Playground of DEATH!!!

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Well hello, you look familiar.  It’s been quite some time since my last post but I have a great excuse.  I have started a Masters program in Sport and Exercise Psychology.  I figured that I know (and will still continue to learn) much about movement and physiology but can’t do much good with the knowledge if I can’t convince people to get out and move around.  I studied Ayurveda under a man of great wisdom, Dr. Suhas Kshirsagar.  He used to tell us that the one symptom he fears is a idiopathic, autoimmune deformity that looks like this:

Now to the story of the day….

I found this article in the July 19th, 2011 print edition of the New York Times.  It was very revealing because like the proverbial boiling frog in the pot, I hadn’t noticed there was a political agenda at work on the playgrounds I grew up on.  I had noticed that during my short childhood, we had gone from all metal to mostly plastic equipment.  I had noticed the tall slides and “igloo made of metal bars” (I don’t know what the heck that thing is called) had vanished.

I figured this movement was to update and keep in line with ADA standards.  I had no reason to complain at the time and found little fault with the new equipment……but I was 9 years old at the time.

Reflecting on this societal shift, I wold like to think I would have been one of those making a huge stink over the progressive policies that dug up our jungle gyms and tire swings and replaced them with those stupid tic-tac-toe squares and 5 foot slides.

Turns out that kids need to be exposed to the risk, fun and excitement that kids have enjoyed for millions of years.  Sure we have replaced our clubs and spears for smart phones and lattes but we still need to learn how to approach challenging situations and face our fears.  It’s a shame that we don’t listen to common sense until there is a study done to prove it.  One common thread in all the medical research, nutrition recommendations and whatever else the CDC, FDA, HHS and WHO has to offer is that despite the most noble of intentions, there are always unintended consequences.  It seems that we accept these words as a get-out-of-jail-free card for anyone who utters them.

Moving For Wellness is all about challenging yourself.  Realizing that the threat does not come from the external, but rather resides within you.  You must battle your nature whether it is to do good deeds when you don’t feel like it or get up and walk your dog after a long day at work.  We allow ourselves to get too comfortable in a society that demands less and less responsibility of us individually.  We as a species have evolved to the top because of our brilliant ability to adapt to adversity.  Confronting a challenge is the only way in which you will grow in character, health, wealth or happiness.

That’s it for me tonight.  I’ve got to challenge my natural inclination to sit here and go bust out a super-set of pushups.

Move and be Well,

BF

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Paleo proclaimed worst diet by US News; Dr. Cordain responds.

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This story comes to me just as I finish up a conference call on nutrition.  My work at the moment is in the management of chronic diseases.  My team consists of people with PharmD, RN, RD and MPH after their names.  I challenged the idea that we “need” to eat grains at all and got an interesting answer.  The RD on the call said, “[if you exclude grains from your diet] you would miss out on some heart-healthy nutrients”

It’s amazing how some health professionals have such knee-jerk reactions to any approach that challenges their paradigm.

Here’s the response to the story by Dr. Cordain:

Please feel free to distribute widely per Dr. Cordain.

Hi Doc,

I’m not sure if you’ve seen this or not, but US News ranked Paleo last of 20 diets claiming a lack of scientific evidence and no-long term weight maintenance guidelines. I’m not sure if you’d be interested in defending it or not, but if you’d be willing to provide specific refutations of their claims, I’d like to write a response piece for the Colorado State University Collegian to run next Wednesday, my deadline is Saturday.

Thanks.

http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/paleo-diet

http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/best-overall-diets

Seth

June 8, 2011

Hi Seth,

Good to hear from you and many thanks for your continued support of the Paleo Diet.  I hadn’t seen this piece, but I appreciate that you have brought it to my attention.  It is obvious that whoever wrote this piece did not do their homework and has not read the peer review scientific papers which have examined contemporary diets based upon the Paleolithic food groups which shaped the genomes of our ancestors.  Accordingly the writer’s conclusions are erroneous and misleading.  I feel strongly that it is necessary to point out these errors and make this information known to a much wider audience than those reached by the readers of the U.S. News and World Report.  You have my permission to syndicate my response and or your write up for the CSU Collegian to any of the major news services including AP and UPI.  Additionally, I will copy a number of colleagues and scientists worldwide with this message to ensure that it will be widely circulated on the web, blogs and chat groups.

The writer of this article suggests that the Paleo Diet has only been scientifically tested in “one tiny study”.  This quote is incorrect as five studies (1-7); four since 2007, have experimentally tested contemporary versions of ancestral human diets and have found them to be superior to Mediterranean diets, diabetic diets and typical western diets in regards to weight loss, cardiovascular disease risk factors and risk factors for type 2 diabetes.

The first study to experimentally test diets devoid of grains, dairy and processed foods was performed by Dr. Kerin O’Dea at the University of Melbourne and published in the Journal, Diabetes in 1984 (6).  In this study Dr. O’Dea gathered together 10 middle aged Australian Aborigines who had been born in the “Outback”.  They had lived their early days primarily as hunter gatherers until they had no choice but to finally settle into a rural community with access to western goods.  Predictably, all ten subjects eventually became overweight and developed type 2 diabetes as they adopted western sedentary lifestyles in the community of Mowwanjum in the northern Kimberley region of Western Australia.  However, inherent in their upbringing was the knowledge to live and survive in this seemingly desolate land without any of the trappings of the modern world.

Dr. O’Dea requested these 10 middle aged subjects to revert to their former lives as hunter gatherers for a seven week period.  All agreed and traveled back into the isolated land from which they originated.  Their daily sustenance came only from native foods that could be foraged, hunted or gathered.  Instead of white bread, corn, sugar, powdered milk and canned foods, they began to eat the traditional fresh foods of their ancestral past: kangaroos, birds, crocodiles, turtles, shellfish, yams, figs, yabbies (freshwater crayfish), freshwater bream and bush honey.   At the experiment’s conclusion, the results were spectacular, but not altogether unexpected given what known about Paleo diets, even then.  The average weight loss in the group was 16.5 lbs; blood cholesterol dropped by 12 % and triglycerides were reduced by a whopping 72 %.  Insulin and glucose metabolism became normal, and their diabetes effectively disappeared.

The first recent study to experimentally test contemporary Paleo diets was published in 2007 (5). Dr. Lindeberg and associates placed 29 patients with type 2 diabetes and heart disease on either a Paleo diet or a Mediterranean diet based upon whole grains, low-fat dairy products, vegetables, fruits, fish, oils, and margarines.  Note that the Paleo diet excludes grains, dairy products and margarines while encouraging greater consumption of meat and fish.  After 12 weeks on either diet blood glucose tolerance (a risk factor for heart disease) improved in both groups, but was better in the Paleo dieters.  In a  2010 follow-up publication, of this same experiment the Paleo diet was shown to be more satiating on a calorie by calorie basis than the Mediterranean diet because it caused greater changes in leptin, a hormone which regulates appetite and body weight.

