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Meditation

To add to my change in lifestyle that has resulted in wonderful results (I'll talk more about that later) I have added meditation. I have tried one 20 minute session each morning for a week now, and I have to say that the results are pretty good. I feel calmer, and my ability to focus has increased. Whether this is a placebo, I do not know?

"Certain mental characteristics that were previously regarded as relatively fixed can actually be changed by mental training," University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Richard Davidson said. "People know physical exercise can improve the body, but our research and that of others holds out the prospects that mental exercise can improve minds."

Paying attention to facts requires time and effort, and since everyone only has a limited amount of brainpower to go around, details can get overlooked. For instance, when two pictures are flashed on a video screen a half-second apart, people often miss the second image.

"Your attention gets stuck on the first target, then you miss the second one," Davidson said. This is called "attentional blink," an effect akin to how you might overlook something when you blink your eyes.

Now I am not the most spiritual person in the world (not even close), but  human civilization has discovered things through the millenia that we have yet to grasp in our modern society. It is the case with nutrition, and now I think its also the case with how we use our minds. Now science and logic are great instruments (and maybe they could be called ways of life) that has helped humanity "advance" (depending on your point of view), but there is not question that our minds are not made for logic, we can use our brain for logic, but evolution over millions of years has selected qualities that help us survive (this may be why depression, violence, psychiatric disorders are on the rise). We originally evolved in tribes of 30 or less. Now with "tribes" of thousands how do we find our place?

I think meditation has a spot to fill here, by helping ourselves break through the disruptive waves of life and help center ourselves in the present, thus that we can enjoy who we are, and where we are!

Here's a video to get you started, more info to come soon. Next post will be on a must-see Vitamin D presentation.

The moral of the story is that to live in our modern society optimally we must incorporate knowledge and skills that our ancestors has accumulated over millions of years.

Lincoln

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864

To: Mrs. Lydia Bixby

Dear Madam:

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a losss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to serve.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

Abraham Lincoln

This is totally off-topic, but I came across this letter and it just struck me as to how amazing a man this president was.

Insulin and its dangers

Fat. It is the preferred fuel of your body and once you get your body running on fat you’ll know what I mean. To run on fat, you must stop running on glucose. If you introduce glucose into your body that creates an insulin response, your body shifts to burn glucose because it is a much more readily available source of energy, thus it shuts down fat burning. The insulin spike causes the glucose to be stored in your liver/muscles as glycogen, if you eat too much carbohydrates and your glycogen stores become full it gets stored as fat (fat burning stopped + too much glucose = more fat), and the rest is used as energy. 

Why does your body do this though?  Well it wants to get rid of the glucose as fast as possible. After your glucose levels are normal your insulin levels follow. 

Now, your muscle has the ability to burn both fat, and glucose. When doing high intensity work it prefers glucose, when low intensity I find that fat lasts much longer. When your muscles lose the ability to switch between fat burning and glucose burning (and solely rely on fat) you get insulin resistance and type II diabetes. 

You are probably thinking now, if I want power I must take carbs. Well that is true, but all that is required is to fill your glycogen stores in the liver and muscles. If you’re eating so many carbs and getting fat, that is too much. 

We all know that insulin decreases glucose, what raises it? Well, glucagon, glucocorticoids, catecholamines, they raise glucose levels. If you think about it evolutionarily, why has natural selection resulted in 1 hormone that lowers glucose, and 3 that raises it? Well because in the millions of years that we have survived by hunting mammoths, saber-tooth tigers, elephants, deer, etc... and gathering berries and nuts, we have never consumed enough carbs for the glucose to be a danger. Unlike in our society today. 

In today’s society our insulin spikes over 3 times per day (for the average well “balanced” diet). 

Whether eating low carbs confers you a “metabolic advantage” I do not know. Dr. Atkins said that you could eat as much meat and fat as you want, and not get fat. So what he is suggesting is that  by not eating carbs, your body can burn more calories, then if you eat carbs, and recent proponents of the metabolic advantage suggest it has to deal with insulin. I think it is a mixture of the two (because for those taking metformin AKA glucophage, they seem to be able to get rid of fat mass, maybe because insulin doesn’t go up, but this may be due to a change in appetite?) But in my opinion calories is still important. 

