Perhaps the most widely accepted and damaging element of dietary Conventional Wisdom is that grains are healthy - the "staff of life" - as we've been led to believe our entire lives. While grains have indeed enjoyed massive global popularity for the last 7,000, they are simply not very healthy for human consumption. From two million years ago, when the first Homo erectus arose and steadily evolved into the first modern Homo sapiens between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, and continuing until about 10,000 years ago, humans existed entirely as hunter-gatherers. Early Homo sapiens derived their food from 100 to 200 different wild food sources, including animal meats, fruits, vegetables, and nuts and seeds. Grains were notably absent. Around 10,00 years ago, forces conspired to create a dramatic shift in the human diet. The widespread extinction of large mammals on major continents coupled with increases in population forced humans to become more resourceful in obtaining food.Those living by water utilized boats, canoes, nets, and better fishing tools to enjoy more bounty. On land, humans refined theor toolmaking and hunting strategies to include more birds and small mammals in the food supply.
Escalating competition for animal-sourced food led to agricultural innovations sprouting up independently in the most advanced societies around the world (Egyptians, Mayans, etc.). As wild grains (which were a very small part of some earlier diets but difficult to harvest for any significant yield) and, much later, legumes became domesticated, humans derived more and more calories from these readily available high-calorie sources, a trend that has continued to the present day - with dire consequences.
Loren Cordain, Ph.D., author of the Paleo Diet, explains: For better or for worse, we are no longer hunter-gatherers. However, our genetic makeup is still that of a paleolithic hunter-gatherer, a species whose nutritional requirements are optimally adapted to wild meats, fruits, vegetables, not to cereal grains. There is a significant body of evidence which suggests that the human genetic makeup and physiology may not be fully adapted to high levels of [cultivated] grain consumption. We have wandered down a path toward absolute dependence upon [cultivated] grains, a path for which there is no return. .... Costs to the individual were also significant. The flourishing of agriculture paralleled a reduction in average human life span as well as body and brain size, increases in infant mortality and infectiouse diseases, and the occurrence of previously unknown conditions such as osteoporosis, bone mineral disorders, and malnutrition. As cultural and medical advancements have eliminated most of the rudimentary health risks faced by early humans (infant mortality, predator danger, minor infections turning fatal, etc.), we can now live long enough to develop, suffer, and die from diet-related diseases, including atherosclerosis, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes...
Grains offer the great majority of their calories in the form of carbohydrate, so they cause blood glucose levels to elevate quickly. High carbohydrate foods such as sugar and grains (and to a lesser extent, legumes-which we'll dicuss shortly) have been recently and suddenly introduced to the human food supply (that's right, even 10,000 years ago is "recent and sudden" in evolutionary terms) and yet are consumed in massive quantities. These sugars and grains shock our delicate hormonal systems, which are better adapted to what today would be considered a low carbohydrate, high fat diet. ... A grain-heavy diet stresses the all-important insulin regulation mechanism in the body. After consuming that bagel, scone, muffin, French toast, or bowl of cereal (all derived from grains) and a glass of juice for breakfast, your pancreas releases insulin into the bloodstream to help regulate blood glucose levels.Even after the routine meal just described, many Americans technically become temporarily diabetic, with blood glucose levels soaring to clinically dangerous levels. You know the drill by now. After your meal, insulin is released into the bloodstream to promote the storage of glucose as muscle glycogen or direct its conversion to fat. Experience this often enough and you gain weight and develop insulin resistance and Metabolic Syndrome. If, instead you were to have a Primal Blueprint breakfast consisting of a delicious cheese-and-vegetable omelet with some bacon, you would enjoy a moderate insulin response, leading to balanced energy levels for the hours after your meal instead of a sugar high and insulin crash. Furthermore, with blood glucose levels balanced, you would be able to access and burn stored body fat for energy until your nest insulin-balanced meal.
(The Primal Blueprint)
"GRAB THE BULL BY THE HORNS"-SAMMY "THE BULL" GRAZIANOS
The Human Body And Mind Are Not Genetically Adapted To The Diet And Lifestyle That The Agricultural Revolution Brought About Around 10,000 Years Ago And They're Especially Not Genetically Adapted To The Diet And Lifestyle Brought About By The Industrial Revolution And Today's Information Age. This Is Why Diseases And Psychological Disorders Caused By This Evolutionarily Novel Lifestyle And Diet Have Skyrocketed Over The Past Several Centuries (We're Maladapted To Our Current Technologically Advanced Society).
http://lileks.com/institute/bread/3.html
You hear a lot these days about toxins in the food chain - things like mercury, PCBs, and iodine. The alleged culprit is usually a chemical introduced into the environment by humans and found to be harmful to laboratory animals in large doses. The media sound the alarm, people fuss about it for awhile, and then the hysteria dies down. No one seems to get sick from these things. As a doctor, I've personally never seen any illness I could relate to mercury, PCB, or iodine toxicity. It makes interesting news, but the amounts of these pollutants in our food are usually much too small to make us sick.
However, I do see patients suffering from the effects of another toxin everyday. It's a mixture of two chemicals, amylase and amylopectin, that people introduced into their food only recently in the span of human existence. But unlike the toxins you read about in the newspapers, this one exists in our foods in, frankly, toxic concentrations. Although its effects are subtle, sometimes taking years to do its damage, it often leads to progressive disability, disease, and death. Where are we getting this toxin? We make a point of adding it to nearly every meal we eat. It's the main ingredient of bread, potatoes, and rice and is more commonly known as starch.
Starch is, in fact, the same tasteless paste laundries use for stiffening shirt collars. The word starch comes from the Old English word sterchen, "to stiffen," which is what it does to your arteries. Most of us don't think of starch as a toxin because the foods that contain it are so familiar to us. We've been eating bread, potatoes, and rice all our lives, as have our parents and grandparents. Indeed, many people can get away with eating large amounts of starch without harmful effects because they are genetically resistant to its harmful effects or have certain activity patterns that protect them. However, for those of us who are susceptible - which includes about 40 percent of the population - starch toxicity is a menacing reality. Consumption of amounts common in our modern diet can lead to serious problems like diabetes and heart disease - but not before causing years of unsightly, frustrating obesity.
When you're young, your body can handle a lot of starch. Your pancreas makes plenty of insulin, and your tissues respond very well to it. However, as you age - especially if you have a genetic predisposition to insulin resistance - the way your body metabolizes glucose slowly changes. Your pancreas continues to make plenty of insulin, but your body begins losing its responsiveness to it. As a result, your pancreas has to make increasing amounts of insulin to keep your blood glucose levels down. As time passes, your body's ability to produce insulin begins to lag. If the pancreas can't secrete enough insulin to overcome insulin resistance, glucose starts backing up in the bloodstream, the condition we call diabetes.
The tissues that line blood vessels are particularly vulnerable to high blood glucose levels. Diabetes eventually leads to blood-vessel disease, the most common cause of death and disability in the industrialized world. However, diabetes is the only late stage of starch toxicity. Profound body chemistry disturbances precede diabetes by decades, causing quirky appetite regulation and imbalances between good and bad cholesterol that promote cholesterol build up in arteries. The most frustrating problem, though, is a tendency to accumulate excess body fat.
How did the foods we rely on the most to prevent hunger - the so-called staples like wheat, potatoes, and rice - end up causing so much trouble? For millions of years, humans roamed the earth, hunting game and gathering natural vegetation for food. Starch was not a major part of their diet. They consumed it only in minute quantities locked up in the protective husks of seeds that were not particularly appealing to eat.
In nature, starch provides a concentrated source of energy for seeds to sprout. The seeds of grasses that are native to regions with long, hot dry seasons and short, temperate wet seasons are especially high in starch, which jump-starts these plants so they can mature quickly during short growing seasons. Impermeable husks protect the seeds from the sun and predators during the dry season.