In the second modern study (2008) of Paleo Diets, Dr. Osterdahl and co-workers (7) put 14 healthy subjects on a Paleo diet.  After only three weeks the subjects lost weight, reduced their waist size and experienced significant reductions in blood pressure, and plasminogen activator inhibitor (a substance in blood which promotes clotting and accelerates artery clogging).  Because no control group was employed in this study, some scientists would argue that the beneficial changes might not necessarily be due to the Paleo diet.  However, a better controlled more recent experiments showed similar results.

In 2009, Dr. Frasetto and co-workers (1) put nine inactive subjects on a Paleo diet for just 10 days.  In this experiment, the Paleo diet was exactly matched in calories with the subjects’ usual diet.  Anytime people eat diets that are calorically reduced, no matter what foods are involved, they exhibit beneficial health effects.  So the beauty of this experiment was that any therapeutic changes in the subjects’ health could not be credited to reductions in calories, but rather to changes in the types of food eaten.  While on the Paleo diet either eight or all nine participants  experienced improvements in blood pressure, arterial function, insulin, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and triglycerides.  What is striking about this experiment is how rapidly so many markers of health improved, and that they occurred in every single patient.

In an even more convincing recent (2009) experiment, Dr. Lindeberg and colleagues (2) compared the effects of a Paleo diet to a diabetes diet generally recommended for patients with type 2 diabetes.  The diabetes diet was intended to reduce total fat by increasing whole grain bread and cereals, low fat dairy products, fruits and vegetables while restricting animal foods.   In contrast, the Paleo diet was lower in cereals, dairy products, potatoes, beans, and bakery foods but higher in fruits, vegetables, meat, and eggs compared to the diabetes diet.  The strength of this experiment was its cross over design in which all 13 diabetes patients first ate one diet for three months and then crossed over and ate the other diet for three months.  Compared to the diabetes diet, the Paleo diet resulted in improved weight loss, waist size, blood pressure, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, blood glucose and hemoglobin A1c (a marker for long term blood glucose control).    This experiment represents the most powerful example to date of the Paleo diet’s effectiveness in treating people with serious health problems.

So, now that I have summarized the experimental evidence supporting the health and weight loss benefits of Paleo Diets, I would like to directly respond to the errors in the U.S. News and World Report article.

1.            “Will you lose weight? No way to tell.”

Obviously, the author of this article did not read either the study by O’Dea (6) or the more powerful three month crossover experiment by Jonsson and colleagues (9) which demonstrated the superior weight loss potential of high protein, low glycemic load Paleo diets.  Similar results of high protein, low glycemic load diets have recently been reported in the largest randomized controlled trials ever undertaken in both adults and children.

A 2010 randomized trial involving 773 subjects and published in the New England Journal of Medicine (8) confirmed that high protein, low glycemic index diets were the most effective strategy to keep weight off.   The same beneficial effects of high protein, low glycemic index diets were dramatically demonstrated in largest nutritional trial, The DiOGenes Study (9), ever conducted in a sample of 827 children. Children assigned to low protein, high glycemic diets became significantly fatter over the 6 month experiment, whereas those overweight and obese children assigned to the high protein, low glycemic nutritional plan lost significant weight.

2.            “Does it have cardiovascular benefits? Unknown.”

This comment shows just how uninformed this writer really is.  Clearly, this person hasn’t read the following papers (1 – 6) which unequivocally show the therapeutic effects of Paleo Diets upon cardiovascular risk factors.

“And all that fat would worry most experts.”

This statement represents a “scare tactic” unsubstantiated by the data.  As I, and almost the entire nutritional community,  have previously pointed out, it is not the quantity of fat which increases the risk for cardiovascular disease or cancer, or any other health problem, but rather the quality.  Contemporary Paleo Diets contain high concentrations of healthful omega 3 fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids and long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids that actually reduce the risk for chronic disease (10-18).

3.            “Can it prevent or control diabetes? Unknown.”

Here is another example of irresponsible and biased journalism which doesn’t let the facts speak for themselves.  Obviously, the author did not read the study by O’dea (6) or Jonsson et al. (2) which showed dramatic improvements in type 2 diabetics consuming Paleo diets.

“but most diabetes experts recommend a diet that includes whole grains and dairy products.”

If the truth be known, in a randomized controlled trial, 24 8-y-old boys were asked to take 53 g of protein as milk or meat daily (19).  After only 7 days on the high milk diet, the boys became insulin resistant.  This is a condition that precedes the development of type 2 diabetes.  In contrast, In the meat-group, there was no increase in insulin and insulin resistance.  Further, in the Jonsson et al. study (2) milk and grain free diets were shown to have superior results in improving disease symptoms in type 2 diabetics.

4.            “Are there health risks? Possibly. By shunning dairy and grains, you’re at risk of missing out on a lot of nutrients.”

Once again, this statement shows the writer’s ignorance and blatant disregard for the facts.  Because contemporary ancestral diets exclude processed foods, dairy and grains, they are actually more nutrient (vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals) dense than government recommended diets such as the food pyramid.    I have pointed out these facts in a paper I published in the American Journal of Nutrition in 2005 (13) along with another paper in which I analyzed the nutrient content of modern day Paleo diets (12 ).  Most nutritionists are aware that processed foods made with refined grains, sugars and vegetable oils have low concentrations of vitamins and minerals, but few realized that dairy products and whole grains contain significantly lower concentrations of the 13 vitamins and minerals most lacking in the U.S. diet compared to lean meats, fish and fresh fruit and vegetables (12, 13).

“Also, if you’re not careful about making lean meat choices, you’ll quickly ratchet up your risk for heart problems” .

Actually, the most recent comprehensive meta analyses do not show fresh meat consumption whether fat or lean to be a significant risk factor for cardiovascular disease (20-25), only processed meats such as salami, bologna, bacon and sausages (20).

References

1.            Frassetto LA, Schloetter M, Mietus-Synder M, Morris RC, Jr., Sebastian A: Metabolic and physiologic improvements from consuming a paleolithic, hunter-gatherer type diet. Eur J Clin Nutr 2009.

2.            Jönsson T, Granfeldt Y, Ahrén B, Branell UC, Pålsson G, Hansson A, Söderström M, Lindeberg S. Beneficial effects of a Paleolithic diet on cardiovascular risk factors in type 2 diabetes: a randomized cross-over pilot study. Cardiovasc Diabetol. 2009;8:35

3.            Jonsson T, Granfeldt Y, Erlanson-Albertsson C, Ahren B, Lindeberg S. A Paleolithic diet is more satiating per calorie than a Mediterranean-like diet in individuals with ischemic heart disease. Nutr Metab (Lond). 2010 Nov 30;7(1):85

4.            Jonsson T, Ahren B, Pacini G, Sundler F, Wierup N, Steen S, Sjoberg T, Ugander M, Frostegard J, Goransson Lindeberg S: A Paleolithic diet confers higher insulin sensitivity, lower C-reactive protein and lower blood pressure than a cereal-based diet in domestic pigs. Nutr Metab (Lond) 2006, 3:39.

