Weekend Link Love – Edition 322
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Research of the WeekIn Taekwondo athletes, a ketogenic diet improved physical performance (PDF).
Using a foam roller reduces arterial stiffness and improves endothelial function.
Playing action video games may improve general learning capacity, not just game-specific learning performance.
Ginger is probably effective for patients with osteoarthritis.
Episode 42: Ask the Primal Doctor – Q&A with Dr. Cate Shanahan: Dr. Cate returns to the podcast to talk a little bit about her history working with rural Hawaiians eating their traditional diets, how that experience shaped her approach to medicine, and whether or not the mainstream medical community is shifting toward a more ancestral approach (even if they don’t quite know it).
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.
As violent video game consumption increased, actual real life violence decreased.
Several sets of heavy leg presses performed right before cycling improved cyclists’ subsequent cycling performance by 6%. Researchers aren’t exactly sure why, as neither VO2 max nor lactic acid levels were significantly affected.
Anne Hathaway goes from vegan to paleo. Good switch.
The New Yorker covers grass-fed meat (and, somewhat indirectly, ancestral health).
There may actually be four chronotypes, not just two.
Would you do a 21-day no sitting challenge? This person is.
A longtime anti-saturated fat guy has a public change of heart (PDF).
Check out (OFFTIME), an app that lets you unplug from your smartphone.
I’m honored to be featured in a new recipe ebook out this week. Check out The Best Paleo Recipes of 2014, featuring 150 stunning and delicious recipes from your favorite bloggers. Sale offer ends Monday, November 17th at 11:59 PM EST.
One year ago (Nov 16 – Nov 22)
We are the petri dish….
– Indeed we are.
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This nonstop effort to find support for ketogenic diets is peculiar.
Agree. There can be all sorts of tweaks and twists and varying degrees to a ketogenic diet. For instance, a piece of meat, two lettuce leaves, and a large chunk of butter can be considered ketogenic. A lot of people who think they’re on a ketogenic diet really aren’t.
Measurable, medically supervised ketosis is very strict because it limits amounts as well as types of food. In fact, it mimics starvation, which isn’t a very good idea for a healthy individual, although it will usually induce weight loss like crazy. For those who need medical ketosis (as for seizure control), weight loss can be stopped by drastically increasing the amount of fat in the diet. (The notion that fat won’t make you fat is completely incorrect because nobody eats nothing but fat.)
I’m not sure if I’ve been mostly ketogenic or not lately. Likely not, but I’ve been losing some annoying fat that had been creeping up on me, and a big portion of my diet (like half) has been [fortified] wine, beer, and sweet potatoes (with inordinate amounts of butter). Other than that I’ve been trying to stick to meat, eggs, fish, and some low calorie vegetables. And lots of butter with that often. Calories in, calories out basically, is what I’m getting at.
Ahh, when you’ve lived the magic yourself it becomes your religion.
It could be seen another way: as a nonstop provision of evidence that ketogenic diets may be beneficial for some groups of people. To many people, the word “ketogenic” equates to “ketoacidosis” and is linked with images of starvation, acidification of the body, and huge hunks of meat. So there is very high mainstream resistance to even considering that ketogenic diets – by definition very low carb – may be beneficial, even healthy.
There are many variants of ketogenic diets, which have very different effects to ketoacidosis. They don’t necessarily mimic starvation, in my opinion. I haven’t done any literature research yet, but I suspect that people on ketogenic diets, who are in caloric and nutritional balance, may not excrete any ketones. Are there any forum members who regularly test their urine for ketones and pH, and track their body fat %? It would make a fascinating project…I have to take a biological anthropology class within the next year, so maybe I could do it!
About one-third of the calories in protein are lost to thermogenesis. Then there are widely, maybe even wildly, different individual responses to dietary fats and carbohydrates. There’s some very interesting work being done on gene polymorphisms and copy numbers. For example, Perry et al. (2008) found that groups that traditionally ate high amounts of starchy foods micro-evolved to have higher copy numbers of salivary amylase 1. Maybe the high copy number people have different responses to ketogenic diets than the low copy group?
