Honestylog.com

Finally; I can tuck in my shirts

It's been a number of years, perhaps six or seven, since I've been comfortable tucking in my shirt, save for when I'm wearing a suit and the coat covers the sin.

Here was my last photo set, not quite three months ago, end of February. Net weight loss has been real slow (only about 5 pounds), but very steady. I think I've reached somewhat of a tipping point, however. Fat loss has been far in excess of what would be implied by weight loss. I estimate just on volume that I've gained 10 pounds lean in my thighs. They are getting to be quite large and dense, and I can't pinch but a quarter inch of subcutaneous fat.

The belly is the big challenge, but when I began, it stuck out a good six inches. Now, maybe one inch or so. In addition, I have the subcutaneous layer between the skin and the abdominal muscle that has not yet seemed to kick in. My trainer says that in men, it's always the last to go.

Anyway, here's this afternoon; about 20 hours since the last meal and an hour from a workout. Art told me in an email to smile when I take photos, because I deserve to. Voilà. It's a far cry from this.

Oversight

I think I was remiss in not highlighting this wonderfully descriptive image in this post, specifically the link to Mark Sisson.

It concerns doing lots of cardio, which makes you hungry, especially for carbs, which spikes insulin, driving the carbs to fat and making you even more hungry, so you do even more cardio.

It’s like digging a hole to put the ladder in to wash the basement windows.

That could apply to a whole lot of quotidian clusterfuckery I observe.

Smackdown

This is just too good to quote any of it. You'll just have to go read the whole thing, as Peter -- the very smart UK veterinarian -- ridicules the "calories in / calories out" oversimplification.

Stephan has commentary, and Mark, looking great at 54, has prescient insights into exactly what Peter is talking about.

Read it all. Then, consider being of some help to your family and friends who've suffered too long under the Diet Delusion. You very well might save their life.

Neglect

I've been neglecting email. For two, I've got Adam, my cousin, and Ronny over in Japan (Ronny: I lived in Hayma in Honshu for five years; '84-'89). They both want to know about the working-out aspect of EvFit.

The truth is, I'm not the person to ask. This is the one aspect of the thing I've surrendered. By happenstance, I've got a trainer who knew short, intermittent, variable, and intense. I see him twice a week, and seriously: I'm 'yessir' all the way; literally, to the point I enjoy saying "yes sir" (I've had it said enough to me: my turn). He barks orders; I submit and obey. I wouldn't have it any other way, in spite of the reality that it's normally me in command of all that's around me. I read the stuff about various exercises, and I'm immediately at a loss because I don't even know the names or descriptions of the stuff I do, which is various and at different times and different days, random. It's my trainer's job; you get it?

Here's what I'll advise, because I'm certainly not qualified to advise on weight training regimes: follow Chris' blog, Conditioning Research. He is very good at tracking just about every relevant thing out there, he seems to know a lot about training, and maybe he'd even be kind enough to do a beginner's workup, if he can't point you to something already done. Chris: the trouble I find with a lot of stuff is that beginners don't know the names/descriptions of exercises (me included). To them, it's like saying, "Do 3x10 of aklkjdlka alknlllasdd's." In terms of finding exercise diagrams on the Internet, I find it hit & miss. YouTubes are probably the solution, and better anyway.

Finally: think. Think evolutionary and functional. If I had no specific knowledge and lived out where I didn't have access to facilities like a gym, I'd do stuff like climb trees and rocks, hike hills with weight strapped on, do a lot of jumping -- with and without weight -- and a lot of short burst sprints of random duration. In essence, think about the functions you might have to perform if you were living by your own means in total, and try to duplicate those functions with the intensity that your life depended on it. Can you imagine trying to catch a rabbit when you haven't eaten in three or four days? Solving that problem has 2 million years of cellular evolution behind it, and to the extent you can simulate and duplicate it is the extent to which you express your genes, which of course want you to be lean and mean.

Resistance

I got an email about resistance training, yesterday. My response was to say that I pretty much just go with my trainer. I also provided links to Art De Vany's workout and his essay on EvFit (PDF).

Upon further consideration, I came to a realization. I read lots and lots of stuff about different ways one can go about doing their training. Lots of 'em, I'd like to try. But right now, my goal is singular and focussed, which is to get somewhat ripped at <10% BF, and to do that I've got at least 20 more pounds of fat to shed.

OK. So what of the workouts? Here's what I realized, and it's kind of remarkable. When I began, last May, I was at 230 pounds. In the first couple of weeks of workouts, I went up to 236 or so, perfectly normal. Since then, I've shed weight down to around 206 or so. So, about 25 net pounds. Cool. Then, I realized the big important thing. I have pretty much doubled my strength during the year. Where I could barely get in 10x3 bench presses at 90 pounds, I can now easily do 10x4 at 165. In other areas, I'm doing 300% of what I began with.