Around ten thousand years ago - very recently in the span of human existence - people living in the eastern Mediterranean region and South Asia, where wheat and rice grew naturally, figured out how to extract the starchy cores of the seeds from their protective husks by grinding them between rocks. They used these kernels to stave off starvation when meat and fresh vegetation were scarce. For the first time, humans discovered a plentiful source of calories for which they didn't have to compete with other predators and that they could store for months.
Later our ancestors found that by adding water and heating these kernels, they could make them more palatable. As time passed, they discovered more ways to make starch taste better. They added fat to flour to make it moist, leavened it with yeast to lighten it, and added sugar to sweeten it. Because high-starch foods have to be processed or "refined" before they can be eaten, they have come to be called refined carbohydrates.
The cultivation of wheat in the West, rice in Asia, and corn in the New World was a boon to humankind. These staples provided - and continue to provide - an efficient means of preventing starvation. Of all the foods humans eat, refined carbohydrates supply by far the most calories with the least investment of land, labor, and capital.
Not only did the domestication of wheat, rice, and corn change the human diet, but it also transformed civilization. The ability to stockpile food supplies freed humans from having to forage constantly. This encouraged cooperation, division of labor, and eventually formation of governmental structures. Along with government and spare manpower came armies of conquest. Eventually, the eastern Mediterranean and South Asian regions gave rise to the dominant civilizations of the world, and reliance on starchy staples spread to most societies on earth.
The cultivation of refined carbohydrates represented a major change in the human body's chemical environment. Prehistoric humans ate only small amounts of starch entangled in fiber and encapsulated in impervious husks. It takes hours for the digestive tract to process such foods. It was a shock to the human metabolism when, instead of the occasional granule of starch, people began consuming cupfuls at every meal in concentrated, rapidly digestible form.
Your body handles refined carbohydrates differently from other kinds of foods. As soon as starch hits your stomach, it breaks down to glucose, which short-circuits directly into your bloodstream without traveling more than a few inches down your intestinal tract. Within minutes, your blood glucose levels shoot up to heights never experienced by your prehistoric ancestors.
If genetic changes were needed to handle this abrupt change in digestive physiology, the human race has not had enough time to evolve them. Genetic adaptation requires millions of years, but starchy staples have been around for only about ten thousand - a mere tick of the evolutionary clock. It isn't surprising that the shift to refined carbohydrates that has occurred in the last few thousand years has had a profound effect on human health.
WHEAT (GRAIN), RICE (GRAIN), POTATOES, AND ALL OF THEIR BYPRODUCTS AS WELL AS OTHER REFINED CARBOHYDRATES WILL BE THE DEATH OF ALL OF YOU. (I'LL ADDED MORE PARAGRAPHS TO THE PASSAGE ABOVE THIS WEEKEND.)
Any wonder that 70% of the country is overweight/obese? These are the top 10 calorie sources, almost all of it garbage.
"IN CALIFORNIA WITTA VEGAN CHICK SHE SAID 'THE ONLY MEAT SHE EAT IS DICK'!" -YO "ADRIAN" GATTI
The L.A. Times Is Telling ME That Processed Meats Are NO GOOD For You! I've Known This For A While, L.A. Times! Mark Sisson Told ME To Especially Avoid Hot Dogs, Hamburgers, And Packaged Lunch Meats! My NiggaLunch Meeeaaat! (http://www.marksdailyapple.com/processed-meat-bad/#axzz3sT5oAgvf)
Is It Cancer Causing? No, Not If You Eat It In Moderation Along With A Balanced Diet (Lots Of Vegetables).
IF YOU WANT TO LIVE LONG AND HEALTHY YOU'VE GOT TO STOP EATING HIGH GLYCEMIC LOAD FOODS THAT YOUR BODY ISN'T ADAPTED TO PROPERLY METABOLIZE, PARTICULARLY REFINED CARBOHYDRATES, WHICH RAISE YOUR BLOOD SUGAR LEVEL TOO QUICKLY, TOO HIGH, AND FOR TOO LONG. THAT MEANS STOP EATING NOODLES, PIZZA, PASTA, HAMBURGERS (SPECIFICALLY THE BREAD), HOT DOGS (SPECIFICALLY THE BREAD), SANDWICHES (SPECIFICALLY THE BREAD), BURRITOS (SPECIFICALLY THE RICE AND TORTILLAS), TACOS (SPECIFICALLY THE TORTILLAS), FRENCH FRIES, ONION RINGS, CHIPS, BAGELS, PANCAKES, CEREALS, MUFFINS, DONUTS, CAKES, COOKIES, GRANOLA BARS, ETC., ETC., ETC. AND START EATING FOOD THAT YOUR BODY HAS EVOLVED TO EAT AND PROPERLY USE AS FUEL FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS (I.E. GREEN VEGETABLES, LOW SUGAR FRUITS, OMEGA-3 FATS, MONOUNSATURATED FATS, SATURATED FAT, AND PROTEIN IN THE FORM OF LEAN BEEF, FISH, AND POULTRY). THE MAJORITY OF FOOD THAT YOU WERE RAISED TO EAT AND THE MAJORITY OF FOOD THAT YOUR CULTURE HAS CREATED WITHIN THE PAST SEVERAL HUNDRED TO SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS IS NOT GOOD FOR YOU. THE ONLY DIET THAT'S GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH IS THE PALEO DIET (WHAT OUR PALEOLITHIC ANCESTORS ATE FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS). LOOK AT PATRIC YOUNG OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IF YOU NEED PROOF OF THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF THIS DIET (THE ORIGINAL DIET OF THE BLACK MAN).
Your Glycemic Load Intake Should Be No More Than 500 A Day. In Other Words, The Foods You Eat On A Daily Basis Should Not Have A Glycemic Load Total Of More Than 500. This Means You Should Avoid Refined Carbohydrates Such As "Bread, Potatoes, Rice, Breakfast Cereal, Pasta, And Sugar Containing Soft Drinks." Why? Because The High Glycemic LoadOf These Foods Leads You To Overproduce Insulin And Too Much Insulin Leads To Weight Gain, Diabetes, Heart Disease, Cancer, And A Whole List Of Other Ailments. "Don't Eat A Load (A High Glycemic Load), Eat A Toad!" 474 × 423
Say no to
the glazed doughnut, yes to strawberries and yogurt. Ignore the chips;
crunch a handful of almonds. Reach for sweet potatoes instead of white
in the produce aisle. Subtracting high-GI foods while you add low-GI
alternatives to your plate multiplies your chances for weight-loss
success. You banish the foods that crank up your blood sugar and your
insulin levels - and that lead to cravings, binges, fatigue, and weight
that won't budge. You eat more of the good stuff that keeps you feeling
full and satisfied, which helps you lose weight.
Researchers
like Dr. Ludwig suspect that America's obesity epidemic is tied in part
to our 30-year romance with low-fat diets high in refined carbohydrates
- the high-GI stuff. Eating too many refined carbs (like low-fat diet
cookies and cakes) overwhelms your bodies ancient blood sugar control
system - and can set off a cascade of hormones that pad fat cells.
Here's
how it happens: A high-GI meal (say, a doughnut, coffee, and apple
juice for breakfast) can drive blood sugar up twice as high as a low-GI
alternative (such as steel-cut oatmeal with chopped apples and
cinnamon). Insulin levels soar, pushing the sugar into your muscles and
liver cells. That leaves your blood sugar lower than before you ate!
You're famished and may reach for more high-GI foods. Meanwhile, high
insulin levels deliver a one-two punch that makes your body gain
stubborn weight: They send more excess calories into fat cells, and they
prevent fat cells from releasing this stored energy when your body
needs it. (Insulin suppresses the biochemical system that pulls fat from
cells and burns it for energy.)