5.            Lindeberg S, Jonsson T, Granfeldt Y, Borgstrand E, Soffman J, Sjostrom K, Ahren B: A Palaeolithic diet improves glucose tolerance more than a Mediterranean-like diet in individuals with ischaemic heart disease. Diabetologia 2007, 50(9):1795-1807.

6.            O’Dea K: Marked improvement in carbohydrate and lipid metabolism in diabetic Australian aborigines after temporary reversion to traditional lifestyle. Diabetes 1984, 33(6):596-603.

7.            Osterdahl M, Kocturk T, Koochek A, Wandell PE: Effects of a short-term intervention with a paleolithic diet in healthy volunteers. Eur J Clin Nutr 2008, 62(5):682-685.

8.            Larsen TM, Dalskov SM, van Baak M, Jebb SA, Papadaki A, Pfeiffer AF, Martinez JA, Handjieva-Darlenska T, Kunešová M, Pihlsgård M, Stender S, Holst C, Saris WH, Astrup A; Diet, Obesity, and Genes (Diogenes) Project. Diets with high or low protein content and glycemic index for weight-loss maintenance. N Engl J Med. 2010 Nov 25;363(22):2102-13

9.            Papadaki A, Linardakis M, Larsen TM, van Baak MA, Lindroos AK, Pfeiffer AF, Martinez JA, Handjieva-Darlenska T, Kunesová M, Holst C, Astrup A, Saris WH, Kafatos A; DiOGenes Study Group. The effect of protein and glycemic index on children’s body composition: the DiOGenes randomized study. Pediatrics. 2010 Nov;126(5):e1143-52

10.            Cordain L. Saturated fat consumption in ancestral human diets: implications for contemporary intakes.  In: Phytochemicals, Nutrient-Gene Interactions, Meskin MS, Bidlack WR, Randolph RK (Eds.), CRC Press (Taylor & Francis Group), 2006, pp. 115-126.

11.            Cordain L, Miller JB, Eaton SB, Mann N, Holt SH, Speth JD. Plant-animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy estimations in worldwide hunter-gatherer diets.Am J Clin Nutr. 2000 Mar;71(3):682-92.

12.            Cordain L. The nutritional characteristics of a contemporary diet based upon Paleolithic food groups. J Am Nutraceut Assoc 2002; 5:15-24.

13.            Cordain L, Eaton SB, Sebastian A, Mann N, Lindeberg S, Watkins BA, O’Keefe JH, Brand-Miller J. Origins and evolution of the Western diet: health implications for the 21st century. Am J Clin Nutr. 2005 Feb;81(2):341-54.

14.            Kuipers RS, Luxwolda MF, Dijck-Brouwer DA, Eaton SB, Crawford MA, Cordain L, Muskiet FA. Estimated macronutrient and fatty acid intakes from an East African Paleolithic diet. Br J Nutr. 2010 Dec;104(11):1666-87.

15.            Ramsden CE, Faurot KR, Carrera-Bastos P, Cordain L, De Lorgeril M, Sperling LS.Dietary fat quality and coronary heart disease prevention: a unified theory based on evolutionary, historical, global, and modern perspectives. Curr Treat Options Cardiovasc Med. 2009 Aug;11(4):289-301.

16.            Cordain L, Eaton SB, Miller JB, Mann N, Hill K. The paradoxical nature of hunter-gatherer diets: meat-based, yet non-atherogenic. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2002 Mar;56 Suppl 1:S42-52

17.            Cordain L, Watkins BA, Florant GL, Kelher M, Rogers L, Li Y. Fatty acid analysis of wild ruminant tissues: evolutionary implications for reducing diet-related chronic disease. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2002 Mar;56(3):181-91

18.            Carrera-Bastos P, Fontes Villalba M, O’Keefe JH, Lindeberg S, Cordain L. The western diet and lifestyle and diseases of civilization. Res Rep Clin Cardiol 2011; 2: 215-235.

19.            Hoppe C, Mølgaard C, Vaag A, Barkholt V, Michaelsen KF. High intakes of milk, but not meat, increase s-insulin and insulin resistance in 8-year-old boys. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2005 Mar;59(3):393-8.

20.            Micha R, Wallace SK, Mozaffarian D. Red and processed meat consumption and risk of incident coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes mellitus: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Circulation. 2010 Jun 1;121(21):2271-83

21.            Micha R, Mozaffarian D. Saturated fat and cardiometabolic risk factors, coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes: a fresh look at the evidence. Lipids. 2010 Oct;45(10):893-905. Epub 2010 Mar 31.

22.            Mozaffarian D, Micha R, Wallace S. Effects on coronary heart disease of increasing polyunsaturated fat in place of saturated fat: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. PLoS Med. 2010 Mar 23;7(3):e1000252.

23.            Siri-Tarino PW, Sun Q, Hu FB, Krauss RM. Saturated fatty acids and risk of coronary heart disease: modulation by replacement nutrients. Curr Atheroscler Rep. 2010 Nov;12(6):384-90.

24.            Siri-Tarino PW, Sun Q, Hu FB, Krauss RM. Saturated fat, carbohydrate, and cardiovascular disease. Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 Mar;91(3):502-9

25.            Siri-Tarino PW, Sun Q, Hu FB, Krauss RM. Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease. Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 Mar;91(3):535-46

The Great Ca Calorie Count 2011

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A menu at a McDonald’s drive-through window in New York, calorie counts included.

Ed Ou/Associated Press

It has been in effect for almost half a year and many Californians still don’t know what to make of the calorie labeling law.  It seems that more people were up in arms when municipal officials in New York City and San Francisco passed more surgical laws aimed at sugar sweetened beverages and kids meals respectively.  There was a lot of debate going around about personal liberties and other TEA Party ideals, and all that was at stake was the prospect of switching to diet soda and swapping apple sticks for your french fries.

It seems this grand-scale food labeling law was passed and implemented with nothing more than a collective, “hummmmm” as we let these ubiquitous nutritional qualifiers rain all over our lunch-time parades.  I find myself balking at the 4-digit figures on the rare occasions the forces of nature drive me to such an establishment.

Lawmakers and Public Health officials hope that they can lead us to make better choices about our food through, quite literally, “in-your-face” caloric content labeling.  I hope they can, however, even before the latest behavioral studies started trickling in, I had my doubts about the success of this tactic.  Ok, I can’t lead you to believe my doubts were purely intuition and professional prowess.  The sad fact is that New York City has already had a similar law in effect for nearly two years.  So why would CA attempt to pass it across the State after sad reviews from New York City?  Four silly little words that has the power to concentrate more hubris then you’ll find in a back alley pissing contest behind some Texas roadhouse:

More Research is necessary…

Gee, wouldn’t it have been nice to do the research, then pass the laws?  I can tell you right now that even after we spend millions of tax dollars on self-evident research, I will still not incorporate this public calorie count tactic in to the Movement for Wellness.  Food is a very personal thing and needs to be addressed in a highly specific manner.  I applaud those government officials responsible for this law for being progressively minded in that they are looking for ways to improve our overall health using the means available to them.  My regret is that this broad-brush health promotion directs the conversation to a place where we find ourselves stumbling over decisions that in the (rear) end, are of little consequence.

