise theory at the Evolutionary Fitness level.

Aerobic exercise uses protein as an energy substrate; it burns protein to supply energy for aerobic exercise. It also diminishes the insulin response to protein intake. Anaerobic exercise induces protein sparing through the release of GH, the protein-sparing hormone. Consequently, aerobic exercisers require more protein than anaerobic exercisers do [W. Evans, Protein Nutrition, Exercise, and Aging: Review in Journal of American College of Nutrition, Vol. 23 (2004)].

Even older people, whose dietary intake of food is limited, require 1.6 g of protein per kilogram of body mass per day. Few, if any, take in this amount. The RDA for older people is half that. Pitiful, I say. Aerobic exercise at the RDA will lead to sacropenia, impoverished muscle mass and poor body composition.

A brief look at the evolutionary evidence would be enough to demonstrate this latest discovery of exercise and nutrition science. But, we already knew this. Our ancestors did little of what passes for aerobic exercise. They walked and engaged in intermittent, intense activities. They got plenty of rest and play. They did not jog or run 10Ks, except for fun and to demonstrate their fitness to others.

Since about half or more of their caloric intake was in wild animal sources, they had protein far beyond the RDA. If you combine aerobic exercise, and no anaerobic, high intensity activities...

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Should My Daughter Run 10Ks?

November 19, 2006 04:48 PM

Mark Christensen (author of Supercar) asked if his daughter should continue to run 10Ks. She finished high among 1500 runners in her first race with only light training.

You might be able to guess my answer. I would say No, she should not continue to run them. Some reasons:

1. She did not collapse and, so, may not have a heart issue that will kill her. But, you may not know for sure. She ought to be screened.

2. Light training is OK, but her next step will be to increase training to do better. If it works, she will do better and then come back and train harder. This positive feedback loop is a non-linear path to ill health and much wasted time.

3. Why would she drop tennis, a beautiful and more healthful sport, for the drudgery and risk of long distance running? I don't get it at all. Any bragging rights she might earn are worthless.

4. It is a highly destructive activity. Ankles, knees, hips, and lower back all take a pounding. She will develop poor posture and progressively grow shorter as her spinal disks compress. Her vascular system will become inflamed and she may develop asthma from the LA basin air and high volume breathing. She will age more rapidly and compromise her immune system. Her stress hormones will elevate and her good hormones will decline.

5. She will become slower unless she adds sprinting into her mix. And she is likely to develop a higher level of body fat, particularly if she begins eating the pitiful foods runners eat.

6. The free radicals produced by running and the glucose heavy foods runners eat will expose her to high oxidative stress. Her mitochondria will take a beating and may eventually go into premature decline (though years later).

7. Her muscle mass will decline as the cells go into their suicide program from the heavy inflammation induced by excessive running.

8. The pretty, happy, and athletic young woman that is your daughter will become a fat, skinny, compulsive, overtrained and prematurely aged woman with a slight scowl on her face in place of that smile if she becomes a chronic runner.

9. Her risks of brain cancer will rise as will the likelihood she may be injured in traffic. Or accosted out on a run.

10. It takes too much time and is no fun.

What ever possessed people to do this? As I said in my Charles Staley interview, I believe jogging and running were encouraged by lab research that was seriously incomplete. Researchers were able only to do the lab testing on runners and cyclists because the methods were available for this and the models are far simpler than what is required to do anarobic research. Running is steady state work, power activities are non-steady state and far harder to model. Only now are tools for non-linear modeling of human activity becoming available.

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Charles Staley Interview

November 16, 2006 11:27 AM

Charles and I spoke for about an hour about Evolutionary Fitness. Many of you will know the content if you have been here for long. Newcomers may find it helpful. Charles was a well-informed and lively interviewer. I was talking out on the back patio having just come out of the office for a breather from preparing for my trip and talks.

