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.

Identically Differernt

Tim Spector is Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King's College London and in 'Identically Different' he teases apart how identical genes do not lead to identical outcomes.  We are of course talking about epigenetics.

Much of Spector's work involves looking at the genetics of twins.  Twin can be identical (concordant), or non-identical (discordant).  Identical twins share all their genes while non-identical twins share, on average, about half. Factoring in the likely similar upbringing of twins the heritability of a particular trait or condition can be calculated by analysing that trait of condition amongst the populations of discordant and concordant twins.  The two main epigenetic principles are DNA methylation and Histone modification.

Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain

• "I am more and more convinced that our happiness or unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life, than on the nature of those events themselves."
  Wilhelm von Humboldt

In Elaine Fox's Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain we get a pop roundup of the mind of the optimist and the pessimist - which reflect 'primal inclinations to seek pleasure or avoid danger'.  We are evolved to tune in to danger but as Fox illustrates, this protection mechanism can come to dominate, yielding a negativity - with detrimental results.

More from Fat, Fate & Disease

More nuggets from Fat, Fate & Disease. 

Some (ongoing) research conducted by Southampton University which has followed several hundred children from birth, turns up some further interesting epigenetic effects - and it is bad news for Low Carb,

• "The Southampton studies have shown clearly that birthweight is not the most important factor in setting the risk of chronic disease.  The thickness of the carotid artery of a child at nine years of age, an early and highly objective marker of risk of cardiovascular disease, was statistically related to low carbohydrate intake by the mother in late pregnancy, and this factor was independent of the child's birthweight."

Birth order seems to be a significant factor in obesity, with the first-born at a greater risk.  This is important as child mortality falls, families comprise fewer children and so more of the planet are 'first-born'.  In China this is particularly significant with its one-child policy,

• "In the early 1950s, a doctor in Motherwell in southern Scotland made substantial recommendations about the diet that his women patients should eat during pregnancy.  The offspring were studied until they were 30...[Southampton University researchers] analysed how fat these 30-year-olds were from the point of view of whether they were first-born or not...those who were first-born have about 25 percent more body fat than those who were second or subsequent children.  More recently, data from Cesar Victora's group in Brazil have shown that first-born children are more likely to have higher blood pressure later." 

The Southampton research program mentioned above has gone in to significant analysis of body composition,

• "In our first study we found that the degree of epigenetic change measured at birth in one particular gene, associated with the control of fat metabolism, explained about 25 per cent of the differences in body fat between children nine years later"

 This particular research was repeated in a second birth cohort study and supported the idea that methylation of a gene at one site determine likelihood of becoming obese more than genetic variation.  This methylation was identified within the umbilical cord (which had been sampled as part of the study), and firmly establishes the relationship between mother's diet and child's physiology.

Gut flora is another theme explored in the book,

• "Generally these bugs inside our bodies are very useful.  They help by predigesting our food and play a major role in determining our nutrition and our metabolic health.  We know that people with diabetes have different patterns of gut bacteria.  We also know that how we develop this internal family of gut bacteria influences whether we get allergies..."

A quick aside here.  Just think how rapidly generations of bacteria pass in a single year of human life.  Now consider the fact that they are evolving and adapting to their environment (YOUR gut).  So now we can see a feedback mechanism; that your nutrition in particular,  and also your pattern of energy expenditure (and the hormonal milieu that follows), may well be affecting the epigenetics of your gut flora!  This change in gut flora may affect YOUR epigenetics.  Pretty incredible stuff.

Fat, Fate & Disease

In Fat, Fate and Disease by Peter Gluckman and Mark Hanson, we see an attempt to synthesise the scientific research from various sources in to one volume that explains why our current strategy is not working, drawing heavily from evolutionary biology and evolutionary theory.  As you'd expect, epigenetics are a big part of the puzzle.

