READERS SUMMARY: WHY IS IRON IMPORTANT? HOW DOES IT AFFECT LIFE AT A 30ft LEVEL MICROSCOPICALLY HOW DOES IT AFFECT LIFE AT A 30,000 ft LEVEL IN OUR OCEANS HOW DID EVOLUTION USE IRON TO PROTECT US AND OUR SPECIES? HOW DID A PROTECTIVE EFFECT BECOME A DEADLY DISEASE IN 50 YEARS RIGHT UNDER OUR NOSES? IS THIS ALL TIED TO FACTOR X TOO AT SOME LEVEL? This blog was specifically designed for the people who just experienced my Factor X Webinar unveiling so it may not make total sense to those who did not attend. For those who did attend you now have the context to understand the following “few modern diseases” that just may not be diseases at all because of how an evolutionary bottle neck sped up epigenetics. HEMOCHROMATOSIS: Iron is a element that is vital for life. In fact, every form of life on this planet uses it to some degree to make sense out of the random chaos of the chemistry of atoms that life orders together to make the beautiful musical composition that is life. For humans, metabolism requires Iron. Iron carries oxygen to tissues in our cells but it can paradoxically makeContinue Reading
OSTEOPOROSIS TWO: THE VITAMIN K2 STORY
READERS SUMMARY: 1. HOW DOES THE HUMAN BODY HANDLE VITAMIN K2? 2. IS THE GALLBLADDER IMPORTANT IN THE VITAMIN K2 CYCLE? 3. WHY DOES OSTEOPOROSIS WALK HAND AND HAND WITH ARTERIAL DISEASE? 4. HOW IS VITAMIN K2 LINKED TO OUR LIPID PROFILE CLINICALLY? 5. HOW DOES COUMADIN CAUSE IATROGENIC OSTEOPOROSIS? In the first blog on osteoporosis, we focused in on how to stimulate bone mass accrual via our diet. This is by far the best way to fight osteoporosis and least used way, but it is not the only way to treat it. Eating a diet that is plentiful in proteins and saturated fats are smart moves to stave off bone loss as one ages. Eating a diet laden in carbohydrates or filled with a lot of fowl like turkey and chicken is not going to help your bone mass in the long run. The last blog demonstrated that vitamin K2 supplementation (for just 4 weeks) will not only increase your insulin sensitivity, but raise your sex steroid hormones as well to support your bone metabolism. Both mechanisms seem to be related to increased amounts of serum carboxylated osteocalcin (cOC), is made rather than just modulating inflammation in our body.Continue Reading
THE "NOT SO HARD" TRUTH ABOUT HAIR LOSS
READERS SUMMARY: WHY EARLY HAIR LOSS MIGHT BE A GLUTEN/GLIADIN PROBLEM? WHY YOU SHOULD NOT USE A NUCLEAR WEAPON TO TREAT A MOLEHILL? WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES OF PLAYING A BIOCHEMIST ROLE IN THIS PATHWAY? WHEN TREATMENTS ARE WORSE THAN THE ORIGINAL CLINICAL PROBLEM? WHAT SHOULD I DO WHEN I HAVE HAIR LOSS BEFORE STARTING DRUGS? Every so often, I have decided to post a blog about an interesting clinical picture that I think may help our community out. Today we are going to cover a clinical topic that came up a while back on Paleohacks about a young male patient about his recent hair loss. I think this topic is timely because of the recent literature that is now coming out about the drugs that disturb the distal androgen pathways, and how they can wreck the Hypothalamic Pituitary axis on a permanent basis. I have heard many doctors on public radio shows (Sirius Doctor Radio to be exact on their dermatology show recently) and in blogs say that these hair sparing drugs do not cause any long term problems with a males fecundity or libido. In a nut shell, I am calling bullshit on that. This statementContinue Reading
HOW TO FIND YOUR INNER MASTERPIECE?
READERS SUMMARY: 1. WHAT IS PPAR-gamma AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? 2. HOW DOES IT TIE ARTHEROSCLEROSIS, VITAMIN K2, AND OUR LIPID PANEL TOGETHER? 3. HOW IS A LEAKY GUT, THE LIVER, OBESITY,CHOLESTEROL, and BLOOD PRESSURE ARE TIED TOGETHER? 4. HOW IS EXERCISE COUPLED TO THIS COMPLEX WEB? 5. HOW DOES PQQ FIT INTO ALL THIS? WHY IS IT A CRITICAL PALEO SUPPLEMENT? 6.. HOW DOES LEPTIN PLAY A ROLE HERE TOO? Today we are going to hit on a new levee that ties diet to exercise and throws in a bit of leptin. I am going to apologize in advance, because there is going to be some mind bending biochemistry with in it. I think after explaining it to you, it will begin to help you understand how some of my recent blog posts are all tied together and needed for optimization. It also will help show you why low volume HIIT exercise is optimal for health, and endurance exercise is not. The Levee under discussion today is number 12. PPAR (peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor) gamma is regarded as the master regulator of the adipocyte and of lipid metabolism in the cell. It is under the direct control of leptinContinue Reading
WHAT ARE THE TOP TEN PALEO SUPPLEMENTS?