In
contrast, a low-GI meal raises blood sugar slowly and steadily. Insulin
levels rise only high enough to gently push glucose into waiting cells,
where it is burned for energy. Your blood sugar stays low and steady
for hours.
"The
idea with low-GI eating is that we recruit fundamental biological
mechanisms in the body so that blood sugar stays lower, you feel fuller
faster, and the body doesn't seem to react to the diet with as much
stress," Dr. Ludwig says. "Eating this way will help people stay on a
weight-loss diet longer, without as much of a struggle. They'll be less
hungry, their metabolic rate will stay a little higher, and they'll feel
better."
...
Blood sugar is not
a bad guy. This sweet stuff is your body's best friend - rocket fuel
for hardworking muscles and brain cells, energy that (like extra
flashlight batteries or the nation's strategic oil reserves) can be
stored and then released at precisely the moment you need it most.
It's
only when levels rise too high - or sink too low - that blood sugar has
serious, negative consequences for your mood, your weight, your energy
level, your health, and even your life. The trick to staying on blood
sugar's good side is simple: Work with - not against - the intricate and
intelligent biochemical system that keeps levels within a healthy
range. Your first step? Understand how your blood sugar control system
works by reading this brief owner's manual.
Nearly
all of the blood sugar that powers your cells comes from the carbs on
your plate - the fruits, veggies, grains, and sugar that your digestive
system converts into the tiniest of sugar molecules: glucose.
In
a sense, carbs are like candy. Whether you're eating corn chips,
chocolate mousse, or broccoli spears, carbohydrate foods all contain
chains of sugar molecules. Some chains are short. Others are long. Some,
like the sugars glucose and fructose , need almost no digestion before
they can be absorbed into your bloodstream. Others, like the fiber in
oatmeal, are so tough that your body cannot break them down.
The
moment you slide a forkful of apple pie or mashed potatoes into your
mouth, a series of enzymes begins breaking apart these chains.
Ultimately, all carbs are converted into glucose, fructose, or galactose
- tiny sugar molecules that slide easily through your intestinal wall
and into the bloodstream. There's one more stop before this new supply
of blood sugar can reach hungry cells: the liver. Here, cells hold on to
some glucose for later use (it's stored in a form called glycogen). And
fructose and galactose are converted into glucose. Like gasoline pumped
into the tank of your car at the start of a summer road trip, the
glucose that circulates in your bloodstream is now ready to power your
mind, muscles, and metabolism.
...
Not
all carbs are created equal. Some reach the finish line faster than
others - and when it comes to healthy blood sugar, bet on the tortoise,
not the hare. High-glycemic carbs, such as white rice and white bread,
are broken down and absorbed swiftly, raising blood sugar fast.
Low-glycemic carbs move through your digestive system slowly and release
sugar into your bloodstream slowly. Many factors influence how rapidly
or slowly a carb becomes blood sugar. Among them: whether you've also
consumed something acidic (like vinaigrette dressing) or fatty (like
butter on bread), both of which slow absorption; whether the starch in
the food has been thoroughly cooked (the longer you cook a starch, the
faster it's absorbed by your body); whether the carb is surrounded by a
tough coating such as the covering on beans and seeds, which slows absorption; how finely a carb such as flour has been ground (finer grains
absorb faster); and whether a carb comes with digestion-slowing viscous
fiber (as do oatmeal and lentils).
"FULL OFFA FAT BURGER BUTT I GOTTA BIG MAC" - GET THAT (CUETE 2X)
Muscle
cells and the tissues of organs throughout your body rely on glucose
for energy to function. Walking, breathing, sweating, digesting,
producing new cells, growing a baby during pregnancy, and thousands of tiny intercellular functions are all driven by this teeny-tiny sugar.
Your
body's top glucose hogs are your brain and nervous system, which
collectively consume about half the glucose that circulates in your
bloodstream. Even at rest, the brain devours a great percentage of your
glucose supply than your body uses while active.
It
takes just 7 ounces of pure glucose - less than 1 cup - to fuel the
daily work and play of your cells. Like a thrifty Boy Scout, your body's
glucose abides by the motto "Be prepared." About 40 percent of the
glucose released after a meal is stored in the liver and muscles in a
form called glycogen. When blood sugar falls between meals or food isn't
available, the liver releases its supply into the bloodstream as
glucose. Muscle cells also hoard glycogen for their own private use.
(And when your body runs out of glycogen, fat cells release fatty acids
for use by skeletal muscles, your heart, and other tissues.)
Your
glucose reserves must be replenished daily. Your body keeps only about
1,900 calories' worth of glycogen in its larder - enough to sustain you
for about 16 hours. When that runs low, it burns fat and even uses
protein to create more glucose. Most Americans have more than enough,
however, thanks to overeating, inactivity, and a taste for refined
carbohydrates. When there's an overload of glucose, your liver and
muscle cells can run out of storage space. The excess sugar is stored -
as fat.
But
if you exercise (the Sugar Solution plan recommends at least 30 minutes
at least five times a week), you not only burn more glucose, you also
activate a mechanism that pulls blood sugar into the cells that's
independent of insulin. You get a double benefit: no excess insulin,
lower glucose.
Normal
blood sugar stays within a range of 60 to 90 milligrams of glucose per
deciliter of blood (mg/dl) before a meal and rises to between 120 and
160 mg/dl after eating. Experts admire the body's ability to maintain
this precise, narrow range around the clock and suspect its main purpose
is to keep sugar supplies to the brain steady. (Brain cells can store
only the smallest amount of extra glucose and cannot use fatty acids for
power; they must constantly "sip" from the bloodstream.)
If
blood sugar control is a balancing act, hormones act as the tightrope
walker's pole. "Blood sugar regulation involves a balance between
hormones that raise blood glucose and those that lower it," says Robert
Cohen, MD, professor of medicine in the division of endocrinology and
metabolism in the department of medicine at the University of
Cincinnati and director of the diabetes clinic at University Hospital in
Cincinnati. The key players: insulin, which lowers blood sugar by
persuading cells to absorb it; and glucagon, which tells the liver to
release stored glucose.
Insulin
is produced by the beta cells in the pancreas. Under healthy
conditions, these clever cells sense glucose levels in the bloodstream
and adjust their insulin output accordingly. After you eat, insulin
levels rise. Once released, insulin ushers glucose out of the
bloodstream and into waiting cells throughout the body. When sugar
levels fall, so does insulin production.
But
if you're overweight and inactive, receptors on muscle, liver, and
organ cells throughout your body may grow deaf to insulin's signals.
Then, your beta cells pump out extra insulin, raising your risk for
stubborn overweight as well as health problems. Over time, overeating
fatty and sugary foods may prompt your beta cells to lose their smart
ability to sense changes in blood sugar levels. They stop producing the
right amount at the right time. Blood sugar levels rise dangerously.
If
you haven't eaten in a while, alpha cells in the pancreas send glucagon
into the blood. This hormone raises blood sugar by signaling the liver
to give up its glycogen stores. Glycogen becomes blood sugar, ready to
feed your body's fuel-hungry cells. If you overeat foods that raise
blood sugar dramatically, this system can stay turned on and prevent
your body from burning a secondary fuel: fatty acids stored in fat
cells. This is a problem if you're trying to lose weight.
Meanwhile,
chronic stress can keep another blood sugar backup plan switched on for
to long. If you need a sudden burst of energy - to outrun a charging
saber-toothed tiger, for example - your adrenal glands churn out stress
hormones including epinephrine and cortisol, which tell your body to
release and burn stored glucose. That worked well for cavemen and
cavewomen, who faced short-term stresses like marauding cats. As you'll
discover later in this book, 21st-century chronic stress can keep these
hormones raging, leaving you with higher blood sugar around the clock.
Chronic stress can also prompt you to overeat and store extra fat in
your belly...which leads to more insulin resistance. Stress reduction
isn't a luxury; it's a necessity for maintaining a healthy weight!
