It has many names and monikers.
Male menopause.
Andropause.
Age-related testosterone deficiency.
Hypogonadism.
Manopause, my personal favorite.
Although it isn’t as sharply defined as female menopause, male menopause is a catch-all for the gradual cascade of mental and physical health issues that men face as they approach and pass middle age and their testosterone drops. Wherever possible, I will insert “man” puns into the symptoms and conditions. Consider yourself warned.
Read MoreIn today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m talking about pregnenolone, the “master hormone.” Most of the hormones we talk about, like testosterone, estrogen, and cortisol, all have pregnenolone as their precursor hormone. What can happen when pregnenolone goes too low? Can taking pregnenolone solve any problems? Is menopause actually a pregnenolone deficiency?
Let’s find out….
Read MoreA Primal woman’s first reaction to the prospect of taking synthetic hormone replacements for menopause? Probably a healthy dose of skepticism. We in the ancestral health community, after all, tend to view pharmaceuticals as a last resort—interventions that are overprescribed by vested interests, create their own set of side effects, and may even do more harm than good. To suggest that we “need” this or that prescription raises our hackles.
Besides, it’s not like menopause is a product of modernity or an aberration our ancestors never experienced; it’s a physiological stage that evolution has protected and selected in humans. It’s perfectly natural. Rather than the debilitating, miserable experience many women report having, menopause should be easier. Graceful, even. But it often isn’t.
Read MoreBack in June during the 21-Day Challenge, I asked you to share questions you had about my personal health routine, and I’m looking forward to answering those in the coming months. We talk a lot about generalities here, and for good reason. Research can and should drive principle, but oftentimes while we wait around for it (or have questions about the overall validity of what’s out there), n=1 self-experimentation can tell us a lot.
Over the years, I’ve gathered ideas for that experimentation by reading the studies and listening to others talk about the choices they make. All of it together has—and continues to—inform the routine I follow to live the life I want. Among the many questions you sent were inquiries about my supplement regimen. Today I’m sharing what I take, when I take it, and why.
Read MoreOne of the biggest mistakes I see among people who exercise is they forget this core truth: we get fitter not during the workout but from recovering from the workout. Some of the most experienced, hardest-charging athletes I know fail to heed the importance of recovery. Hell, the reason my endurance training destroyed my life and inadvertently set the stage for creation of the Primal Blueprint was that I didn’t grasp the concept of recovery. I just piled on the miles, thinking the more the merrier to the point where recovery simply wasn’t possible.
It didn’t work for me, and it won’t work for you. In order for your muscles to grow, you need to be focusing on muscle recovery.
Read MoreEven after I fixed my diet, ditched the chronic cardio, and cleaned up my overall lifestyle to be more in line with our evolutionary upbringing, one big problem remained: my response to stress.
This had always been an issue for me. Part of it was that I kept a full plate at all times. Whether it was my training load, my businesses, my overall type A personality, stress was simply unavoidable, I thought.
How did I approach the situation and manage my stress differently over time?
Read MoreInsulin does a lot of important things for us. It pulls glucose from the blood and fritters it away into our cells to be burned for energy or stored as glycogen. It prevents hyperglycemic toxicity to neurons, pancreatic cells, the arterial walls and the generation of excessive levels of reactive oxygen species. It even promotes muscle protein synthesis and helps augment muscular hypertrophy, especially following resistance training. Clearly, we need insulin. Without it, we’d die, as type 1 diabetics readily do without an exogenous source.
But this process goes off the rails when our cells become resistant to the effect of insulin over time. We secrete too much. Our levels remain elevated. It becomes harder to burn body fat. In fact, we end up in even more efficient fat storage mode.
I’ve shared about nutritional means to enhance insulin sensitivity in the past. What about other non-dietary strategies?
Read MoreGenerally speaking, the basic Primal Blueprint for fitness and physical activity applies equally to men and women of all ages. Lifting heavy things works in everyone. Sprinting is a fantastic way—for anyone who’s able—to compress workouts and improve training efficiency. Improving one’s aerobic capacity through easy cardio doesn’t discriminate between the sexes. And everyone should walk, hike, garden, and perform as much low level physical activity as possible. These basic foundations—the 30,000 foot view of fitness—don’t really change across age or sex.
But the details do, especially for women.
Read MoreWhat if a person secretes too much insulin in response to a glucose load? What if, for whatever reason (and there are dozens of possible culprits), a person’s cells are resistant to the effects of insulin? What if, to remove the same amount of glucose from the blood, a person secretes twice or thrice the amount of insulin? What happens when insulin stays elevated? Lipolysis is inhibited to an even greater degree. Body fat becomes even harder to burn. Susceptible brain, artery, and pancreatic cells are exposed to higher levels of blood sugar for longer. Muscle protein synthesis falls off a cliff. Glycogen is replenished at a diminished rate. And if cells are already full of glycogen and there’s nowhere else to put the glucose, it converts to fat for storage.
Obviously, we don’t want to be insulin resistant. We want to be insulin sensitive. Here are 10 nutrition-based actions.
Read MoreWith 6.1 million children in this country bearing a past or present ADHD diagnosis, it’s little wonder folks had a lot to say in the initial post I did on the subject a few months back. For the most part, people were pumped to discover new potential therapies for themselves or loved ones, or at the very least to find validation in their own hunt for side effect free ADHD treatment. Others questioned the validity of certain alternative approaches, and still more posed questions about other treatments they’d heard about or were interested in.
Is there any substance to the other alternative therapies I added in passing within that previous post? What else shows promise? Let’s dig in….
Ⓒ 2023 Mark's Daily Apple