READERS SUMMARY: WHAT ARE THE TOP TEN SUPPLEMENTS TO CONSIDER WHEN CHANGING? WHY DO I CONSIDER THEM THE BEST CORE SUPPLEMENTS FOR A PALEO LIFESTYLE? WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT TO LEAST SUPPLEMENT IN A PALEO LIFESTYLE? When a person decides to become optimal and eats a paleo/primal diet there are many changes that occur to one’s RNA/DNA and to our epigenetic switches. Many of these bio-machinations will take months to give the full hormonal response, but there are some potential issues that can exist when a person implements a change to their life. One of the big issues is to initially delineate is–what kind of paleo diet are you instituting? Many people eat a lot of grass fed skeletal meat and avoid all offal at first. Others cut their carbs while others carb load based upon their activity levels. Others use a high protein approach to control hunger, while others use a low protein approach if they are running a vegetarian regime. This blog will attempt to discuss what someone might consider to supplement if they are eating a standard paleo diet as outlined in in a Paleo 1.0 book. I recommend that people with disease considerContinue Reading
MSG your GUT and your BRAIN post trauma.
READERS SUMMARY: 1. How does MSG and aspartame affect you and your brain and your fat loss? 2. What do artificial sweeteners do to a human? 3. How does neuronal injury from diet, trauma, and energy depletion all tie together? 4. What about young humans? 5. What about young humans with injured brains? In part 2 of this series, we will explore how excitatory amino acids in foods and introduced to our GI tract could cause us some problems with normal functioning causing weight plateaus. We will discuss how MSG and aspartame (Nutrasweet), could wreak havoc with the human brain. This is especially true if that brain already has been concussed many times or is afflicted with some neurodegenerative disorder or is connected to an already leaky gut (low HDL level). Many people don’t seem to understand how MSG and artificial sweeteners cause damage to neurons. The experimental data on this area is documented quite well by Dr. John Olney. His work began in 1969. He studied the endocrine effects of MSG on the hypothalamus. Most of my blog readers know that leptin signaling in the hypothalamus is critical for developing obesity and controlling weight among other things. You mightContinue Reading
THE SUNSHINE OF YOUR LIFE……..?
READERS SUMMARY: 1. Are dermatologists right about the sun being bad for us all the time? 2. Why is sunlight so vilified by some physicians? 3. What does Vitamin D really do for us and our immunity? 4. What diseases does it play a major role in humans? What help does it give? 5. What other conditions might optimizing your vitamin D levels help? I was in a lounge watching the news last week and began to over hear a group of dermatologists talk about the new FDA rules set down for sunblocks that will go into effect in January of 2012. There was unanimous agreement among them all that sunlight was the source of everything that was bad in their world. One of the doctors said to another that, “no human should be out in the sun and they should just take vitamin D3 from the drug store instead of getting it from the sun.” It was at that point I knew this was going to make a blog post about this. Apparently no one realizes that photosynthesis supports most of the food chain on this planet? And we are the mammal who has an energy hog inContinue Reading
CELLULAR DEPLETIONS….WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?
