Why Is This Ok?

The 'flavor industry' admits - the goal here is make things addictive:

hedonism over health, makes sense? 

Ask yourself 'is it food'?  We're living in a food carnival.  My lunch today was 3 Ingredients: Turkey, avocado, apple.  It was amazingly palatable why is my behavior in eating like this considered an 'alternative diet'??  wtf???

Great Running Video

The CHASE. from Gretchen Powers on Vimeo.

From DeGuzman's GAPS Diet Blog

((that does it, I'm finally ordering a meat dryer))

GAPS Beef Jerky

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Felipe (Phil) DeGuzman

For snacks on the go, or as a simple meal entree, our GAPS beef jerky has proven to be a life saver. My method includes an amazing crunchy onions twist that makes this recipe unique and amazing! The recipe is versatile as well, so choose your ruminant meat source and you will be in for a treat.

Since venturing on the GAPS Diet, we have made almost uninterrupted batches of beef jerky to keep on-hand. As with most packaged items, beef jerky is one of those products that you simply cannot trust to be free of HFCS, sugar, seed oils, or other questionable and non-GAPS ingredients. The side benefit is that this is one of the most scalable, time efficient, and versatile foods you can make on the GAPS/Paleo/Primal diet. You can tinker with the levels of spiciness, chewiness or crunchiness, and other palatabilty factors by slicing the meat to varying thicknesses, altering the dehydration time, and changing up the spice mix or meat source (bison jerky is amazing; and did you know you could make ground beef jerky that is a knockoff of a slim-jim?)
Ingredients

• 2-3T Meat Medley spice mix
• 1-2T sea salt
• 1-2T Apple Cider Vinegar
• 2 medium yellow onions
• 3-5 lb Grassfed Beef (chuck roast, brisket, loin, “London Broil”, or other big cheap cuts– fatty cuts are ok, but beware cuts with lots of connective tissue…they can be difficult to chew once jerked). See notes below for ground beef.

Recommended Equipment
Excalibur food dehydrator, 1 gallon Ziploc storage bags or pyrex bowl with airtight lid
Method

1. Slice beef into 1/8″ to 1/4″ pieces. Longer pieces are better, but small pieces work fine too.
2. Arrange pieces on a cutting board or baking pan. Coat both sides of the beef with salt, then spice mix.
3. Slice onions into 1/8″ thick pieces. I like to leave them as rounds.
4. In a 1gallon ziploc bag or pyrex container with lid, combine beef, onions and vinegar. Shake to distribute vinegar to all pieces.
5. Store in refrigerator for 8-24 hours
6. Arrange beef and onions on dehydrator sheets (or if you do not have a dehydrator, use a baking sheet with a drying rack insert, or worst case use a baking pan alone. Dehydrate on dehydrator “jerk” setting or in oven at 150 degrees for 4-6hours. Test by bending the dehydrated beef. It should bend and reveal fibers. If it cracks it is over done, but still fine to eat. If it bends and reveals pink flesh, then it needs to dehydrate longer…it may be safe to eat but will not store as long and may develop mold. Onions should be crispy.
7. Remove from dehydrator or oven. Let cool for 20 minutes or so…the beef will stiffen as it cools. Store in an airtight container, preferably in the refrigerator.

As mentioned, you can play around with the spiciness using more or less cayenne, paprika, black pepper or other pepper flakes or dried herbs.

LOL, I Tried

Great Story About B2R Changing a Man's Life

David Lockington's Second Wind

First Posted: 12/ 5/11 08:56 AM ET Updated: 12/ 5/11 08:56 AM ET

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  Aging ,   Cycling ,   Yoga , David Lockington , Health Post50 , Modesto Symphony ,Cellist , Composer , Conductor , Maestro , Running , Triathlon , Fifty News

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He may be more Bernstein than Springsteen, but Maestro David Lockington was born to run.

In his 40s, the cellist, composer and classical music conductor decided he wanted to complete a Triathlon Sprint by the time he was 50. But there were a few hurdles. He didn't cross the finish line until 53.

But in his passion to meet this purely physical challenge, Lockington, music director of the Grand Rapids and Modesto symphony orchestras and a favored guest conductor in the U.S. and abroad, unlocked some of the keys to sustaining the vitality necessary for a long artistic career and healthy well-being in later life.

Lockington grew up a slender, active boy in his native England, where he sang opera by the time he was 11 and loved to run barefoot in the spacious park around his home in Weling, Kent. He swam in the lakes and biked around them; played soccer and even rugby, until his growing accomplishment at the cello pressured him to protect his hands. After a serious car accident in Europe, he taught himself yoga to heal his back.