They pull some interesting examples of epigenetic 'predictive, adaptive response' from various sources of the animal world.  The Pennsylvanian meadow vole for example, can be born in either spring or autumn, which determines the thickness of it coat of fur.  The type and density of its hair follicles are set before birth, but temperature clues are thin on the ground as the temperature in the womb is pretty consistent.  The trigger in this case are melatonin levels in the mother which reflect the length of day and so the season.  They also indicate how biological decisions early in development can be outside of our individual control.  Butterflies also pull a similar trick.  Their wing colour needs to reflect the seasonal colour of foliage.  In this case the temperature the larva is exposed to triggers the relevant epigenetic change.

Overcoming Gravity

It seems books on strength are like buses.  Nothing for ages then several come along at once!  Chris Highcock's Hill Fit gives a solid program for fundamental strength gains aimed primarily at the hill walker and mountaineer but with wider application.  'Overcoming Gravity: A Systematic Approach to Gymnastics and Bodyweight Strength' by Steven Low targets a much more specialised audience:

HillFit

I recently received a copy of Chris Highcock's Hill Fit.  For those that don't know, Chris Highcock runs the Conditioning Research blog - a hugely respected and popular fitness site pertaining to health, performance and fitness in general.

Chris has identified an obvious but much neglected niche in the armoury of the dedicated hillwalker and rambler; strength.  While most outdoor enthusiasts will pay attention to their primary hardware (gore-tex shell, fleece, footwear, rucksack, GPS etc....), few would consider strength to be important. 

In fact, short of running around the block a few times a week to improve 'cardio', few walkers I know would actually engage in serious strength work.  This is a mistake - something Chris makes a compelling case for in Hill Fit.

Chris takes you through the research and helps you put together a simple, short but effective routine that relies primarily on bodyweight and low-tech equipment (something which gets the Natural Messiah thumbs up!).  Easy and advanced variations are given for each exercise which you can work through, ensuring intensity is maintained as your strength progresses.

The book is 'focused on something that every walker, hiker and backpacker needs' and certainly, if you've never considered training for strength before heading to the hills, I'd recommend you get your hands on a copy.

Fat, Fate and Disease

New for 2012, Fat Fate And Disease by Peter Gluckman and Mark Hanson.

• 'Why are we losing the war against obesity and chronic disease?' This is the simple question Peter Gluckman and Mark Hanson ask, exploring the dominant myth that the exploding epidemic of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes can be tackled by focusing on adult life styles. Addressing the flawed approach of the weight-loss industry, they explain why a continued focus simply on diet and exercise will fail. Highlighting the implications of the growing burden of these problems in the developing world, they show that the scientific enterprise ignores the reality of the social, cultural, and biological determinants that make different populations and people respond differently to living in the modern nutritionally rich world. Gluckman and Hanson review the overwhelming scientific evidence that much of the problem emerges in early life and even before birth, identifying that to address these issues requires considering development in two dimensions - a life course approach and addressing the developmental challenges of countries emerging through the socioeconomic transition. Asking why the major global bodies and vested interests fail to consider these dimensions and continue with failed approaches, they conclude by discussing the complex interactions between health and the food industry, and suggest that the food industry must be co-opted as an ally in this battle, providing a clear pathway forward.

Looks interesting....

Meat and Sex

In the great debate about whether man is primarily a meat eater or vegetarian we often lose sight of the subtler utility of animals.  I blogged previously about this in Waste Not, Want Not.  Forage for a plant and you have food.  Kill a bison and you have food, leather and hide for clothing, tendons for bow strings (and musical instruments), bones for handles and tools, and so forth.

In The Red Queen, Matt Ridley draws attention to the work of Kim Hill.  Firstly you might want to bone-up on sexual selection.  Natural selection is indeed powerful, but that is only half the story - or rather the impact of sexual selection is omitted in preference for the 'survival of the fittest' sound-bite we've ended up with.