Insulin is a very important hormone, but it’s a hormone. Its function is to do its job, then disappear. Hormones are basically signal that parts of our bodies send to other parts. The signal should be sent, then go away. Just like a traffic light. If the signal on the traffic light stays red without going away, then traffic backs up, anger, impatience, rage, frustration develops. This is what your body does. It gets angry, impatient, frustrated, and you develop diseases. More about the dangers of insulin found here: 

Insulin and Its Metabolic Effects

Explains how insulin is related to heart disease, cancer, and many other diseases such as aging, as talked about in my previous post here.

At the end of the day, its best to keep your insulin low.

Longevity, Exercise, Performance, Nutrition. Part II

In the previous post the issue of exercise and diet was addressed. The conclusion? Diet and exercise is the best. Now why should we exercise? If we are lean, if we feel healthy, is that not enough? No its not.

Personally (this is based on no evidence whatsoever) I don't think aging slows the rate of aging, if anything it could possibly decrease it, but I think it does improve our quality of life as we approach the end, instead of not exercising and spiraling down into ineffectiviness. Exercise forces our body to adapt, and when it adapts its forced to grow and change. One problem in our western society today is stress. Chronic stress raises our cortisol levels chronically which causes massive damage to our bodies. Stress can cause damage to our brains, our hearts, our arteries, and who knows what else. So by exercising we are helping ourselves adapt to any stress that life can throw our way. There is also muscle.  By training them we increase their size and their strength by waking up neurons so that we can prevent more falls and basically just move around through the world better.  As we age, we lose quite a lot of muscle mass. At an age of 45 our muscle mass decreases at 1% each year. At around age 24, top tennis players have reached their peak performance, and it goes downhill from there. As we age we must keep up our activity.

 Another great example can be given with skeletal muscle. As we age there is a certain degree of muscltrength training increases the muscles cross sectional area but also wakes up the motor neuron that stimulates the muscle. Waking up the motor neuron increases the muscles response time and hence can help prevent falls in the elderly because the muscle ability to sense and correct change is increased. Preventing falls in the elderly prevents possible hip fractures. A hip fracture in advanced age is a devastating insult to the bodies physiology.

So exercise will help in 3 major ways:

1. Keep you agile so that you don't easily injure yourself
2. Increase muscle mass, keep weight in check, and blood glucose in check
3. Exercise increases your awareness of your health and body and possibly leads to other healthy interventions.

Here are some more benefits:

• Reduced Disability and Mortality Among Aging Runners
  
• People With Type 2 Diabetes Can Put Fatty Livers On A Diet With Moderate Exercise
  
• Exercise increases brain growth factor and receptors, prevents stem cell drop in middle age
  
• Older women who are more physically fit have better cognitive function
  
• Moderate exercise is an antioxidant: upregulation of antioxidant genes by training.
  

Something that has been studied for quite a while is how we should provide our bodies with nutrition around the times we workout. What should we eat before we workout, during, after?when should we eat it, in what ratios, in what form? These are all questions that are currently undergoing research in the sports nutrition field.

What is the consensus? Well everybody knows its important, even the ancients knew it was important:

"The importance of nutrition following training-induced homeostatic disruption can be traced to our most ancient of writings. Esau, the first born of Isaac, in what is estimated to be 1800 BC appears to have had incredible genetics. His training sessions,however, were not found in the gym, but rather in the field as he hunted the most ferocious of beasts. So vital was the post-workout meal to the father of the Edomites that he sold his birthright to his brother Jacob for it!"

From personal experience by consuming a low-carb diet and becoming adapted to fat, my exercise performance has suffered tremendously. For brief moments I can work at 100% effort, but only for brief moments. After a couple of circuits, my muscles are pretty much dead. This is the feeling of depleted glycogen. By using such high intensity exercises my glycogen supply was depleted, because for a very long time I have not consumed carbohydrates. 

We basically have two energy systems. One energy system, the one that burns glucose is mostly used for high intensity anaerobic activities. Then you have the aerobic, which can use both sugar and fat. When fat adapted, there is no difference in performance when running at 60-80% of your maximum capacity. However when tested at higher intensities, those that are fat adapted do not perform as well as those consuming high carbs. So here we come to a tension, we can either be fat adapted for health, or we can consume lots of carbs to support our improvement in fitness or athletic performance. I choose the former, but being the type of person I am I want the best of both worlds. According to this study even though you ingest 100g of carbohydrates after workout, you still burn fat for over 3 hours. This study shows that glycogen synthesis is 45% faster if you consume glucose right after exercise, instead of delaying, this is weird considering that even though waiting two hours and to ingest the glucose, and even though there is higher insulin and glucose levels, the rate is still slower. This suggests, that there is a window (30-60min) where your glycogen stores can be replenshed without raising insulin levels too high. For a low carber, this windows is a must, to avoid the high spike in insulin.