Knowledge ≠ Behavior

I can remember in school, just as we were awakening from the overly romanticized dream of getting an education and being promised the world at our fingertips, our professors would periodically try to pump us up with a little study-related pep-talk.  Being an Exercise Science major, I often heard such studies cited that correlated level of education with longevity and quality of life.  I remember thinking, “If knowledge equates to better health, why are we not doing a better job at spreading the word as a society?”.

The truth is that leading a person to approach their everyday health decisions armed only with a slew of numerical goals and limits reduces the human being to a Newtonian closed-system machine subject only to the ancient physics of yesteryear.  Our relationship with food is one of both emotion, quantum mechanics and finally caloric consumption.

Few scientists have explained this truth better than Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology.  In his very long and comprehensive lecture titled Sugar: The Bitter Truth, he explains how we obsess over our intake and expenditure of energy when it comes to our diets.  As a specialist of the hormones, Dr. Lustig asserts that when it comes to our food having an impact on our body shape, it’s not the amount of calories that we should worry about; however we should worry about how our body responds on a hormonal level to the type of food we ingest.  The new fixation on calories takes us even further than we already are from the true focus according to so many ant-obesity researchers such as Dr. Lustig.

New loop-holes

It goes without saying that with new legislation comes new possibility to cheat the system.  When the public is lulled in to a false sense of security and they abdicate all of their food consumer responsibility to the suits in the FDA, USDA, NHS, et al., it creates open season on the public for the wiley marketing teams and media manipulators in the food industry.  This has been at work for quite a long time.  How else did we get to a point where we down Anti-oxidant soda, and stuff ourselves with sugary “low-fat” treats in the name of making healthier choices.

Childs Play

Keep in mind that adults are not the only ones exposed to these new social eating norms.  Children learn what is valued in their society by their keen sense of observation.  As they see adults torture themselves over indulging in a calorie-dense meal, they’ll learn to largely base their food choices on caloric values.  Children should be taught to maintain their innate sense of intuitive eating.  Sure we need to limit their affinity to the sugary and salty but they certainly do not need to inherit our obsession with calorie content over quality of food and eating that truly matter; food, farm and family.

Jamie Oliver is on the right track when he partnered up with a Los Angeles fast food restaurant in his latest season of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.  One of the first questions he asks the owner of the restaurant is, “do you know where your food comes from?”.  It’s sad to hear that the well-meaning guy only stumbles as a response and mentions a guy…in a warehouse…downtown somewhere.  These are the questions we should demand get answered by those who feed us; not the caloric value rather the integrity of the product itself.  Get back to basics and as my good friend Sean Croxton of Underground Wellness says, JERF!…….Just Eat Real Food!

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Defining Real Food

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The rules no eater should be without.

We all love food.  No creature on  Earth is indifferent when it comes to filling up on the finest available fare.  But what is food exactly.  Until recently, even the medical community didn’t pay much attention to what FOOD is exactly.  In his book  Food Rules, Michael Pollan suggests we “Eat Food”.  He goes on to say further that most of what we see on the shelves in our markets is food-like substance.  He proposes that we ask ourselves one simple question about the food staring at us from or plate.  “Would your grandmother recognize this as food?”  For some things we feed ourselves (or worse yet, our kids) it is pretty easy to identify the food-impostors.  The problem is when we think we are buying something healthy and it’s really just a stripped down food item with a bunch of healthy sounding additives made in a laboratory, molded in to shapes that resembles real food.  And you thought you were playing make-believe when, as a child,  you whipped up a batch of those play doh hot dogs for all to enjoy.

Healthy People on Real Food?

I recently attended the Healthy People Conference at Loma Linda University.  This years slogan was “The Food Factor”.  This struck me as a bit telling of the ten-foot-pole with which modern medicine and public health at large deal with the actual food of the population.  Sure we’ve had Registered Dietitians and Clinical Nutritionists in hospitals for decades now but they either deal with the single macro/micro nutrients or caloric intake of their patients.  It was quite a sight to hear how top authorities in medicine and public health were fumbling with the terms”organic” and “non-GMO” as if these were two of the most mysterious of medical technologies.

Being the guerilla health and fitness warrior that I am, I decided to take up the phrase of our 40th President,”Trust but verify“.  I started asking some of the MDs, PhDs and MPHs buzzing around the expo hall what their definition of Real Food is.  The responses were as varied as if I had asked their favorite color.  It got me thinking that if these medical professionals had no idea what real food is, how can the general public have a clue?

The next day, I took to the books on my shelves and scoured the internet to see how others identify real food.  Here are some popular definitions of real food from health and fitness professionals in print and across the internet:

The Visualization Technique

Can I imagine it growing?

Even the most conscious calorie-counter or label-reader still gives little thought to the fact that their food was once alive in one way or another.  We are overwhelmed by the subjective experience of eating (as we should be; food is meant to be enjoyed) that we fail to consider that our food was once a living, eating and breathing organism.  It is important to not only scrutinize the food you eat but also the food your food ate….and the food your foods food ate….and so on.

This book will bring family time back to the kitchen and the dinner table.

Just as it is impossible to be healthy by eating sick animals, it is equally impossible to be good stewards of the life gifted to you by your food by their ultimate sacrifice if you are not fully aware of the pice paid.  I hope someday we would require that food packaging include an actual picture of the animal, or plant growing in nature; not so that we be discouraged from eating it, but so we fully appreciate the sacrifice made so that we may be nourished. The harsh reality of this world is that it takes life to give life.

In her brilliant book, Feeding the Whole Family, Cooking with Whole Foods. Cynthia Lair of cookus interruptus asks, “Can I imagine [my food] growing” as a handy little way to teach young and old how to identify real food.  This is a great stand-alone question to keep in mind as you stroll down the aisles of your mega-mart.  For me, this goes a bit beyond the popular suggestion to shop the perimeter of the store…after all, you can find this and this along the perimeter of the store even though they are perfectly stable in the center aisles.  Real food goes bad quickly.  Grocery stores now place food-like substances along the perimeters right next to real foods in order to trick the eater.

The Paleo Paradigm

If it wasn’t around 10,000 years ago, it’s not real food.

Easy to follow, easy to read Primal tips for a healthy life.

Mother Nature has experimented with an infinite number of genetic traits and characteristics in every branch of the genetic tree.  We all know all of life evolved from single-cell organisms.  Some grew legs, some wings, others fins.  Some adapted to eating flesh while others put more genetic stock in to their GI system, giving them the ability to digest and absorb plant nutrients efficiently.  We as a species distinguished ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom 200,000 to 100,000 years ago.  Since then, our genome has changed very little with respect to how we eat.

Mark Sisson explains in his book, The Primal Blueprint, that our primal ancestors who hunted and gathered this Earth around 10,000 years ago were bigger, stronger, faster and more full of life than we are today.  Although we possess greater knowledge today, they had bigger brains than the modern human.

