Paleo in a Nutshell, Part 1: Diet

Sh!t's Not Normal - Our Pathetic Diets

We went from Neo-Lithic diets to Neo-Pathetic

((lot's of good links in here))

We eat food that we can't identify or even pronounce the ingredients, we eat food whose priority is yield, portability, etc - NOT nutrition.  Crops need 72 soil nutrients we consume crops that have three nutrients injected into them.  The dwarf wheat we eat in every meal has been on the planet for a only a few decades and was created in a lab and has never been tested on humans.  We do more research on which mini-van or plasma TV to buy but we give NO thought on what we eat.  That is the most intimate process and decisions we make and we do it with the least information, and worse yet, with bad information. 

Dr Daphne Miller hits these problems head on in her book The Jungle Effect: Discovering the World's Healthiest Diets, Why They Work and How to Bring Them Home.  (youtube lecture here).  In her book she instructs us how diets around the planet took 20,000 years to make and they were tweaked over each generation to produce food choices and ingredient combinations to make humans feel good, have no diseases and live longer.  Food chosen based on the health effects on the consumer.  This seems like some new-fangled concept... Example: Icelandic people eat no veggies or fruits.  They consume reindeer and the reindeer eat moss (rich in Vitamin C) - the people get vitamin C through the meat the eat.  In today's way of feeding people, we'd cram reindeer together and force feed them subsidized corn (which is poison to them) pump them full of antibiotics to keep them alive long enough to grow quickly.  Consuming this reindeer meat would contain no Vit C and we'd all die of scurvy.  And/or science would work on pills to treat the symptoms of scurvy :). As I keep saying you are what you eat AND you are what you eat eats.  

A new book has just come out on this topic that I look fwd to reading: Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World.  (podcasted interview here). Written by the farm here in VA that gets it!!  I have access to their meats at my local crossfit gym.   The author feels we'll look back on this period of history with astonishment wondering how we consumed things that make us sick, then a separate industry comes in and treats this sickness.  When did it become normal to consume more chemicals that an advanced chemistry set in every meal??  Well it's not normal.  The processed foods commercials are not accurate in telling you that their products are in any way good for you.  The average distance traveled for anything you pick up at the grocery store is 1,500 miles.  Cheap food?  You're spending more on fossil fuels than you are on those bananas.  I wish these costs were unhidden and common sense could someday rule.  Our grandchildren will get it.  Gonna kindle this book now. 

**My lunch today cost me $10, I ordered it from catalyst meals (no link,i'm not advertising for them).  It was made from 4 pronounceable/identifiable ingredients and has all that I need.  

If you have a different opinion, I'd love to hear it.

Micro-Instability

Micro-Instability is the benefit touted by a few 'toning' shoe sellers out there.  The idea is to make you aware that you need to fire stabilizing muscles to be able to stand and walk.  These shoes are getting a lot of bad press lately - Reebok's Easy Tone shoes were not delivering what they were advertising and owe the public $10s of millions!  They're not the only ones, Sketchers, and a dozen others are offering a way to 'exercise' without doing anything.  


Anything that sounds too good to be true is.  An alternative is to let your actual tripod of stability feel the ground.  We have a triad of pressure points - the heel, the 1st and 5th metatarsal heads.  These are our tripod.  When they are pressing down with equal pressure sharing the load of our weight we are happy and the muscles and tendons in our 'chain' are working the way the should.  


About 6mos ago I started wearing the thinnest soled shoes I can find to work, workout, run, etc..  My feet are NOW (finally) aware of when I have firm footing.  They know when I'm on an uneven surfaces I have a feedback mechanism that tells my body to put "less weight on that foot and take a shorter stride"-- annnnd Whammo - no twisted ankle.  


Thin soles, barefoot, or maybe rocking chair shoes with sensors that tell your iphone you're on uneven ground through your bluetooth headset... hmmm  there may be a market for THAT!


At Livestrong dot com, the discussion of instable shoes helping back pain.  From Here: 

An alternative to improving your posture without purchasing toning shoes would be to walk barefoot as often as possible. Walking barefoot, apart from the possible discomfort in cold weather and lack of foot protection, provides benefits to your back. When you walk barefoot, you do not put extra stress on your joints. Tribes in Africa who walk barefoot rarely experience back problems. If you prefer to keep your feet covered, some toning shoes are specifically designed to mirror the effects of walking barefoot.

Anyone have experience with shape-ups shaping you up?  Wrong crowd?

Running Form Analysis Part 1

I've been unlearning heel-striking for almost two-years now.  I'm finally down to zero-drop shoes!  I wish I'd done that from the beginning, transition shoes are not necessarily helpful -as I've had to relearn a few things repeatedly.

Anyway, this is me at marathon pace when I run to the left, and half marathon pace running to the right.  In the past year I have taken a minute off my mile time and ~7mins off Half marathon time, and 20mins off my marathon time.

Thanks to Crossfit, Crossfit Endurance, and my personal coach in 2010 was 'Running with Eric' (Orton).

Still have some work to do.  Things are coming together, just need to loosen up!