So, what I'd say is that whatever you do, if you need to drop net pounds (more fat mass than the muscle you're going to build) make sure that in the whole scheme of things that you are not getting weaker. It's fine to have a crap workout -- I sure have. But those should be offset by explosive ones. In total, you should be gaining strength, even while you are loosing net weight. That's what tells you you're on the right track.

Starving Cancer

Chris sent this to me earlier in email (thanks, man). Whilst considering whether to blog it, or not, I note that he already has.

Good Calories, Bad Calories

After a period of reading another couple of books, I have just picked back up on Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories once again over the last couple of days.

You know what? This is an amazing work on general grounds. Taubes is a consummate and meticulous advocate of the scientific method; i.e., you first form a hypothesis and then do your honest, dead level best to refute it. To the extent you fail time after time, the hypothesis gets stronger and stronger because you are systematically eliminating everything that can be speculated to count against it. It's the only valid way to do science. You can't "confirm" a hypothesis in the sense of coming up with conditions under which it holds, for no matter if it holds under a million such conditions, you need but one to obliterate it.

The depth and research into this book is amazing. No wonder it took five years to write. In a nutshell, you have the Ancel Keyes fat-cholesterol-heart hypothesis that just won't die, which is itself based upon his flawed Seven Countries Study. From the Wikipedia article:

These studies found strong associations between the CVD rate of a population and average serum cholesterol and per capita intake of saturated fatty acids. Then, as now, critics have rightfully pointed out that this "strong association" vanishes when data from other countries are added to the mix and there have been allegations that Keys "cherry picked" the data to support his hypothesis.

I might have to eventually go and create a table to keep track of it all, but since then, there is study after study after study, and not for the purpose of attempting to falsify the flawed, cherry-picked study, but rather to "confirm" it. And how do they attempt to do that? By designing other flawed studies with multiple factor variation, i.e., so that a failure to confirm can be attributed to ambiguity. Even then, they have not been able to confirm anything. Those studies that fail to find any correlation between fat, cholesterol, heart disease, cancer, and so on are "disappointing." Those that show higher fat consumption correlated to lower heart disease and cancer (such studies exist) are dismissed. They may show up in a journal, but never get reported in the mainstream. If by chance they do, they are attacked vigorously by the "medical" establishment. Over and over.

Anyway, that's my report after only getting about a third of the way through. But I do agree with one blogger who wrote that Taubes ought to take on anthropogenic global warming next. Principally, it is the exact same thing going on.

A Motivation I Haven't Written About

There's a motivation underlying my food & fitness obsession I've not written about.

My mom, aged 67, is a Type 2 diabetic. I intend for her to be around for a good long while, and so far as I have witnessed, the "help" she was getting from the medical establishment -- whom she paid to treat her -- is beyond malpractice; but I'll refrain from telling you what I really think.

There's lots of anecdotes I could tell; like how I sent her to my personal trainer to do resistance training, and then how just two weeks ago I showed up at her house for the 66th birthday party to see her backyard sporting about 25 new large plants of various things for the spring. Each one had come in a 5-gallon pot, for which she had dug all the holes herself. Said she wasn't even sore afterwards.

She was diagnosed some years ago, was put on oral medication, given diet recommendations, regular checkups and so on. But there was considerable confusion about what she ought to eat. And I don't think she was ever admonished to increase her lean muscle mass. She was aware of the low-carb advice, but that wasn't really the advice she was getting. And, of course, the low-fat-crap is pervasive throughout the medical community. It is very hard to maintain a low carb diet that's also low in fat. The difference has to be made up with protein, and that can get very unpleasant. Just in terms of sheer mass, fat is more than twice as energy efficient as either protein or carbs (9 kcal per gram vs. 4).

And yet, her blood glucose levels just kept creeping up, she'd have huge swings, spikes well over 200, and so on. Then -- it was perhaps a couple of years ago -- they determined she had to go on the self-administered shots, which really got to her emotionally. She's no dummy. She could see the downward progression. Type 2s always get worse and worse.

The gym helped a lot, I think. Also, she has recently gone to a super low-carb diet, with no concern for fat or protein. This means no grains or grain products at all and very limited fruit. Her blood glucose has now stabilized between 85 and about 105 most of the time. 125-140 is the very upper spike range for a normal person. I also got her Dr. Bernstein's book, regarded as the Diabetes Bible for those in the know.

She shoots two types of insulin, a fast-acting and a time-release. Several weeks ago she was able to drop the fast acting one (no spikes). Then, this weekend, her and my dad hitched up the 5th-wheel trailer for a camping trip. She forgot her insulin at home. They were only a couple of hours away, so it could be had, but she decided to just monitor closely. Pretty much, it's staying in the 85-95 range. The highest measures was 123, but usually the highest reading is the first of the day, and that's coming in at 105.