So what changed 10,000 years ago?  Agriculture.  We thought we could beat the system. We stopped moving around as much and tried to replaced our animal-based calories with plant-based calories.  I say attempted because we need only look at the health of both us and the Earth to see the result of that 10,000 year old experiment. Our general state of health and the now barren “fertile crescent” serve to exemplify the gradual taking of life that goes along with mass agriculture.

Please do not read this and think Mark and I think that plants are not real food.  The simple truth is that we humans do a lot of thinking.  Our brains are calorically expensive to run.  Feeding our bodies solely on plants is something to which we are not well adapted.  The artificial abundance of plant calories available in the food supply is detrimental to our health.  (remember the plant material I speak of is mainly grains and not leafy vegetation)  If you wish to go out to a meadow and shovel fistfuls of wheat in to your mouth, by all means, do it.  Chances are you won’t enjoy it.  It is only through our supposed ingenuity and invention of the millstone that we have artificially made something otherwise unpalatable, in to the staff of life.

I’d be remiss if I led the reader to believe that Marks book is simply a diet book.  He succinctly explains in great detail how to enjoy the luxuries of modern life while maintaining the health and happiness of our ancestors by applying the 10 laws of the Primal Blueprint. 

The Healing Effect

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food

-Hippocrates

Until the modern age, food was regarded as the primary source of medicine.  It is only through our conscious dissociation between what we eat and how we subsequently feel that has allowed us to ignore this eternal truth.  Hippocrates is credited with having said these famous words thousands of years ago.  By contrast, the US Surgeon General didn’t officially acknowledge the value of a good diet with respect to ones health until 1988.  Still today the best your doctor can do in the way of dietary guidance is regurgitate some industry funded and government endorsed research that employs standardized formulas and one-size-fits-all guidelines shown to be good for “most people”.  I don’t blame the doctors nor the system however it’s foolish for us as individuals to gamble with our health and hope we land somewhere at the top of that bell curve shown in the study.  Your food is the most intimate object your body will ever encounter.  Why we let somebody else tell us what our bodies need is beyond me.

Healing with Whole Foods includes complete sections on Ayurvedic principles of food—combining; the treatment of disease conditions through meals

The traditional Whole Medical Systems of the East are uniquely suited to explain and execute therapy through real food.  The Indian subcontinent spans such a range of elevation and latitude that it contains every type of climate on the rest of the planet.  Through this diversity the indigenous people have had thousands of years to experiment with the myriad of vegetables and herbs native to their land.

Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine alike designate certain qualities, characteristics and actions to foods.  If you have a cold, only a warm food such as chicken soup can help you come back in to balance.  It is an intuitive and uncomplicated way to look at food and realize its full potential.  These intrinsic qualities and potencies are mitigated as the food is removed further from its true nature.  This could be done by genetically altering the genome, growing it out of season, feeding it something other than its natural diet, etc.  This disconnect with nature can also take place if food is heated beyond stability.  This happens with oils, milk (through pasteurization) and bottled water baked in their plastic containers in warehouses across the country.  These otherwise real foods are chemically altered to improve shelf life and inflate a profit margin for some entity involved.

Integrity of the cycle

Normally I try to abstain from “circle-of-life” type arguments because I just end up breaking in to song and never get any work done.  This time, there simply is no other way to describe the holy dynamic that is the way in which we nourish ourselves and sustain our own lives.  Try as we may, we can not scientifically explain how intense energy burning light-years away from us becomes the infinitely unique life-form you think you are.  When does life start; be it you own, your foods, your foods food, your foods food food, and so on?  If you want to feel alive, you have to eat that which is filled with life.

My definition for real food involves understanding this cycle.  There is a set amount of life-force available in the world.  This is a concept known as Chi (or Qi) in TCM and Prana in Vedic traditions (Yoga, Ayurveda, etc).  Since the creation of the universe there has not been any addition no subtraction of life-force to the system.  If you care not to have such a broad metaphysical approach, suffice it to say that as far as the individual is concerned, the amount of life-force he or she will take in and give out is part of a zero-sum game.  That said, if you trace back the journey of the meal you will eat tonight, you could give an honest evaluation of how it got there and who exactly profited and lost in the process.  By my standards, if anybody involved disproportionately gained or lost, from the fowl to the farmer, your meal is not made of real food.

This seems a little stringent but consider it on a grander scale.  If anything is done to synthetically amplify the eternally present amount of life in a fruit, vegetable or animal, the nutritional integrity is compromised.  The profit of the farmer or food supplier must be paid by someone else in the system.  Who pays that bill?…you do.  After the food-like substance is “laundered” through your body, year after year, your medical bills start to pile up.  Remember, there is and will always be a set amount of life-force available in the universe.  If somebody tilts the scale in their favor, someone else will come up short.  It may take years and sometimes even generations, but as we continue to insist that we can sustain life from lifeless food, we will be met with the cold reality that is our collective decline in vitality and health.

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Exercise for the Brain

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Plato was given his nickname by his wrestling coach due to his broad shoulders. (Platon = broad)

“In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity.  Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together.  With these two means, man can attain perfection.”

-Plato

Apparently even those iconic Ancient Greeks needed to be reminded to get to the gym from time to time.  As I stated in my blog post on the recent USDA/NHS Dietary Guidelines for Americans,  we seem to be an extremely health conscious people; we just seem to have the (potato) chips stacked against us when it comes to the quality of food and information made available to us by the one-size-fits-all establishments.  We depend on the allied health authorities such as the AMA, USDA, ACSM, and ACE to not only inform us of the proper way to exercise but also to continually give us evidence based reasons to exercise.  It is useless to know how to do something effectively if you have no good reason for doing it in the first place. For better or for worse, the inspirational message from both our governmental and health authorities as well as the commercial fitness industry is any one or combination of the following; “Get fit to get healthy, live longer, have more sex, look great, or get up off the floor“  Though these threats to our safety and appeal to our primal urges seem powerful enough to get us active, they are not good sources of permanent and meaningful behavior change motivation.  All of these factors deal largely with the physical body.

What Gets Measured….

A healthy conceptualization of exercise is one that sees the adaptation of the physiology and physique of the body merely as side effects of a life in motion.  Exercise should be seen as a medicine for the entire being, not just your buns and thighs.  It is no surprise, however, that these objective indicators are the focus of both our esthetic and health goals.  They are measurable.

More than a Runners High

Dr. John Ratey is a practicing Clinical psychiatrist and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who is working to quantify this mind/body connection.  He successfully prescribes exercise for everything from ADHD, mood disorder, addiction, menopause and Alzheimer’s.  His therapy is based off the latest in  medical research that links the physiological benefits of exercise to real psychological improvement. He articulates this mission in his latest book, Spark:

“What I aim to do here is to deliver in plain English the inspiring science connecting exercise and the brain…  I want to cement the idea that exercise has a profound impact on cognitive abilities and mental health.  It is simply one of the best treatments we have for most psychiatric problems.”

