Suppversity on Autophagy

http://suppversity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/want-to-clean-up-cellular-garbage-train.html

7 Fat-Regulating Hormones

7 Fat-Regulating Hormones That Become Out of Whack With Too Little Sleep

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jj-virgin/fat-regulating-hormones_b_3767527.html

Some Useful Myth-Busting

Nutrition Myths http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mike-hart/nutrition-myths-_b_3641936.html

Fifteen Minutes to Awesome

Personal Trainer Exposes 'Before & After' Secrets on Instagram http://gawker.com/personal-trainer-exposes-before-after-secrets-on-in-1189167678

Middle-Aged Gain

Why weight gain in middle age is not inevitable

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23809574

Don't Swallow It

5/6 ain't bad!

http://www.newscientist.com/special/six-health-myths?utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=SOC&utm_campaign=twitter&cmpid=SOC%7CNSNS%7C2012-GLOBAL-twitter

Scientific American on Calorie Counting

We've been here before.  Originally phrased in Paleo as "calories don't count", evolved in to "why count calories", and now reformulated as "can you count calories".  Some of us don't count calories.  Calories still count, but how effectively you can count them is the crux of the matter.  Isocaloric is not isometabolic - as Scientific American report,

• Food is energy for the body. Digestive enzymes in the mouth, stomach and intestines break up complex food molecules into simpler structures, such as sugars and amino acids that travel through the bloodstream to all our tissues. Our cells use the energy stored in the chemical bonds of these simpler molecules to carry on business as usual. We calculate the available energy in all foods with a unit known as the food calorie, or kilocalorie—the amount of energy required to heat one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius. Fats provide approximately nine calories per gram, whereas carbohydrates and proteins deliver just four. Fiber offers a piddling two calories because enzymes in the human digestive tract have great difficulty chopping it up into smaller molecules.
  Every calorie count on every food label you have ever seen is based on these estimates or on modest derivations thereof. Yet these approximations assume that the 19th-century laboratory experiments on which they are based accurately reflect how much energy different people with different bodies derive from many different kinds of food. New research has revealed that this assumption is, at best, far too simplistic. To accurately calculate the total calories that someone gets out of a given food, you would have to take into account a dizzying array of factors, including whether that food has evolved to survive digestion; how boiling, baking, microwaving or flambéing a food changes its structure and chemistry; how much energy the body expends to break down different kinds of food; and the extent to which the billions of bacteria in the gut aid human digestion and, conversely, steal some calories for themselves.
  
  Nutrition scientists are beginning to learn enough to hypothetically improve calorie labels, but digestion turns out to be such a fantastically complex and messy affair that we will probably never derive a formula for an infallible calorie count.

You can try and count calories but precision is difficult when the targets (calroies in AND calories out), are moving.

fMRI Scan

fMRI scan indicating increased brain activity...

Lip Service

Something that I saw on Conditioning Research a long time ago:

Created by: CosmetologySchool.org

It is still a relevant issue today:

• Most lipsticks contain at least a trace of lead, researchers have shown. But a new study finds a wide range of brands are contaminated with as many as eight other metals, from cadmium to aluminum. Now experts are raising questions about what happens if these metals are swallowed or otherwise absorbed on a daily basis.
  

Bodyweight = Big & Functional!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvq1AHaqGto&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Sound Advice

Meet the Next Fitness Star Winner! http://www.womenshealthmag.com/fitness/next-fitness-star-winner-stacie-clark

The Men Who Made Us Thin

Further to this post here is a post by Carl Henegan expanding on why he thinks Weight Watchers does not work

You can see the full program on the men who made us thin on the BBC. This follows on from a series last year called The Men Who Made Us Fat.