You can hear the interview at this link Art talking about Evolutionary Fitness

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A Theory of Body Building

November 6, 2006 08:31 AM

I don't think body building is well understood. If you are intent on building muscle mass, you can find a lot of instruction on how to work out or what exercises, sets, sequences and so on to do in magazines and on web sites. There is also a lot of advice on the nutrition side. Yet, none of the advice has any theory behind it. It is just simple empiricism; this works, "Do it" is what you will find. What is the overall concept or theory behind body building?

Individual body builders do offer a kind of proof of concept in that their mass and appearance show that something works to produce those results. But, it seems to me that there is almost no theory that puts existing practices on some kind of conceptual basis and explains what is going on.

Is it possible to remain in an anabolic state more or less continuously? This is one of the "mantras" of body building. Why does volume seem to be so important? What other adaptations are going on in the body that may affect one's state of health and well-being? How can the human body attain such dramatic increases in musculature? Aside from muscle volume and appearance, what other adaptations must the body make to sustain the energy and resources costs of an expanded musculature? How far outside the evolutionary model of human activity and body mass are the practices and mass of a modern, professional level body builder?

No one knows. I think all these questions are unanswered; they are not even asked for the most part. I will be putting some of my thoughts up over the next few weeks.

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More Against Grains

October 31, 2006 10:36 AM

Grains contain gluten, a protein that blocks the absorption of nutrients in the small intestine. Our early ancestors did not eat grains, they were too far down the list in terms of optimal foraging strategy. High value sources like meat dominated all other sources. Then come nuts, honey and sources of fat such as insects. Wild plants then become optimal, of which the damaging and difficult to process grains would have been near the bottom.

Many of us suffer from celiac disease. I don't think it is so much a disease as a natural response in individuals whose genetic make-up is closer to the hunter gatherer origins. These individuals would be from areas that were late to adapt to cultured agriculture. It takes time to weed out gluten intolerant individuals from the gene pool and late-adopting cultures have not had sufficient time. Now it turns out that gluten intolerance is 1. more wide-spread than previously thought, and 2. more damaging than noted.

Primarily, it was thought that the damage to the intestines predominated in celiac disease, indicated by cramping, weight loss, and chronic diarrhea). Now it is know to be responsible for osteoporosis, joint pain, and depression (all linked, perhaps, to the gluten and phytic acid in the grains and their interference with mineral and protein metabolism).

But, there is more. Nutrients are critical to the brain. Celiac disease is now implicated in cognitive decline (Mayo Clinic writing in the Archives of Neurology). The average age of onset was 64, but that is because the study was seeking progressive decline. It could begin much earlier in life than that, especially to a child who is exposed to wheat, rye, barley or oat frequently. This means every bowl of cereal or snack offers new exposure. Amnesia and loss of motor control were also exhibited, as was neuropathy. A pretty bad list of effects.

It is known that when you are exposed to a substance you do not tolerate well, there is an immune response followed by a release of stress hormones, including adrenalin. The "rush" from the hormones can cause you to become semi-addicted to the very substance you cannot tolerate. Hence, if you get a high from eating a bagel or bowl of spaghetti, it is likely a sign that you are gluten intolerant and looking for that adrenalin rush.

If you feel like you are giving up good feelings by eating the Evolutionary Fitness Way, it seems you may be gluten intolerant. If you are, your intestines and brain will pay the price if you indulge that "need" to jump that donut or inhale that bag of chips. Every body is a little grain intolerant; the price you pay for that rush is not just the fat and insulin insensitivity. Your nervous system pays too. You will end up less smart. And your joints may hurt too.

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Answers

October 26, 2006 05:24 PM

There were a few questions about my Lactate Play post. I am on a big project, so I only have a moment, but the questions are easy to answer.

Yes, a workout depletes muscle glycogen and produces lactate. The question is how do you work out with glycogen depleted muscles? You don't and you can't. Your body will regenerate muscle glycogen, sometimes within minutes or seconds. Even after a playfully hard workout, thet depletion only lasts a matter of hours. Muscle glycogen is so important for emergency fight or flight responses that the body wastes no time in repleting lost stores. Just don't guzzle the "repletion drinks" or you will shut down the gene expression activated by the transitory depletion caused by the work out. It is part of the evolved adaptation to lactate producing work.