Hill worked with the Ache people of Paraguay and found that meat was used a form of payment,

• Ache men would donate any spare meat they had to women they wanted to have sex with.  They were not doing so in the hope of helping to feed children they had already fathered but as a direct payment for an affair.  It was not easy to discover.  Hill found that he was gradually forced to drop questions about adultery from his studies because the Ache, under missionary influence, became increasingly squeamish about discussing the subject.

For a hunter-gatherer society we shouldn't underestimate the pressure to obtain meat, not just from a survival perspective, but also as a means to securing a mate.  Powerful drivers are at work here that may not leave much archaeological evidence.

As I said before, this is a great book!

Division of Labour

My earliest posts saw me romanticising about HGs navigating over wild terrain.  I'd learned to memorise a shuffled pack of cards (still an awesome trick, but one I've not practised for a while), using the 'Journey' method courtesy of Dominic O'Brien where each card position, 1-52, is assigned a position along a familiar route.  The two seemed to be related.

What got me was how easy this trick is - and why did it work so well when done under the framework of a journey?  Why was this geographic angle superior to a method based upon the senses?  It is known that extreme images/scenarios help memory recall as do smells and music, but a journey as outlined above, is by far the most practical approach.

In The Red Queen, Matt Ridley looks at the general differences between men and women when it comes to visuo-spatial tasks.  Putting aside the idea that men have generally superior visuo-spatial skills due to polygamy (a phenomena seen in some mice, so not without precedent), the work of Silverman and Eals suggest that our HG past has left indelible imprints upon the modern self due to a division of labour.  Whereas men looked for food sources that were 'mobile, distant and unpredictable', women foraged closer to home,

• ...[Silverman and Eals] asked themselves: what special spatial skills would women gatherers need that men would not?  One thing they predicted was that women would need to notice things more- to spot roots, mushrooms, berries, plants - and would need to remember landmarks so as to know where to look.  So Silverman and Eals did a series of experiments that required students to memorise a picture full of objects and then recall them later, or to sit in a room for three minutes, and then recall what objects were where in the room (the students were told they were merely being asked to wait in the room until a different experiment was ready).  On every measure of object memory and location memory, the women students did sixty to seventy per cent better than the men.

Given the evolutionary drivers that must have shaped these behaviours the obvious question is how deep do these differences run physiologically?  I wonder if women would benefit more from a broadly vegetarian diet (still excluding NAD), with some supplemental meat, and men the contrary?  This is just speculation mind.  personally I am still meat-centric with a side order of veg and some starch.  I dial the starch up and down as required and with an eye on season.  If I feel I've put some weight (particularly over summer) I assume that I am doing things right!

Testosterone & The Immune System

I've come across a few interesting articles and papers on the compromise between testosterone and the immune system.  High T comes at a price.  A graphic example of this in the animal kingdom can be found in Matt Ridley's The Red Queen. 

The comb of a cockerel can be used to judge health by both a potential mate and by farmers.  The comb itself is an adornment, evolved through sexual selection, and so in many ways is a burden to survival:

• [The] comb is red because of the carotenoidpigments in it...The peculiar thing about caretinoids is that birds and fish cannot synthesise them within their own tissues; they extract them from their food - from fruit or shellfish, or other plants and inverterbrates.  But their ability to extract caretinoids from their food and deliver it to their tissues is much affected by certain parasites.  A cockerel affected by the disease coccidiosis, for example, accumulates less carotenoid in his comb than a healthy cockerel - even when both animals have been fed equal quantities of carotenoid.  Nobody knows exactly why the parasites have this specific biochemical effect, but it seems to be unavoidable and it is therefore extremely useful to the female: the brightness of carotenoid-filled tissues is a visible sign of the levels of parasite infection....The size and brightness of such combs may be affected by parasites, but they are effected by hormones.  The higher the level testosterone in the blood of a cockerel, the bigger and brighter will be his comb and wattles.  The problem for the cockerel is that the higher his level of testosterone, the greater will be his parasite infestation.  The hormone itself seems to lower his resistance to parasites.  Once again nobody knows why, but cortisol, the 'stress' hormone that is released into the bloodstream during times of emotional crisis, also has a marked effect on the immune system.  A long study of cortisol levels in the children in the West Indies revealed that they are much more likely to catch an infection shortly after their cortisol levels have been high.  Cortisol and testosterone are both steroid hormones and they have a remarkably similar molecular structure: of the five biochemical steps needed to make cholesterol into either cortisol or testosterone, only the last two steps are different.  There seems to be something about steroid hormones that unavoidably depresses immune defence.  This immune effect of testosterone is the reason that men are more susceptible to infectious disease than women, a trend that occurs throughout the animal kingdom...It is as if male animals have a finite sum of energy, which they can spend on testosterone or immunity to disease, but not both at the same time.

