Lifeworld

The figure below is one of many in Weston Price’s outstanding book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration showing evidence of teeth crowding among children whose parents moved from a traditional diet of minimally processed foods to a Westernized diet.Tooth crowding and other forms...

One common outcome of doing glycogen-depleting exercise (e.g., strength training, sprinting) in combination with intermittent fasting is an increase in growth hormone (GH) levels. See this post for a graph showing the acute effect on GH levels of glycogen-depleting exercise. This...

Let me start this post with a warning about spirits (hard liquor). Taken on an empty stomach, they cause an acute suppression of liver glycogenesis. In other words, your liver becomes acutely insulin resistant for a while. How long? It depends on how much you drink; possibly as long...

Mazess & Mather (1974) is probably the most widely cited article summarizing evidence that bone mineral content in older North Alaskan Eskimos was lower (10 to 15 percent) than that of United States whites. Their finding has been widely attributed to the diet of the Eskimos,...

The “great blogosphere debate” rages on regarding the effects of carbohydrates and insulin on health. A lot of action has been happening recently on Peter’s blog, with knowledgeable folks chiming in, such as Peter himself, Dr. Harris, Dr. B.G. (my sista from anotha mista), John,...

Dental erosion is a different problem from dental caries. Dental erosion is defined as the removal of minerals from the tooth structure via chemicals. Dental caries are the result of increased site-specific acidity due to bacterial fermentation of sugars.Still, both have the same...

John was overweight, out of shape, and experiencing fatigue. What did he do? He removed foods rich in refined carbohydrates and sugars from his diet. He also ditched industrial seed oils and started exercising. He used HealthCorrelator for Excel (HCE) to keep track of several...

This post has been revised and re-published. The original comments are preserved below. Typically this is done with posts that attract many visits at the time they are published, and whose topics become particularly relevant or need to be re-addressed at a later date....

I ran several analyses on the effects of fruit consumption on mortality on the China Study II dataset using WarpPLS. For other China Study analyses, many using WarpPLS as well as HCE, click here.The results are pretty clear – fruit consumption has no significant effect on mortality.The...

Our body naturally produces as much as 10,000 IU of vitamin D based on a few minutes of sun exposure when the sun is high. Getting that much vitamin D from dietary sources is very difficult, even after “fortification”.The above refers to pre-sunburn exposure. Sunburn is not...

In this post on the China Study II data we have seen that wheat apparently displaces dietary fat a lot, primarily fat from animal sources. We have also seen in that post that wheat is strongly and positively associated with mortality in both the 35-69 and 70-79 age ranges,...

The idea that protein leaches calcium from the bones has been around for a while. It is related to the notion that protein, especially from animal foods, increases blood acidity. The body then uses its main reservoir of calcium, the bones, to reduce blood acidity. Chris Masterjohn...

This post is based on an analysis of a subset of the China Study II data, using HealthCorrelator for Excel (HCE), which is publicly available for download and use on a free trial basis. You can access the original data on the HCE web site, under “Sample datasets”.HCE was designed...

This previous post looks at the amounts of protein needed to maintain a nitrogen balance of zero. It builds on data about individuals doing endurance exercise, which increases the estimates a bit. The post also examines the issue of what happens when more protein than is needed...

The figure below, from Brooks et al. (2005), shows a graph relating nitrogen balance and protein intake. A nitrogen balance of zero is a state in which body protein mass is stable; that is, it is neither increasing nor decreasing. The graph was taken from this classic study by Meredith...

Undoubtedly one of the big differences between life today and in our Paleolithic past is the level of stress that modern humans face on a daily basis. Much stress happens at work, which is very different from what our Paleolithic ancestors would call work. Modern office work, in...

The figure and table below are from Vieth (1999); one of the most widely cited articles on vitamin D. The figure shows the gradual increase in blood concentrations of 25-Hydroxyvitamin, or 25(OH)D, following the start of daily vitamin D3 supplementation of 10,000 IU/day. The table...

The figure below, taken from Wilmore et al. (2007), is based on a classic 1972 study conducted by Ariel and Saville. The study demonstrated the existence of what is referred to in exercise physiology as the “placebo effect on muscular strength gains”. The study had two stages. In...