Every doctor she has ever seen has been exactly worthless. No; destructive with their bogus low-fat, high carb, whole grains bullshit.*

Anyway, if you know any Type 1 or 2 that might benefit, send them over to Bernstein's place. He's a Type 1, living with it now for nearly 60 years. He was trained as an engineer, was literally dying as a young man from the disease, determined he had to take matters into his own hands, figured it out, nobody would listen because he wasn't a doctor, so he went and became one. His story is a very interesting read. Also, there's a link to his diabetes forums on his website. It's chock full of Type 2s who have cured themselves through exercise and low-carb dieting.

Later: *I don't think that's really even it. What I suspect is that lots of doctors are tired of trying to get people to follow any diet that doesn't' allow them to consume as much as they want, of anything they want, whenever they want. I have actually read in various places that even diabetics who were able to control their blood sugars via low-carb diets ultimately decided to just do the insulin. They don't know what a path of self-destruction that is, and I don't think doctors are making sure they know.

Refined Carbs Cause Alzheimer's Too?

I'm typically very skeptical -- really -- of cure alls. Chiropractic is a good example. Now, about every couple of years I end up waking up having done some damn thing to my neck whilst sleeping, and I can barely move my head without sharp pain in my neck & shoulder. It can take a week or more to work back right, and it's very painful every step of the way. Just trying to raise my head off the bed can be excruciating, and I end up having to roll out. In each case, I'll go to a Chiropractor, he/she cradles my head and pops/cracks it to the left, then to the right, and it's like 50% relief on the spot. The rest of the discomfort melts away over the next 24 hours.

Fine. Cool. Love 'em. But then they always want to get kooky, suggesting x-rays, regular visits to keep my spine "aligned," and its all justified under some silly notion that spine "mis-alignment" is the ultimate and fundamental source of all trouble. Nonsense. Quackery.

On the other hand, the notion that refined carbohydrate over years and years lies beneath a lot of our modern diseases carries some weight with me. What I know is that eliminating them completely over the last few months has delivered remarkable benefits. I've been on medication for sinus allergies, hypothyroid, and chronic heartburn for about seven years or so (in the case of the allergies, about 10 years). I'm off all three as a daily thing. I have a couple of times had to use the prescription sinus spray now that it's spring and everything is in bloom, but it's only as needed, now, which has been rare. The only thing this can possibly be in my case is the elimination of refined sugars and gluten completely from my diet resulting in a reduction of the inflammation they cause.

Now there's this, via Matt Metzgar.

An integrated and unifying hypothesis for the metabolic basis of sporadic Alzheimer's disease.

Acquired disturbances of several aspects of cellular metabolism appear pathologically important in sporadic Alzheimer's disease (SAD). Among these, brain glucose utilization is reduced in the early stages of the disease. Hyperinsulinemia, which is a characteristic finding of insulin resistance, results in a central insulin deficit. Insufficient insulin signaling impairs the intricate balance of nitric oxide regulation of the central nervous system. Reduction in central insulin decreases neuronal nitric oxide synthase and increases inducible synthase activity. This, in turn, decreases astrocytic energy substrates and antioxidant supply of neurons. In addition, an increase in peroxynitrite formation impairs redox balance. Hyperleptinemia and glucose excess, which are the other parameters of insulin resistance, may worsen the reduced astrocytic energy supply and the ongoing inflammation via the inhibition of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). Consequently, energy deficit and inflammation in neuronal tissue may cause neurodegeneration of SAD.

And as Matt points out, we know what causes insulin resistance. For me, it's a no-brainer. I get so much benefit from being off grains -- no exceptions. Added bonus that I may be doing something as well to keep my mind from eventually melting.

In a separate post, Matt also calls attention to this PDF on childhood obesity. Very much worth a read.

A Round of Applause

Art De Vany serves up the impressive 4-month fitness results of one of his readers.

Part I

Part II

Any doubters left...that random, stochastic evolutionary fitness, i.e., pre-agricultural (Paleo) eating, brief, intense, fun and functional resistance training, and intermittent fasting is the path to longevity, fitness and health?

Diets Don't Work

Practitioners of the Evolutionary way know why.

It takes a stochastic approach, i.e., Paleo eating, intermittent (brief, intense, preferably fun or at least functional) resistance training, and intermittent fasting (offset by intermittent overfeeding).

Breakfast, Breakfast and Longevity Notes

Here was the literal break-fast last night, after a very nearly 36 hours fast. Very simple, and no, it's not lettuce that's gone brown; it's balsamic. Pretty much, the only salad dressing I do now is home made with quality cold pressed extra-virgin olive oil. This one is simply olive oil and balsamic. Another one I do is a French vinaigrette that's a bit more complex. I'll have to remember to provide the recipe next time. You'll love.