Update in 2013: That inward slant to my landing leg is considered a crossover gait.  I've worked to eliminate that component in my gait.  Now I no longer chafe in my inner thigh/groin area.  The crossover gait ends up loading joints in this way:  http://lowerextremityreview.com/article/knee-oa-in-obese-patients-a-cyclical-clinical-challenge

Funny, How Not to Run

Feed the Brain, Not the Gut

To Ditch Dessert, Feed the Brain

If the brain goes hungry, Twinkies look a lot better , a study led by researchers at Yale University and the University of Southern California has found.

Brain imaging scans show that when glucose levels drop, an area of the brain known to regulate emotions and impulses loses the ability to dampen desire for high-calorie food, according to the study published online September 19 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

"Our prefrontal cortex is a sucker for glucose," said Rajita Sinha, the Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry, and professor in the Department of Neurobiology and the Yale Child Study Center, one of the senior authors of the research.

The Yale team manipulated glucose levels intravenously and monitored changes in blood sugar levels while subjects were shown pictures of high-calorie food, low-calorie food and non-food as they underwent fMRI scans.

When glucose levels drop, an area of the brain called the hypothalamus senses the change. Other regions called the insula and striatum associated with reward are activated, inducing a desire to eat, the study found. The most pronounced reaction to reduced glucose levels was seen in the prefrontal cortex. When glucose is lowered, the prefrontal cortex seemed to lose its ability to put the brakes upon increasingly urgent signals to eat generated in the striatum. This weakened response was particularly striking in the obese when shown high-calorie foods.

"This response was quite specific and more dramatic in the presence of high-calorie foods," Sinha said.

"Our results suggest that obese individuals may have a limited ability to inhibit the impulsive drive to eat, especially when glucose levels drop below normal," commented Kathleen Page, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Southern California and one of the lead authors of the paper.

A similarly robust response to high-calorie food was also seen in the striatum, which became hyperactive when glucose was reduced. However, the levels of the stress hormone cortisol seemed to play a more significant role than glucose in activating the brain's reward centers, note the researchers. Sinha suggests that the stress associated with glucose drops may play a key role in activating the striatum.

"The key seems to be eating healthy foods that maintain glucose levels," Sinha said. "The brain needs its food."

Those with a diet mind-set will often make food decisions based on what they perceive to be the best for reducing the fat on their <insert body part that they are unhappy with>.  This could be a food choice that sends blood glucose levels fluctuating, perhaps via their influence on insulin secretion levels.  Or they could be skipping meals (in the context of conventional eating), leading to a fall in blood glucose levels.  These choices, either way, become short-term strategies which, in the medium to long term, can have EPIC FAIL written all over them if they end up triggering the responses to energy-dense (and neolithic agents of disease-dense) foods as outlined above.

Perhaps part of the success of a paleo-templated diet might lie in its ability to stabilise energy (glucose) supply to the brain, substantially reducing (if not eliminating) the pull of junk food?

Full paper here.

A Runner's Story of Stride Correction

Overstriding promotes a heel-first landing that reduces running efficiency and increases impact stress on legs and feet.

Photograph by: ALLEN MCINNIS GAZETTE FILE, The Gazette

I've jumped on the forefoot running bandwagon. And while the jury is still out regarding its long-term benefits, I've decided to give this much-heralded technique a try.
The reason I've changed my running style after 20 years is I can't seem to get rid of my knee pain. And after reading about my ongoing battle with iliotibial band syndrome (pain on the outside of the knee), veteran triathlete coach Gilbert Ayoub offered to look at my technique and suggest tips on making running more "knee friendly."
Ayoub's evaluation tools include a treadmill, camera, large-screen TV and a keen eye, which he used to take stock of my style. The conclusion is that I overstride, which Ayoub says promotes a heel first landing that reduces running efficiency and increases impact stress on the lower extremities.

His suggestion is to shorten my stride, increase my turnover, lift my heels higher, adopt a more forward lean and change from striking heel first to a mid-to forefoot landing.

Read the rest of his transformation here.

Newton's First Zero Drop Shoe

I have not tried this shoe.  I doubt I will since I've read repeatedly how narrow the toe box is.  The shoe is 5.8oz, $125, removable sock liner, and includes a 3mm heel raise pad.  I'm NOT a fan of the lugs under the forefoot.  Newton has a comical origin where the applied for a patent for lugs under heel+forefoot and they were rejected - so they removed the heel lugs and said it's a "new way to run".  I can't find that patent submission, but here's Newton's springy heel patent.  (Who it's bad.)  There's a nice extended review of the MV2 here at runblogger.

Try this shoe on before you buy, seems like you need to size-up for proper fit!

Quote from runblogger: In summary, the MV2 is an extremely light, zero drop shoe that will appeal to both Newton fans and those looking for a flat shoe that retains a bit of midsole underfoot. The lugs are not as noticeable as those on other Newton shoes, and the fact that they extend to the edges on each side is a big design improvement. I suspect that this shoe will retain the excellent durability of other Newton shoes, and thus may outperform many EVA based racing flats in this regard. Minimalist runners who prefer a wide toebox will probably not enjoy the feel of this shoe, but if you are accustomed to running in racing flats or XC spikes then this shoe will feel fine.

The Newton MV2 is set to be released in September 2011, and the MSRP is $125. They are currently available for pre-order on the Newton Running Website.