When people think of the effect of exercise on one’s mood, they often think of the transient rush of endorphins known as “runners high”.  Dr. Ratey maps out exactly how in addition to these feel-good chemicals running through the movers blood, there is also a great increase in utilization of proteins like IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor) , BDNF (brain derived neurotropic factor) and VEGF (vaso-endothelial growth factor) for lasting positive effect.  Although these hormones are always present, Dr. Ratey explains how exercise effectively blasts these through the blood/brain barrier and causes psycological adaptation; just like exercise causes muscular adaptation.  The suggestion is that the primary objective of animal movement is to “work-out” the brain and improve functions of learning, reasoning and emotional affinity.

This is a very interesting concept when you think of it on an evolutionary level.  There was a period of time when all living species only had a sophisticated spinal cord.  Why did mother nature, through natural selection, decide to develop that mass of nerves rather than give the organism legs, or fangs, or something else a little more useful?  NYU neurophysiologist Rodolfo Llinas asserts that only a mobile creature needs a brain.  In his book, I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self, he tells the story of a sea squirt that starts life mobile then, once it roots itself in some coral, eats its own brain.  Llinas interprets from this that, “That which we call thinking is the evolutionary internalization of movement.”

A New Conclusion

When it comes to exercise, the end is not as important as the means.  You can move your body for whichever reason it is that suits you.  As a rule, I usually counter all health advice by saying that no one thing is good for everybody.  Exercise is probably the only exception.  It makes absolutely no difference your reasoning for starting an exercise program as to how your health will improve.  Once started, however, the adherence to the program does suffer as those superficial motivators either become less important or the initial goal is achieved.  When done properly, exercise changes the psychology of the person so much so that you actually want to work out.  Realizing that our main purpose for having the ability to move is to nourish the brain can not only be new motivation to become a mover but also may serve as a more permanent carrot at the end of your stick.  Let us hope we just don’t “over-think” ourselves with our improved cognition and snap the stick in half to get the carrot.

Re-learn how to eat every 5 years

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Click to download

And so it’s finally here.  The United States Department of Agriculture has finally released the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 (DGA)…and not a moment too soon because I was still eating like it was 2005.  So before we get in to the meat and potatoes…er fruits and whole grains of the guidelines, let us explore why we need a revised edition every 5 years.

“This periodic review is mandated under the 1990 National Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research
Act (Public Law 101-445, Section 301[7 U.S.C. 5341], Title III). The DGA is required to be based on
the preponderance of current scientific and medical knowledge and to be released by the Secretaries of
USDA and HHS every five years.”

I’ll leave it up to the reader to establish their own notion about just how efficient and non-wasteful it is to bring together two government agencies with a combined 2010 estimated budget of $977,700,000,000.00 for the purpose of determining specific and realistic dietary guidelines for optimal health.  I would however like to point out that this takes place every 5 years.  The variables analyzed are medicine, nutrition and epidemiology.  The need to re-evaluate the DGA every 5 years suggests that any or all of these three variables are so radically changing within such a short period of time.  If we are to place any faith in to these three sciences, shouldn’t they at least be true for more than 5 years? This to me is the most scary aspect to investigate.   Oh, and by the way..according to the title, it’s only a healthy way to eat for Americans.  Sorry rest of the world, get your own guidelines.

In case your eyes just glazed over reading all those zeros, that was $977.7 Billion dollars “invested” (not spent) on our nutrition and health promotion.  With so much money invested in our health, you would think we would all be Jack and Elaine Lalanne.  The reason money can’t buy us health is because we are still smitten with our own genius.  We as a public of all ages have personally witnessed so much technological and medicinal wonder come about that we have relinquished our own common sense and turned supine whenever we hear the words, “according to a study..”.  We as those who conduct and legislate on the basis of said studies have such tunnel vision that unless it can be proved with a scientific model, we pay little attention to it at best and demonize it at worst.

A Golden Recipe for Health

So why is it that a third of us are obese or overweight and half of us suffer from chronic disease?  After all, we have $977.7 Billion spent…oh, sorry, invested in us each year.  The message from those who stand behind these government guidelines, i.e. your doctor, personal trainer, dietician, etc, is that we just don’t listen to and follow their “golden recipe” for health and wellness.  The equation at the foundation of all the mainstream health information is the following:

Health = [Calories in] ≥ [Calories out]

If we could leverage the luxury of a certainty afforded by such a simple equation, your perfect beach body would only be a math equation away.  No matter how much you hated math in school, I highly doubt you would fake the flu to avoid this math test.  Human behavior is actually very predictable.  Give someone the Promise of a Positive outcome and they’ll do what it takes to get it.  Remove either of the P words and the person is less likely to comply.  If it is the case following this golden recipe to health worked with any substantial amount of reliability, more people would find it easy to make healthy choices and changer their behavior permanently.

A Health Conscious Population

The reason we have a health problem in America is not because we are undereducated or non-adherent.  In fact, I would say that we are more health conscious a people than there has ever been.  We have our non-dairy creamers, non-fat bacon and even anti-oxidant soda.  We are so conscious of our health in this country that we spend and estimated $50 Billion dollars of our own descretionary money on fitness and supplements.  Add this to the government investment of $977.7 Billion and you’ve got well over $1,000 Million (or one Trillion as we here in the US say it so that it doesn’t sound so bad) spend on preventing sickness and maintaining health.  We certainly are “health conscious”.

..with anti-oxidants

Perhaps that is the problem.  Our health, and more specifically should not be something we should have to think about so much.  Feeding oneself is the most basic and intimate act one can perform.  Whomever it is that you think you are has been killed off and reborn countless times over the course of your life.  Your tissues are not as old as the amount of candles on your birthday cake.  YOU are merely a highly sophisticated assimilation of external life that has been incorperated in to your own ego.  On a very subtle level, this is the essence of nutrition and digestion.  On very physiological level, our cells take in alien cells and send them to the gastric chop-shop inside us to be sold for their parts.  Some of us need part X and others need partt Y-328938495D.   DIgestion is not a “one-size-fits-all” process.

The reason we are sick is because we have tried so hard to find, in classic utilitarian fashion, the perfect diet that will work for most people with the lowest possible economic impact.  The same goes with Conventional Medicine.  Not all therapies apply to all people but as long as there is valid and reliable peer-reviewed evidence to say that it’s worth the cost/benefit trade off, you get approval.  True wellness requires personal inquiry and exploration.  It is not something that can be taught to you by the shits and white-coats in Washington D.C.

The Meat and Potat….er….Fruit and Whole Grains of the Guidelines

Now that I’ve dealt with the philosophical aspect of this

Denise Minger of www.rawfoodsos.com

absurdity, here are a few of the technical points I take issue with.  I could attempt to do this better than Denise Minger of rawfoodsos.com but I would fail.

The following is an excerpt from her blog:

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Saturated fat: true killer or whipping boy?

