Small Frequent Meals? Bad Idea for Weight Loss.

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Bloomberg News is reporting on some very interesting weight-loss news. (I guess there’s not much going on in the financial world…) Two Large Meals a Day Tops Six Mini-Meals for Weight-Loss reveals evidence that contradicts the hallowed advice to eat several small meals per day if you want to lose weight.

Here’s what’s important:

“Over 12 weeks, people with Type 2 diabetes who ate just breakfast and lunch lost an average of 1.23 points in body mass index, or BMI, compared with a loss of 0.82 point for those who ate six smaller meals of the same nutritional and energy content. The data, in a small study involving 54 patients, were presented today at the American Diabetes Association meeting in Chicago.

The study builds on previous results disproving the theory that eating more frequently improves weight loss. That pattern, thought to work because it helps control appetite, was shown to produce no more weight loss than three regular meals in a 2010 study published in the British Journal of Nutrition. The latest report eliminates one additional meal.

In today’s study, sponsored by the Czech Republic’s Ministry of Health, both the frequency of the meals and the timing were important, according to Kahleova. Eating earlier in the day — just breakfast, between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., and lunch, between 12 p.m. and 4 p.m. — is associated with better results than skipping breakfast, she said.

Two meals a day also led to a greater decrease in liver fat content and a bigger increase in insulin sensitivity than six smaller meals.”

I find it very interesting that the researchers recommend skipping dinner instead of breakfast. That counters what I’ve been doing and what I’ve learned as a good fasting strategy. As I’ve said in recent posts (here and here), I like the idea of continuing the nighttime fast well into the day, then eating later in the day.  In fact, in recent weeks I’ve been trying to eat two big meals on my fast days: a mid-day meal and an evening meal. Perhaps I’m doing this less than optimally if this recent study is accurate.

I think the big picture is that we should spend several hours not putting food in our mouths. There is mounting evidence that being hungry for a while is a good thing. Clearly in this country we eat too much food.  It seems we not only eat too much–we eat too often. Further, the weight-loss gospel that a small-frequent-meal strategy aka “grazing” may be entirely wrong.

If you’re interested in this topic, there are a couple of worthwhile articles from Dave Tate’s site EliteFTS.com.  Logic Does Not Apply Part I: Meal Frequency and Part II: Breakfast are well-referenced and interesting. Both discuss and support the idea of a) skipping breakfast and b) spacing out our meals by several hours.  The writer notes though that small frequent meals throughout the day may be best for putting on weight.  So if you’re looking to gain a bunch of muscle then eat often!

 

 

Things to Read: Taking on Dr. Oz, Don’t Take Your Vitamins, Questions About Barefoot Running,

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There are several interesting things out there to check out.  Here are a few:

The New Yorker on Dr. Oz

Scientists often argue that, if alternative medicine proves effective through experimental research, it should no longer be considered alternative; at that point, it becomes medicine. By freely mixing alternatives with proven therapies, Dr. Oz makes it nearly impossible for the viewer of his show to assess the impact of either; the process just diminishes the value of science.
the New Yorker

Dr. Mehmet Oz is hugely popular.  I don’t know how many people watch his show but it’s a lot. We all know who he is. He’s a Harvard- and University of Pennsylvania-trained heart surgeon and he directs Columbia Hospital’s Cardiovascular Institute and Integrative Medicine Program. He knows a few things. An article in the New Yorker titled The Operator: Is the most trusted doctor in America doing more harm than good? takes Dr. Oz to task for perhaps crossing a line from science and good doctoring to entertainment.

I agree with a lot of what the article suggests. He seems to veer from scientific-based factual information into entertaining yet scientifically questionable material. He’s had psychics on his show and he often discusses “miracle cures,” and “breakthrough fat-burning this-and-that.” I haven’t seen much of him but what I do see and hear sounds very sensational. He seems to promise miracles to desperate people. Sounds a little kooky to me. From the article:

“The Dr. Oz Show” frequently focuses on essential health issues: the proper ways to eat, relax, exercise, and sleep, and how to maintain a healthy heart. Much of the advice Oz offers is sensible, and is rooted solidly in scientific literature. That is why the rest of what he does is so hard to understand. Oz is an experienced surgeon, yet almost daily he employs words that serious scientists shun, like “startling,” “breakthrough,” “radical,” “revolutionary,” and “miracle.” There are miracle drinks and miracle meal plans and miracles to stop aging and miracles to fight fat. Last year, Oz broadcast a show on whether it was possible to “repair” gay people (“From Gay to Straight? The Controversial Therapy”), despite the fact that Robert L. Spitzer, the doctor who is best known for a study of gay-reparation therapy, had recanted. (Spitzer last year apologized to “any gay person who wasted time and energy” on what he conceded were “unproven claims.”) Oz introduced a show on the safety of genetically modified foods by saying, “A new report claims they can damage your health and even cause cancer.” He also broadcast an episode on whether the apple juice consumed daily by millions of American children contains dangerous levels of arsenic. “Some of the best-known brands in America have arsenic in their apple juice,” he said at the outset, “and today we are naming names.” In each of those instances, and in many others, Oz has been criticized by scientists for relying on flimsy or incomplete data, distorting the results, and wielding his vast influence in ways that threaten the health of anyone who watches the show. Last year, almost as soon as that G.M.O. report was published, in France, it was thoroughly discredited by scores of researchers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Dr. Eric Rose was interviewed for the article.  Rose is a professor of surgery at the Mount Sinai medical school.  Rose and Oz worked together, most notably on Frank Torre’s 1996 heart transplant.  (Frank Torre is the brother of former Yankee manager Joe Torre.) He said this:

“I want to stress that Mehmet is a fine surgeon,” Rose said, as he did more than once during our conversation. “He is intellectually unbelievably gifted. But I think if there is any criticism you can apply to some of the stuff he talks about it is that there is no hierarchy of evidence. There rarely is with the alternatives. They have acquired a market, and that drives so much. At times, I think Mehmet does feed into that.”

I asked if he would place his confidence in a heart surgeon, no matter how gifted, who operated just once a week, as Oz does. “Well,” he replied, “in general you want a surgeon who lives and breathes his job, somebody who is above all devoted to that.” Again he mentioned Oz’s experience, but when I asked if he would send a patient to Oz for an operation, he looked uncomfortable. “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t. In many respects, Mehmet is now an entertainer. And he’s great at it. People learn a lot, and it can be meaningful in their lives. But that is a different job. In medicine, your baseline need has to be for a level of evidence that can lead to your conclusions. I don’t know how else you do it. Sometimes Mehmet will entertain wacky ideas—particularly if they are wacky and have entertainment value.”

And there is this observation from researcher Eric Topol:

“Mehmet is a kind of modern evangelist,” Eric Topol said when I called him at the Scripps Research Institute, where he is a professor of genomics and the director of the Translational Science Institute. Topol, one of the nation’s most prominent cardiologists, founded the medical school at the Cleveland Clinic and led its department of cardiovascular medicine. “He is keenly intelligent and charismatic,” Topol said. “Mehmet was always unique, but now he has morphed into a mega-brand. When he tells people the number of sexual encounters they need each year to improve their lives in a specific way, or how to lose weight in three days—this is simply lunacy. The problem is that he is eloquent and talented, and some of what he says clearly provides a service we need. But how are consumers to know what is real and what is magic? Because Mehmet offers both as if they were one.”