Yep, those are potatoes -- fingerling -- initially sautéed just a minute or two on the stove in butter, garlic, and lots of paprika. Then, onto a cookie sheet at 350 for 20. Then 3-5 under the broiler. While I eat almost no grain, grain product, rice, pasta, legumes...I do take in some potato, usually a couple of times per week. Oh, almost forgot: 16 oz ribeye, grilled at five-hunerd.

This morning:

The omelet begins with a good sized pat of butter on medium, then several slices of yellow onion sliced very thin, like a 16th. Onion in the butter until brown and carmelized. In the meantime, beat the two eggs; and I took one of the three strips of bacon and chopped it up. All goes into the pan with the onion and butter. For years I have faced the issue of having a difficult time getting the cheese (pepper jack, in this case) fully hot & melted without overcooking the egg. Grating helps, but even better is to just slice up what you need, into a bowl, and nuke it for 30-45 seconds. It makes a nice goo, which you can then easily spread onto the omelet and fold over. And check out how little rind there is on the Trader Joe's mini watermelons.

Here's a couple of interesting things I read yesterday on the subject of longevity.

IF Life: The Longevity Gene SIRT1 Part I - CR, Fasting and Aging Diseases

Clarence Bass: Weight Training Reverses Almost 40 years of Aging -- in Six Months; Restores Youthful Genetic Footprint to Mitichondria

The researchers summarized their findings: “We report here that healthy older adults show a gene expression profile in skeletal muscle consistent with mitochondrial dysfunction and associated processes such as cell death, as compared with young individuals. Moreover, following a period of resistance exercise training in older adults, we found that age-associated transcriptome expression changes were reversed, implying a restoration of a youthful expression profile.” (Emphasis added.)

“The main, novel finding,” Co-author Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky told CS (Canadian Press) writer Sheryl Ubelacker, “is that we could bring that aging mitochondria pattern back towards a younger person, almost reversing the aging signature, pretty much by 40, 45 years with six months of weight training.”

Full Study

(linked via the new Fitness Spotlight aggregator)

The older you are, the absolutely more essential it is to get exercise in the form of weight training. If you can possibly afford it, which is probably more a matter of priority, get a personal trainer and tell him you'll only hire him if he can squeeze an hour workout into 30 minutes, and do it twice per week. I have worked out on, mostly off, for many years. Never did I make it more than about 2 months without dropping off (sometimes for years), with a single exception where I had a workout partner, but then it lasted only six months. I am just about at the one year point, and I have missed exactly one workout where I didn't reschedule to the next day or so. That's the difference a trainer makes.

If you have injuries, just work around them. You have lots of muscle groups.

A Big Breakfast and an I Told You So

I guess, more accurately, this would be a big "startfast."

That's leftover tri-tip roast, grilled on the BBQ for guests last evening. Three strips of fried, uncured bacon, two eggs over easy, and some red grapes. Of course, the unsalted butter in which I fried the eggs went on top of the roast. Yum.

Next meal tomorrow night, about 36 hours from this meal, and a few hours after a workout at the gym.

Next up, some will recall my two posts concerning a speech given by Gary Taubes, here, and then a follow-up here. I was trying to get across the idea that what Taubes seemed to be driving at is that it's not nearly so simple as calories in, calories out. Ultimately, that's true, but that's just the raw material, and not the causal factor which, I speculated was akin to a positive feedback mechanism. I wrote the following in the second post referenced above:

... it's not simply the fact of excess calories of any sort that makes people fat, but rather, they are turning on a fat-accumulation hormone that tips a balance, such that fat begins to act much like a tumor...

[...]

And what happens when a tumor gets to be of sufficient size? Does it not then become a self-sustaining cannibalistic parasite, sacrificing healthy bodily tissue for its own sake in a positive-feedback mechanism, such that the bigger it gets, the bigger and more parasitic its influence on the rest of the body until eventually its pathological selfishness kills the very host that feeds it?

This morning I cam across this bit of research news, courtesy of a commenter over at Art's.

Your belly fat could be making you hungrier

The extra fat we carry around our middle could be making us hungrier, so we eat more, which in turn leads to even more belly fat.

[...]

Yang says “this may lead to a vicious cycle where NPY produced in the brain causes you to eat more and therefore gain more fat around your middle, and then that fat produces more NYP hormone which leads to even more fat cells.”

Many of the things I have learned over the last months seem so dammed obvious and simple that's it's really difficult to understand why this "low fat, whole grains" culture persists. One thing's for sure, and that's that most of the people out there spouting it aren't -- and probably never did -- actually thinking about any of it. When that happens, there's just no telling what you're going to get. I'd point to political implications, but that'd be just too obvious.

Will The Blogosphere Cure Cancer?