According to this study, coingestion of carbohydrates and protein during exercise increased during protein synthesis by 45%.

This study shows that protein supplementation doesn't do much for muscle soreness, or recovery. However this goes against much research, so this may be due to single amino acid vs whole protein intake.

This study shows that a mixture of protein hydrosylates/leucine/carbs is best for a post workout drink for protein synthesis and repair, and increased strength.

There has been a lot of talk about growth hormone. It has been shown that carbohydrate consumption will supress growth hormone because of the insulin spike. So in my opinion a pre-workout shake is not a good idea. This study shows that carbohydrate and protein consumption before exercise can supress growth hormone release. During exercise studies show the same thing. However post exercise carb consumption doesn't release GH according to studies. Personally I like to exercise in a fasted state, and only consume carbs after workout (the amount of carbs depends on the intensity and length of exercise).

In terms of protein and carbohydrate supplementation I like to follow the International Society of Sports Nutrition:

The International Society of Sports Nutrition is the only non-profit academic society dedicated to promoting the science and application of evidence-based sports nutrition and supplementation.

This paper: International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: protein and exercise says that one requires 1.4-2.0 grams of protein per kg of bodyweight per day. 

protein residues such as branched chain amino acids have been shown to be beneficial for the exercising individual, including increasing the rates of protein synthesis, decreasing the rate of protein degradation, and possibly aiding in recovery from exercise.

This paper: International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: creatine supplementation and exercise recommends creatine monohydrate for performance.

The quickest method of increasing muscle creatine stores appears to be to consume ~0.3 grams/kg/day of creatine monohydrate for at least 3 days followed by 3–5 g/d thereafter to maintain elevated stores

Hundreds of studies have shown the effectiveness of CM supplementation in improving anaerobic capacity, strength, and lean body mass in conjunction with training. In addition, CM has repeatedly been reported to be safe, as well as possibly beneficial in preventing injury

This paper: International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: Nutrient timing

Post-exercise (within 30 minutes) consumption of CHO at high dosages (8 – 10 g CHO/kg/day) has been shown to stimulate muscle glycogen re-synthesis.

• Adding PRO (0.2 g – 0.5 g PRO/kg/day) to CHO at a ratio of approximately 3: 1 (CHO: PRO) has been shown to stimulate glycogen re-synthesis to a greater extent.

• Post-exercise ingestion (immediately after through 3 hours post) of amino acids, primarily EAAs, have been shown to stimulate robust increases in muscle PRO synthesis. The addition of CHO may increase PRO synthesis even more, while pre-exercise consumption may result in the best response of all.

• During prolonged resistance training, post-exercise consumption of CHO + PRO supplements in varying amounts have been shown to stimulate improvements in strength and body composition when compared to control, placebo, or CHO-only conditions.

• The addition of Cr (0.1 g Cr/kg/day) to a CHO + PRO supplement may facilitate even greater adaptations to resistance training.

Now that we have covered protein and carbohydrate supplementation and timing. Next we will deal with something that is not addressed, but its something that should be. Health is both physical and mental. 

In this study: Improving mental regeneration after physical exercise

It is concluded that post-workout supplementation of 50 mg L-theanine accelerates mental regeneration after physical exercise. The effect is not based on hormonal changes and higher amounts of L-theanine do not result in additional benefits.

This concludes this series.

• Protein: 1.4-2.0g/kg/day bodyweight
• Creatine: 0.3g/kg/day for 3 days followed by 3-5 days g/d
• Carbohydrates: 35 grams usually, but this is up to the person and how hard they work out.
• You should take protein before and after you workout. If you reach 2.0g/kg of protein per day, include this after-workout protein in your daily amount. If not, exclude it.

For timing, a bit pre-exercise then the rest post-exercise is best. But if you want to read more about timing, read the paper above. They recommend more, but I think this is more useful for serious athletes.

Longevity, Exercise, Performance, Nutrition. Part I

Green Tea. Good for Us?