Great book!

The Beasties We Need Near Us

From New Scientist:

• As humans became urban and industrial, we also separated ourselves from other species. Pets aside, we have laboured to rid our houses and cities of creatures - not just visible predators and pests but also the microbes on our countertops and hands. Some of these steps were sensible acts of self-preservation, but others were driven by an ideology of humans as separate from nature. Dunn, a biologist at North Carolina State University as well as a science journalist, catalogues the dangers of that ideology.
  
  To illustrate how species influence one another's evolution, he points to the pronghorn, a small antelope-like mammal in North America that runs inexplicably fast. The pronghorn's speed, Dunn says, only makes sense if you consider the large predators that once hunted it. The "pronghorn principle" also applies to the human body. We too are "haunted by ghosts" of parasites, pathogens and predators that shaped our evolution.

One for the reading list methinks: "The Wild Life of Our Bodies" By Robb Dunn

Talent Code

I have just finished reading Daniel Coyle's 'The Talent Code'. It adds some biology to the idea that 'you are what you do' and '(deep) practice makes perfect'. It is no revelation that our brains are plastic and can adapt throughout life - but Coyle digs a little deeper.

Myelin is a waxy substance that can be prompted to insulate neural networks. The significance of this is that:

1. All human thought and deed is simply an electrical pulse between neurons,
2. Myelin wraps around these circuits, the insulating effect of which is to boost signal "strength, speed and accuracy",
3. Increased firing of a circuit promotes myelination of that circuit and so it fires with increased efficiency and fluidity.

This manifests as 'skill'. The general idea is to engage with 'deep practice' - which is driven by passion and persistence, but which is 'mistake focused' - a situation where you push yourself to the borderline of your ability, where mistakes will occur, but at a point where you can self-correct. The challenging nature of this approach, the novelty of random error, forces us to learn, prompting myelination which makes us remember.

Broadly, Coyle advises us to:

1. Break the skill up in to manageable chunks, and,
2. Repeat.

As electrical impulses are sent down the nerve fibres, the chain of fibres is wrapped in myelin. This process of myelination is paramount. It insulates this neural circuit and optimises the impulse:

• "Neural traffic...with myelin's help [can] accelerate to two hundred miles and hour. The refactory time (the wait required between one signal and the next), decreases by a factor of 30"

The combined effect of this is "...to boost overall information-processing capability by 3000 times". He goes on to note that "...myelin has the capacity to regulate velocity, speeding or occasionally even slowing signals to they hit synapses at the optimal time".
Finally, Coyle gives us the four fundamentals of myelin:

1. The firing of a circuit is paramount. Myelin responds to the 'urgent-firing' of electrical impulses along a circuit.
2. Myelin is universal. It doesn't care what you are doing, it responds to what you do! Coyle describes it as 'meritocratic'. Those circuits fired most get priority myelination. (Those of you inclined to watch soap operas or daytime talk-shows on TV for large amounts of your time might want to reflect upon this!)
3. Myelin wraps - it doesn't unwrap. This is why habits are hard to break! Myelinating a new habit will change behaviour! Only disease or aging removes myelin.
4. Age matters. We net-gain myelin until about 50 years of age (although after this time we can still myelinate).

Fascinating subject.