Alactic work outs are designed to produce strong neural patterns and power. They cannot be truly alactic because the kind of work involved must produce lactate. But, you do so few reps and keep the muscle fresh so that you do not get neural fatigue and you strongly challenge your ability to produce power.

Recall that I do them as a series of "one reps". Do one rep at a challenging weight. Put the weight down and rest momentarily. Then do it again. Repeat up to 5 times. But stop if you feel even a bit tired or if the movement is not quick and in perfect form.

Training to fatigue and poor form trains the nervous system into poor patterns.

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Complexity in Physiology and Medicine

October 24, 2006 04:09 PM

You may know by now that complexity is part of Evolutionary Fitness. It is a blend of the Stone Age with High Tech. The old part is our genes and how they were shaped by evolutionary forces. The new part is the science of complexity. These topics fuse naturally because our ancestors were adaptive and lived in an uncertain world; thus we were made by evolutionary forces to live in a complex and challenging world. Virtually all deep research in physiology relies on complexity.

I have argued often here that averages and thinking based on averages distorts medical decisions. Virtually all distributions of physiological variables that are used to assess health or illness are non-normal distributions and fall into the stable Paretian class.

Now there is a new book on Complexity in Medicine that develops that vision. This is the second prong of a new kind of medicine, one that combines Evolutionary Medicine with Complexity Medicine.

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Metabolic Pathways and Gene Expression

I talk a lot about this topic when I mention that "genes are not destiny" (to remind you that even identical twins can differ enormously in their physiology based on what they do and eat and how that triggers gene expression; see my Twins post) and about muscle gene expression induced by activity and diet (through glycogen content of the muscle) or intermittent fasting (which triggers repair genetic programs).

I have been particularly interested in the role of lactate in gene expression and have pointed out that muscle lactic acid induces the expression of FT muscle fibers. Oxygen induces expression of ST muscle fibers. This is how the muscle "knows" how to remodel itself to adapt to the stress induced by anerobic or aerobic work. I also argued that anerobic-fueled movement is primal relative to aerobic-fueled movement which came along much later in evolution.

Now there is this very interesting article in the Journal of Neuroscience, summarized in this link to the BrainAtlas.org page (a great resource) Genetic Expression in Brain Regions and Metabolic Pathwarys. Note how strongly the motor areas of the brain become differentiated from even the closely related somatosensory areas through the genetic response to the metabolism of lactate. I think this is an ancient adaptation that profoundly shapes the human response to anerobic activity. Primal creatures that moved produced lactate through anerobic metabolism (as do we humans). Lactate metabolism became the signal to express motor areas of the brain to control movement.

If I had to summarize the theory of movement in Evolutionary Fitness, it is to engage in lactate play. That is, to be playfully active in such a manner as to transiently produce lactate or lactic acid. This produces the "burn" you feel when you are doing something that tests your limits. Transient means you don't go deeply into the burn or you damage the muscle tissues and may down regulate motor unit and motor cortex gene expression.

Lactate burns. I have a skin humectant, ammonium lactate, that I sometimes use in the dry climate of Southern Utah. If I put it on my face, it burns just like a muscle close to its limit.

Burn, but just a little and make it intermittent, not regular. Work out to express lactate first and string the intervals together in such a way as to develop strength endurance. The Power Law system is the model of this kind of deep ancestral dynamics.

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Another Breakfast

October 14, 2006 11:30 AM

A whole ham steak, a few slices of honeydo melon, and a bit of coffee. So easy to make and satisfying.

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Mental Obesity

October 11, 2006 10:24 AM

My reader Tim sent me this news article on Obesity and mental function.

But, I think these researchers are following the path of correlation rather than causation, as I argued in my last post on testosterone. They are looking for some mechanism through which abdominal obesity might affect cognition.

I would argue that metabolic disease produces both abdominal obesity and poor brain nutrition. The brain becomes insulin resistant, just as other organs in the body do, so metabolic disease produces abdominal obesity and poor cognition. This is what I mean by mental obesity, not a fat brain, but an insulin-resistant brain produced by an obese, insulin-resistant body.