Like
a jewel-encrusted Faberge egg or a vintage 1953 Studebaker, your body's
system for managing blood sugar is a beautiful anachronism. Built to
withstand the frequent famines, scarce feasts, and heavy physical
demands of Stone Age life, it's out of place in a 21st-century landscape
of cinnabons, stuffed-crust pizza, and pay-per-view. Your body lives by
prehistoric rules designed to keep mind and body running oh-so-frugally
on a sometimes meager supply of glucose. It extracts every molecule of
sugar from the foods you eat, then conserves precious glucose - hoarding
the energy in muscle and liver cells for the times you need it most.
Yet
Twinkies have replaced wild raspberries; grain-fed beef and supersize
fries have replaced freshly dug roots and lean wild game rich in good
fat. Calorie consumption has soared, and daily exercise means walking
from the front door to the car - not a 15-mile trek to the next watering
hole.
The
world has changed; our bodies have not. And a growing stack of research
links that fundamental mismatch to an amazing variety of modern-day,
blood-sugar related health problems including heart attack, stroke, high
blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, infertility, and even Alzheimer's
disease, as well as birth defects, sexual dysfunction, blindness, kidney
failure, and amputation. Even more alarming: The workings of this
ancient sugar control system can put you at a high risk for serious
conditions even if your blood sugar levels look normal. Of
course, risk rises higher if sugar levels soar into the prediabetic
range, and higher still if you develop full-blown type 2 diabetes.
The
problem isn't just sugar. Insulin - the hormone that tells cells to
absorb blood sugar - plays a major role, too. In tiny amounts, this
powerful protein is healthy and essential. But if inactivity, belly fat,
and a high-fat, high-sugar diet have made your cells insulin
resistant...your body pumps out two to three times more insulin than
normal in order to force sugar into cells. The ploy works. Your cells
receive the sugar they need (and your blood sugar levels will look
normal on a fasting blood sugar test). But the excess insulin can raise
your blood pressure, clog your arteries, overtax your pancreas (raising
diabetes risk), promote the growth of cancer cells, stop ovulation, and
dim memory.
Once
this hidden high blood sugar begins to do its damage, you develop a
condition called metabolic syndrome, in which biochemical changes
triggered by insulin resistance begin to alter systems throughout your
body. Metabolic syndrome can simmer undetected for decades...Blood sugar
levels will rise into prediabetic and then diabetic zones if your
pancreas can no longer produce enough insulin to overcome insulin
resistance.
HEY, KNOW WHAT'S PALEO? KOREAN BBQ. THE BULGOGI, GALBI*, BIBIMBAP WITHOUT THE RICE, AND SIDE DISHES (THE KIMCHEE LIKE STUFF) IS ALL PALEO, I BELIEVE. JUST LIKE SASHIMI, DAIKON, AND SEAWEED ARE ALL PALEO. JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING IN JAPANESE CUISINE BUT THE RICE AND MISO SOUP ARE PALEO (I MAY BE LEAVING SOME THINGS OUT).
(The High Carbohydrate (Heavy Junk Food, Heavy Fast Food) Diet Doesn't Work Well For The Polynesian, But They Eat It Anyway. Hmm...Fast Life History Strategists. They're Living For Now, Not Later!)
I hate when my doctor says "you shouldnt be eatting for 2" well then explain to me why im so fucking hungry all the damn time?!!
"Because
You're Eating All The Wrong Foods, Hone Grey Hamo. You Eat Sugary Foods
And Other High Carbohydrate Food (Fast Food, Junk Food, Etc.) That
Turns Into Sugar When You Digest It, Which Boosts Insulin Levels And High
Insulin Levels Ultimately Makes You Hungry Again (You Quickly Become
Hungry AGAIN After Digesting Sugary And High Carbohydrate Food). If You
Ate Less Sugar, Less Processed Foods, And More Fiber, Protein, And
Healthy Fats (Monounsaturated Fats, Polyunsaturated Fats) You'd Feel
Satiated (Full) For Longer Periods Of Time. By The Way, Have You Noticed
That The Majority Of Polynesian Toddlers Are Way Overweight And Well On
Their Way To Developing Diabetes, Heart Disease, And Other Obesity
Related Diseases? That Starts With Their Mother's Poor Diet And
Continues With The Poor Nutritional Diet That Their Family Feeds Them. BREAK THE CYCLE." - Peter Dagampat Ph.D.
In the evolutionary sequence of the Homo species, consumption of
animal flesh, the development of tools, and the need for communication
and collaboration all led to the progressive growth of brain size. As
brain size increased, pelvic size could not keep pace and Homo
newborns were born incompletely developed, requiring an extended time
after delivery before achieving independence, much longer than other
primates. The prolonged nature of human child rearing enhanced the
enculturation process.
The sequence continues with the evolution of Neandertalensis and Cro Magnon, the latter being the first of the Homo sapiens,
the forerunners of modern humans, appearing some 180,000 years ago.
Brains volumes reached a height of around 1600 cc, teeth were virtually
free of decay and deformity, with consistent evidence for nutritional
adequacy with absence of signs, for instance, of iron deficiency or
malnutrition. (The Wikipedia image at left shows the largest brained Homo that ever lived, Cro Magnon.) While life for early Homo
certainly had its challenges, such as nematode infestation from
poorly-cooked fish, or traumatic injury (leg fractures were uniformly
fatal), malnutrition was not generally a problem for Homo. Pre-Neolithic life was, from a nutritional viewpoint, quite good . . .
That is, until around 10,000 years ago when Homo sapiens first added grains.
The hunter-gatherer cultures of the Fertile Crescent added wild einkorn
and emmer wheat. The inhabitants of southeast Asia added rice that grew
wild. The Native Americans living in the southeastern coastal North
America, MesoAmerica, and the west coast of south America added maize.
The inhabitants of central Africa added millet and sorghum. (Of course,
the timeline of grain incorporation is not quite as clean as this.
Maize, for instance, gathered and then cultivated in what is now modern
Peru something like 4000 years ago. For the sake of simplicity, we will
call it roughtly 10,000 years Before Present.) What happened to Homo sapiens who added grains? The anthropologists tell us that grain-consuming Homo:
–Experienced an explosion of tooth decay. While tooth decay was rare
among scavenger-hunter-gatherers, it became commonplace in grain
consuming humans. Tooth decay was accompanied by tooth abscess and tooth
loss.
Most
Full-Blooded Polynesians Have Good Tooth Structure And Dental
Formation. Properly Aligned Teeth And Proper Tooth Spacing Is Much More
Common Among Them Than Other Ethnic Groups. Both Females Above Are A
Good Example Of This. Look At Their Teeth. They're Perfectly Aligned,
Spaced, And Even. (Maintaining This Good Structure And Formation And
Actually Keeping Their Teeth Is Another Story All Together. Polynesians,
Especially On A High Carbohydrate Diet, Are Prone To Cavities, Tooth
Decay, Tooth Chipping, And The Complete Loss Of Teeth (Wholesale Loss Of
Teeth).)
NiceTongan Teeth (I'm Looking For This Little Tongan Girl Rite Now. She Had Perfect Teeth And Way Above Average Attractiveness For Being Tongan Even Though She Was A Little Small For Her Age, But I Can't Seem To Find Her Paige! She's A Little On The Small Side, But Might Be Friends WithLisah Mounga @MissLees06 and loox!)
Notice
How Her Two Front Teeth Slightly Turn Inward? That's A Trait
Characteristic Of Female Polynesian Teeth. In Fact, She Has The Classic
Polynesian Tooth Structure As Well As The Prototypical Polynesian Face.
She's About A 7-7.5 On The Scale Of Facial Beauty (Fairly High For A
Samoan).
