Weekend Link Love – Edition 317

Weekend Link LoveHead on over to Paleo Magazine Online and lend your voice to their annual “Best of” poll. This year, we’re up for several categories. You know who to vote for, right?

Research of the Week

You often hear that “fire made us human” by introducing a broader range of (cooked) foods to our diets, increasing our calorie intake, making those calories easier to digest, and paving the way for larger brains, but fire also changed how our brains work. By sitting around a campfire at night – every night – we became master storytellers and consumers of those stories.

Amidst the furor over a cure for Alzheimer’s, a group of ten Alzheimer’s patients have just seen remarkable improvements by minimizing carbs and grains, utilizing coconut oil and short fasts, reducing stress through yoga and meditation, getting optimal sleep, improving mitochondrial function, and taking a few supplements like turmeric, resveratrol, vitamin D, and vitamin K2. Now why does that sound so familiar?

Just 20 minutes of strength training can improve your memory.

It’s just a case report of a single patient, but cool nonetheless: after going on a paleolithic ketogenic diet, a 19 year-old type 1 diabetic patient was able to discontinue insulin therapy, showing normal blood glucose and evidence of restored insulin production (PDF).

Delayed feeding of gluten doesn’t change the rate of celiac in kids with family history of the disease, but it does delay the onset.

New Primal Blueprint Podcasts

Episode #37: Listener Question and Answer with Mark Sisson – Brad and I discuss using holistic methods to overcome injuries, recent modifications to my gym routine, the upcoming collaboration with Katy Bowman, and much more.

Each week, select Mark’s Daily Apple blog posts are prepared as Primal Blueprint Podcasts. Need to catch up on reading, but don’t have the time? Prefer to listen to articles while on the go? Check out the new blog post podcasts below, and subscribe to the Primal Blueprint Podcast here so you never miss an episode.

Interesting Blog Posts

Could multiple sclerosis begin in the gut? (I wouldn’t be surprised.)

The Atlantic wonders whether kids should be running marathons and completing Olympic-length triathlons. (They shouldn’t, by the way. I mean, what???)

Pharmaceutical-grade circadian enhancement (without the use of actual pharmaceuticals).

How much sleep do you actually need?

Media, Schmedia

Canadian researchers are calling for a shift in how we determine heart healthy diets – away from focusing on specific nutrients (like individual saturated fatty acids) and toward considering the effects of whole foods.

Is a 3-day work week in our future?

Everything Else

You really need to set aside a half hour to watch this episode of South Park.

Australian aborigine oral traditions accurately describe meteor impacts from thousands of years ago.

A case for including half-kneeling stances in your strength training.

Does evolutionary theory need reworking?

This article makes me really, really want to visit the Nordic Food Lab.

Some Amish farmers are foregoing pesticides by fortifying the plants’ immune systems with targeted supplementation of specific nutrients.

Sleeping brains understand words.

School lunch in Sweden looks incredible.

You know, I’ve never admitted this publicly, but I’ve been fighting a decades-long addiction to a certain noxious green plant. I’m just glad my kids never got hooked on okra.

The as-yet earliest cave art was just discovered, and it’s in Indonesia.

The New Yorker covers Dunbar’s number: is there a physiological limit to friendship?

Monkey midwives.

Recipe Corner

Time Capsule

One year ago (Oct 12 – Oct 18)

Comment of the Week

Yada, yada, yada…..why spend time doing all this reading myself when I can just wait for somebody to narrate it to me on the podcast ;)

Ha. You got me there.

About the Author

Mark Sisson is the founder of Mark’s Daily Apple, godfather to the Primal food and lifestyle movement, and the New York Times bestselling author of The Keto Reset Diet. His latest book is Keto for Life, where he discusses how he combines the keto diet with a Primal lifestyle for optimal health and longevity. Mark is the author of numerous other books as well, including The Primal Blueprint, which was credited with turbocharging the growth of the primal/paleo movement back in 2009. After spending three decades researching and educating folks on why food is the key component to achieving and maintaining optimal wellness, Mark launched Primal Kitchen, a real-food company that creates Primal/paleo, keto, and Whole30-friendly kitchen staples.

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