Dr. Oz seems like the latest in a long line of American snake-oil salesmen.  The best ones mix truth with fantasy and it sounds like Dr. Oz is doing just that.  On the positive side, the article tells us that Dr. Oz is pro-vaccine.  Read the full article on the cult doctor here.

The New York Times: Don’t Take Your Vitamins

The likely explanation is that free radicals aren’t as evil as advertised. (In fact, people need them to kill bacteria and eliminate new cancer cells.) And when people take large doses of antioxidants in the form of supplemental vitamins, the balance between free radical production and destruction might tip too much in one direction, causing an unnatural state where the immune system is less able to kill harmful invaders.
the New York Times

I’ve discussed various questions about supplements. Now, a recent opinion piece called Don’t Take Your Vitamins is in the New York Times and it goes into more information on the topic.  Here’s a bit:

“Antioxidation vs. oxidation has been billed as a contest between good and evil. It takes place in cellular organelles called mitochondria, where the body converts food to energy — a process that requires oxygen (oxidation). One consequence of oxidation is the generation of atomic scavengers called free radicals (evil). Free radicals can damage DNA, cell membranes and the lining of arteries; not surprisingly, they’ve been linked to aging, cancer and heart disease.

To neutralize free radicals, the body makes antioxidants (good). Antioxidants can also be found in fruits and vegetables, specifically in selenium, beta carotene and vitamins A, C and E. Some studies have shown that people who eat more fruits and vegetables have a lower incidence of cancer and heart disease and live longer. The logic is obvious. If fruits and vegetables contain antioxidants, and people who eat fruits and vegetables are healthier, then people who take supplemental antioxidants should also be healthier. It hasn’t worked out that way.

The likely explanation is that free radicals aren’t as evil as advertised. (In fact, people need them to kill bacteria and eliminate new cancer cells.) And when people take large doses of antioxidants in the form of supplemental vitamins, the balance between free radical production and destruction might tip too much in one direction, causing an unnatural state where the immune system is less able to kill harmful invaders. Researchers call this the antioxidant paradox.

Because studies of large doses of supplemental antioxidants haven’t clearly supported their use, respected organizations responsible for the public’s health do not recommend them for otherwise healthy people.

So why don’t we know about this? Why haven’t Food and Drug Administration officials made sure we are aware of the dangers? The answer is, they can’t.”

The article goes into how the supplement makers have tied the hands of the FDA.  Seems this sort of thing happens in many different arenas from food and drugs to environmental regulations.  It seems over and over again we’re shown that we should get our nutrition from real food, not pills and powders.

The New York Times: Is Barefoot-Style Running Best? New Studies Cast Doubt.

(Somehow all these article came from the great city of New York. Wasn’t really intentional but… there it is anyway.)  I’m a big fan of minimalist or barefoot-style running.  I believe in my case it has helped me regain proper mobility and strength, and has helped me overcome pain and regain my running ability.  That said, simply donning a pair of Vibram 5-Fingers and hitting the road WAS NOT a cure-all for me. A lot more work went into my efforts to fix my running.  The New York Times discusses things in this direction in this recent post in the Well Blog section.

The article discusses research from the Journal of Applied Physiology that looked at forefoot vs. heel striking in runners.  (Advocates of barefoot-style running suggest that barefoot running promotes forefoot striking which is suggested by some to reduce injuries.)  The pertinent findings are these:

In the end, this data showed that heel-striking was the more physiologically economical running form, by a considerable margin. Heel strikers used less oxygen to run at the same pace as forefoot strikers, and many of the forefoot strikers used less oxygen — meaning they were more economical — when they switched form to land first with their heels.

Most of the runners also burned fewer carbohydrates as a percentage of their energy expenditure when they struck first with their heels. Their bodies turned to fats and other fuel sources, “sparing” the more limited stores of carbohydrates, says Allison Gruber, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who led the study. Because depleting carbohydrates results in “hitting the wall,” or abruptly sagging with fatigue, “these results tell us that people will hit the wall faster if they are running with a forefoot pattern versus a rear-foot pattern,” Dr. Gruber says.

That covers running efficiency of two different foot-strike styles.  The article says this about injuries:

The news on injury prevention and barefoot-style running is likewise sobering. Although many barefoot-style runners believe that wearing lightweight shoes or none at all toughens foot muscles, lessening the likelihood of foot-related running injuries, researchers at Brigham Young University did not find evidence of that desirable change. If foot muscles become tauter and firmer, the scientists say, people’s arches should consequently grow higher. But in a study also presented at the sports medicine meeting, they found no changes in arch height among a group of runners who donned minimalist shoes for 10 weeks.

Other researchers who presented at the meeting had simply asked a group of 566 runners if they had tried barefoot-style shoes and, if so, whether they liked them. Almost a third of the runners said they had experimented with the minimalist shoes, but 32 percent of those said that they had suffered injuries that they attributed to the new footwear, and many had switched back to their previous shoes.

This isn’t terribly surprising considering that from a biomechanics standpoint, running is a complicated task. There are numerous joints and muscles involved in the kinetic chain. If any part of that chain isn’t functioning properly then we may get a problem. If we’re conditioned to running in one type of shoe then abruptly change to another shoe, then conditions are very different under our feet and thus the way we run will be altered.

Minmal shoes have been a component of my overcoming various chronic aches and pains–which I should say were acquired while running in conventional “good” running shoes. I initially simply running in my old, bad style in my new minimal shoes.  It didn’t work!  I had to regain competency in my feet, hips, and torso to fix my running issues.  Minimal shoes allowed me to become more aware of my feet and more aware of how I land on the ground. So again, I think minmal shoes can be a very good idea so long as they’re not looked to as a be-all-end-all cure to running injuries.

The Fasting Experiment: Part II

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Got food? Nope.

Back in May I discussed Michael Mosley and his PBS special called Eat, Fast, and Live Longer.  It motivated me to try out fasting. This is an update.

Fasting can take on various different forms. We often think of fasts in terms of total abstinence of food and drink but that’s not the only way to fast.  Fasts may be undertaken for several days at a time, for 24

hrs, or during part of a day.  Reasons to fast include medical instruction, weight loss and other health benefits, or religious devotion.  I’ve employed two types of fasting for weight loss and the various other health benefits discussed in the previous post and below.

Types of fasts

– Intermittent Fasting: Intermittent fasting has days of fasting alternated with days of non-fasting. I’m not doing a full-on fast but rather I’m extending my nighttime fast and reducing my calories on these days.  This pattern has been popularized by Michael Mosley’s FastDiet aka the  5:2 Diet.  (As I’ve said, I find Mosley’s work compelling, but to be fair, the Wiki entry on the 5:2 diet mentions a lack of evidence for its efficacy.  Make your own decision.)  I typically take two rest days throughout the week on Wednesday and either Monday or Friday.  These have been my fasting days.