"I had a conscious revelation as a teenager that, since I wasn't a prodigy cellist, I would like conducting as a career goal because I would be really good by the time I was old!" he recalled during a recent interview in Modesto, California, where he performs about eight weekends out of the year.

He had always met the physical demands of the career, which today include some 10 hours weekly of strenuous group rehearsal time, two or three concerts per weekend, private practice hours and and months of travel between one orchestral engagement and another. Conducting itself is a form of exercise, he said, in which "you quickly develop the muscles you need to hold your arms out, just by doing it," he says -- much like a dancer, which is not far from a description of how mobile and energetic Lockington appears on stage.

He discovered Kundalini Yoga and practiced it even in the smallest hotel rooms. "I've always liked this idea of being able to stay in shape even in a jail," he joked.

He enjoyed running in many of the places he has lived, from New Haven, Connecticut, where he earned his Master's degree in cello performance at Yale and studied conducting with Otto Werner Mueller, to homes he later made with his wife, the acclaimed violin soloist Dylana Jenson and their children, in New York, New Mexico, Denver and now Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Running had always come naturally and Lockington presumed that he had "an endurance type of body." Then, nearing 50, the triathlon goal suddenly became more and more elusive: "I started working toward it, and whenever I would start to increase my running, I would get a hip thing, or a knee thing, and I began to think, well maybe my body's just not built for it. It kept giving out on me."

At the same time, he started noticing some other physical changes. "I went through a period where I slowed down," he said. "My body was getting a little heavier. I was feeling lethargic, and somewhat flat. I had always been an optimistic person, and felt myself getting moodier. It just crept up on me."

No one but he really noticed it, he said. As a conductor, "When I was on: I was on." But there was this increasing dependence on caffeine; this annoying tendency to fall asleep in chairs. And so, he didn't make it by 50. The years crept by.

Then Lockington stumbled on a book called Born to Run by Christopher McDougal, about the forgotten technique of barefoot running. Reading it, he said, "was like a cannon shot. It woke up all my latent desires to move in space. I wanted something to reconnect me to nature. And it just got me out there." That spring he resumed the barefoot running of his boyhood, wearing the barefoot running footwear known as five-finger shoes.

But the turning point came when Lockington's wife Dylana encouraged him to get some blood tests at the Born Clinic, an alternative health center in Grand Rapids. What he learned from them was a complete surprise: his testosterone levels had plummeted.

"I thought it was hilarious," Lockington said. "I didn't have any sexual dysfunction, so it wasn't striking at the heart of my manhood in that way."

At that moment, though, Lockington says he realized that "if there was not a solution for this, I was going to start to go downhill quite fast, which is what one associates with men in their 50s and 60s from our parents' generation...often becoming a shadow of their former selves."

Bioidentical hormone treatments commenced, and he directed some of the increased energy he experienced into his training. A doctor at the Born Clinic recommended that he use orthotics in his shoes, and that too helped. Then he went to watch the son of a friend race in the Reeds Lake Triathlon sprints in Grand Rapids -- and could no longer hold out.

In September 2010, just a month before his 53rd birthday, he completed the half-mile swim, nearly an 18-mile bike ride, a five-mile run, emerging from Reeds Lake, Michigan, dripping wet and utterly elated, his wife and children cheering him on. A year later, he did it again.

It was not the fear of losing ground in the competitive world of conducting that drove Lockington to revitalize his body, but it has allowed him to contemplate a far longer career. What people notice is that he has extraordinary energy on the podium and in life. The athletic training has increased his strength of will and endurance for whatever projects he takes on, he said.

"I feel that being able to work on a longer musical form relates to doing endurance training, because there's strategy in both: there's form and artfulness in the composition, and there's strategy in the race -- and it all has to be paced," he said.

Match Your Shoe's Shoes 'Hinge Points' For Fitment

Wide toes  box, flexibility, ground feel... these are a few of our favorite shoe metrics of performance.  Something often left undescribed is shoe length.  Turns out black toenails are likely from you digging your nails down NOT into the head of the shoe!  A shoe length you choose should be MORE of fitting it to your hinges, not your foot length.  Sometimes you can put on a shoe and it just 'feels' better and it's hard to explain why.  That can be that you've matched the shoe's flexibility to the points of your foot's flexibility. 