That's a partially tongue-in-cheek question, but also partly serious. What I really mean to ask is: is there a reasonably effective treatment for most forms of cancer that's already basically understood and available? And if so, why is it not in the mainstream? Whatever the reason, if indeed there is "a cure," could the blogosphere then act as the medium for wide distribution of the information, bypassing traditional outlets, until such point as so many anecdotes of successful control or eradication tip the balance?

Well, let's see. I don't have a whole lot to say, but others do, lots of them very smart people. If you take the time to get through it -- and you should, just on the reasonable chance there's something to it -- you're going to get quite an education on just what cancer is, how it grows, and thus, what might be the most effective way to combat it.

First, let me address the question of cancer quackery. It exists on the faulty premise that there is significant financial incentive to explicitly not cure cancer, but to keep it alive and well whilst developing drugs to manage it, hopefully in a manner that has patients ingesting drugs in perpetuity. There is never any shortage of anecdotes, i.e., people going into remission or seeing eradication of a cancer while on some sort of alternative treatment. But in addition to considering the cause & effect aspect of such anecdotes (cause or coincidence?) there is also the issue of proper diagnosis. When I was a kid, a friend of my mom's claimed to have been diagnosed with cancer, then cured by "Laetrile." I don't know if anyone really suspected it at the time, but later antics from that person convinced me that she never had cancer in the first place.

Here's the fallacy: there is an incentive to come up with drugs that manage the disease, all else remaining equal. That's one approach, and problems of the magnitude of cancer ought to be attacked from different avenues. People have been cured with chemotherapy who otherwise would have died. Lots of them. Mostly, that's due to earlier diagnosis. There's also incentive to cure it outright, to eradicate it. A drug company invents drugs. If a cure or treatment comes to light that's not a drug, well, that's out of the purview of a drug company and it's unreasonable to expect them to just abandon the approach they have taken and invested in. Others are sure to explore other paths, and methods that are truly effective will eventually rise to the surface.

Anyway, suffice it to say that I am always suspicious of "cancer cures," and I fully understand that anytime an intriguing anecdote comes to light, people immediately start searching for the magic bullet. What I have to present here -- work done by others; I'm just assembling -- is something that doesn't come under the magic bullet category, at least from my perspective. It's actually something our primitive ancestors were very familiar with as an aspect of their natural, every day, evolved existence. it involves two parts: very low sugar/carbohydrate intake (and no grains) and periods of moderate to heavy fasting (though they knew it as starvation).

So let's move on to the story of the lady from Australia whose 65-yr-old father is doing swimmingly 18 months after being diagnosed with lung cancer with metastasis. How? By getting in touch with Dr. Jan Kwasniewski in Poland and following a strict no-low carb, high fat diet.

Here's the link train.

• Kwasniewski and cancer. Peter calls attention to the woman's comment at another post, as well as to a few other things. Commenters then provide even more links.
• Cancer's Sweet Tooth. This one could make you a bit angry, especially if you've had a friend or loved one who died of cancer. You must read and understand this, and it will blow your mind because of the simple, Occam's Razor implications of the thing. Then, realize that much of this was known in the 1920s and a Nobel was given out for it in 1931. The article itself is from 2000.
• Can a High-Fat Diet Beat Cancer? The Time article that started the Aussie lady on her quest to get the word out.
• Cancer & Ketosis. Robb Wolf, who obviously knows a lot about current cancer treatments and the drugs involved, responding to that Time article. At the end of that post, you'll get a very real and tragic sense of the source of Robb's interest.
• What You Need to Know About Cancer and Metabolic Control Analysis (PDF). This is a Robb Wolf interview with Dr. Thomas N. Seyfried. One very interesting tidbit I didn't know is that fasting a mouse for 24 hours is about metabolically equivalent to a human fasting about a week.
• Effects of a ketogenic diet on tumor metabolism. A PubMed abstract.
• Kasha's story. The comment on Peter's blog that set this post in motion.

Now, keep in mind that I just posted about how fasting prior to chemo seems to protect healthy cells, and since chemo is a war of attrition against cancer, this makes perfect sense.

So, what do you make of all this? I'll tell you what I make of it, and it's simple. I know that for me, no-to-low carb with no grains or grain products or refined sugar is what I was built for. I have documented it going back months now. I'm off three medications I've been on for years. Fasting has also been tremendously helpful. Both will be integral to the rest of my life, because of how they make me feel, as well as watching, right before my very eyes, my own body transform itself into what it was genetically meant to be. I don't look upon it as a means of "preventing cancer." I look upon it as the way our human organism evolved, and unless cancer is a normal part of living in a normal way, in accordance with one's nature -- which we know it's not, from studying indigenous people who are virtually free of cancers and other diseases of civilization -- then it's only "preventative" in the sense that eating prevents starvation.