The strict version of intermittent fasting has men consuming about 600 calories on the fast days, women about 500 calories.  That ain’t much!  I’m training for some athletic events so this isn’t necessarily the ideal time to fast as I need all sorts of nutrients, fuel, and protein in order to engage in and recover from workouts.  My modification simply has me waiting to eat (more on that right below) and generally trying to consume fewer calories.  I actually sort of look forward to trying this very low-calorie fast though.  When I’m ready…

– Restricted Feeding Window: This process is the other component of my fasting project. Essentially, this has you restricting the time during which you eat.  Typical suggestions are to eat only during an 8-hr. time period of the day and to fast the other 16 hrs.  Eating programs such as the Perfect Health Diet and the Warrior Diet advocate the restricted eating window.

Research in mice has indicated favorable benefits of the restricted-feeding window.  The Salk Institute for Biological Studies released a study last year in which a researcher said:

“It’s a dogma that a high-fat diet leads to obesity and that we should eat frequently when we are awake,” says Satchidananda Panda, an associate professor in the Regulatory Biology Laboratory and senior author of the paper. “Our findings, however, suggest that regular eating times and fasting for a significant number of hours a day might be beneficial to our health.”

Further, an article by Brownen in Ageing Research Reviews discusses evidence that both caloric restriction and intermittent fasting may have potential to combat age related illnesses such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.  This type of information supports my efforts.

My early experience

I’ve combined intermittent fasting with the restricted feeding window for about a month now.  I reduce my calories two days per week and I take in very few calories (about 230) in the morning. This comes from the coconut oil and grass-fed butter in my version of Bulletproof coffee.   The idea is to prolong the overnight fast. Then sometime around noon or later I start eating. I typically do this on Wednesday and Friday which are my rest days.  I’ve fasted on Mondays as well.

Besides the likely health benefits of fasting, I’d also like to lose some weight and get down to 195 lbs.  I’m training for both the Triple Bypass bike ride and the Continental Divide Trail Run and both of those efforts would be a little easier if I were a little lighter. Therefore I’m tracking my caloric intake and expenditure with My Fitness Pal (Myfitnesspal.com).  It’s a fantastic tool for anyone wanting to lose weight.  (If you want to lose weight then you must track your food intake.  If you’re not willing to track your food then you’re not serious about losing weight–and that’s OK.  It’s just not going to happen unless you decide to do it.)  I started using it in conjunction with fasting.  It seems to be a very good combination.  I’ve consistently weighed anywhere from 202 lbs. to about 207.  Now, I’m consistently weighing anywhere from 195 lbs. to 198 lbs.  My body composition has improved as well from about 18% to about 15%.  These changes came about very quickly

My Fitness Pal has you filling out a profile that includes such data as age, sex and activity level.  You then enter in how much weight you’d like to lose and how quickly you’d like to lose it–1 lb. per week for example.  I started off using My Fitness Pal by only tracking my calories and not tracking my exercise expenditure.  At times it was really tough to keep my calories within the prescribed range.  Once I started entering my exercise data My Fitness Pal adjusted my caloric intake and allowed me to consume quite a bit more which was very helpful.  It looks like my rapid weight loss was probably due to my adhering to the recommended caloric intake of a sedentary person.  This while I was exercising quite vigorously and staying below the recommended calories on my fasting days.  Quick weight loss indeed.

More information

If you’re interested in learning more about fasting, I’ve listed some resources below.  I’m new to this and there’s a lot more you can learn.

Depriving yourself: The real benefits of fasting – This comes from the Chicago Tribune. The evidence of the benefits of fasting are discussed:

“When it comes to treating cancer, Valter (cq) Longo, director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California, thinks that short-term complete fasts maximize the benefits. He’s found that a 48-hour total fast slowed the growth of five of eight types of cancer in mice, the effect tending to be more pronounced the more fasts the animals undertook (Science Translational Medicine).

Fasting is harder on cancer cells than on normal cells, he says. That’s because the mutations that cause cancer lead to rapid growth under the physiological conditions in which they arose, but they can be at a disadvantage when conditions changes. This could also explain why fasting combined with conventional cancer treatment provides a double whammy.

Clinical trials assessing the impact of fasting in people with cancer are ongoing. Early results are promising, says Longo, and patients in the advanced stages of cancer, who cannot wait for the results, might find it worth discussing fasting with their oncologist.

Could fasting prevent cancers developing in the first place? Evidence is scant but there are ‘very good reasons’ why it should, says Longo. He points out that high levels of IGF-1 and glucose in the blood, and being overweight are all risk factors for cancer, and they can all be improved by fasting. Another risk factor is insulin, says Michelle Harvie at the University of Manchester, UK.

Studying women whose family history puts them at high risk of developing breast cancer, she put half of them on a diet that involved cutting calories by about 25 percent, and half on a 5:2 fast. After six months, both groups showed a reduction in blood insulin levels, but this was greater in the fasting group. Harvie’s team is now analyzing breast biopsies to see whether this translates to fewer of the genetic changes associated with increased cancer risk.

High insulin is also associated with type 2 diabetes, so perhaps it is no surprise that fasting shows promise here, too.”

Ready, Set, Fast: How Strategic Meal-Skipping Can Help You Lose Fat, Gain Muscle and Get HealthierDr. John Berardi of Precision Nutrition wrote this for The Art of Manliness.  It’s his account of his own fasting experiment.  He gives a good rundown of fasting basics, different types of fasts, links to fasting research, and his take on how to get started.

The UK’s Hot New 5:2 Diet Craze Hits The U.S. – Weight Loss Miracle? – We haven’t discussed the drawbacks of fasting.  This article from Forbes discusses several aspects of fasting including intermittent fasting which the 5:2 Diet is based on.  Some of the downsides of fasting are mentioned here too.

“The main drawback of intermittent fasting that has drawn many vocal critics is that it’s really, really hard to do. There’s no question, you’re going to be pretty hungry – and pretty grumpy – on your fasting days. And when dieting is miserable, people tend not to stick to it. And when they don’t stick to it, they get discouraged, often eating even more once they give up. Other than that, experts cite side effects including dehydration, irritability, anxiety, sleep problems, and bad breath.

Like many fad diets, intermittent fasting is likely to work really well for some people, discourage many more. But you won’t know which group you fall into until you try. So get ready to start coordinating your fast days with family and friends; the 5:2 FastDiet is going to be around for awhile.”

The writer makes a good point.  Fasting isn’t all that easy or fun.  But neither is cancer, diabetes or being overweight.  What’s your health worth to you?

 

The Fasting Experiment: Part I

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Even if calorie restriction does not help anyone live longer, a large portion of the data supports the idea that limiting food intake reduces the risks of diseases common in old age and lengthens the period of life spent in good health.
– Scientific American

The second of Michael Mosley’s PBS series on health is titled Eat, Fast and Live Longer.  A significant portion of the program is devoted to the health effects of fasting or caloric restriction.  (He does not suggest that you actually consume your food at a rapid pace.)  I’ve read and heard about some of the benefits of fasting and I’ve played around with it a little bit.  After understanding the results of Mosley’s self-experiment with fasting, my wife and I both were very motivated to enact some form of fasting in our lives.

Michael Mosley PBS

Watch Eat, Fast and Live Longer with Michael Mosley on PBS. See more from Michael Mosley.

Benefits of caloric restriction

There seem to be several noteworthy benefits to fasting (aka caloric restriction.)  I’ve written before that hunger actually seems to stimulate movement and alertness.  The idea being that a hungry animal must go look for food.

