Mark's Daily Apple

The Benefits of Boredom

No matter how old – and busy – I get in life, when summer rolls around, I still think of the leisure of the season as a kid. As much as I looked forward to the open-ended days of running wild, however, at some point I’d inevitably find myself bored. My best friend would be away on vacation. The weather would be too consistent. Whatever the case, I’d find myself feeling like I’d seen and done all there was to do a million times over. I’d mope and grumble (gaining no sympathy in the process). In those days, there was no gadgetry to surrender attention to. It was mostly the power of invention and imagination – the two best aspects of childhood if you ask me. Eventually, I’d conjure something good enough to get out of my funk. In fact, my greatest schemes and misadventures seem to have came out of those lulls. The thought makes me wonder: in this age of easy preoccupation, do we undervalue boredom?

Keep reading…

Posted By: Mark Sisson

81

Does Your Blood Type Determine Your Optimal Diet?

I get a lot of emails about the “Eat Right For Your Type” diet, also known as the blood type diet, which asserts that specific optimal diets exist for each blood type. In this post, I’ll take a look at whether there’s anything to this idea, and whether you should change the way you’re eating based on whether you’re Type O, A, B or AB.

The proposed diets all tend to be pretty decent, whole foods-based ways of eating, and they’re all better than the standard American diet of industrial processed junk, but differences do exist. Here’s the basic breakdown of all four blood type diets:

Type O (PDF): The “original” blood type and the oldest one, proponents claim it evolved among hunter-gatherers in response to their (Primal) diet of animals and plants. People with this blood type do best on meat, fish, and certain fruits and vegetables while limiting starches and omitting grains (especially wheat), beans, legumes, and dairy. It’s pretty much a strict paleo approach.

Type A (PDF): The agricultural blood type, proponents claim it arose after the advent of agriculture. People with this blood type do best on vegetables, fruits, grains, beans, legumes, and limited fish. They should avoid meat, wheat, and dairy. It’s basically a vegetarian diet.

Keep reading…

Posted By: Mark Sisson

264

Engineering a Better Life: A Reader Case Study

This is a guest post from Mark’s Daily Apple reader Jack Oughton. This article and last week’s article from Primal enthusiast Jack Yee go to show that there are many different approaches to living a healthy Primal lifestyle. Maybe some of the strategies that have worked for others in the community will work for you as well. Enter Jack…

“It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.” ~ Bruce Lee

Unlike many of the contributors to Mark’s Daily Apple, I’m not a health and fitness professional. I haven’t got the time. I’m a freelancer, trying to design a happy existence around an incredibly demanding yet fulfilling job, and some semblance of a social life. And do this all as simply as possible.

Keep reading…

Posted By: Mark Sisson

92

Dear Mark: The Purpose of Body Hair and the Non-Essentiality of Dietary Cholesterol

In today’s edition of Dear Mark, I finally field a question that has been weighing heavily on the hearts and minds of the ancestral health community: body hair. I will tell you that there has been a lot of behind the scenes chatter between big names in the community about just how to tackle this question, and until now, no one has stepped up. To be frank, no one really knew what to say. No one wanted to commit. I certainly didn’t, but then I got this email from Natasha and I realized that something had to be done. The people couldn’t wait til the roundtable discussion on chest hair scheduled for the next PaleoFX or Loren Cordain’s keynote speech at AHS 13 on the evolutionary purpose of arm hair. They needed to know why body hair exists, and they needed to know now. After that, I cover the less exciting topic of the non-essentiality of dietary cholesterol. In other words, if we can make it, why do we need to eat it? I go over why that question misses the entire point, and more.

Let’s go:

Keep reading…

Posted By: Mark Sisson

73

Weekend Link Love

The Arctic apple, a non-browning GMO varietal, is about to be unleashed upon the American public. Check out this impassioned plea from the Caltons and sign their Change.org petition to keep it off store shelves.

Research of the Week

A recent review of dietary fats and health “in the context of scientific evidence” makes a few interesting and refreshing conclusions. They find “adverse health effects that have been associated with saturated fats in the past are most likely due to factors other than SFAs,” question whether the “dietary manipulation of serum cholesterol may be moot in view of numerous other factors that increase the risk of heart disease,” and discuss the considerable evidence that omega-6 PUFAs promote inflammation and augment disease while omega-3s “seem to counter these adverse effects.”

Keep reading…

Posted By: Mark Sisson

32