So, it seems to me that if one is unfortunate enough to be diagnosed with cancer, a three front assault would be to go on an 80/15/5 diet, i.e., 75% of calories from animal fat, 20% protein, and 5% cabs in the form of vegetables, fruits, nuts, berries, conduct fasts of three to four days or more every few weeks, and at minimum 2-3 days immediately prior to chemotherapy.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, and with the channels of communication I've established by virtue of the blogosphere, I'll surely be able to stay on top of it.

Counterintuitive Therepy

Get a load of this.

Fasting for two days protects healthy cells against chemotherapy, according to a study appearing online the week of Mar. 31 in PNAS Early Edition. Mice given a high dose of chemotherapy after fasting continued to thrive. The same dose killed half the normally fed mice and caused lasting weight and energy loss in the survivors.

...

The idea for the study came from the Longo group’s previous research on aging in cellular systems, primarily lowly baker’s yeast.

About five years ago, Longo was thinking about the genetic pathways involved both in the starvation response and in mammalian tumors.

When the pathways are silenced, starved cells go into what Longo calls a maintenance mode characterized by extreme resistance to stresses. In essence the cells are waiting out the lean period, much like hibernating animals.

But tumors by definition disobey orders to stop growing because the same genetic pathways are stuck in an “on” mode.

That could mean, Longo realized, that the starvation response might differentiate normal and cancer cells by their stress resistance, and that healthy cells might withstand much more chemotherapy than cancer cells.

The shield for healthy cells does not need to be perfect, Longo said. What matters is the difference in stress resistance between healthy and cancerous cells.

During the study, conducted both at USC and in the laboratory of Lizzia Raffaghello at Gaslini Children’s Hospital in Genoa, Italy, the researchers found that current chemotherapy drugs kill as many healthy mammalian cells as cancer cells.

“(But) we reached a two to five-fold difference between normal and cancer cells, including human cells in culture. More importantly, we consistently showed that mice were highly protected while cancer cells remained sensitive,” Longo said.

If healthy human cells were just twice as resistant as cancer cells, oncologists could increase the dose or frequency of chemotherapy.

“We were able to reach a 1,000-fold differential resistance using a tumor model in baker’s yeast. If we get to just a 10-20 fold differential toxicity with human metastatic cancers, all of a sudden it’s a completely different game against cancer,” Longo said.

I find this very interesting, particularly in light of an already well known benefit of fasting: autophagy. Here's the short version.

(link: Art)

Continue to be Amazed

Yesterday I called attention to a photo of Art De Vany at 70 years of age.

Ever heard of Clarence Bass? That's him at 60. And here's a series of him all along the way, including what he looks like at 70. Of course, if you drill down to discover his methods, it's largely much of what I've talked about here for months on this topic: clean whole food and intense, brief, intermittent resistance training. Though he appears to include grain in his diet, I'll bet he eats it in moderation, minimally processed.

I'm interested in his "one set" routine and have been reading about this elsewhere. I'm going to talk with Mike, my trainer, and perhaps give it a try.

All in all I think this speaks volumes. We are so conditioned to the idea of losing our bodies to nature as we get older, and nowadays, there are people -- including myself -- who simply gave into nature at around the age of 40. Well Art's, Clarence's and others' similar photos aren't a lie, and equipped with this information: that it can be done -- and rather simply, in fact -- it's just dissonant to claim an interest in long-term longevity, vitality, and health an not put in the minimal effort necessary.

In fact, that's why it has been a steady progression of success after success for me for what will be a year come next month. Once I realized that it was not about willpower and discipline, but about fun and enjoyment, it unlocked the whole thing. If you're not having a blast getting fit and eventually ripped at <10% BF, then you're going about it all wrong.

That's why I'm interested in the one set routine. I always enjoy the first set of every exercise, but not so nearly as much the second and the third. I'd prefer to just keep going on that first round, keeping it fun and looking forward to the next exercise. But even still, it's hard not to have fun lifting weights when it's only for 30 minutes and you are dumbfounded each and every time with how pumped you can get yourself in that short of time.

Art

Here's a photo of Art from behind, taking a practice golf swing. That wouldn't be a big deal, of course, but Art is 70 years old. Turns 71 in August, I believe. Most 40 year olds could be envious.

Bea & I are headed out to Vegas May 17th for Art's Evolutionary Fitness Seminar on the 19th.

Weekend Cooking

Real quick, without a lot of 'splainin.

Friday night Ribeye steak. Cooked in the pan by first trimming some of the fat and melting it, adding some butter, and then some lard. Once done to a perfect medium rare, as you can see, set the steaks aside to settle while you add some red wine to the pan along with some fresh or sour cream to thicken. Then add the juice that has escaped from the steaks in the interim. I had a bit of chopped onion, minced garlic, and lots of freshly ground pepper. Much like a pepper steak sauce. So yummy.