Also, caloric restriction seems to extend the lifespan of various organisms and reduce incidence of various diseases. (Many studies have been done on animals, others in humans.) Caloric restriction seems to improve insulin sensitivity, heart function, and seems to improve memory in the elderly and may help in epilepsy treatment.  Fasting seems to make brain tumors more vulnerable to radiation treatment, and calorie restriction–particularly carbohydrate/sugar restriction–appears to be an effective treatment for other cancers.  (To be fair, there are other studies finding few benefits to calorie restriction.  A recent study in monkeys suggests that the type of calorie matters more to lifespan than the amount of calories consumed.)

In this episode of Mosley’s show, he discusses Insulin-like growth factor or IGF.  I won’t go into all the details of this compound, but it seems that it plays a key role in the development of several cancers and diabetes.  In a study from the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, subjects with breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer and ovarian cancer had higher levels of various types of IGF compared with controls.  The study says:

“Evidence suggests that lifestyles characterized by a high-energy diet may affect the IGF system, which may, in turn, connect such lifestyles to high rates of cell proliferation and predispose cells to risk of malignant transformation.”

An article in the Harvard Gazette discusses studies with similar findings.

Why is this important?

Fasting decreases levels of IGF.  Beyond just cutting calories, protein needs to be reduced as well. Watch Mosley’s special or read his BBC article The Power of Intermittent Fasting for more discussion on fasting and IGF.

I’m not a true academic researcher and I don’t claim to have found all the definitive evidence of this whole IGF/disease relationship, but from what I’ve read and heard it sounds like too much food may push us towards some types of diseases including various cancers.  Periodic caloric restriction seems generally like a good, healthy idea.

If you look at the Wikipedia entry for fasting, you’ll see that the practice has been around all over the world for thousands of years, often for religious purposes. I tend to think though that if a practice hangs on for that long, our organism must on some level see something beneficial in it. Further, as noted in the Scientific American article How Intermittent Fasting Might Help You Live a Longer, Healthier Life, ancient humans were often forced to fast due to availability of food.  A reliable supply of three (or more) square meals a day is a very recent addition to humanity.  It’s possible that this pressure in evolution helped select for healthier genes that survive today.

In the next entry, I’ll discuss various types of fasts and my early experience in toying with caloric restriction.

 

PBS’s The Truth About Exercise

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“The chair is a killer.”
– Michael Mosley, PBS, The Truth About Exercise

Attention all exercise geeks and anyone fond of learning about the ins and outs of regaining or maintaining your health: You must check out the new series from PBS called The Truth About Exercise with Michael Mosley.  (Actually, it seems that each episode has it’s own title “… with Michael Mosley.”)  I watched the first episode and it’s tremendously interesting.  The second episode is titled “Eat, Fast and Live Longer.”  I just started it.

(Thanks to my mom for telling me about this show.)

Mosley uses himself as an experimental subject as he delves into some of the following topics:

  • How to reduce your insulin response with 3 minutes of (very) intense exercise per week.
  • How and why exercise can help remove fat from the blood stream.
  • The very deadly perils of sitting too much.
  • Why some people are “non-responders” to some aspects of exercise (and why exercise is still healthy for “non-responders.)

I know very little about Mosley but that he seems to be a fairly common sort of guy who’s not in particularly good shape.  He has the questions about his health that many of us have.  He talks to various exercise physiologists, nutrition scientists and coaches as he searches for answers and examines several exercise myths.  I love it because much of what he discovers is informed by the latest science.  He’s not rehashing the “common knowledge” (which is commonly stale and fairly inaccurate.)  It’s a very entertaining show that moves quickly and isn’t overly science-y.  It has a pretty decent soundtrack as well.  I highly recommend it to anyone reading this right now.  Previews of each episode are below.  Go here to watch the full episodes.

Watch The Truth About Exercise with Michael Mosley – Promotion on PBS. See more from Michael Mosley.

Watch Guts with Michael Mosley – Preview on PBS. See more from Michael Mosley.

Diabolical Junk Food Science and Pharmaceutical Subterfuge

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Science and it’s use by industry are the topics of two recent articles.  One story looks at the food industry’s use of science to hook us on their products.  Another article shows us how the pharmaceutical industry does its best to hide science from us to… well… hook us on their products.

Junk Science

“With production costs trimmed and profits coming in, the next question was how to expand the franchise, which they did by turning to one of the cardinal rules in processed food: When in doubt, add sugar.”
– The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food, NY Times

If you haven’t read it yet then I highly recommend you check out a recent article from the New York Times Magazine titled The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food.  It’s a little long but well worth the read.  Lest anyone think

Thank you science.

that giving up junk food is all about willpower, this article might change your mind.

We get an in-depth look at the very determined scientific efforts by processed food companies (General Mills, Frito-Lay, Cadbury Schweppes for example) to create food that stimulates us to an unbelievable degree.  The motive of course is to get us to buy and consume what most of us know to be poison filth.  The writer has interviewed hundreds of current or former food scientists, marketers and CEOs to get an inside look at how all this works.

These companies’ efforts include laboratory research into such things as “mouth feel” or how a snack feels in our mouths.  Based on the replies of focus groups, food engineers may manipulate a snack in a myriad of ways.  Degree of crunch, softness, creaminess, thickness, puffiness, smoothness, gumminess–all sorts of sensations and combinations of sensations are carefully manipulated to help create the ultimate user experience.

Closely associated to mouth feel is the “bliss point.”  Just what is a bliss point?  It’s sort of a holy grail for junk food.  It’s a concept that arose from the observation that very strong flavors may be enjoyable but quickly help tell our brain to stop eating.  Meanwhile bland food may be unexciting but we can eat loads of it without feeling the need to stop.  The bliss point is the fine combination of the two that leads to a snack that tastes amazing but also manages to sidestep our brain’s wiring so that we’ll eat more and more.  From the article:

This contradiction is known as “sensory-specific satiety.” In lay terms, it is the tendency for big, distinct flavors to overwhelm the brain, which responds by depressing your desire to have more. Sensory-specific satiety also became a guiding principle for the processed-food industry. The biggest hits — be they Coca-Cola or Doritos — owe their success to complex formulas that pique the taste buds enough to be alluring but don’t have a distinct, overriding single flavor that tells the brain to stop eating.

Thirty-two years after he began experimenting with the bliss point, Moskowitz got the call from Cadbury Schweppes asking him to create a good line extension for Dr Pepper. I spent an afternoon in his White Plains offices as he and his vice president for research, Michele Reisner, walked me through the Dr Pepper campaign. Cadbury wanted its new flavor to have cherry and vanilla on top of the basic Dr Pepper taste. Thus, there were three main components to play with. A sweet cherry flavoring, a sweet vanilla flavoring and a sweet syrup known as “Dr Pepper flavoring.”

Finding the bliss point required the preparation of 61 subtly distinct formulas — 31 for the regular version and 30 for diet. The formulas were then subjected to 3,904 tastings organized in Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago and Philadelphia. The Dr Pepper tasters began working through their samples, resting five minutes between each sip to restore their taste buds. After each sample, they gave numerically ranked answers to a set of questions: How much did they like it overall? How strong is the taste? How do they feel about the taste? How would they describe the quality of this product? How likely would they be to purchase this product?