Any Of Y'all Ever Had A Female Dentist Repeatedly Rub One Of Her Breasts Against Your Cheek And Mouth While She Was Working On You Teeth? I Have! A Korean Dentist In Rowland Has Done That, A Persian* Dentist At USC Has Done That, And Tammy (That Vietnamese Dentist From Fountain Valley) Has Done That! I Think They Only Do That To Guys That They Find Attractive And Unconsciously Want To Have A Baby With! *Kooshyar Tahmasbi's Wife!
...consider cavities. Cavities are the work of bacteria that adhere to teeth in a thin film of plaque. Most bacteria in your mouth are natural and harmless, but a few species create problems when they feed off starches and sugars in the food we chew and then release acids that dissolve the underlying tooth, creating a pit. Untreated, a cavity can expand and worm its way deep into the tooth, causing excruciating pain as well as serious infection. Unfortunately, humans have little natural defense against cavity-causing microbes other than saliva, presumably because we did not evolve to eat copious quantities of starchy, sugary foods. Cavities occur at low frequencies in apes, they are rare among hunter-gatherers, they started to become rampant following the origin of agriculture, and they spiked in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today cavities afflict nearly 2.5 billion people worldwide. Although cavities are evolutionary mismatches who causal mechanisms are as well understood as scurvy, they remain extremely common today because we don't effectively prevent their root causes. Instead, cultural evolution has devised successful treatments to cure cavities once they occur by having a dentist drill them out and replace them with fillings. In addition, we have developed some partially effective ways to prevent cavities from being more common through brushing, flossing, sealing teeth, and having a hygienist scrape plaque off our teeth once or twice a year. Without these preventive measures, there would be many billions more cavities than the billions that already exist, but if we really wanted to prevent them, we would have to reduce our consumption of sugar and starch drastically. However, ever since farming, most of the world's populationhas been dependent on cereals and grains for most of their calories, making a truly cavity-preventing diet impossible for all but a few. In effect, cavities are the price we pay for cheap calories. Like most parents, I let my daughter eat cavity causing foods, encouraged her to brush her teeth, and sent her to the dentist, knowing full well that she'd probably get a few cavities. I hope she forgives me. Unlike scurvy, cavities are therefore a kind of mismatch disease that is still prevalent because of a feedback loop - vicious circle - caused by interactions between cultural evolution and biology. The circle begins when we get sick or injured from an evolutionary mismatch that results from being inadequately adapted to a change in the body's environment, either from too much, too little, or too novel a stimulus. Although we often treat the disease's symptoms with varying degrees of success, we fail to or choose not to prevent the disease's causes. When we pass on those environmental conditions to our children, we set in motion a feedback loop that allows the disease itself to persist and perhaps increase in prevalence and intensity from one generation to the next. In the case of cavities, I didn't pass on my cavities to my daughter, but I did pass on a diet that causes them, and she is likely to do the same to her children.
The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease. Lieberman, p. 175-176.
Cavities Became More Prevalent Throughout The Human Population As We Moved From A Hunting And Gathering Way Of Life To An Agricultural Based Lifestyle, Which Led To A Greater Consumption Of Grains (Carbohydrates) And As I've Previously Stated, A Diet Higher In Carbohydrates Leads To Disease, Including Disease Of The Gums And Teeth! (Carbohydrates Cause Cavities Because The Bacteria In Our Mouth Quickly Turn Those Carbohydrates Into Acids And Those Acids Burn Through Our Teeth!)
An additional and very significant health problem caused by farmers' diets is due to lots of starch. Hunter-gatherers eat plenty of complex carbohydrates, but farmers grow and then process cereals, roots, and other plants that are rich in simple carbohydrates, also known as starch. Starch tastes great, but too much can cause a raft of mismatch diseases. The most common of these maladies is rotten teeth. After a meal, starches and sugars stick to your teeth and attract bacteria that multiply and combine with proteins in your mouth to form plaque, a whitish film surrounding the tooth. As the bacteria digest sugars they excrete acid, which is trapped by the plaque and then dissolves the enamel crown, causing cavities. Cavities are rare among hunter-gatherers but extremely common in early farmers. In the Near East, the percentage of individuals with cavities jumped from about 2 percent before agriculture to about 13 percent in the early Neolithic and became even higher in later periods. Figure 17 shows some painful-looking examples. Cavities, I should add, were hardly a trivial concern before the invention of antibiotics and modern dental care. A cavity that penetrates below the crown into the dentine is not only excruciatingly painful but also can cause a severe, possibly fatal infection that starts in the jaw and moves into the rest of the head.
The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease. Lieberman, p. 193
Neanderthals hardly ever suffered from cavities because they ate mostly meat and plants and very little carbs or sugar. High starch of today’s food erodes enamel and causes tooth decay, which you can see on people’s teeth in the archaeological record #neanderthalmuseum
Although it sounds like a dramatic event associated with a volcano, tooth eruption is simply the slow process of teeth pushing their way through the gums and visibly emerging in the mouth. For permanent molars, this happens around age 6. Sometimes, certain teeth do not erupt properly, a situation known as altered passive eruption (APE).
APE can cause a person’s smile to appear “gummy” because one or more teeth remain partially covered by the gums because they don’t fully protrude into the mouth. Although this is not widely considered a health risk, it does play into the aesthetics of a person’s smile.
Teeth normally erupt through the gums during childhood and continue development until early adulthood, shrinking back from the tooth until stabilizing in place. https://www.instagram.com/p/B5j1e5qFWeb/ Gummin' AtCha!
Notice The Hamo Girl's Teeth Spacing (Or Lack Thereof)? Why Are Her Teeth So Crooked And Crowded? READ BELOW.
During my senior year in college, my jaw ached for months. I tried to ignore the discomfort and coped by taking pain relievers until, during a routine tooth cleaning, my dentist ordered me to see an orthodontic surgeon without delay. An X-ray showed that my wisdom teeth (third molars) were unwisely trying to erupt but did not have enough space. They had rotated in the bone and were jamming into the roots of my other teeth. So, like most Americans, I had oral surgery to remove these unwelcome teeth. In addition to being painful, impacted wisdom teeth push other teeth out of proper position, they can cause nerve damage, and they sometimes lead to serious oral infections. Before the invention of antibiotics, such infections could be life-threatening. How and why did evolution design our heads so poorly with insufficient room for all our teeth, putting you and me at risk of severe suffering and sometimes death? What did people do about impacted wisdom teeth before penicillin and modern dentistry?
Evolution turns out to not have been such a bad designer. If you look at lots of recent and modern skulls, you will quickly appreciate that impacted wisdom teeth are another example of an evolutionary mismatch. The museum I work in has thousands of ancient skulls from all over the world. Most of the skulls from the last few hundred years are a dentists nightmare: they are filled with cavities and infections, the teeth are crowded into the jaw, and about one-quarter of them have impacted teeth. In contrast, most of the hunter-gatherers had nearly perfect dental health. Apparently, orthodontists and dentists were rarely necessary in the Stone Age. For millions of years, humans had no problem erupting their wisdom teeth, but innovations in food preparation techniques have messed up the age-old system in which genes and mechanical loads from chewing interact to enable teeth and jaws to grow together properly. In fact, the prevalence of impacted wisdom teeth has many parallels to osteoporosis. Just as your limbs and spine will not grow strong enough if you don't sufficiently stress your bones by walking, running, and doing other activities, you jaws won't grow large enough for your teeth and your teeth won't fit properly if you don't stress your face sufficiently from chewing food.