I forgot to get a picture of the finished dish (just as I was late on the one above), but here is a tomato, basil & garlic purée that is a great addition to a dish of chicken mushroom fettuccine, which is what I made for guests and was devoured. (Yes, I'll do non "Paleo" for guests, from time to time.)

I took two small tomatoes, cleaned out the seeds so they are just skin & flesh, dice 'em and rapidly sauté in a little olive oil, crushed garlic, and basil fresh or dried. That was for five people. It's simply a dollop on the sautéed chicken breasts, which I did in olive oil (that's paprika seasoning). When complete I set the breasts aside in the warm oven, added white wine to deglaze the pan, and in the meantime nuked a big handful of fresh shredded Parmesan in a cup of heavy cream until it was smooth. Once the wine has reduced, I added just a couple of medium sized crimini mushrooms, chopped pretty fine and a small amount of onion, also chopped fine, and a touch of minced garlic. Once that was all soft, add the nuked cheese & cream, then about a half tub of créme fraîche. Then toss in the pasta. Then, add in all the juice that has exited the cooked breasts. I serve it with the breast alongside rather than cut in strips and mixed in. Add the dollop of purée and garnish with a light dusting of dried parsley. Wish I had take a photo of the finished deal.

Last up, this morning's frittata, which employed use of the leftover crimini mushrooms and Parmesan cheese. There's also a little bacon inside, as well as onion, and it's topped with some chopped prosciutto. Alongside are blueberries and red grapes in some heavy cream.

An elegant slice of evolution

Stephan, in a comment on his own post:

Vitamin D is an essential nutrient for development, as supported by the fact that it's in eggs (fish, reptile and bird) and milk.

Do you understand?

Fat Extravaganza

On the heals of my breakfast post, I've got more about fat. Here, Peter digs up an article about Dr. Kwasniewski's Optimal Diet that makes some of my escapades seem tame.

On the other hand, we're only talking about now lean and healthful 70 and 80 year olds curing their diabetes, arthritis and other chronic ailments by consuming 250 grams of fat from animal sources per day, which is like five times higher than "recommended" in total fat, ten times higher in saturated fat.

Here's what I know: the more animal fat I eat, to the exclusion of carbs and the reduction of protein to moderate levels, the better I feel. I can easily stay up into the the wee hours without being tired, but I can also go to bed without being tired at 9 pm, go right to sleep, and sleep soundly for ten hours. I haven't slept for ten hours since I was a teenager. And when I rise, a noticeable leanness and firmness all over, as though the very last bits of generalized inflammation have been drained out of me overnight. When I'm not sleeping, it's high and steady energy continuously. No more afternoon malaise. It's a wonderful feeling.

Here's Peter's post. A commenter added this link to a video. Commenter Stephan pointed out this funny bit from the article:

Of course, high-fat diets will give you the benefits of energy and weight loss, but they are just not good for you.

Go figure. You're seeing this sort of thing more and more. The evidence of success in reaching some goal or point can no longer be dismissed or ignored. But we "just know" that fat is bad.

Chili Verde

This morning's breakfast.

Chili Verde, which I made last night, eggs fried over easy in unsalted butter, a bit of potato fried in lard, and a half of a tortilla heated directly on the flame of the gas stove. Not strictly in keeping with my no-to-low carb regime, but I keep it to a real minimum and am still well on my path to regaining control of my own body form.

The recipe for the chili verde is one of the very few that's not of my own creation. It's my 2nd-generation Mexican father-in-law's recipe and I've been cooking it for nearly ten years. It differs from the traditional recipe in that rather than using tomatillos, we use tomatoes. One day I'll try it with the former, but I'm in no rush because this way is so damn good. I have yet to ever prepare it for a single person in all these years who didn't love it.

The recipe:

• 3-4 lbs. of cheap fatty pork chops with the bones
• 4-5 large tomatoes; alternatively, a couple cans stewed or diced tomatoes, with or without the spices some of them contain, and one or two fresh tomatoes
• 1 small can tomato sauce
• 5-6 cloves of fresh garlic, crushed
• 2 medium yellow onions, chopped finely
• 6-10 medium jalapeño peppers, depending on the level of heat desired, chopped finely with or without seeds; again, depending on the heat.

The preparation is quite simple. Cut up the pork chops and brown them in a pan. Then take the garlic, onion, and peppers and lightly saute, just a few minutes and certainly not enough for the onion to become translucent (I've made it without this step and I don't know it makes a lot of difference). Place all this in your cooking pot, add in the tomatoes, tomato sauce, salt & pepper if you like, a little water if you need (I never do), bring to a boil and then cover and simmer for a couple of hours or so, until the pork falls off the bones and will easily fall apart.