As a chronic migraineur, I benefit greatly from a low-carb diet, which may not, in the strictest sense, be ketogenic. I haven’t tested my urine for ketones. When my carb intake from all sources is between 75 and 125g/day and the carbs derive from low-glycaemic index veggies and some fruit, I have fewer migraines and their intensity is lower. The carbs in whole milk don’t bother me, but that may be a combination of low glycaemic index, and an almost 1:1:1 ratio with fat and protein. When my carbs come predominantly from grains, at the same level of intake, life can be pretty hellish. Of course, this is an n=1 study, but there are consistent reports in the medical literature that some chronic migraineurs do better on a ketogenic diet. There’s evidence that at least some chronic migraineurs have altered insulin pathways. There are three constellations of migraineurs, with different comorbidities, so that may explain why it works for some but not all.
At the other extreme, I know people whose young son had intractable epilepsy, seizing almost continuously day in and day out, for whom medication and electric shock therapy were ineffective. They put him on a really strict, tightly medically supervised, ketogenic diet – meat, eggs, butter, heavy cream – and within six weeks the child was seizure-free. He took no drugs at all. His diet, although ketogenic, didn’t put him into ketosis because he was getting enough calories that he didn’t break down any body tissues. He continued to grow normally. He may possibly (pure speculation on my part here!) have high natural ability to perform neoglucogenesis. Over time, he’s been able to reintroduce low levels of vegetables and fruits, but they still avoid starches. He still takes no medications.
Ketogenic diets may not work for everybody, but I think they should be accepted as healthy for at least some people.
I welcome all comers to the “lethargic” sleeper’s group!
Brother! how nice to meet you!
Love that “Can Steak Save the Planet?” article.
Love the article, hate the title! it perpetuates a completely inaccurate stereotype.
I agree; and while welcomed, I think that the environmental angle is playing 2nd fiddler to Belcampos main goal which is targeting consumers with very deep pockets; can’t afford it? Settle for our hamburgers and secondary cuts. Something that you don’t hear from other growers who raise cattle in the same manner. But as I said, I enjoyed reading the article and think that the reporter did an excellent job. And for all I know, the title was picked by the editor to draw the readers attention as often happens. (;
And I care about Anne Hathaway or what she is or isn’t eating because….
…because the more high profile celebrities embrace our way of eating, the more popular support it will have, and the more likelihood there is for social change.
Good response.
I pay almost no attention to celebrities. But I know I’m an outlier.
BTW, how does Elon Musk eat? THAT would get my attention.
+1
I support paleo movement mostly because it is a much healthier alternative to a veganism for youngsters who feel the need to belong to a group or a movement. Nowadays ,with a paleo-movement in a picture, it is less scary to sent your son or a doter to a university where animal rights activists roam in packs and try to brainwash others into caring about animals more than about own health.
As for ginger and osteoarthritis, ginger is a poor man’s COX-2 inhibitor, and is already in use for rheumatoid arthritis, so the osteo type is just the next logical step.
The study regarding action video games made me feel a lot better about all of my life.
LOVED the putting time in perspective link–
thank you!
Richard Nikoley used the same Taekwondo study to illustrate a potential downside to the ketogenic diet, pointing out that the athletes lost muscle mass and gained fat mass.
“I just didn’t feel good or healthy, not strong,” [Anne Hathaway] said of her vegan diet days.
Nailed it, didn’t she?
two thumbs up for cross rib roasts….great in a 500″ oven for 15 min then turned down to 275 and cooked 15 minutes per pound more…makes crazy delicious rare meat. Slices great cold for lunch meat.
That Taekwando study was posted on Free The Animal awhile ago. The conclusion:
“”Keto” Diet in Taekwando Athletes: Good for Performance, Less Beneficial for Body Composition – Non-Sign. Higher Muscle & Lower Fat Loss in 25% Deficit vs. Balanced Diet”
“Performance” is relative. A ketogenic diet is often detrimental to athletic performance. What’s interesting is that the athletes got fat on said ketogenic diet.
As a 15 year student of Taekwondo, I’m really interested in the Ketogenic article related to TKD. Will definitely need to dig into it more and discuss it on my page.
Pasteurized kombucha? Glad I don’t have to drink that.
Another great roundup Mark, thanks for sharing! I LOL’d at the “21-day no sitting” challenge guy, haha!
so my typo corrections were fixed but my comment wasn’t posted? fail. I’ll spend my time and money elsewhere.