by Brio Personal Training
12. February 2010 12:53
Food or Not Food?
Milk is one of the primary no-nos on a paleo diet, because through 99% of human evolution we've been chasing down and killing large game to eat rather than chasing them down to milk them. The paleo philosophy is to eat the foods generally available to your caveman ancestors and to steer clear of those that weren't Humans are equipped to handle milk (human breast milk) through infancy and the toddler years because we produce an enzyme called lactase that helps break down the milk sugar called lactose. In most people, the production of this enzyme stops sometime in early childhood and we lose our ability to digest milk products. It wasn't too much of a stretch in terms of human evolutionary development that some people would possesses a genetic variant that had them continue to produce the enzyme lactase through the entire lives (it's called lactase persistence). As humans began to domesticate animals, a nutritious and plentiful food source was available to those who could digest it and so they survived and thrived to pass along this genetic variant.
It makes sense then that lactase persistence occurs most frequently in people descended from areas of the world where agriculture was established the earliest (around 12,000-10,000 years ago in the fertile crescent). Lactose intolerance is most common in people from areas of the world exposed very recently (perhaps only a few generations ago) to the food staples of agriculture.
We've certainly seen this difference in our own athletes who give up dairy for a month as an experiment. Some are quickly relieved from the previous nagging afflictions of asthma, acne, chronic phlegm, nasal allergies, indigestion, gas, bloating, etc. And others experience no difference at all. Some simply cannot handle dairy and other do just fine with it. The only way to know which group you fall in to is to do this experiment with yourself.
Check out this study for some interesting genetic research on this topic...
Red is high frequency of lactase persistance (tolerance of dairy products) and blue is the lowest frequency.
by Brio Personal Training
5. February 2010 17:43
Syndrome X or The Metabolic Syndrome is a cluster of diseases that tend to occur together. These are also called the western diseases or diseases of civilization because they occur in astronomically high numbers in western society and are virtually non-existent in more traditional living areas of the world. The diseases are: obesity (specifically abdominal obesity), high blood pressure, heart disease, impaired blood sugar regulation, Type 2 diabetes, and unhealthy levels of blood lipids (dyslipidemia). When the theory was first proposed that these affilications might be related it was hypothesized that obesity was the cause of the other surrounding diseases. We now know that obesity (the excess accumulation of body fat) is just another symptom of an underlying disorder - a hormonal disruption that leads to the unregulated growth of many tissues, not just fat tissue. The underlying disorder is hyperinsulinemia... in normal language that's too much insulin. Insulin is uniquely stimualted by dietary carbohydrate so too much insulin is very likely caused by too much carbohydrate. But the list of disease linked to hormonal disruption of insulin production is growing and no longer limited to the handful named above. To the list we can add:
- acne
- early first menustral cycle in young girls
- cancer
- increased stature (we're taller than we used to be)
- skin tags
- hyperpigmentation of the skin
- female infertility
- male pattern baldness
From Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology... Hyperinsulinemic diseases of civilization: more than just Syndrome X
Abstract
Compensatory hyperinsulinemia stemming from peripheral insulin resistance is a well-recognized metabolic disturbance that is at the root cause of diseases and maladies of Syndrome X (hypertension, type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia, coronary artery disease, obesity, abnormal glucose tolerance)... Insulin is a well-established growth-promoting hormone, and recent evidence indicates that hyperinsulinemia causes a shift in a number of endocrine pathways that may favor unregulated tissue growth leading to additional illnesses... These endocrine shifts alter cellular proliferation and growth in a variety of tissues, the clinical course of which may promote acne, early menarche [first menustral period], certain epithelial cell carcinomas [cancer], increased stature, myopia [poor vision], cutaneous papillomas (skin tags), acanthosis nigricans [hyperpigmentation of the skin], polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) [the leading cause of female infertility] and male vertex balding. Consequently, these illnesses and conditions may, in part, have hyperinsulinemia at their root cause and therefore should be classified among the diseases of Syndrome X.
by Brio Personal Training
3. February 2010 20:52
From the Washington Post....
Paleolithic diet is so easy, cavemen actually did it
"Here's a question for the weight-conscious: How often do you see a fat caveman? Exactly. Maybe excepting Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble, most portrayals of the people who lived 12,000 years ago depict svelte folks baring rock-hard -- if hairy -- abs. What's their secret? Surely it's great exercise to be out chasing woolly mammoths and foraging for berries all day. And it helped that there were no Fruity Pebbles or venti white chocolate mochas hundreds of generations ago.
But, seriously, what if we ate like our Paleolithic ancestors? That would be lots of lean meats, nuts, fresh fruits and vegetables; no grains, salt, sugar, legumes or dairy products. Some people do, and it's called the Paleo diet -- short for Paleolithic, which refers to the era before agriculture took hold, a movement away from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle that resulted in settled societies, and, eventually, Twinkies and couch potatoes."
by Brio Personal Training
2. February 2010 20:59
Another article on barefoot running. Obviously one of our favorite topics!
Barefoot Running: How Humans Ran Comfortably and Safely Before the Invention of Shoes
"...says Daniel E. Lieberman, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and co-author of a paper appearing this week in the journal Nature. "By landing on the middle or front of the foot, barefoot runners have almost no impact collision, much less than most shod runners generate when they heel-strike. Most people today think barefoot running is dangerous and hurts, but actually you can run barefoot on the world's hardest surfaces without the slightest discomfort and pain. All you need is a few calluses to avoid roughing up the skin of the foot. Further, it might be less injurious than the way some people run in shoes."