My friend Robert, a prominent neural pyschiatrist, tells me that the areas of the brain that have the most insulin receptors, the hippocampus and the frontal cortex, are the same areas that show prominant degeneration in Alzheimer's disease. Insulin resistance in the brain means that these key areas are denied nutrition and are suffering a kind of sugar overload.

He hypothesizes that the amyloid proteins that now get so much attention in Alzheimer's research may be the product of insulin resistance in these key brain areas. The amyloid may even be an attempt to protect those delicate tissues from the damage of the underlying metabolic disease that is destroying them. (His argument in this case is not so different from the emerging view that cholesterol is not the cause of cardiovascular disease but evidence of the body's attempt to limit the damage caused by an underlying metabolic disease.)

This intriguing conjecture by an established scientist brings us back to the same hypothesis we often encounter in these simple, correlation studies. An underlying metabolic disease is the cause of both abdominal obesity and declining brain function. The relation between obesity and cognition is just a correlation.

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Hormone Claims

October 10, 2006 04:33 PM

I have an advertisement in front of me that cites several studies to claim that by the time they are 60 years old, men typically produce 60% less testosterone than they did at age 20. Naturally, the ad is selling a product to increase testosterone level. The claim is based on the free or unbound testosterone hypothesis that purports to show that it is the unbound testosterone that is important to a man's body composition and virility rather than total testosterone.

I just happened to see my Urologist to discuss the results of my testosterone test that I previously only received by telephone from the nurse. He says the research literature shows that total testosterone is the key factor, not free testosterone. On this basis he had tested only my total testosterone. You know the level already if you have been here for long; it is 601. He said he had never seen a patient my age with such a high level and that he rarely sees young men at that level.

So, this stuff is all bunk about losing your hormones or sex drive when you get older. What we are seeing is two things: 1. Sedentary ageing does have devastating effects, but that is just the toll taken by a long period of sedentism, not ageing per se. That is what is showing up in these tests. 2. To sell you products, the companies find some exotic and likely meaningless measure and then tell you they have a product to address that. This gives some plausibility to a claim that would otherwise be false.

It would be beyond belief to say that there is a product to increase testosterone production, the lydig cells have only so much capacity and could be driven to exhaustion and collapse if pushed too hard by some stimulant (if there were one). So, the marketers have to find another way.

I think what the research is finding is a simple correlation: sedentary men with abdominal obesity have high levels of binding globules that bind some total testosterone (nobody seems to know the purpose of binding testosterone, how active it is, if and when it is released, or where it is transported to). These same men have low total testosterone, no energy, poor body composition, and low sex drive. A worn out, obese man on the verge of type 2 diabetes of any age will have low testosterone. The process centers around metabolic disease, not ageing.

It is not incidental that high total testosterone is considered to be protective of kidneys. Metabolic disease produces low testosterone and kidney damage, so there is a correlation between low testosterone and kidney damage, but it is not causative. They have the common cause of metabolic disease.

Ageing of the form we see in the West is not so natural. It is a disease of sedentism, over-feeding, and poor nutrition. Sedentism and diet-induced metabolic disease is the root cause of much of what we call ageing.

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Sport Drinks On the Ropes

October 9, 2006 02:28 PM

Fluid replacement guidelines issued by, among others, the American College of Sports Medicine have always been questionable from an evolutionary perspective.

Now Professor Tim Noakes in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (2006, 40) says that the case against fluid replacement guidelines was proven over 20 years ago. A new study using telemetry to monitor hydration and temperature status found that the athletes own body adequately regulated temperature and found no relationship between hydration status and temperature. Temperature and measures of dehydration (sodium and urine concentration) stayed within normal ranges. Even large losses of fluid do not lead to heat illness.

As if the body would not protect itself given its sophisticated homeostatic mechanisms; mechanisms so complex they are still not fully understood. It is a grandious claim to say that research or sports products can improve these evolved homeostatic mechanisms that serve not only we