Here’s what the USDA has to say about saturated fat:

A strong body of evidence indicates that higher intake of most dietary saturated fatty acids is associated with higher levels of blood total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. Higher total and LDL cholesterol levels are risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

Ah, the lipid hypothesis in all its unproven, scientifically-feeble glory! We’ll look at the evidence they cite to bash saturated fat in a moment. But for now, let’s see their specific 2010 recommendations regarding this oft-feared nutrient:

To reduce the intake of saturated fatty acids, many Americans should limit their consumption of the major sources that are high in saturated fatty acids and replace them with foods that are rich in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids. For example, when preparing foods at home, solid fats (e.g., butter and lard) can be replaced with vegetable oils that are rich in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids.

Time to start frying your (yolk-free) eggs in soybean oil. Never mind that polyunsaturated fats actually increase oxidative stress (a major player in heart disease and cancer) and become particularly hazardous when heated, especially compared to heat-stable saturated fats. And never mind that most vegetable oils are disproportionately high in omega-6 fatty acids, aggravating the omega 3/6 imbalance that’s already rampant in American diets. If the USDA guideline team could peel off those lipid-hypothesis goggles for a minute, maybe they’d realize that the vegetable oils they’re recommending are likely to wreak some serious health havoc, regardless of what they do to cholesterol levels.

Worse, the new dietary guidelines give the green light to eat some of the worst industrial oils out there:

Oils that are rich in monounsaturated fatty acids include canola, olive, and safflower oils. Oils that are good sources of polyunsaturated fatty acids include soybean, corn, and cottonseed oils.

From page 38 of the 2010 USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans

From this graph, we should learn that soybean oil and corn oil (for example) are more healthful options than coconut oil and butter, because they’re lower in saturated fat. It doesn’t matter that we have studies showing high-omega 6 oils like corn oil may promote tumor growth while—using the same study design—saturated fats do not. As long as the USDA is on board with the “cholesterol causes heart disease” theory, the only thing that matters about fats is how they affect lipid profiles.

Besides, saturated fat is saturated. And saturated things kill us.

Here’s something else that’s interesting. Let’s hop over to the fatty acid page in the Evidence Library for a second. Under the subheading called “Needs for Future Research” (AKA “Stuff We Don’t Really Understand Yet”), they wrote:

1. Determine the benefits and risks of MUFA vs. PUFA as an isocaloricsubstitute for SFA. Confirm the metabolic pathways through which dietary SFA affect serum lipids, especially as some SFA (e.g., stearic acid) do not appear to affect blood lipid levels.

Basically, they’re recommending we swap saturated fat for unsaturated varieties without being sure what the effects are, and that we slash all saturated fat consumption without being sure whether the reasons are biologically justified. I guess by the time the next tome of guidelines is released, the USDA will get to see whether their lipid recommendations helped or killed us off faster. Welcome to America, land of 300 million guinea pigs.

Keep Reading…

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Conclusion

We spend quite a bit of money in this country.  Much of it is for good and much of it could be allocated elsewhere if we just took a closer look at what drives the spending.  Research is good as long as we don’t take it too seriously.  When we stop abandoning our intuitive wisdom and losing faith in ourselves to know what is best suited for our bodies, we will get more healthy.  There is no substitute for eating real food no matter how hard we try to prove otherwise in labs across the nation.  Invest in yourself, turn within to ask your body what it is that it wants you to feed it, and live a healthy, empowered and long life.   I write this on the eve of the 100th celebration of Ronald Reagan’s birth.  His words about our reliance upon government for direction were never more true.

“government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”


 

…Well I guess he wasn’t talking about diet afterall.


The French Connection

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Pierre de Coubertin

Jack LaLanne

It is no coincidence that two of the greatest movers over the last two centuries were of Franco heritage.  Two men so passionate about their causes that they would have to swim against the current of society, occasionally while being handcuffed and tied to a fleet of boats.  One man gave us the Modern Olympic Games and the other gave mainstream medical legitimacy to physical fitness. But is there something unique about the French that inspires an affinity for physical activity and feats of strength?

Liberté, égalité, fraternité;

How the French Revolution led to the Olympics

The 18th century brought about two great revolutions in the European sphere; the American Revolution and the French Revolution.  It was a time of great upheaval and redefinition of national values.  In America, we experimented with what is now known as the American Trinity (Liberty, In God We Trust, E Pluribus Unum) while France declared as the motto of their Revolution; Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.  The two are seemingly identical mottos- save for the obvious religious overtones of the American set- however, these two national ethea shaped two very different nations. 

As the French elevated the idea of equality-of-all-citizens, they lowered sharp blades upon the necks of the aristocracy and the clergy.  This secularization left no author of moral ideals such as equality, but man himself.  If man grants equality, man must maintain equality through constant progressive and politically-correct social reconstruction.  This national value of man-made equality was not constrained just to economics. The egalitarianism went so far as to affect the distinction between the sexes.

84 years after the end of the Revolution, at the age of twenty, Pierre de Coubertin found himself in a country of men more concerned with vanity than masculinity. He was concerned with the “sexual suicide” Geroge Gilder would later write about.

Having been born to an aristocratic family in Paris, France, young Pierre had the means to spend his days romanticizing the classic depiction of masculinity he only found in the great works of the Ancients.

Marianne, a French National Symbol at Place de la Republique

He felt frustrated with the comparison of his experience in life and the heroic figures he read about in the Iliad and the Odyssey.  He took up the crusade to bring sports and physical education to French public schools as a way to restore the sense of “moral and social strength” in his fellow Frenchmen.  Physical strength and contest was something that seemingly fell out of the Franco mind when the Revolutionaries replaced Hercules (a long time symbol of the pre-Revolutionary French monarchy) as a national symbol with Marrianne.

After many years of multi-national campaigning, Pierre de Coubertin revived the Ancient Olympiad and gave the world what is so cherished as the Modern Olympic Games.  What was initially done to reverse the spread of feminism over his fellow man, has become an inspiration to many individual athletes and given pause to the nations they represent, to reflect upon whatever political and physical wars in which they may be engaged.  The dream of de Coubertin was that at least every 4 years, the world will be at peace and relegate all animosity to the field, court, pitch, pool or track.

Francois Henri le Magnifique

One year before Pierre de Coubertin left this Earth, a young son of French immigrants opened what is thought to be one of the first modern health clubs in America.  “Jack” LaLanne had spent the latter part of his adolescence rabidly self-teaching and exploring the mysteries of physical fitness and bodybuilding.  One must understand that Jack’s message was delivered at a time when much of America had only seen men of his physical stature at the circus.  This “strongman” in a jumpsuit had to rely on great feats of strength and endurance in order to be taken seriously by the American public. 

Sitting here on my physio-ball chair, typing this exploration of physical virtue, I am awe-struck at the seemingly insurmountable social resistance young Jack LaLanne faced as he pioneered and invented the fitness industry.  He saw a certain complacency amongst his fellow Americans and he stopped at nothing to inspire us for our own good, to get our collective butts off the couch and move.  Much of what we take for granted, such as the “Jumping Jack” and the Smith machine are creations from ideas first created inside the brain of the Magnificent Jack LaLanne.