On The Right Foot

Start your meal on the right foot, and you’ll cut back on calories without even thinking about it

http://blog.womenshealthmag.com/scoop/this-appetizer-makes-you-eat-less-during-dinner/

‘Safe’ levels of sugar harmful to mice

http://www.nature.com/news/safe-levels-of-sugar-harmful-to-mice-1.13555

Living Wild

Whilst in the mood to blog I thought I'd share a book that I've recently read; The Wild Life: A Year of Living on Wild Food by John Lewis-Stempel. 

When I first received the book I wasn't really that enthusiastic about it as the cover seemed to feature some upper-class member of the horsey-set.   But from the opening page this really is a triumph of prose and an absorbing account of how Lewis-Stempel sought to live off hunted and foraged food for a year,. 

• The Wild Life is John Lewis-Stempel's account of twelve months eating only food shot, caught or foraged from the fields, hedges, and brooks of his forty-acre farm. Nothing from a shop and nothing raised from agriculture. Could it even be done?
  
  We witness the season-by-season drama as the author survives on Nature's larder, trains Edith, a reluctant gundog, and conjures new recipes. And, above all, we see him get closer to Nature. Because, after all, you're never closer to Nature than when you're trying to kill it or pick it.
  
  Lyrical, observant and mordantly funny, The Wild Life is an extraordinary celebration of our natural heritage, and a testament to the importance of getting back to one's roots - spiritually and practically.

The struggle of the hunter/gatherer is well documented and Lewis-Stempel records his moments of hardship with warmth and humour.  The book pulls together interesting asides and anecdotes from folklore and early English literature.  It is also sprinkled with recipes both modern and traditional.

The book has a deep emotional feel to it that reminds me of Roger Deakin's Waterlog where the author shows a visceral understanding and love for the subject at hand.  In other ways it is an modern take upon Ian Niall's excellent The Poacher's Handbook.  Both these books are superb additions to the canon of modern nature writing and I have to say Lewis-Stempel's The Wild Life is right up there alongside them.

"Well Done"

I went to the doctor's last week and got an official 'all clear' for my hypertension issue.  I got a high reading in the doctor's surgery (154/95 ish and due to 'white-coat' hypertension), but I was able to show him my own records that show daily averages of under 140/90 over the past few months.  These averages show modal reading around 130/80.  On seeing my records he smiled and simply said, "Well done!".

This morning I had a reading of 113/71.

Nutrient Arteries

An interesting article from the BBC supporting some of the ideas that modern arable farming gives rise to largely sterile ecological wilderness and in contrast, pastoral farming can facilitate biodiversity:

• "The demise of big animals in the Amazon region 12,000 years ago cut a key way that nutrients were distributed across the landscape, a study has suggested.
  
  Researchers say animals such as huge armadillo-like creatures would have distributed vital nutrients for plants via their dung and bodies.
  
  The effects, still visible today, raise questions about the impact of losing large modern species like elephants."

It is worth reading the rest of Big animal extinction 'severed nutrient arteries to see how dung and bodies are important conduits in the dispersal of nutrients throughout any ecosystem.

The Secrets To A Fulfilling Life

The 75-Year Study That Found The Secrets To A Fulfilling Life http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/11/how-this-harvard-psycholo_n_3727229.html

Mike O'Hearn on the Big Three

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8x-Te2J8Ao&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Fat Profits

As I said several years ago, the diet industry is built on failure.

Fat profits: how the food industry cashed in on obesity http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/aug/07/fat-profits-food-industry-obesity

Eating on the Wild Side

A pseudo Paleo 2.0.

Jo Robinson: Eating on the Wild Side http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-gerendasy/jo-robinson-eating-on-the_b_3720492.html

Predictive Adaptive Response Hypothesis

If hunger doesn't kill you, it doesn't make you stronger http://www.nature.com/news/if-hunger-doesn-t-kill-you-it-doesn-t-make-you-stronger-1.13503

Why Dieting Must Die

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/dieting-problems_b_3704664.html

How Junk Food Can End Obesity

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/07/how-junk-food-can-end-obesity/309396/