Mat Lalonde and Paleo Nutrition

Here is a concise write up about Mat Lalonde and the Paleo way of eating:
http://life.nationalpost.com/2010/06/10/qa-mat-lalonde-discuss-the-paleo-diet/

This is a great way to introduce the "why" behind the nutrition prescription of The Proving Ground.

In Search of the Perfect Human Diet

Here is a link to a trailer for CJ Hunt's documentary:

http://www.perfecthumandiet.us/film_demo.htm

The War on Fat

Here is an article I found from Mark's Daily Apple:

http://www.slate.com/id/2248754

It's a short piece and I recommend reading the whole thing. Actually,I wish every nutritionist and MD would read this article and Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Gary-Taubes/dp/1400040787. Here is a VERY telling segment toward the end:

Will this new research on fat and carbs will be reflected in the 2010 Dietary Guidelines? According to Meir Stampfer, a Harvard professor of nutrition and epidemiology who worked on the 2000 guidelines, scientists on this year's committee know perfectly well what the evidence says. But few researchers want to shake the status quo or risk confusing the public. Robert Post, deputy director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, admits that when it comes to nutritional recommendations, "simple messages, few messages, targeted messages, are very important." Ultimately, then, policymakers have to choose between keeping the message consistent and actually getting it right.

So instead of an admission that the lipid hypothesis-dietary fat is bad and kills you so eat more carbs- is based on bad science and wrong, the USRDA doesn't want to confuse people by telling them the truth. This really confirms my extreme apprehension of the government having any say in my personal health decisions. Well, this and the condition of the roads.

Exercise and Weight Control

Here is an article from New York Magazine discussing the role exercise plays in weight control.

http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/

Let me preface this by saying it is my contention that correct exercise is essential for maximizing healthy gene expression, promoting insulin sensitivity, maximizing cognitive ability and slowing the aging process. It also appears to do a pretty good job of promoting muscle growth and increasing bone density. It probably does a lot of other cool things as well. It does not, in my opinion, lead to sustainable weight loss.

Defining healthy exercise is another post for another day. Needless to say, it's not what the American Medical Association or most trainers prescribe. The eat less exercise more crowd lives in a deprived and sometimes sadly obsessed state of overwork and under feeding. It is unsustainable and no fun.

Please forgive me if this is preaching to the choir. Pass this blog along to your friends, family and co-workers who may benefit from its content.

An Excerpt:

The job of determining how fuels (glucose and fatty acids) will be used, whether we will store them as fat or burn them for energy, is carried out primarily by the hormone insulin in concert with an enzyme known technically as lipoprotein lipase—LPL, for short. (Sex hormones also interact with LPL, which is why men and women fatten differently.)
In the eighties, biochemists and physiologists worked out how LPL responds to exercise. They found that during a workout, LPL activity increases in muscle tissue, and so our muscle cells suck up fatty acids to use for fuel. Then, when we’re done exercising, LPL activity in the muscle tissue tapers off and LPL activity in our fat tissue spikes, pulling calories into fat cells. This works to return to the fat cells any fat they might have had to surrender—homeostasis, in other words. The more rigorous the exercise, and the more fat lost from our fat tissue, the greater the subsequent increase in LPL activity in the fat cells. Thus, post-workout, we get hungry: Our fat tissue is devoting itself to restoring calories as fat, depriving other tissues and organs of the fuel they need and triggering a compensatory impulse to eat. The feeling of hunger is the brain’s way of trying to satisfy the demands of the body. Just as sweating makes us thirsty, burning off calories makes us hungry.

One More:

If it’s biology, and not a lack of willpower, that explains why exercise fails so many of us as a weight-loss tool, then we can still find reason for optimism. Since insulin is the primary hormone affecting the activity of LPL on our cells, it’s not surprising that insulin is the primary regulator of how fat we get. “Fat is mobilized [from fat tissue] when insulin secretion diminishes,” the American Medical Association Council on Foods and Nutrition explained back in 1974, before this fact, too, was deemed irrelevant to the question of why we gain weight or the means to lose it. Because insulin determines fat accumulation, it’s quite possible that we get fat not because we eat too much or exercise too little but because we secrete too much insulin or because our insulin levels remain elevated far longer than might be ideal.
To be sure, this is the same logic that leads to other unconventional ideas. As it turns out, it’s carbohydrates—particularly easily digestible carbohydrates and sugars—that primarily stimulate insulin secretion. “Carbohydrates is driving insulin is driving fat,” as George Cahill Jr., a retired Harvard professor of medicine and expert on insulin, recently phrased it for me. So maybe if we eat fewer carbohydrates—in particular the easily digestible simple carbohydrates and sugars—we might lose considerable fat or at least not gain any more, whether we exercise or not. This would explain the slew of recent clinical trials demonstrating that dieters who restrict carbohydrates but not calories invariably lose more weight than dieters who restrict calories but not necessarily carbohydrates. Put simply, it’s quite possible that the foods—potatoes, pasta, rice, bread, pastries, sweets, soda, and beer—that our parents always thought were fattening (back when the medical specialists treating obesity believed that exercise made us hungry) really are fattening. And so if we avoid these foods specifically, we may find our weights more in line with our desires.

Paleo Study

This study came to my attention after visiting http://www.marksdailyapple.com/. The study is from the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. The last sentence is telling.