All this  is outrageous in terms of the lengths to which food companies go to sell us garbage.   It shouldn’t be surprising though.  Food companies are in a high-stakes game.  They need to sell stuff. Fortunately, because of information like this, these companies and their products may come under the same scrutiny the tobacco industry experienced a few years ago.  What else can I say?  I think all this is highly fascinating.  Read up!

The medical wool over our eyes

So the junk-food industry loves science because it helps them create products that we love to death.  In sort of the opposite direction, the pharmaceutical industry isn’t quite so interested in paying attention to science. Truth About Your Medicine: Ben Goldacre on How to Reform the Pharmaceutical Industry comes form the Daily Beast.  In it, Ben Goldacre tells us how the drug companies choose to ignore, diminish or squash unflattering research into their products.  He writes:

“The systematic review evidence on missing results shows that, for the treatments we use today, our best estimate is that half of all trials haven’t been published; trials with flattering results are twice as likely to be shared. This is an issue with academic trials, as well as industry sponsored research.”

So what he’s saying is that much of the evidence and scientific analysis of drugs isn’t available for anyone to read.  It hasn’t been published.  He further states:

“This presents such huge problems for informed decision making, which are obvious to even the most casual observer, and the issue of missing trials could not possibly survive informed public scrutiny. This is why a battle has been waged to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist, helped along by a series of “fake fixes” that have delivered little more than false reassurance.”

The article also links to the transcript of a recent live chat with Goldacre on this topic.

Ben Goldacre is a fairly interesting guy.  I wrote about his previous book Bad Science.  He makes laudable efforts to both demystify science and call on the carpet questionable industries such as complimentary/alternative medicine to the drug companies.  His new book is Bad Pharma.  Sounds interesting.

 

Health & Fitness News: Sit-to-stand test predicts mortality, Kids who walk or ride bikes to school concentrate better, Further evidence against gluten

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Getting up off the floor predicts mortality

Several stories may be worth your reading.  First there’s an interesting test that seems to fairly strongly predict mortality risk.  It involves getting up from the floor using a minimal amount of assistance and support.  A Simple Test Assessing Ability to Sit Up From the Floor Predicts Mortality come from Medical News Today.  It discusses research from Brazil published in the European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention. Here’s the pertinent information:

“They told the participants to try and sit up with the least amount of support that they believe necessary, and not worry about their speed. They scored the participants’ ability to both sit and rise out of 5. For each time the participants used support from their hand, knee or other part of their body the researchers would subtract a point. A total composite score out of 10 was assigned to them which would determine which category or group they belonged to (C1, 0-3; C2, 3.5-5.5; C3, 6-7.5; and C4, 8-10).

A total of 159 people died (a 7.9% mortality rate) at the end of the study, with significantly more deaths occurring among people with low test scores. They found that the rates of mortality between the four groups differed by quite a great deal, even when controlled for gender, age and body mass index (BMI). Those belonging to group C1, which had the lowest score range, were 5-6 times at higher risk of death than those in group C4. This difference suggests that the sitting score is good predictor of all-cause mortality.

Participants with scores below 8 had mortality rates 2 to 5 times higher than those with scores ranging from 8-10. The authors noted: “‘a 1-point increment in the [sitting-rising] score was related to a 21% reduction in mortality.'”

Watch the video below to see an explanation of the sit-to-stand process.  Try it out.  What’s your score?

Kids who walk or bike to school concentrate better

An article in the Atlantic tells us a) kids who move around more think better and by extension, b) there really is no division between the mind and the body.  The Link Between Kids Who Walk or Bike to School and Concentration discusses Dutch research that indicates the following:

“The survey looked at nearly 20,000 Danish kids between the ages of 5 and 19. It found that kids who cycled or walked to school, rather than traveling by car or public transportation, performed measurably better on tasks demanding concentration, such as solving puzzles, and that the effects lasted for up to four hours after they got to school.”

Niels Egelund is the researcher who conducted the research.  I love what he says about moving and sitting (emphasis is mine).

I believe that deep down we were naturally and originally not designed to sit still,” Egelund said. “We learn through our head and by moving. Something happens within the body when we move, and this allows us to be better equipped afterwards to work on the cognitive side.”

I’m going to go way out on a crazy limb and say that if movement is good for cognition in kids, it’s probably just as good for adult cognition.  And we see here that the concept of a division of the mind and the body simply doesn’t exist.  The health of one depends on the health of the other.  The evidence shows that the French philosopher Descartes got it wrong with his idea of dualism.

More on gluten

Going gluten-free is probably the biggest, most discussed issue in nutrition these days.  By eliminating gluten, are we improving our health or are we just following the latest fad?  The jury is out.  Certainly if someone has celiac disease then it’s vital that gluten be eliminated for good health.  But it’s unclear if everyone else will benefit from avoiding gluten.

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence out there to support the health benefits of cutting gluten, but anecdotal evidence isn’t terribly powerful evidence.  Gluten-free whether you need it or not comes from the New York Times Well Blog.  The article discusses all of these details.  It doesn’t come down firmly on any side but it provides evidence that perhaps the anecdotal evidence supporting gluten avoidance is worth further investigation:

“Crucial in the evolving understanding of gluten were the findings, published in 2011, in The American Journal of Gastroenterology, of an experiment in Australia. In the double-blind study, people who suffered from irritable bowel syndrome, did not have celiac and were on a gluten-free diet were given bread and muffins to eat for up to six weeks. Some of them were given gluten-free baked goods; the others got muffins and bread with gluten. Thirty-four patients completed the study. Those who ate gluten reported they felt significantly worse.

That influenced many experts to acknowledge that the disease was not just in the heads of patients. ‘It’s not just a placebo effect,’ said Dr. Marios Hadjivassiliou, a neurologist and celiac expert at the University of Sheffield in England.”

Something else caught my eye in the article. Experts who caution against everyone going gluten-free have suggested the following:

“They also worried that people could end up eating less healthfully. A gluten-free muffin generally contains less fiber than a wheat-based one and still offers the same nutritional dangers — fat and sugar. Gluten-free foods are also less likely to be fortified with vitamins.”

Okay, here’s the big revelation: EAT FEWER MUFFINS!  Anyone worried that gluten-free muffins don’t offer the same nutritional benefits of wheat-based muffins is looking at gluten-free grains of sand on the beach and ignoring larger issues.  To me, the big picture is still one in which we’ll have better health if we reduce processed food consumption.  Eat less stuff that comes out of boxes, bags and cartons.  That includes all kinds of stuff that contains gluten: bread, crackers, chips, cereal, etc.  Eat more plants.

Health & Fitness News: Cooked Food Grows the Brain; High-Carb Diet Contributes to Alzheimer’s; Lifting Weights Helps the Brain and Protects Against Metabolic Syndrome; Lactose Tolerance & Evolution; Tighten Your Left Fist to Perform Better

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A wide range of interesting things have popped up in health-and-fitness news. You should know about this stuff!

