Mark's Daily Apple

You Might Want to Sit Down for This

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Or maybe you don’t. It turns out that sitting in a chair – that time honored tradition we commonly associate with rest, relaxation, and recuperation (don’t forget mind-numbing work, too!) – is actually bad for us. At least, the way we approach sitting is health harmful. The occasional dalliance with a straight-backed office chair probably isn’t a problem, but when we spend most of our waking life sitting (or, even worse, slumping over) in a chair, we invite disaster. Such sedentarism is a real problem, and a recent one. Grok certainly wasn’t bound to a desk. He may have had more off time than we do (if modern hunter-gatherers are any indication), but he didn’t spend it subjecting his body to extended bouts of unnatural contortions. And there’s the other big difference: the way we sit is completely unnatural. Instead of sprawling out, hands behind our heads, legs outstretched, we moderns “relax” in a chair – a piece of furniture with which we have relatively new relations.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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Weekend Link Love

Nikki Young, author of The Paleo Cookbook (I’ve got a copy, and I use it frequently), was interviewed over at Fitness Spotlight this week. Read what she has to say. Then check out her pumpkin and chicken curry recipe at the bottom of the post.

Here’s a quick bodyweight exercise from Conditioning Research: The oblique side raise.

The New York Times talks probiotics. How helpful are they, really?

You may remember Grok Star Sterling and his incredible transformation. He’s got his own blog now, aptly named Sterling Advice. Check it out!

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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10 Ways to Quench a Primal Thirst

I’ll admit it. For the most part, beverages don’t get a lot of attention around here. I tend to take a pretty dismissive stance on them, perhaps as a reaction to the ridiculous mainstream obsession with water intake (64 ounces per day? C’mon!). Also, besides the occasional hankering for a cold beer, I don’t really crave beverages. Coffee in the mornings, water when thirsty, and the occasional glass of wine with dinner is my typical lineup. Most of the fluids my body needs comes from the food I eat so I tend to view beverages as largely inessential. They’re nice and refreshing, but rarely needed.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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Weekend Link Love

Another major sign conventional wisdom is starting to crack: This week The Huffington Post ran a piece on why cholesterol may not be the cause of heart disease. A swing and a hit!

Perennially spot-on with life advice, Zen Habits wants you to do less. Find out why.

Are humans meat eaters or vegetarians? You may already know the answer, but I’d still suggest reading Dr. Eades posts on the subject. Here’s part 1 and part 2.

Move over lap band, there’s a new surgical procedure competing for the gold medal of dumb… The Chugay Tongue Patch uses breakthrough advancements in pain and idiocy to stop people from eating food for 30 days. Via That’s Fit.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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You Don’t Know Squat

A while back, I gave a bit of Link Love to Nature’s Platform (thanks, NeoPaleo), a contraption that fits over regular toilets and allows users to squat instead of sit. I included it mainly for the laughs, a bit of tongue-in-cheek (no, not that cheek – the other one!) ribald humor that was somewhat relevant to the Primal lifestyle (because let’s face it, Grok was definitely a squatter), but then I got to thinking: maybe there really is something to squatting. At the very least, I owed it to our bowels to look a bit deeper into the subject, to try to get to the bottom of it, as it were.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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