Conclusions:Even short-term consumption of a paleolithic type diet improves BP and glucose tolerance, decreases insulin secretion, increases insulin sensitivity and improves lipid profiles without weight loss in healthy sedentary humans.European Journal of Clinical Nutrition advance online publication, 11 February 2009; doi:10.1038/ejcn.2009.4.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19209185?dopt=Abstract

A bit off topic, but natural fat is nothing to fear. It is a wonderful source of energy and nearly hormonally neutral. This means you won't have a huge insulin spike when you consume fat. Remember, big insulin spikes signal the body to store energy as body fat. Enormous amounts of anything may trigger an insulin response, so don't eat the whole jar of almond butter as I once did!

Grass fed, free range beef and chicken, wild salmon and the like are all great sources. When you consume feed lot meat, I'd trim the fat a bit. The ratio of Omega 6 fatty acids to Omega 3 fatty acids is very high in animals that have been fed the atrocious low fat grain diet. The best ratio is 2:1 or 1:1.

Skip the man made fat (trans fat, partially hydrogenated stuff, etc.). They are terrible.

They Were Wrong

Heart surgeon Dwight Lundell penned a fascinating piece concerning the erroneous advice given by doctors concerning heart disease. I've posted the entire article below. Here's an interesting excerpt that really hits the nail on the head:

The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity. Let me repeat that. The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet that has been recommended for years by mainstream medicine.
What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.

http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com/2009/02/heart-surgeon-admits-huge-mistake/

How to Make a Pig Fat and Insulin Resistant

Here is an interesting study comparing pigs on a cereal grain based diet with those eating a more hunter/gatherer type diet. Notice that the paleo pigs weighed 22% less than the cereal fed pigs and had 43% less subcutaneous fat. Also, the insulin sensitivity was significantly improved in the paleo sample.

The low C reactive protein exhibited by the paleo fed pigs is an indicator of low systemic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is now being linked to everything from heart disease to degenerative neurological diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. While this trial doesn't contain a human sample, the results are interesting.

Meat, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds. It is so simple.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1635051.

I Agree with Suzanne Somers!

Well, mostly. She has a new book. Please understand, I am not saying buy it. If you want a much better read, get Cordain's The Paleo Diet or The Paleo Diet for Athletes. Enter the Zone by Sears isn't bad either. However, the fact that she says "if you can pick it, pluck it, milk it or shoot it, eat it," is admirable. None of this "everything in moderation and whole grains are good" nonsense!

I'll pass on the cleansing (unproven) and melatonin supplementation (down regulates natural melatonin production). Love her fish oil advice. The testosterone replacement it typically unnecessary when you train using functional movements performed at high intensity. The type of training we do packs a hormonal wallop that trumps the outdated and generally goofy idea of burning calories. This hormonal cascade does not occur when one uses a Thighmaster.

The link to her interview is below. I'm now waiting on the next six signs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46IAZjkR_XA

Hungry?

Doug made a good point last night when he suggested the idea of putting some paleo friendly meal ideas on the blog. If you are not familiar with this way of eating, it can seem a bit daunting at first. The ironic thing is that, in my opinion, eating in this fashion is simpler than many people realize.

With this in mind, I offer the following links that give recipes and suggestions for meals. If I make something that is particularly appetizing, I may post it here as well.

One thing that you will notice in these recipes and paleo cooking in general is the wide array of color. This suggests a high nutrient density. When you look at your plate and see nothing but brown, the nutrient density is suspect.

Here are the links:

http://www.performancemenu.com/recipes/recipes.php

http://mypaleokitchen.blogspot.com/

http://georgesrecipes.blogspot.com/

http://robbwolf.com/

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/

Once you get the hang of it, it's amazing how easy it is to just throw stuff together that tastes great. If the nutrition stuff is interesting to you, check out Cordain's site first (a post or two down from this), then look at the above sites.

Nutrition and Exercise

I've been meaning to post this for a while, but I keep forgetting (probably because I didn't write it down, Peggy). Here is a link to a post by Robb Wolf on Art DeVany's site. Robb is a research biochemist turned strength trainer. He knows his stuff.

The photos provided in his post and the accompanying explanation make a compelling case for the style of training we do combined with a paleo style way of eating. Notice I DID NOT say diet. Who the heck wants to be on a diet?

http://www.arthurdevany.com/2007/11/robb_wolfs_repo_1.html

Here's a link to Loren Cordain's site on paleo eating. He calls it a diet.

http://www.thepaleodiet.com/

Art DeVany Interview

Here's a link to an interview Art did a year or two ago with strength coach Charles Staley. Charles developed an interesting concept called Escalating Density Training (EDT). Very CrossFitesque. Basically, do more work in the same or shorter time frame.

Art's site is great --

http://www.arthurdevany.com/

The link to the interview is here--

http://www.staleytraining.com/media/devany.mp3

I don't endorse everything Art says (his take on religion, for example). However, I find him to be a very well educated source of clarity in the fields of health, wellness and longevity.

Deo volente

Michael Pollan

I mentioned to Joe that I posted a video of a talk Michael Pollan gave a while back. It was buried somewhere in May, so I'm re-posting it here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-t-7lTw6mA

Paleo Nutrition

Here's a video of Loren Cordain PhD talking about the paleolithic nutrition model. His talk has to do with its utilization as a possible treatment for Multiple Sclerosis, however the first part of the series is a good introduction to his concept of eating.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhkmDHLCUEs&watch_response