Cooked Food Grows the Brain:

“If you eat only raw food, there are not enough hours in the day to get enough calories to build such a large brain.  We can afford more neurons, thanks to cooking.”
– Dr. Suzana Herculano-Houzel, neuroscientist, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil

The human brain has far more neurons than our primate relatives such as apes and chimps. Relative to our body weight, we carry far more brain mass than our ape relatives, and we use far more energy to run our neurology than apes. Why? And how have we managed to acquire all the energy to manage this process over the past several hundred thousand years? It seems that the answers lie in humans cooking their food. An article from the Guardian titled Invention of cooking made having a bigger brain an asset for humans discusses the issue further. The article is informed by a study from the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

High-Carb Diets May Contribute to Alzheimer’s:

“Older people who load up their plates with carbohydrates have nearly four times the risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, a study out Tuesday finds.”
– USA Today

There’s more news regarding food and neurological function. USA Today reports on a recent study in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease indicates that a high-carbohydrate diet (as is suggested by the FDA) may contribute to early-onset dementia. Medline also reported on the study saying:

“Those who reported the highest carbohydrate intake were 1.9 times more likely to develop mild cognitive impairment than those with the lowest carbohydrate intake. Those with the highest sugar intake were 1.5 times more likely to develop mild cognitive impairment than those with the lowest intake.

Those whose diets had the highest levels of fat and protein were 42 percent and 21 percent less likely, respectively, to develop mild cognitive impairment than those with the lowest intake of fat and protein.”

The Medline report also makes the following important observation saying, “While the researchers found an association between sugar-laden, high-carb diets and mental decline, they did not establish a cause-and-effect relationship.”

I personally have lost weight by cutting carbs–particularly processed carbs such as cereal, bread, crackers, tortillas, muffins, etc–and replacing those calories with fibrous vegetables, fat and protein.  I’ve become convinced that an FDA-type high-carb diet is probably not the ideal way to eat for most people.

Lifting Weights Helps the Brain:

“Where previously we had seen positive associations between aerobic activity, particularly walking, and cognitive health, these latest studies show that resistance training is emerging as particularly valuable for older adults,”
Dr. William Thies, chief medical and scientific officer of the Alzheimer’s Association

Of course I love any evidence that suggests lifting weights is good for you. I have particular interest in evidence that weights help us beyond simply building muscle and bone mass. Mind Your Reps: Exercise, Especially Weight Lifting, Helps Keep the Brain Sharp comes from Time. The article reports on four studies presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Vancouver.

I’d like to know what loads are best used in preventing Alzheimer’s. Does any type of strength training prevent Alzheimers or are certain exercises better than others? What’s the minimal effective dose to derive the benefits? I hope someone is looking into these questions.

Lifting Weights Protects Against Metabolic Syndrome:

“Research has linked greater muscle strength and muscle mass to lower rates of metabolic syndrome. Since lifting weights increases muscle strength and mass, it might also help to decrease the development of metabolic syndrome.”
– Sciencedaily.com

Such a wonderful thing this weight training!  Science Daily discusses research by the National Strength & Conditioning Association that indicates lifting weights protects against metabolic syndrome. What is metabolic syndrome? The article says:

“Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of risk factors linked to increased rates risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. People with at least three out of five risk factors — large waist circumference (more than 40 inches for men and 35 inches for women), high triglyceride levels, reduced levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL, or “good” cholesterol), elevated blood pressure, and high glucose levels — are considered to have metabolic syndrome.”

The proof keeps on stacking up. Lifting weights is a staple of healthy living.  Are you currently on a strength training program?  If not, why?

Lactose Tolerance & Evolution:

“Everywhere that agriculture and civilization went, lactose tolerance came along. Agriculture-plus-dairying became the backbone of Western civilization.”
– Slate

Humans are the only animals that consume milk beyond the age of infancy. (Not all humans actually. Two-thirds of us are lactose intolerant. Still, there are a lot more humans that drink milk in their adulthood compared to other mammals.) Why is this? What makes so many of us so different from other mammals? Are there advantages to lactose tolerance? The Most Spectacular Mutation in Recent Human History is from Slate Magazine. The article discusses the speed with which this genetic mutation spread and possible theories on why it ever happened at all. There are no solid answers to the questions here, but it seems that in much of the world, civilization and lactose tolerance have gone hand-in-hand:

“The plot is still fuzzy, but we know a few things: The rise of civilization coincided with a strange twist in our evolutionary history. We became, in the coinage of one paleoanthropologist, ‘mampires’ who feed on the fluids of other animals. Western civilization, which is twinned with agriculture, seems to have required milk to begin functioning.”

There clearly seem to be some advantages to a lot of people in consuming milk and/or other dairy products. There also appear to be some real disadvantages. Read the New York Times article Got Milk? You Don’t Need It for another view of milk consumption. The article states:

“Osteoporosis? You don’t need milk, or large amounts of calcium, for bone integrity. In fact, the rate of fractures is highest in milk-drinking countries, and it turns out that the keys to bone strength are lifelong exercise and vitamin D, which you can get from sunshine. Most humans never tasted fresh milk from any source other than their mother for almost all of human history, and fresh cow’s milk could not be routinely available to urbanites without industrial production. The federal government not only supports the milk industry by spending more money on dairy than any other item in the school lunch program, but by contributing free propaganda as well as subsidies amounting to well over $4 billion in the last 10 years.

I think the Times article raises some valid points. Clearly many of our fellow humans do fine without consuming milk as adults. The FDA guidelines insisting that we drink milk are a bit bogus, and completely influenced by the dairy industry. However, in lactose tolerant adults, I’m not sure milk is a bad thing. I haven’t been completely convinced one way or the other. I drink milk sometimes but not often. More often I consume cheese and yogurt which are fermented versions of milk.

Make a Fist to Perform Better:

“Athletes who made a fist with their left hand did better under pressure than when they made a fist with their right hand…”
– “Preventing Motor Skill Failure Through Hemisphere-Specific Priming: Cases From Choking Under Pressure,” Journal of Experimental Psychology

I find this article from the Atlantic enormously interesting. The results are in the quote above. In this study, right-handed athletes (Righties only were tested.) performed better when they made a fist in the left hand. What’s going on here? The article states:

According to the researchers, freaking out is primarily associated with the left hemisphere of the brain, while the right hemisphere deals more with mechanical actions. Meanwhile the cortex of the right hemisphere controls movements of the left side of the body, and the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body. So they figured that if you can purposely activate the right hemisphere — in this case, by making a fist or squeezing a ball with your left hand — it will improve physical performance and draw focus away from the ruminating left hemisphere.”

Interestingly, anyone who’s learned the RKC Hard Style of pressing has learned to make a fist in the opposite non-pressing hand. The effect is powerful. You get stronger when you do this! Maybe this study indicates why.

 

Are All Calories Created Equal?

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“Put most simply, the fewer carbohydrates consumed, the more energy these weight-reduced people expended.”
Gary Taubes, author, Good Calories, Bad Calories

A recent Harvard University study has produced some interesting results as regards various types of eating patterns, calories, and how these all affect weight loss maintenance.   The study is discussed in two New York Times articles; one titled What Really Makes Us Fat, the other titled In Dieting, Magic Isn’t a Substitute for Science is a Q&A with a veteran obesity researcher. ABC News also analyzes the study in For Calories, It’s All About Quality Over Quantity, Harvard Study Says.

