Health Links

Here's a few things I cam across over the course of the week that you might find some interest in.

Ketogenic Diets and Physical Performance. This is a very interesting review by Stephen Phinney where he takes a look back at essentially forgotten studies of indigenous people who lived quite dandily on animal fat and protein, with a notable absence of diabetes, obesity, heart disease and cancer, though the focus of the paper is on physical performance.

During the time that this consensus view of the necessity of
carbohydrate for vigorous exercise was forming, the last pure hunting
cultures among the peoples of North America finally lost out in
competition with expanding European cultural influences. Between 1850
and 1930, the routine consumption of carbohydrates spread north from
the U.S. Plains States through central Canada, where the indigenous
peoples had heretofore made at most seasonal use of this nutrient
class. However the last of these groups to practice their traditional
diet, the Inuit people of the Canadian and Alaskan Arctic regions, were
luckily observed by modern scientists before their traditional dietary
practices were substantially altered. The reports of these early
scientists imply that the Inuit people were physically unhampered
despite consuming a diet that was essentially free of identifiable
carbohydrate.

Fast Way to Better Health. This is by Michael R. Eades, author of Protein Power, and a blogger too.

When researchers restrict the caloric intake of a group of lab animals
to about 30 to 40 percent of that of their ad libitum (all they want to
eat) fed counterparts, they find that the calorically restricted
animals live 30 percent or so longer, don't develop cancers, diabetes,
heart disease, or obesity. These calorically restricted (CR) animals
have low blood sugar levels, low insulin levels, good insulin
sensitivity, low blood pressure and are, in general, much healthier
than the ad lib fed animals.

…

Caloric restriction is a terrific way to lose weight and get
healthy; problem is, it's not much fun. When rats live out their little
ratty lives calorically restricted in their cages they seem to show
signs of depression and irritability. Primates do for sure. If primates
don't get enough cholesterol, they can actually become violent. But, if
you're willing to put up with a little irritability, hostility and
depression, it might be worth cutting your calories by 30 percent for
the rest of your long, healthy miserable life.

Doesn't sound so cheery?  You're not ready to sign up yet?

Well, there is a better way.

Here's a good lesson in Occam's Razor. First this blog entry, again by Michael Eades, and this Men's Health article, The Cure for Diabetes (five pages, well worth it). See if you can put it all together.

Finally, here's a little bit on mental health: Zeitgeist – The Movie.

"They must find it difficult, those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority."

"The mass of people who are Bible-taught never get free from the
erroneous impressions stamped on their minds in their infancy, so that
their manhood or womanhood can have no intellectual fulfillment, and
millions of them only attain mentally to a sort of second childhood."  — Gerald Massey