Here's how it works. With every chew, muscles move you lower teeth forcefully against your upper teeth to break down food. Anyone who has stuck a finger accidentally in another person's mouth knows that humans can generate bone-crunchingly high bite forces. These forces not only break down the food, they also stress your face. In fact, such chews cause bones in your jaws to deform as much as your leg bones deform when you walk and run. Chewing also requires that you apply those forces repeatedly. A typical Stone Age meal - especially something tough like a gristly steak - might require thousands of chews. Repeated high forces cause your jaws to adapt over time by growing thicker in the same way that running and playing tennis cause your arm and leg bones to grow thicker.In other words, a childhood spent chewing on hard, tough food helps your jaws grow big and strong. As a test of this hypothesis, my colleagues and I raised hyraxes (small but adorable relatives of elephants that chew like humans) on nutritionally identical hard and soft diets. The hyraxes that chewed harder food developed jaws that were significantly longer, thicker, and wider than the ones who chewed softer food.
The mechanical forces generated by chewing food not only help your jaws grow to the right size and shape, they also help your teeth fit properly within the jaw.Your cheek teeth have cusps and basins that act like little mortars and pestles. During each chew, you pull the lower teeth against the upper teeth with near pinpoint precision so that the cusps of the lower teeth fit perfectly into the basins of the upper teeth and vice versa. Therefore, to chew effectively, your lower and upper teeth need to be just the right shape and in exactly the right place. Tooth shape is mostly controlled by genes, but proper tooth position in the jaw is heavily influenced by chewing forces. As you chew, the forces you apply to your teeth, gums, and jaws activate bone cells in the tooth socket, which then shuttle the teeth into just the right position. If you don't chew enough, your teeth are more likely to be misaligned. Experimental pigs and monkeys raised on ground, softened food that never required them to chew forcefully develop abnormally shaped jaws in which the teeth are improperly aligned and don't fit together.Orthodontists take advantage of the same mechanisms - in which forces push, pull, and rotate teeth - to straighten and align people's teeth using braces. Braces are basically metal bands that apply constant pressure to teeth to move them where they ought to be.
The bottom line is that your jaws and teeth grow and fit together through many processes that involve more than just chewing forces, but a certain level of munching and crunching is necessary for the system to work properly. If you don't chew forcefully enough when you are young, your teeth won't be in the right position, and your jaws may not grow large enough to accommodate your wisdom teeth.Many people today therefore need orthodontists to straighten their teeth and oral surgeons to remove their impacted teeth because our genes haven't changed very much over the last few hundred years but our food has become so soft and processed that we don't chew hard enough and often enough. Think about what you ate today. It was probably highly processed: pureed, ground, mashed, whipped, or otherwise chopped into bite-sized pieces and then cooked to be soft and tender. Thanks to blenders, grinders, and other machines, you can go through a day eating wonderful food (oatmeal, soup, souffle!) without having to chew at all. As chapter 5 reviewed, cooking and food processing were important innovations that allowed teeth to become smaller and thinner during the evolution of the genus Homo, but we have recently taken food processing to such extremes that children often don't chew as much as they need to for normal jaw growth. Trying eat like a caveman for a few days: eat only roasted game. roughly chopped vegetables, and nothing that has been ground, pureed, boiled, or softened using modern technologies. Your jaw muscles will fatigue because they are not used to working that hard. Nor surprisingly, the effects of modern, wimpy diets are abundantly clear whenever orthodontists look in people's mouths. For example, young Australian Aborigines whose families recently transitioned to Western diets have smaller jaws and serious tooth crowding problems compared to their elders, who grew up eating more traditional foods. In fact, over the last few thousand years human faces have become about 5 to 10 percent smaller after correcting for body size, about the same size reduction we see in the faces of animals fed cooked, softened food.
Much as I think malocclusions and impacted wisdom teeth are mismatched conditions whose causes we fail to prevent, it would be absurd to abandon orthodontics and force children to chew mostly hard, tough food. I can only imagine the tantrums and other problems that parents would confront if they tried to save on orthodontic bills this way. I wonder, however, if we could reduce the incidence of orthodontic problems by encouraging children to chew more gum? Many grown-ups consider chewing gum to be unaesthetic and annoying, but dentists have long known that sugar-free gum reduces the incidence of cavities. In addition, a few experiments have shown that children who chew hard, resinous gum grow larger jaws and have straighter teeth. More research is needed, but I predict that chewing more gun would help the next generation to have its cake and more often eat it with their wisdom teeth too. The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease. Lieberman, p. 305-309.
The Nickerson Gardener ("An Old Lady Told Me How To Plant A Fuckin' Garden...You Gotta Feed A Seed To Grow A Fruit...You Niggas Watered Down...Tru" - Pacman Tha Gunman)
EXERCISE DOESN'T LEAD TO AS MUCH WEIGHT LOSS AS YOU INTUITIVELY ASSUME. WEIGHT LOSS (YOUR METABOLISM) IS PRIMARILY DETERMINED BY YOUR GENETIC MAKEUP, JUST LIKE YOUR BODY WEIGHT IS PRIMARILY DETERMINED BY YOUR GENETIC MAKEUP. SO IF YOU'RE FAT THERE'S NOT MUCH YOU CAN DO TO NO LONGER BE FAT OTHER THAN ACCEPTING THE FACT THAT YOU'RE GOING TO BE FAT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.
If
"a calorie is a calorie" and one ingested equals one burned, then
exercise should cause weight loss, and doing a lot of exercise, even if
you keep eating the same foods, should make you shed some serious
poundage.But it doesn't. The calories you eat or drink may have a positive effect on your weight, but the energy you burn doesn't do the opposite.There is not one study that demonstrates that exercise alone causes
significant weight loss, and a meta-analysis (designed to assess
significance over many stuies at once) proved it.; moderate exercised
resulted in a weight loss of 2.2 pounds and vigorous exercise in a loss
of 3.5 pounds. Given our current obesity epidemic, that just ain't gonna
cut it. As an example, a friend of mine decided to clear her post-baby
"muffin top" by initiating a moderate-to-vigorous exercise program.
Twelve weeks later, she was up five pounds. She felt better, but her
muffin top hadn't changed. She asked me what she was doing wrong.
Nothing. I told her. She was doing just find and likely much healthier
than at the outset. Her waist would be smaller, but the muffin top was
subcutaneous fat; she could still "pinch the inch." She got into her
pre-pregnancy jeans anyway.
RAGGAMUFFIN!
Burning
a pound of fat liberates 2,500 calories, so it had always been assumed
that you can lose one pound by eating 2,5000 calories less or exercising
2,500 calories more. However a recent scientific analysis shows the
fallacy of expecting increased energy expenditure to promote weight
loss. As people lost weight, their energy intake had to drop even
further to keep the weight loss going. On average, obese people had to
eat 3,977 calories less to burn off that one pound of fat. So you can
see that trying to burn weight off with exercise is extremely difficult,
if not downright impossible. A second reason that exercise doesn't
cause weight loss is that when you exercise, you build muscle. That's
good for your health, but it doesn't reduce your weight.
If
chapters 4-9 say anything, it's that studying an event a complex as
obesity means looking at the entire gamut of behaviors - because, in the
real world, none of them occur in isolation, and all of them are driven
by biochemistry. Guaranteed, if you hold food intake constant and then
institute vigorous activity, some weight loss will follow, but
not much. That's why every exercise plan promotes good nutrition.
And that's why so many weight-loss programs want to sell you their food.
But it's the biochemistry that drives the behavior.
Oh,
you say to me, I know people who joined the armed forces and they lost a
lot of weight. Wrestlers do it all the time. NFL linemen show up in
training camp overweight and out of shape and by the end of the
exhibition season they're back at playing weight. This is the fact that
perpetuates the myth. Anyone can lose weight if his or her environment
is changed. "Boot camp" is a secluded and controlled environment. Every
aspect of your daily regimen, from food to exercise to sleep, is
regulated. The trick is to change behavior while in your routine
environment. Don't bet the ranch. As we learned in chapter 4, behavior
is a result of biochemistry, and biochemistry is a result of
environment. Even the contestants on The Bigger Loser get a personal trainer and a chef to control their environment. But
in a free-range situation, in which the general populace finds itself,
energy intake will rise to meet energy expenditure to maintain the same
level of adiposity. And in the majority of obese people, we know why:
leptin...again.
