A couple of months ago, a cool study came out that showed vegetarians are more likely to have a brain shrinkage as they age. The reason is due to vitamin B12, which is mainly found in animal foods.
Furthermore, no one in the study actually had vitamin B12 deficiency, which means that merely getting the recommended amount is not good enough. A couple of posts down I talked a brain deterioration, so I guess an addendum to that post would be: EAT YOUR MEAT!
Also see here.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Long-time no see
Whew, it's been a while since I have updated the blog. Shame on me! Anyways, I hope to start updating more frequently from now on.
For now, I have a site that I would like to add to the mix: Lyle McDonald's, Body Recomposition.
This site is filled with such good content. In particular, I would point to his discussion on insulin and fat loss. While Gary Taubes and Mark from "Mark's Daily Apple" have a lot of good things to say, this is an article that they should read as they both go too far with the whole "insulin is solely to blame for fat gain" hypothesis.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Food diary increases weight loss
Here's an important story that has hit the news today, the results of a recent study showing that people who keep a food diary double their weight loss.
It's pretty obvious as to why, because people who don't keep a log are less accountable to what they eat. Now, it's better to lose weight and not keep a log because that's much simpler, but if you aren't losing weight then keeping a log may be just the thing you need because it's very easy to overestimate how much you are taking in. It's also very easy to convince yourself that you aren't eating much when deep down in your subconscious you know you are. A food log brings this to the light.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Brain deterioration doesn't have to happen
Interesting story today about a women who lived to be 115 but had perfectly good cognitive functioning. According to the article:
A series of neurological and psychological examinations were performed when the patient was 112 and 113 years old. The results were essentially normal, with no signs of dementia or problems with memory or attention. In general, her mental performance was above average for adults aged 60 to 75.
Further,
As planned, her body was donated to science when she died at age 115. At the time, she was the world's oldest woman. Examination after death found almost no evidence of atherosclerosis (narrowing of the arteries) anywhere in her body. The brain also showed very few abnormalities--the number of brain cells was similar to that expected in healthy people between 60 and 80 years old.
Of course, I'm sure genetics has some role in her resilience to cognitive and cardiac dysfunction.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Vitamin D helps prevent type 1 diabetes?
Interesting story today on sciencedaily.com, about a new study that found a correlation between sunlight exposure and incidence of type 1 diabetes in children.
Yesterday I posted about auto-immune disorders, of which type 1 diabetes is one having to do with dietary lectins. I wonder how these two hypothesis would relate if they're on the right track?
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Dietary lectins cause auto-immune disorders?
I watched this video about a week ago, but I'm just now getting around to blogging about it.
Basically, in the video below, Dr. Loren Cordain is discussing a model of auto-immune disorders in which he believes that they are all caused by dietary lectins in genetically susceptible individuals. So, what's a lectin?
From the current issue of the Paleodiet Newsletter:
The word “lectin” is derived from the Latin verb legere, meaning to “select,” and because of their high affinity to bind just about everything in biological systems, lectins indeed “select.” Lectins were originally defined by their ability to agglutinate (clump) erythrocytes (red blood cells) in tissue cultures, but more recently have been described by their ability to reversibly bind specific monosaccharide (simple) or oligosaccharide (complex) sugars. Lectins are omnipresent proteins found in the plant kingdom and likely evolved as toxic defensive mechanisms to ward off predators. Most dietary lectins are benign and non-toxic to humans, however the primary exceptions are those lectins capable of binding to gut tissue.
Read the rest here, although this particular article is about how lectins may contribute to heart disease, not auto-immune disorders.
If you, or anyone you know is suffering from an auto-immune disorder, you may want to check this video out.
Brief and intense exercise good for the heart
I pick this up on science daily today, an article about a new study showing that brief, but intense exercise is equally good for heart health as low/moderate intensity exercise of 45+ minutes.
From the article
The research compared individuals who completed interval training using 30-second "all-out" sprints three days a week to a group who completed between 40 and 60 minutes of moderate-intensity cycling five days a week.
It found that six weeks of intense sprint interval exercise training improves the structure and function of arteries as much as traditional and longer endurance exercise with larger time commitment.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Bogus news article on "Caveman diet"
I seen this story on "Caveman diet's" today, from May 12th.
The story says that nothing can really be gleaned from the results because the study was not controlled. That is absolutely true, but what they fail to mention is that a controlled study of a paleolithic diet WAS performed AFTER the study that they mention in the story. I linked to this study on this very blog
Another criticism of the study was the low calcium intake. However, this only looks at the input side of the equation. Whenever you eat a food, it reports to the kidney's as either a acid or alkaline load. If you have a high acid load diet then body needs to buffer this acidity. How does it do that? One way is by leeching calcium from your bones because it is one of the bodies biggest stores of base/alkaline. So, while a paleolithic diet may not have much by way of the input side of the bone density equation, it makes up for it by not losing any. Furthermore, studies of the fossils of our ancestors show that they had very dense and strong bones BEFORE humanity started consuming milk. After humanity started consuming milk our bones became WEAKER. This was due to the fact that we had started consuming grains as well. Grains, along with dairy, meat, and legumes, are acid producing foods. Vegetables and fruits are the only base producing.
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