There are two main points of consideration in this discussion.  First, there’s the question, “Are all calories created equal?”  Are carb calories the same as fat and protein calories?  Are refined sugar calories the same as calories from vegetables or beans?  The second question is, “What’s the best way to stay lean once we’ve lost the weight?”

(The country is full of people who’ve lost weight but can’t keep it off.  The big secret is this: Any diet will work.  If you follow the directions, you’ll very likely lose weight no matter what diet you chose.  From paleo, to the Zone Diet, to Weight Watchers to any of the vast number of other diets, if you follow it you’ll probably lose weight.  Done and done?  No. The most difficult part has just begun.  Keeping the weight off is typically very difficult.)

What about the study?  Researchers studied 21 overweight and obese adults, starting each on a diet that helped them lose about 12-13% of their body weight. Then, to help them maintain that weight loss, the researchers put the participants on a cycle of three diets, each lasting four weeks.

One diet is of the low-fat/high-carbohydrate variety as advocated by the FDA and the American Heart Association.  This diet suggests among other things that we eat a lot of grain products, both refined and unrefined; and that we seek to reduce fat consumption at all opportunities.

The other diet was a high-fat/low-carbohydrate diet similar to the Atkins diet.  This is almost the total opposite of the previously mentioned diet.  This diet encourages fat and protein consumption and discourages grain consumption–particularly refined grains.

The third diet was based on low-glycemic foods.  This diet was sort of in between the other two. Fewer refined grains were found here and more vegetables, beans, fruit and the like.  Plus there was less fat and protein than the Atkins-type diet, but more than the low-fat diet.

What were the results?  This is from the ABC News article:

The results weren’t good news for low-fat diet aficionados. When dieters followed that plan, their bodies burned fewer calories than when they were following the low-carb or low-glycemic index diets. And the low-fat diet changed certain metabolic factors in their bodies that typically predicted weight regain.

The low-carb diet seemed to help participants burn the most calories. But it also increased certain markers of stress and inflammation in the body, such as the stress hormone cortisol, which are risk factors for cardiovascular disease and other health problems.

(I’m quite curious about this.  What’s causing the inflammation?  Is it high fat?  Is it high protein?  Is it low carbohydrate?  Is it a combination of some or all of these factors?  The Perfect Health Diet discusses research indicating that limiting protein intake can help with immune function, and that too much protein can lead to ammonia toxicity.  So that leads me to think it’s the protein that may be causing the inflammation.  Would someone please do a double-blind placebo study on this?  And please make it a long-term study while you’re at it.  Thanks in advance.)

In the end, the researchers found that the low-glycemic index diet struck the right balance for the participants. It helped the dieters burn more calories, though not as many as the low-carb diet, but didn’t seem to increase disease-causing stress markers in the body.

I like this observation as well:

“Remember the old food pyramid, with six to 11 servings per day of bread, pasta or rice at the base? In light of this article, it would seem to provide an efficient prescription for weight gain,” said Dr. Jana Klauer, a doctor in private practice in New York.

Gary Taubes, says in What Really Makes Us Fat:

The results were remarkable. Put most simply, the fewer carbohydrates consumed, the more energy these weight-reduced people expended. On the very low-carbohydrate Atkins diet, there was virtually no metabolic adaptation to the weight loss. These subjects expended, on average, only 100 fewer calories a day than they did at their full weights. Eight of the 21 subjects expended more than they did at their full weights — the opposite of the predicted metabolic compensation.

(Please note that Taubes is the author of Good Calories, Bad Calories.  He essentially proposes some of what is suggested by this study, namely that a high-carb diet–particularly one high in refined carbs–is bad and that a high-protein/high-fat diet is good for us.  His article for the NY Times highlights the good of this diet.  He doesn’t mention the following information.  Perhaps there’s a conflict of interest.)

Now, here’s a wrinkle.  Dieting, Magic Isn’t a Substitute for Science is the other NY Times article. It’s a Q&A with Dr. Jules Hirsch, emeritus professor and emeritus physician in chief at Rockefeller University, who has been researching obesity for nearly 60 years, about the state of the research. With regard to the benefits of high-fat diets, he says:

They report that people on the Atkins diet were burning off more calories. Ergo, the diet is a good thing. Such low-carbohydrate diets usually give a more rapid initial weight loss than diets with the same amount of calories but with more carbohydrates. But when carbohydrate levels are low in a diet and fat content is high, people lose water. That can confuse attempts to measure energy output. The usual measurement is calories per unit of lean body mass — the part of the body that is not made up of fat. When water is lost, lean body mass goes down, and so calories per unit of lean body mass go up. It’s just arithmetic. There is no hocus-pocus, no advantage to the dieters. Only water, no fat, has been lost.

The paper did not provide information to know how the calculations were done, but this is a likely explanation for the result.

So the whole thing might have been an illusion? All that happened was the people temporarily lost water on the high-protein diets?

Perhaps the most important illusion is the belief that a calorie is not a calorie but depends on how much carbohydrates a person eats. There is an inflexible law of physics — energy taken in must exactly equal the number of calories leaving the system when fat storage is unchanged. Calories leave the system when food is used to fuel the body. To lower fat content — reduce obesity — one must reduce calories taken in, or increase the output by increasing activity, or both. This is true whether calories come from pumpkins or peanuts or pâté de foie gras.

To believe otherwise is to believe we can find a really good perpetual motion machine to solve our energy problems. It won’t work, and neither will changing the source of calories permit us to disobey the laws of science.

So Dr. Hirsch draws a different conclusion from the researchers and the reporters.  I don’t have a solid enough command of statistics to advocate in either direction.  Both Dr. Hirsh and Gary Taubes suggest that more useful information would come from a long-term study of this type.

What seems clear though is that we should steer well clear from processed foods.  A high-fat/low-carbohydrate diet seems to best best for weight loss but also may cause an increase in the stress hormone cortisol.  The study suggests that making an extra effort to avoid fat may not be very helpful in the battle to rid our bodies of fat.  The third and possibly healthiest eating strategy revolves around a healthy intake of low-glycemic foods.  The Wiki entry on low-glycemic foods states (emphasis is mine):

There are some specific factors to look for in foods that can indicate their glycemic index: Low glycemic foods contain: Fat, Whole grains, Protein, Raw Starches, legumes, vegetables, fruits and dairy products. High Glycemic Foods contain: Refined grains, refined sugars, increased amylopectin: amylose ratio, and often high sugar fruits have a high glycemic index.

Finally, we’re often told to eat more of this that and the other.  “Eat more healthy fat.”  “Eat more fruits and vegetables.”  “Eat more whole grains.”  We’re rarely told to “Eat less” of anything. Therefore I like what Dr. Hirsch has to say about the matter:

What would you tell someone who wanted to lose weight?

I would have them eat a lower-calorie diet. They should eat whatever they normally eat, but eat less. You must carefully measure this. Eat as little as you can get away with, and try to exercise more.

 

News On Beet Juice, Running & Evolution, Saturated Fat & Cardiovascular Disease

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I’m behind on posting and I’m trying to catch up.  There’s been a lot of interesting information to read in various publications.  If you’re a runner (and probably any other sort of endurance athlete) you definitely need to see some of this.  If you’re listening to government guidelines on saturated fat, then definitely look at the last article.