To
explain energy expenditure, we're going to assume a
2,000-calorie-intake and 2,000-calorie output for an average person.
This value comes both from observation and from the Harris-Benedict
equation, a guesstimate used by dieticians to generate dietary plans for
individual patients.
Everyone equates energy expenditure with exercise. Your aerobics instructor will yell at you, "Feel the burn." Burning it means burning it. In point of fact,physical
activity is the minority of energy expenditure, accounting for anywhere
from 5 percent (the ultimate couch potato, at about 100 calories) to 35
percent (the gym rat, at about 700 calories) of total energy
expenditure based on the level and degree of activity. While physical
activity may not account for the largest percentage of energy
expenditure, it is the only component that will improve your health - and the more you do, the better.
There are two other component.It
might seem hard to believe, but the largest percentage of your
calories is burned while sleeping and watching TV (but this does not
mean that you should increase your hours on Facebook or World of
Warcraft). Resting energy expenditure (REE, the energy you burn lying on
the couch) accounts for about 60 percent (or 1,200 calories per day) of
total energy expenditure, is dependent on your size, and is usually
excluded from concern. Lastly, a process called the thermic effect of
food (TEF, the energy you burn to absorb, digest, and metabolize the
food you eat) accounts for about 10 percent (or 200 calories).While it's true that for the most part REE and TEF are not easy to
change in most people, it should be noted that some patients with
obesity exhibit problems with each. And there are some tricks to
increase REE and, to a lesser extent, TEF (see chapter 18).
Rudy
Leibel at Columbia University in 2004 was quoted as saying, "Obese
people tell me all the time they eat very little, they eat like a
bird...well, maybe a pterodactyl." Yet Rudy himself showed that in
response to weight loss, REE declines commensurate with the number of
pounds lost, working to keep your weight stable. Don't blame your
exercise regimen; blame your biochemistry.While
you're burning more energy by going to that Zumba class, your REE is
going to thwart you by evening out your overall percentage. Fat cells
want to remain filled; they aren't going away without a fight. In
response to a decline in either leptin synthesis or leptin signaling
(which the hypothalamus interprets as starvation), REE is reduced from
50 calories per kilogram fat-free mass to 42 calories per kilogram
fat-free mass, or an improvement in energy efficiency of 16 percent,
resulting in a decrease of total energy expenditure of 0.16 x 0.65, or
10 percent. Assuming that standard adult 2,000-calorie intake, that's
a decrease of 200 calories, which easily rivals the increase in caloric
intake that has been observed in the past thirty years.
Furthermore,
there are patient that have specific reductions in REE as part of their
general pathology. As REE accounts for the majority of energy
expenditure, this is the greatest predictor of weight gain. Children
with certain forms of developmental delay are born with lack of muscle
tone (called hypotonia) and are "floppy" at birth. Children with various
forms of mitochondrial dysfunction (e.g. Prader-Willi syndrome) burn
energy at rest about 60-70 percent of normal. This means they need fewer
calories. But that means a lower leptin, and their brain feels starved,
jacking up the caloric intake.
You
have to put energy in to get energy out. Chewing, moving food through
the GI tract, absorbing, and processing food will burn some energy. TEF
usually accounts for 10 percent (or 200 calories per day) of all energy
burned. Many obese children are not hungry when they awaken (in part
because many of them had a big snack or meal just before bedtime), so
their body's degree of energy burning is not ratcheted up prior to their
departure for school. This is one reason, among many, that eating
breakfast is important for perevention and treatment of obesity,
especially in children (see chapter 18). Not eating breakfast has many
other disadvantages. It means not performing well on tasks because of
distraction due to lack of food. Not eating breakfast means the stomach
hormone ghrelin, which conveys the signal for hunger, is not suppressed
throughout the morning. Obese people
rationalize not eating breakfast by saying that's one less meal's worth
of calories. That couldn't be further from the truth. Numerous studies
show that people who skip breakfast eat more duringthe
daylight hours, in part because ghrelin rises to high levels. This leads
to overconsumption of calories at lunch, dinner, and prior to bedtime,
all driving further obesity.
Even though oxidation of fats (see chapter 10) liberates a lot of energy, a little bit of energy is spent making it work. Another
way to take advantage of TEF is to consume some form of protein at
breakfast. Burning protein costs more energy than burning other
foodstuffs. Protein does not stimulate insulin to the same extent as
carbohydrates do, and increases satiety better than other nutrients. So
consuming some protein at breakfast is a smart and very defensible
practice. People who eat veggie omelets at breakfast are way less hungry
at lunchtime.
Finally,
physical activity. You can be completely sedentary, or you can be
Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. The range of energy expenditure by
physical activity that humans can achieve is quite remarkable; topped
perhaps only by how many calories can be eaten. Phelps eats everything
in sight, on the order of 12,000 calories a day. As hard as he works, he
doesn't expend 12,000 calories in physical activity - even marathon
runners don't burn that kind of energy. The Cleveland Clinic Center for
Consumer Health estimates that a 130-pound runner will burn 2,224
calories during a marathon, a 165-pound runner will burn 2,822 calories,
and a 10-pound runner will burner 3,593 calories. Yet Phelps can eat
anything he wants, and he doesn't gain weight. That's because
exercise increases the number of mitochondria in the form of increased
muscle. And increased muscle means you burn more energy at rest . So
Michael Phelps has a higher REE than you do. And that's why exercise is
good; because it builds muscle, and muscle burns energy even at rest.
Physical activity is the most misunderstood aspect of obesity medicine. People think if they exercise they will lose weight. That's a pipe dream.
Most of the studies of exercise for obesity in children are free-range
community interventions and use either weight or BMI as their outcome.
And no amount of exercise is going to change BMI, a measure of body
size, because BMI is the wrong outcome. In the absence of environmental
control, caloric intake will increase to meet the shortfall. Remember,
your subcutaneous fat can actually be good for you. But as discussed in
chapter 8, the target of exercise is muscle and bone.
So,
if you're going to lose weight, why go to spin class? Why is exercise
so good for you? Diet is about pounds, exercise is about inches. Diet is
about weight, exercise is about health. Exercise does the one thing
that dietary restriction cannot: it builds muscle. This is a poorly
understood concept, because most people, including clinicians, equate
BMI with body fat. BMI does not take into account the difference between
muscle and fat, or the difference between subcutaneous and visceral
fat. Several studies have examined body composition before and after
long-term exercise. What they show is that percentage body fat declined.
Absolutely true. But it's because muscle increased. And, in the
process, metabolic status improved - both because visceral fat went down
(a little) and because muscle went up (a lot) (see chapter 18).
You want to
improve your insulin sensitivity - and exercise does just that. It
makes you build muscle at the expense of visceral and especially liver
fat. But you can't see this by stepping on a scale.By
improving insulin sensitivity and lowering insulin levels, exercise
improves leptin signaling, thereby increasing your sympathetic tone (see
chapter 4), energy expenditure, and quality of life.
And
these metabolic improvements translate into disease prevention. A study
of thirty-eight thousand American men showed that physical activity was
more potent in preventing heart disease than being normal weight. But
what about the ultimate outcome: does exercise promote longevity? A
recent study out of Taiwan looking at the death rates of over four
hundred thousand subjects suggest that moderate-intensity exercise for
fifteen minutes a day could increase lifespan by as much as three years,
even in patients with known heart disease. And they didn't control for
diet; if they had, they would have seen an even greater effect of
exercise on longevity. Given that 15 minutes a day accounts for only
91 waking hours a year, or 273 hours in 3 years, 3-year life extension
for 273 hours of exercise performed is a pretty darn good trade.
Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease. Lustig, p. 140-146.
When I say “cardio”,
I’m referring to steady-state, repetitive activity done at a moderate
intensity like jogging outdoors, running on a treadmill or climbing the
Stairmaster. [Side note: the idea that you have to perform this type of
activity to benefit your heart and vascular system is false. Anything
that places a demand on the muscles – including so-called anaerobic
activities like weightlifting – will also condition the heart and
vascular system.] Most people are surprised to learn that cardio doesn’t work for weight loss. How could this be? There are three main reasons:
caloric burn during exercise is generally small;
people who exercise more also tend to eat more (which negates the weight regulating effect of exercise); and,
increasing specific periods of exercise may cause people to become more sedentary otherwise.
In an example of the first reason, a study following women over a
one-year period found that in order to lose one kilogram (2.2 pounds)
of fat, they had to exercise for an average of 77 hours. That’s a lot of time on the treadmill just to lose 2 pounds! In an example of the second reason, a study found that people who exercise tend to eat more afterwards, and that they tend to crave high-calorie foods. The title of this study says it all: “Acute compensatory eating following exercise is associated with implicit hedonic wanting for food.” I love it when researchers have a sense of humor. In
an example of the third reason, one study assigned 34 overweight and
obese women to an exercise program for 8 weeks. Fat loss at the end of
the study was an average of 0.0kg.
Not very impressive. But the researchers noticed that some women did
lose weight, while others actually gained. What was the difference? In
the women that didn’t lose weight, the increase in specific periods of
exercise corresponded with a decrease in overall energy expenditure.
Translation: they were more likely to be couch potatoes when they
weren’t exercising, which negated the calorie-burning effect of their
workouts. If you’re still not convinced, the Cochrane group did a review of 43 individual studies
on exercise for weight loss. Study length ranged from 3 to 12 months,
and exercise sessions lasted on average 45 minutes with a frequency of
3-5 times per week. The results? On average, the additional weight loss
from exercise averaged about 1 kg (2.2 pounds). Meh. Assuming they worked out for 45 minutes 4x/wk over 6 months, that means they had to exercise 69 hours to lose that 1 kg.
Why cardio may be harmful
Too much cardio exercise has a number of harmful effects on the body:
Overtraining is especially damaging because of its effects on cortisol. We discussed cortisol at length in Step 6: Manage Your Stress,
but in this context what’s important to understand is that too much
exercise can disrupt our natural cortisol rhythm and drive levels too
high initially, and depress them over time. Cortisol dysregulation
promotes abdominal fat gain and muscle loss, which in turn causes
further weight gain. There’s also some evidence that frequent endurance exercise may promote – rather than prevent – heart disease. Dr. Kurt Harris summarized a study
performed on 102 active marathon runners and 102 age-matched controls
to determine the effect of aerobic exercise on cardiovascular health. The
marathoners were between 50 and 72 years of age, and they ran an
average of 35 miles per week. They had no known history of heart disease
or diabetes. The control group was similarly aged and also had no
history of cardiovascular or metabolic disease. You might be surprised to learn that the marathon runners were three times more likely to have heart damage than the non-runners. Among the runners, there were 12 heart attacks vs. 4 attacks in the non-runners. In another study
by the same authors, the more marathoners ran, the higher their
likelihood of heart disease. In fact, the number of marathons ran was an
independent predictor of the likelihood of irreversible damage to the
heart tissue.
No cardio? Then what should we do instead?
In short, we should
move like our ancestors. They didn’t strap on a heart monitor and take
off for a 45-minute jog, nor did they go down and swim laps for an hour
in the local lake. Yet they were extremely fit and almost entirely free
of the modern diseases that plague us today. They performed
low-intensity movements like walking, gathering foods or working in
other capacities on a regular basis. These periods of low-intensity
activity were punctuated by brief periods of much higher-intensity
activity – such as going on a hunt, running for a predator or fighting
for survival. This is the type of movement our bodies are adapted
for, and thus this is what we should aim for in our daily lives. But how
do we do that? As Mark Sisson suggests, we should:
Move frequently at a slow pace
Lift heavy things and sprint occasionally
Move frequently at a slow pace
Moving frequently at a slow pace
means approximately 3-5 hours a week of low level activity like walking,
cycling, gardening, hiking, performing manual labor, etc. This mimics
our ancestral pattern of movement, helps maintain a healthy weight,
promotes proper metabolic function and provides a foundation for more
strenuous activity. Another benefit of this type of activity is that
it’s often performed outdoors. Spending time outdoors reduces stress,
increases vitamin D levels, and brings us pleasure, joy and a sense of
connection with the world around us. I think one of the best ways
to do this type of movement is to integrate it into your daily life.
This could include commuting to work and doing errands on foot or by
bicycle, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, doing your own
gardening and yard work, etc.
Your body is a complicated biochemical, hormonal soup controlled mostly by what you eat.
When scientists actually studied how lean protein influences health, well-being, and body-weight regulation - and this has occurred only in the last two decades - they found that our ancestors were right all along. It turns out thatlean protein is perhaps our most powerful ally in the battle of the bulge. It has twice the "thermic effect" of either fats or carbohydrates, which means it revs up your metabolism. In other words, proteins thermic effect increases our metabolism and causes us to burn more calories than if we ate an equal caloric serving of either fat or carbohydrate. Also, more than fats, more than carbohydrates, protein has the highest "satiating value" - that is, it does the best job of making us feel full.
The principles I have laid out in the Paleo Diet - all based on decades of scientific research and proved over millions of years by our ancestors - will make your metabolism soar, your appetite shrink, and extra pounds begin to melt away as you include more and more lean protein in your meals.
People have been taught for years that losing weight is about calories in and out, as if it was just a math problem. That isn't true--not all calories are created the same! 1,000 calories of steamed broccoli doesn't send the same messages to your body as 1,000 calories of candy.
When it comes to human metabolism, this basic law of physics is a bit more complicated: All calories are not created equal. Protein is different from carbohydrates and fats.
How do you burn calories? Some you burn at a very low level all the time as part of your "resting metabolism" - for basic, unconscious functions such as beating of the heart, breathing, and digestion. You burn more calories when you move and still more when you exercise.
The common wisdom is that there are only two ways to burn more calories than you eat: Eat less or move around - exercise - more.
But there's another way to burn calories - a subtle process that can work wonders over weeks and months to create a substantial, long-term caloric deficit. Best of all you don't even have to get out of bed to reap the benefits. This amazing phenomenon is called the "thermic effect," and the key to making it work is protein.
This is how it works: During the digestive process, your body breaks down food into its basic components - carbohydrates, fats, and proteins - and turns them into energy it can use. There's a trade-off: To get the energy from the food, the body must spend some of its own energy. There's a scientific name for this use of energy to digest and metabolize food - "dietary-induced thermogenesis" (DIT). Carbohydrates and fats generate about the same low DIT. Protein's DIT is huge in comparison - more than two and a half to three times greater. So, in order for the body to obtain energy from dietary protein, it must give up almost three times more energy than it needs for either fat or carbohydrates.
What this means is that protein boosts your metabolism and causes you to lose weight more rapidly than the same caloric amounts of fat or carbohydrates. A study carried out at the Dunn Clinical Nutrition Center in Cambridge, England, by Dr. M.J. Dauncey and colleagues showed that during a twenty-four-hour period, a high-protein diet increased total energy expenditures by 12 percent (220 calories) compared to a calorically matched high-carbohydrate diet.
Think about it. You don't have to cut the calories one bit. You can lose 20 to 30 pounds in a year with utterly no change in the quantity of food you eat or even any change in your exercise habits. Or a lot more than that if you exercise more or eat less...
The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Foods You Were Designed to Eat. Cordain, p. 21, 66-67.
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Devin Watson | 
RT 
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P. D. Mangan 