See Video below for a better description:

Make sense?  I noticed the mention of 'more bunions to come due to minimalistic shoes' - I'm curious to see a running tally of that. 

Zach Wahl's mom cures MS with paleo

Posted Thu, 12/01/2011 - 14:41 by Melissa

 I noticed that Zach Wahl's testimony on marriage equality had gone viral on Facebook. In his speech, he mentions his mother's struggle with multiple sclerosis. How is she doing? Apparently, she's gone from wheelchair to walking thanks to her versions of a paleo diet rich in fruits, vegetables, wild fish, seaweed and grassfed meats (including organ meats):

More Evidence That The Paleo Diet Can Reduce Cancer Risk

• Food and Health,
• Government,
• Low Carbohydrate,
• Nutrition,
• Paleo Diet,
• Paleo living

by Barry Cripps

A very interesting article was recently published on October 26^th, 2011 by Nutrition & Metabolism, entitled: “Is there a role for carbohydrate restriction in the treatment and prevention of cancer?”. The article delivers more evidence that the Paleo Diet can reduce cancer risk, and improve heart disease markers. British Dr. John Briffa, a prominent low-carb advocate, posted the following summary of the article on his blog:

The paper starts with reference to hunter-gatherer diets, and their relatively protein-rich, low-carb nature, and remarks that cancer has been found to be rare in societies eating such a diet. It then goes on to postulate several major mechanisms that may account for this association. These include:

1. Cancer cells feed preferentially on sugar (glucose)
Glucose (from sugary and starchy foods) provides the prime fuel for cancer cells, so a diet lower in carbohydrate may therefore reduce tumour development or progression.

Ketones are your friend.

2. Insulin and IGF-1 can stimulate tumour cell growth
High carbohydrate diets increase levels of insulin and what is known as insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) which stimulate tumour cell growth. A lower carbohydrate diet may reduce tumour proliferation as a result.

3. Ketones suppress cancer
Very low carbohydrate diets can lead to the production of ‘ketones’ (mainly produced from fat) that suppress tumours.

4. Low-carbohydrate and ‘ketogenic’ diets ‘starve’ cancer
Low-carbohydrate diets mimic caloric restriction and ketogenic diets mimic starvation – and caloric restriction/starvation is linked to reduce tumour development and progression.

5. Low carbohydrate diets can reduce inflammation
Inflammation is believed to be a risk factor in the development of cancer, and high-carb diets encourage inflammation. Low-carbohydrate diets have been found to be more effective than low-fat ones in terms of reducing markers of inflammation.

The paper also makes the case that such diets may help better meet the nutritional needs of those with cancer.” – Dr John Briffa

You can find the “provisional” version of the article in PDF form here. In the meantime, this is (in my opinion) one of the most poignant paragraphs from the document:

In this context, it is important to note that a low CHO diet offers further possibilities to target inflammation through omission or inclusion of certain foods. Usually, CHO restriction is not only limited to avoiding sugar and other high-GI foods, but also to a reduced intake of grains. Grains can induce inflammation in susceptible individuals due to their content of omega-6 fatty acids, lectins and gluten [159, 160]. In particular gluten might play a key role in the pathogenesis of auto-immune and inflammatory disorders and some malignant diseases. In the small intestine, gluten triggers the release of zonulin, a protein that regulates the tight junctions between epithelial cells and therefore intestinal, but also blood-brain barrier function. Recent evidence suggests that overstimulation of zonulin in susceptible individuals could dysregulate intercellular communication promoting tumorigenesis at specific organ sites [161].

Paleolithic-type diets, that by definition exclude grain products, have been shown to improve glycemic control and cardiovascular risk factors more effectively than typically recommended low-fat diets rich in whole grains [162]. These diets are not necessarily very low CHO diets, but focus on replacing high-GI modern foods with fruits and vegetables, in this way reducing the total GL. This brings us back to our initial perception of cancer as a disease of civilization that has been rare among hunter-gatherer societies until they adopted the Western lifestyle. Although there are certainly many factors contributing to this phenomenon, the evidence presented in this review suggests that reduction of the high CHO intake that accounts for typically >50 E% in the Western diet may play its own important role in cancer prevention and outcome.” [1]

It’s nice to see further evidence of what the Paleo Community has known to be true for a long time, that a lower-carbohydrate version of the Paleo Diet is one of the best, easiest and yummy ways to secure your health for the future. If you want to live a long healthy life, and stand the best possible chance of avoiding cancer, heart disease, and pretty much any disease of civilization you can think of, the Paleo Lifestyle is the way to do it.