READERS SUMMARY: 1. How do we tie the squabble at AHS to Neolithic disease generation? 2. How does a cell react to acute stress and what results? 3. How does this stress get measured by labs and my doctor? 4. What happens when this stress lasts too long? 5. Why cholesterol is always good for us, but why the surrounding terroir dictates the disease we get? Lets continue talking about cellular stress and depletions of things in a cell. We got on that topic because of the macronutrient squabble from AHS. But after following some twitter feeds (@DigiSurg if you want to follow me) about supplement regimes I thought I might try to tie some cellular mineral depletions together with how it causes the cell stress and causes it to affect its cellular terroir and our resultant hormone status. I think this story will help you understand just how important following the trial of biochemistry is. Any type of cellular stress lowers our stores of ATP and of Magnesium (Mg) because they are coupled together by our ATPase enzyme as we saw in this post. This is classically seen in diabetes development as we mentioned there. Another interesting thing alsoContinue Reading
GNOLLS.ORG OPENS THE DOOR TO OBESITY FIGHT
READERS SUMMARY: 1. WHY IS MAGNESIUM SO IMPORTANT? DID THE OBESITY BATTLE OF THE BLOGS MISS IT? 2. HOW SHOULD YOU THINK ABOUT MAGNESIUM AND HOW TO TEST IT CORRECTLY? 3. WHAT DOES MAGNESIUM REALLY DO? 4. THE MISSING LINK IN TAUBES, GUYENET, LUSTIG, AND EENFELDT’S RECENT COMMENTS? 5. ITS THE BRAIN GUYS……WHEN THE SQUABBLE ENDS WE WILL ALL BE SITTING AT THE HYPOCRETIN NEURONS! Magnesium (Mg) is an ion that is often spoken about in the blogosphere but its importance has been under-emphasized. After speaking to Gnolls.org blogger/author/hairstylist J. Stanton ………about this issue at the AHS I decided to publish this blog a bit earlier on Magnesium to help clear the air on this cation. I also think it may help bring some clarity to the new paleo “squabble” that has begun with Taubes, Guyenet, Lustig, and Eenfeldt. And I do love this type of passion. It helps solves scientific problems. Failure of the hypothesis should make us all seek the answers. We have heard many podcasts from the paleo community leaders espousing the use of this supplement for muscle aches, constipation, and improving sleep and metabolism. But what we have not heard is why this is important andContinue Reading
IS FISH OIL……..GOOD OR BAD?
READERS SUMMARY: 1. Is it correct to believe that omega 6′s are always bad? 2. What are the pathways these fats travel and what do they really do? 3. Do we need some type of ratio for optimal health? 4. What are the normal ratio’s of O6/O3 in certain organ’s? 5. Why is knowing what your current O6/O3 ratio critical to your Optimal Health? Today I was getting ready for the Ancestral Health Symposium and I struck up a conversation with two UCLA students on the Santa Monica Pier. After about ten minutes, I realized that before today’s meeting I had to discuss omega six fats. These two bright kids had the clear impression that omega 6 fats were always pure evil for optimization. I asked them where they got that idea and they told me they got it from popular paleo blogs and books they had read and it was reenforced by their peers. I told them both that they just motivated me to go back to my hotel early and begin a new blog before todays first ever Ancestral Health Symposium. So here it goes. Many times we hear in the paleo world talk about the wonderful thingsContinue Reading
WHAT MIGHT CASEY ANTHONY AND OJ HAVE IN COMMON?
READERS SUMMARY: 1. What are the symptoms of adrenal fatigue? 2. Is there differences in presentation between the sexes? 3. What to look for in you? 4. What are some of the things you can do to combat this? 5. What is the prognosis and how long can it last? Do you have dark circles under eyes? Are your eyes sunken to some degree? Do you sleep poorly? Have you lost your energy? Sex drive gone? Do you bloat and start getting unusual bowel movements? Do you live in a plateau phase constantly? Has your weight remained the same too long? Tired for no reason? Need to drink a ton of coffee and salty carb snacks to get by? Do you still crave sweets? Do you feel generally rundown? Do you exercise a lot but still have belly fat that is resistant to loss? Are you forgetful often? Hair loss or brittle? Diagnosed with GERD (dysbiosis) and feel nervous often? Often depressed? If this sounds like you welcome to the diagnosis of adrenal fatigue. Many conventional docs don’t buy this diagnosis but that is because they can’t see what they are not looking for. This syndrome is most often seenContinue Reading
WHY DIETARY BIOCHEMISTRY?
READERS SUMMARY 1. Quick overview of carbohydrate metabolism 2. Quick overview of fat metabolism 3. Quick over view of protein metabolism 4. Are all exercises created equal? 5. What exercises optimize us for health and longevity? The process of how food is turned into ATP is called cellular respiration. Foods are made from carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. This a quick overview of dietary biochemistry to show how our foods and mitochondria have to interact. Carbs have four stages of metabolism that allow them to be transformed into CO2, H2O, and ATP. Stage one is called glycolysis. It has either 10 or 11 steps. 10 if they occur in the cytoplasm, or 11 if they occur in the mitochondria. It begins with glucose of glycogen and ends with pyruvate under anaerobic conditions. It only allows for 2 ATP to be made form glucose and three if glycogen was the source. It also liberated 2 hydrogens in the form of NADH. Stage two carb metabolism has no name but it allows formation of Acetyl CoA from pyruvate. This occurs in the mitochondrial matrix without oxygen, but is an aerobic process. No ATP is made but two Hydrogen atoms (H) are released to make 2 NADH. Stage three ofContinue Reading
