Mark's Daily Apple

A Primal Primer: Animal Fats

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Animal fats have recently been implicated as the cause of heart disease, obesity and, in a roundabout convoluted stretch of logic, global warming. If you let health officials tell it, they’re pure evil. Reviled, shunned, and lambasted by the general public (thanks to less-then-sterling endorsements by health officials), animal fats have really gotten a bad rap.

It wasn’t always this way.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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Setting the Record Straight

We love it that the Primal Blueprint is garnering more public attention. We love it that research supporting the PB is becoming more common, more visible, more talked about. And we love it that people are jumping in the game, reading studies, asking questions, configuring their own Primal practices (and in doing so remaking their health!). The inevitable by-product of all this exposure, however, is an occasional misunderstanding, the every-so-often confusion about the Primal approach and what it actually suggests. These misinterpretations often find their way into our inboxes (We truly do welcome all comments and questions!), or we catch wind of them through the health blogosphere network. The remarks go something like this.

Posted By: Worker Bee

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Dear Mark: What is Creatine?

Over the years, more than a couple readers have asked about creatine and whether or not it has a place in the Primal Blueprint. People may be tempted to lump it in with anabolic steroids or other chemical enhancers, but they would be conferring guilt by association. To clarify, creatine is a naturally occurring substance involved in ATP energy production. All vertebrates have it, and most of us get a good chunk of our creatine from eating said vertebrates. Red meat in particular – beef, lamb, and bison – contains the highest levels of dietary creatine (interestingly enough, human vegetarians – unlike their ungulate counterparts – generally have far less creatine in their muscles than meat eaters). The rest of the creatine we get is biosynthesized internally from three amino acids (some of which are also derived from diet): arginine, glycine, and methionine.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

28

The “Grok Crawl”

One of the more underappreciated developmental milestones in an infant’s life is the act of crawling. First words, walking, reading – these get all the attention, but it’s crawling that helps kids develop the important upper and lower body strength that will serve as a foundation for later activity and basic movement. Some pull and push with their arms while scooting along with their knees. Others crawl with their elbows like soldiers slogging through a battlefield. Whatever their methods, when compared to kids who skipped crawling and went straight to walking, early crawlers seem to have better motor skills. They understand bilateral coordination (using the arms and legs in reciprocal movements), they have a better sense of depth perception, and all that time spent on their hands gives crawlers better grasping strength.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

22

80/20 Principle

For anyone who’s ever adopted a new diet plan for weight loss or overall health, it’s a familiar nightmare. The backdrop varies (an all you can eat buffet, holiday party, dark and silent kitchen in the middle of the night), but the suspense is universal. The temptation, a mental struggle, the cautious scanning of the room. A subliminal background track climbs in crescendo. You give into the slightest slip, a minor indiscretion, really, and suddenly there you are, dropping through a trap door, plummeting down a dark, cavernous shoot, screaming in terror, only to fall into a sorry heap of shame at the fiery center of the earth (or other subconscious setting for doom or disgrace).

Posted By: Worker Bee

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