We have all heard of how good green tea is for us, I am sure of it. Some of us may drink it in the form of leaves, sencha, matcha, and some of us may be taking it in the form of extracts (such as me). But is it actually good for us. At this blog the author describes the similiarity between the famous Epigallocatechin Gallate (ECGC) and gallate. According to the author:

Gallate reportedly cause the same effects as benzoates. These chemicals are notorious; they cause the full range of health problems like asthma, eczema, and the ADHD behavior we're familiar with in food chemical intolerant kids. 

I have found some studies to back this up, one of them here. It has also been shown that bioflavonoids (the "antioxidants" found in fruit and vegetables) apparently do not act as antioxidants in our body. When the media claims that such and such has antioxidative ability and has such and such ORAC score, this is measured outside of the body in test tubes. Its fairly hard to measure what happens to it in the body, but the study shows:

"What we now know is that flavonoids are highly metabolized, which alters their chemical structure and diminishes their ability to function as an antioxidant," said Balz Frei, professor and director of the Linus Pauling Institute. "The body sees them as foreign compounds and modifies them for rapid excretion in the urine and bile."

Even though we may not know for sure how ECGC (and other flavonoids) may work, from the research I do not doubt there are benefits to consuming green tea. There are many many studies showing:

• anti-cancer effects (especially prostate), 
• cardiovascular effects, 
• protecting the skin, antimicrobial, 
• anti neurodegeneration (at least in mice),
• increases insulin sensitivity (good for diabetics, and basically everyone)
• also possibly prevents AGE crosslinking (study also done in rats)
• and many many more (read this site if interested)

The benefits look promising.

Green tea extract is also a very popular "cutting" agent used by bodybuilders (meaning, lose fat). There are many ways that it causes fat loss:

• decreasing appetite
• increasing thermogenesis
• increasing metabolism of fat

How it does this may be by inhibiting an enzyme called COMT. This prevents the breakdown of epinepherine which is involved in lipolysis, thus breaking down more fat. So taken together with caffeine (which is basically tea), while you work out you'll be burning more fat and you'll have more energy because of the caffeine. Win win deal.

Oolong tea has also been shown to increase metabolism, more than green tea, so taking the two together may be good for fat loss.

Now before you go off and buy some green tea extract (GTE), I have read papers where decaffinated green tea results in losses in polyphenol content, so it is best to buy un-decaffinated pills. But the trouble is, almost all the supplements I have seen are decaffinated (gotta do some more searching).

Are there any other adverse effects? 

Well if you take tea with milk, apparently the positive affects dissapear. In this study when milk is added, the cardiovascular health benefits provided by green tea dissapears. This is most likely due to the proteins in milk and how they bind to the polyphenols, affecting their function and absorption (I don't drink milk, future post).

How about a decrease in testonsterone?

The prevention of prostate cancer is related to the decrease in testosterone. In my opinion and the experiences of others and myself this decrease is not a big problem. The benefits far outweighs this. I also think that (by reading the studies) the decrease in testosterone is due to the calorie restriction due to the appetite supressing effects. So the solution? Eat some more.

Green tea also contains L-theanine, and is found in high concentrations. Theanine has a structure similiar to glutamine so it competes with the receptor in the brain, which may prevent glutamic neurotoxicity (anybody like MSG), and also it raises the levels of serotonin, dopamine, GABA, and increase alpha wave activity, which results in the alert but relaxed state, so it has the opposite effect of caffeine. Thus this explains why some people are sleepy after consuming tea.

In conclusion I take green tea, and I suggest you should too, but its not for the antioxidant activity that the media makes you think. I'm sure there is some antioxidant activity but not enough to provide benefit. This leads to antioxidants.

People say eat blueberries, eat vegetables, eat fruits, make sure to get your antioxidants, so you'll live longer and such. In my opinion and BBC's antioxidants can't slow aging unless you constantly carry an bag of antixodants around and infuse them straight into your blood 24/7. What's best is to increase your bodies ability to make antioxidants, this includes taking supplements such as GTE, milk thistle, tumeric, curcumin, and others I have yet to find. But the best thing you can do is to exercise and stress your body. By exercising you consume more oxygen and more free radicals are produced, your body detects this and boosts your bodies ability to make antioxidants, and this boost lasts with you an extended period of time. This now leads to stresses.

• Fasting
• Cold Showers
• Hot showers then cold showers
• Exercise
• Exercise during a fasted state, then taking a hot shower, then a cold

These are just some I do to stress the body. I'll write about this another time. The key is randomness.