Mining for Minerals

The ever excellent BBC Radio Four runs a series called Costing the Earth. This weeks episode looked at mineral deficiency in plant based food (follow the link above to listen to the program again):

• "Over the past 70 years the levels of crucial minerals in our basic foods have declined significantly. This is bad news for consumers in the west, but potentially deadly news for those in the developing world who cannot afford a perfectly balanced diet.
  Alice Roberts sets out to uncover the culprit and find a solution. Do we need to shorten our food chains, de-intensify our agriculture, or simply turn to the varieties of fruit and veg enjoyed by our grandparents?
  
  In Perthshire, Moira and Cameron Thomson spread their own mixture of compost and rock dust onto their poor Highland soils. They are convinced that the rock dust is replacing the lost minerals from the soil, resulting in enormous and very tasty broccoli, parsnips and carrots.
  
  Meanwhile at the University of Nottingham, Dr Martin Broadley uses a combination of mathematics and applied biology to find a way to breed crop roots that extract more of the minerals that are available in the soil.
  
  From the Cotswold kitchen of food writer Diane Purkiss to the world's largest potting shed at the National Soil Archive in Aberdeen, Alice compares and contrasts the diet, soils and plants of the 1930s and the present day in her search for the world's lost minerals."

Of note is talk of adding rock dust to vegetable patches by Cameron and Moira Thompson (about whom you can read more here). The Thompson's have managed to grow exceptional vegetables from meagre soils using this technique.

Their inspiration comes from a book published in 1982 called, rather dramatically, 'The Survival of Civilisation' by Jon Hamaker and Don Weaver. In this book the authors suggests that glaciers ensured our soils were mineral dense, but intensive agriculture has depleted these minerals. And in the absence of any glaciers in the near future happening along to revitalise the soil, we should do the glacier's job for it! You can download the book for free here.

My composting skills are becoming most excellent (we have lots of dark, rich looking and fresh smelling compost in our bin), and this, perhaps along with a little rock dust, might be just what is required to make Captain Kid and Flash's vegetable patch move up gear next summer! We are currently enjoying a feast of homegrown raspberries, but are hoping to branch out (bad pun intended), in to other berries.

Behind the Headlines

Dr Alicia White has written a useful little guide that is worth consulting when next you come across a big news story regarding health, fitness, illness and medicine. Serious journalism is in short supply. Arm yourself.

Arthur Jones Nautilus Bulletin No.1

I happened across this stuff from Arthur Jones. The 'spirit' of his approach reminds me very much of that in the 5BX book I posted on earlier.

You can't help thinking that these older guys had it largely sussed and that much of what passes for fitness advice now has not only been polluted by the late 70s and early 80s fitness crazes, but now spends to much sweating the detail. Add to that a generous topping of marketing hype premised on the multi million dollar supplement industry and you have a recipe for making some people rich!

5BX

I mentioned that today my workout was interrupted several times, and that one of those interruptions was due to some guy chatting about the US Marine Corp's Basic Fitness Test (BFT). Well, he also chatted about the UK Forces' BFT - and specifically that of the Royal Marine Commandos.

Our little chat was actually the second one we have had. I met this guy a few weeks ago when he was doing crunches on a mat adjacent to mine. I was doing 'handstands for time'.

We talked about training ideas (it IS possible to hold a conversation whilst holding a handstand for a minute), and I explained my ideas on short but intense, primarily bodyweight exercises. He seemed to have an appreciation of the simplicity of 'the gym you carry around in your pants' (my definition of a bodyweight routine rather than his), and recommended I look up a book called '5BX'

5BX is short for Five Basic Exercises and the '5BX' program was used as a basic fitness program by the Canadian Air Force from the 1960s up to the 1980s. A bit of googling has highlighted free copies of the original pamphlet (and several successive versions), which are well worth downloading (for free).

Much of the advice therein has seldom been bettered and is closer to the paleo model than just about everything in the mainstream of today....and in only 11 minutes a day!