That's the recipe as it was. I do a couple of things different. I drain a couple of cans of medium black olives and add those. I also cook it low and slow in a crock pot. I prepare in the evening and turn on the pot (low) when I go to bed. Even turning it on at 12 a.m., it should be ready by 6 or 7. If there's any rubbery feel to the pork, it's not done yet.

I took this photo on a plate; however, my favorite way to eat it is in a bowl with two over easy eggs on top, and I eat it with a spoon (normally I'm not having potatoes, tortilla, or beans).

I like to make it pretty hot. This particular one has eight peppers, with seeds. I could stand it a lot hotter, but since we'll consume it over a few days it looses spiciness as it sits in the fridge. So, I like to start out hot. I made a batch over the Christmas holidays up here and I made it seedless. The heat was very substantially reduced, far below my preferences. However, we had family guests and I wanted to take it easy on them. One other note is that when it's done the fat from the pork will make its way to the top and you can easily skim it. I leave it in. It's easy enough for those who don't want to work around it, which simply leaves more very healthful, highly saturated pork fat (lard) for me and the Okinawans.

Try it out. It's really a fantastic recipe and you'll probably end up using it for as long as you cook. Simple. Delicious. Wonderful.

Not By Beef Alone

My last preparation was a pork loin, and here you have a leg of lamb with some broccoli and water chestnuts.

Here it was just before going into the oven.

It was pretty easy and quick. It's just a bit of olive oil, crushed garlic, some dried spices of your own choosing, several pats of unsalted butter, and onions. 10 minutes at 475, turn it over for another 10 minutes at 475, then reduce to 325 for about 25-30 minutes.

In the meantime, I took about a dozen or so blueberries and about a half dozen red seedless grapes which I cut into quarters. Into a bowl, with just about a tablespoon or so of red wine, and nuked it for 30 seconds. Then I crushed it all up and set aside. Once the lamb came out, I placed it on a plate to settle and went to work on the sauce. I deglazed the pan drippings with some red wine on the stove. Then I added the fruit crush, and then about a quarter cup each of heavy cream and coconut milk to thicken up and boost the fat content. The sauce was killer. And oh, by that time the meat had settled and given up some of its juices onto the place. Of course, that got stirred right back into the sauce.

Yummy. By the way? That's Bea's portion. Mine was far larger, with more sauce and thus more fat. Her plate made for a better picture, though.

Food Blogging

Here was a dinner I prepared a couple of nights ago.

It's the pork loin you can get from Trader Joe's and I recommend it. Cook it just like it says on the wrapper: 35-40 minutes in a 350 degree oven. I do a little extra. First, I roll it in a little olive oil on a plate. Next, I roll it in crushed garlic and the oil helps make that stick. Into the pan, a bit of salt & pepper, then I take sweet butter and put about 5-6 pats right on the top, then I cover that all with onion sliced very thin, which holds the butter in place.

After it was done I deglazed the pan over the stove with just a bit of white whine, and then I added about a tablespoon of heavy cream and a heaping tablespoon of coconut milk. The sauce is nearly pure fat and tastes lovely. No, it doesn't taste like coconut; any more than a Thai curry does.

The asparagus is also TJ's, frozen. Just a bit of olive oil in a nice saucepan, uncovered on medium heat for a few minutes, tossing and seasoning as necessary.

Carbohydrates = Sugar

Regina Wilshire is absolutely right.

Would you willingly sit your child down, offer him/her a bowl filled with 1/2 cup of sugar and a spoon to dig in?

It's like I often say when people try to insist to me how great fruit juices are: would you sit down and eat a dozen or two dozen oranges in a single sitting? Think your body was designed to do that?

And sure, we can handle it (infrequently). I'm quite certain that primitive man gorged on sweet stuff opportunistically, like on honey when he came across it, or some sweet fruits (though primitive fruits were largely fibrous and tart -- not like today's selectively bread stuff). More likely, they gorged on berries when they could, seasonally and very intermittently -- not a daily thing.

Yummy; Not

Hey: vegetarian and vegan junk food.

Soya veggie burgers and sausages generally use the same chemically extracted fraction of the bean. This meal is the product of the industrial crushing process the vast majority of the world’s soya beans go through. The raw beans are broken down to thin flakes, which are then percolated with a petroleum-based hexane solvent to extract the soya oil. The remains of the flakes are toasted and ground to a protein meal, most of which goes into animal feed. Soya flour is made in a similar way. The oil then goes through a process of cleaning, bleaching, degumming and deodorising to remove the solvent and the oil’s characteristic “off” smells and flavours. The lecithin that forms a heavy sludge in the oil during storage used to be regarded as a waste product, but now it has been turned into a valuable market in its own right as an emulsifier.

What does 2-3 million years of evolution know? This stuff's gotta be better than "artery-clogging-saturated-fats."