Beet juice for endurance

A number of articles have appeared lately about beet juice and its benefits for endurance athletes.  Never miss a beet is from Outside Magazine.  The article discusses two studies from Exeter University in England that demonstrated performance benefits for cyclists.  Here are the important details.  (Emphasis added is mine.):

… In 2009, a small study done at England’s Exeter University caught the attention of the fitness world. Researchers discovered that competitive cyclists who drank half a liter (about 16 ounces) of beet juice right before they got on their bikes were able to ride 16 percent longer—a massive gain in a sport where only a few percentage points of improvement can be the difference between first place and fifteenth.

Last June, a larger Exeter study backed up this rather unusual protocol: cyclists who drank half a liter of beet juice for six days were 11 seconds faster over a 2.5-mile course and 45 seconds faster over a 10-mile course. The reason: more oxygen was getting to the athletes’ muscles, thanks to molecules in the juice called nitrates. “The oxygen cost of exercising at a given speed is basically fixed,” says Andrew Jones, a professor of applied physiology at Exeter and lead author of both studies. “Only nitrate ingestion appears to improve efficiency. These effects cannot be achieved by any other known means, including training.”

It works like this: Our bodies convert nitrates into nitric oxide, a gas that causes blood vessels to relax and widen, by a process known as vasodilation. This allows more oxygen-rich blood to flow through the body—and the more oxygen reaches the muscles, the longer they’re able to perform at high intensity. Athletes have tried to trigger vasodilation with various banned substances, including hypertension drugs and erectile-dysfunction medication, for years. It now appears that simply consuming large amounts of vegetables that are high in nitrates, such as spinach, carrots, radishes, and beets—the last of which pack the biggest punch, a whopping 310 grams per 16 ounces of juice—can offer the same performance boost.

The article also discusses beta-alanine supplementation.  I haven’t used beta-alanine but recently I have been playing around with eating and juicing beets.  (I don’t juice a whole beet.  I combine about ¼ beet with other fruits and vegetables.)  I pretty much will never say that one thing causes one other thing, but since I’ve been consuming more beets, my workouts have felt really good.  Also, getting up early has been easier.  Again, I can’t say this is the only factor but I see no reason not to continue gobbling a few beets through the week.

One odd thing about beets is that they color some of your bodily excretions, meaning you may see a red tint in the toilet soon after eating or drinking beet juice.  It was kind of alarming the first time I noticed it.  Turns out it’s normal.  Despite this weird side effect, I’m giving beets a thumbs-up.

Evolution, distance running, and a controversial title for an article

Other articles have discussed the idea that human evolution and distance running are intimately intertwined.  A recent article from Slate Magazine suggests the same thing.  If nothing else, All men can’t jump: Why nearly every sport except long-distance running is fundamentally absurd sounds like fun reading.  From our Achilles tendons, to our teeth, brains, our ability to dissipate heat , gait mechanics, and even the “runner’s high,” the article suggests that we are uniquely and powerfully suited to “persistence hunting,” that is chasing down prey until it’s tired.  I think it’s an interesting theory, though I wonder if some day scientists will ruminate over the connection between our thumbs, evolution, and video games or text messaging.

Overhydration

It’s summer.  It’s hot.  We still run, bike, hike, walk, etc.  How much should we drink?  How often? Do we need to weigh ourselves before and after exercise?  Does dehydration lead directly to heatstroke? Furthermore, have you ever heard of hyponatremia, or what happens to you when you drink too much water.  (FYI, drinking too much can be far more deadly than being dehydrated.)

The issue of hydration is a pendulum that still swings around and there is confusion.  Many of us are growing gills for the amount of water we’re drinking, but this high consumption of water throughout the day seems a fairly recent thing.  Do we really need all this consumption?  How did we manage before plastic bottles?  (Watch an episode of Mad Men and you’ll see the only water anyone drank came from melted ice cubes in their cocktail.  How’d we get out of the 1950s under those circumstances?)

For more information, read the Outside Magazine article Tim Noakes on the serious problem of overhydration in endurance sports. (Why listen to Dr. Noakes?  He’s a leading exercise scientist and he’s just recently written a 439-page book called  Waterlogged: The Serious Problem of Overhydration in Endurance Sports.  He’s a very well informed guy.  All runners should read his superb book Lore of Running.)

The article covers some interesting information including how hunter/gatherers run a lot during a hunt but don’t drink until they’ve caught their prey, the history and marketing of sports drinks, and why a bit of dehydration is nothing to fear.

Here’s some background on why we think we need to drink so much when exercising.  (Emphasis is mine.):

When did we start drinking more water?

Well, the sports drink industry was involved. In 1969 a great American physiologist, David Costill, started new studies. Gatorade was just getting into the market, and he went to them and said, Listen, you produce this product, do you know if it works? Is it of any value? He said, I’ll do the studies and let’s see if it works. His focus was to try and raise money to fund his laboratory. He did the first study where he had people like Amby Burfoot—who writes the foreword for the book and won the 1968 Boston Marathon—not drinking anything. Costill had them run when they drank up to 1.2 liters per hour on the treadmill, and [then run] when they didn’t drink. When they did drink, he showed their body temperatures were much lower and he presumed that was better. But if you ask Amby Burfoot, he said he felt much better when he ran without drinking. Costill assumed then that drinking was good for you, although the study hadn’t really shown that because it wasn’t a performance trial, and all the runners found when they didn’t drink was that there were no problems associated with not drinking. The American College of Sports Medicine asked David Costill to write the first drinking guidelines, which he did in 1975. He said that runners should drink regularly during exercise, which is pretty good advice.

Then, what I discovered, which was really eye-opening, was that a single individual working for the U.S. military decided that water was a tactical weapon. That if the military could be encouraged to drink more during maneuvers, they’d have less heat stroke and less illness and they’d be more productive and could be better soldiers. It was purely his idea. It had no scientific basis at all. Two years later he published a paper supposedly saying that if the US soldiers drank 1.9 liters per hour [64 ounces] when they were exercising in the heat they would perform much better. There was utterly no concrete evidence that that was true. The problem was, his advice was embraced by the U.S. Military. They changed their drinking guidelines to say that you should now drink 1.9 liters per hour. The same people who drew up those guidelines were then invited by the American College of Sports Medicine to get involved with drawing up guidelines for runners.

The essential information first and foremost 1) let thirst be your guide, 2) over drinking is bad, and 3) anything short of severe dehydration won’t kill you.

Evidence on saturated fat and cardiovascular disease

Finally, I’ve mentioned before that perhaps we shouldn’t be as afraid of fat–particularly saturated fat–to the degree that we’ve been told.  We’ve got a little more evidence in that direction.  Saturated fat and cardiovascular disease: the discrepancy between the scientific literature and dietary advice is a recent study from the Netherlands.

Researchers evaluated three reports from leading U.S. and European dietary advisory committees with results of studies on dietary fat and cardiovascular disease as they were presented in the referenced articles.  (These committees are the sort that tell us to eat less fat for fear of contracting such ailments as heart disease.)  The findings indicate that the advice given by the committees doesn’t reflect the evidence.  The concluding statement of the abstract of the study says, “Results and conclusions about saturated fat intake in relation to cardiovascular disease, from leading advisory committees, do not reflect the available scientific literature.”  So again, perhaps we should reconsider our view of nasty old saturated fat.