Corporeal Neglect

So much “runoff” good has come from the individual dreams of these two men.  They both saw great flaws in their respective society and they worked tirelessly for their cause.  Their revolutionary thinking resulted in the unconventional utilization of sport and physical activity for the purpose of building character, virtue, mental fortitude and eventually a greater awareness of the necessity to maintain a healthy balance of both mind and body.  It seems that with any enlightenment and advancement in areas of the mind comes a corporeal neglect that overcomes a people and marginalizes anyone who espouses the metaphysical worth to the individual and the society at large of a life in motion.  The seemingly intuitive lessons of sportsmanship, honor and a sense of overcoming adversity go lost to a society that does not properly respect the mind/body dynamic.  Both men served as reminders to us just as we had become too far intoxicated with the post enlightenment thought of the 18th century and the post Industrial Revolution brought on by Henry Ford in the 20th century.   Today we are faced with a population led by a government more focused on genetically engineering our food supply and providing sick-care on mass rather than heeding the simple messages of Coubertin and LaLanne.  Do not sacrifice the body for the sake of an enlightened and more sophisticated mind, for as smart and advanced as we are, the wonders of the physical body are still a mystery to us.  With our minds, we have freed slaves, negotiated treaties, created the internet and sent men to the moon; but we have yet to manufacture a kidney or cure a cold. 

A History of Medicine

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  • 2000 B.C. – Here, eat this root.
  • 1000 A.D. – That root is heathen. Here, say this prayer.
  • 1850 A.D. – That prayer is superstition. Here, drink this potion.
  • 1940 A.D. – That potion is snake oil. Here, swallow this pill.
  • 1985 A.D. – That pill is ineffective. Here, take this antibiotic.
  • 2000 A.D. – That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root.

Barefoot and Pregnant

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Yesterday, I saw a video about the flu-shot on the website of a major HMO.  I didn’t expected the message to be persuasive of vaccination but I was shocked at some of the tactics used in the ad.  I at least expected a fair shake when it came to the con side of vaccination.

I grew curious to know what our Federal Government had to say about vaccinations.  The video I watched was even more appalling than the last.  It starts out with a young pregnant woman.  She walks in to her mom’s kitchen as her mother is reminding her of her doctors appointment and offers her a snack.  Sure seems innocent enough but this dynamic reminds us of our childhood when we didn’t know much about anything.  We had to be reminded by our mothers when to eat, where to go and to tie our shoes.  Only because I was looking for it did I notice a ring on the woman’s finger.  Everything else in this first scene suggests that she is a single mother who went and got pregnant. As the conversation turns towards vaccination, the mother is quick to refute her daughters reservations about getting the flu shot by citing something she heard on “the news”.  When the young woman suggests that she is eating well and exercising (building her health) the mother quickly disparages her by asking her in a condescending tone, “have you been watching something on T.V. or ‘Googleing’ again?”

The next scene is in the doctors office where the non-intimidating, soft-spoken woman OB/GYN gives only the PROs and convinces not only the young woman but also the mother to get vaccinated.

I am not an extremist when it comes to vaccination.  I have nothing against the scientific logic it follows.  My objection is that from a public health perspective, those in power should do everything possible to show the less-informed citizenry all sides of an issue.  If there is to be funds allocated to the seasonal vaccination campaigns, there should be at least as many funds put towards getting people healthy and building immunity for the rest of the year.  When you only give an uninformed population half the story, you are not honoring their liberty to make informed decisions about their bodies, you are disrespecting the core of their human dignity.  We will only be healthy as a nation to the degree that we-the-people have the ability to know ourselves better than the bureaucrats at the CDC.

The Original Mover

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All throughout my career as a student, there was a recurring question that when posed to me in class, always put me at a loss.  I could BS my way through an answer with the best of them, but I could never be satisfied (nor could my teachers) with my articulation of “why we study history”.  Having experienced what they call, “real life” I now believe I have at least a couple valid answers.

Good, Evil and Social Entropy

Very few individuals have the ability to do good on a large scale.  My observation of history has led me to the conclusion that it is far more likely for good to be done by an entire movement over time while evil and destruction on mass can be done by a single deviant perched in a tower with a rifle or wearing an explosive vest. We have more than just modern examples to reveal this truth.  Let us do a small exercise.  Make a list of 5 of the most well known “good doers” in history. (don’t continue reading until you make your list cheater.)  For me, names like Ghandi, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jesus, Buddha, Abraham Lincolon and Jack LaLanne come to mind.  Reflect on the causes all of these men fought for; all of them good, though heavily opposed.  What does it say about the human race, that these great men faced such resistance-to-change during the course of their mission to benefit the human race?  We seem to be a bunch of sadists to need leaders of such stature in order to advance our own civility.

Generational Vision

Much can change over the course of a century.  100 years is ample time to witness the maturity of at least 4 generations.  Despite a peoples best effort to hand down every aspect of their culture, a grand new paradigm is born with each generation.  This augmented reality is what blinds each new batch of citizens from the triumphs and struggles that were won and lost before their influence.

Francois Henri “Jack” LaLanne nearly made it to 100.  He lived to celebrate his 96th birthday.  He taught his “students” by example for so long that a healthy knowledge of American 20th century history is necessary in order to fully place in to perspective the gravity of this man.  Fitness and health are so ubiquitous today that it is nearly impossible to imagine what the landscape was like in the early 1930′s before wellness was en vogue.  It was at this point in history that, at 22 years of age, Jack LaLanne founded one of the first modern health club in America.  “They thought I was nuts when I opened that gym,” says Jack, recalling how doctors and athletic trainers warned their clients to stay away. “They said, ‘You guys will lose your sex drive, become muscle-bound or, worse, get hemorrhoids.”
I guess they had better advice to offer than the silly pursuit of physical fitness.

We have to realize that as varied as all the different fitness fads and styles are these days, they all share a common foundation in the message of this fitness guru lovingly referred to as the “Godfather of Fitness”.  Sure nobody has all the answers and there is no ONE correct approach for everybody but it is somewhat awe inspiring how holistic and all-encompassing as his 10 point plan.  I’d imagine that it would be difficult to find a fitness professional of any discipline to find fault with this message:

A Fitness Prophet

Those of us under 30 may only know him directly from his juicer infomercials.  It is shocking for me to watch all of his many recordings from the 1950′s and realize that most of what goes for revolutionary health advice is just a version of an old Jack LaLanne Show episode.  I have yet to find a LaLanneism that was true then to be false today.  It seems that a large reason we have all the confusion and resultant obesity we do today is because we never were satisfied with “good enough”.  Jack LaLanne was as revolutionary as they come however, since his show has been off the air, we’ve constantly attempted to re-invent the ab-wheel.

It was the vision of this great man that spawned all the fitness crazes, clinical research and respect for the mind, body and spirit during the last century.  Let us hope that those of us who live his message are merely the early adopters and his legacy will be an even MORE active America.

My favorite quote from Jack LaLanne makes it clear to me that he was a student of history and came to the same conclusion about good and destruction as I did.

“Dying is easy…It’s living that’s hard”

 

-Jack LaLanne

 

 

Thank you Jack.  This rep’s for you.