The World’s Greatest Health Gurus

Posted May 19th, 2013 – 65 Comments

By Matt Stone I have watched ridiculous amounts of youtube videos of health gurus – mostly for shock and entertainment. I couldn’t bear the thought that all those hours of killing time were truly of no value. So here is my attempt to salvage those lost hours by bringing to the world the ultimate video compilation of the most hard-to-watch health guru demonstrations ever recorded on video. If you have some others that deserve to be in the collection, please leave those links in the comments section. Try to go with just one, as leaving more than one link in a comment will get it held up in moderation. And by the way, who is your favorite? Let’s just say I saved my favorite for last. Gabriel Cousens Paul Chek… Read more »

How to Recover from a Breakup or Divorce

Posted May 16th, 2013 – 75 Comments

By Matt Stone It was the fall of 2010. I came home limping from a men’s softball game – one of my rare appearances out of the house and wearing something besides my pajamas at the time, to a girl sniffling and wiping her eyes out on the patio. “Matt, you are the funniest, smartest, best-looking son of a gun I ever met. But I don’t think I’m in love with you anymore.” Okay, maybe I embellished a little bit on that quote. It was sudden, out of the blue, and stung. The great Matt Stone, savior of the universe, king of the impossible… dumped? This couldn’t be. I was completely heartbroken and devastated that this mediocre relationship had comed to a halt, and I did what any human does in a situation like this… Read more »

Angelina Jolie Undergoes Preventive Double Mastectomy

Posted May 14th, 2013 – 181 Comments

By Matt Stone News erupted this morning about Angelina Jolie’s preventive double mastectomy. I rarely see any news stories, which is why I so rarely “report” on something in this fashion, but this happened to catch my eye. A response was in order. I first came across the growing trend of getting your breasts removed – you know, just in case you get breast cancer, right at the very beginning of my health research in late 2004. I willed myself to read something from a mainstream health authority as part of my comprehensive education. It was Isadore Rosenfeld, “America’s most trusted doctor,” who I first heard advocating this. I couldn’t believe my eyes, for two reasons. It is shocking that this is the best the medical industry can do It is shocking… Read more »

Thinspiration

Posted May 13th, 2013 – 61 Comments

By Julia Gumm On April 24th, Penn State student Torri Singer began a petition on Change.org to “restrict use of thinspiration language and hashtags circulating the twittersphere.” If you are blessed enough to not know what thinspiration (also known as “thinspo”) is, let me fill you in. Thinspo is an assortment of tips, tricks, diaries and photos all geared to inspire the reader to forgo eating like a normal human being in favor of attaining anorexic-style slimness. Many online thinspiration presences are blatant in their pro-disordered attitudes (known as pro-ana (anorexia) or pro-mia (bulimia) to those in the know). More alarming though, is the thinspiration that poses as reasonable weight loss advice, but is nothing more than an how-to on starvation and image-obsessed behavior. While I applaud the intentions of… Read more »

The Future of 180DegreeHealth

Posted May 10th, 2013 – 145 Comments

By Matt Stone As some of you may have noticed, the site she’s a changin’. Late last year I began inviting more and more guest authors to post on the site, such as Danny Roddy, Julia Gumm, Bella Dodds, and Amber “Go Kaleo” Rogers. Recently I’ve added a new About 180D page as well as a Site Authors page. On Wednesday the site header changed and now reads “180DegreeHealth: The World’s Top Source of Independent Health Information.” This is the direction the site is moving towards. From the beginning I’ve always wanted to create a viable alternative source of health information. To me, it was useless to attempt to enter the world of mainstream health and nutrition with the standard approach. Mainstream health is simply too commercially-polluted to allow fringe information to rise into prominence, or to give… Read more »

Thyroid Deficiency & Common Health Problems

Posted May 6th, 2013 – 177 Comments

By Matt Stone Danny Roddy, frequent guest author at 180D with articles like THIS, THIS, and THIS – turned me on to a great interview with Dr. Ray Peat from 1996. It’s always really cool to see that Ray had put so many pieces of the puzzle together so long ago. Although Ray is difficult to follow along with at times as he doesn’t speak laypersonese (prompted many times to do it in this interview by Gary Null but Sugar Ray don’t speak no jive), overall it is an excellent sermon on metabolism’s role in proper function. Most medical doctors unfortunately are very unaware of thyroid deficiency and common health problems that ensue when the body’s cells aren’t producing energy at normal levels. Peat gives some background on when and how… Read more »

Sex, Lawns and Body Image.

Posted May 4th, 2013 – 47 Comments

By Julia Gumm Coming to terms with human nature in the 21st century is no straightforward task. We are equipped with the most primitive of biologies, a physiology that compels us to do two things: Survive and spread our genes. But teetering o’er top that eatin’, sleepin’ and er, copulatin’ machine, there balances an extremely sophisticated control center. It’s complex enough to get us interested in things like algebra and ethics, and when surveying the two dimensional desires of the hulking load of anatomy it hauls around, is led to beg the question “Is this really all there is?” Consideration of the answer to that query can lead to attempts to complicate what otherwise appears to be far too mundane of a purpose for superior beings such as ourselves. When… Read more »

The Best Way to Feed Your Dog

Posted May 2nd, 2013 – 44 Comments

By Matt Stone In the comments on a recent post the topic of dog nutrition surfaced. Several people mentioned switching their dogs to new diets or even applying my methods of “rest and refeeding” to a sick pet. TW writes… When I came home from college my dog was really sick and frail with obvious signs of Cushing’s. She had lost a ton of weight, collapsed often, peed in the house, was losing her hair, etc. She is a 17 year old beagle-Rottweiler mix so I figured it was just old age. She wouldn’t eat her dog food anymore. I decided to feed her some freezer burnt hamburger. She ate ‘people food’ just fine. It has been a few months since I started feeding her chicken, hamburger, expensive moist dog… Read more »

Why Am I Sleepy After I Eat?

Posted April 30th, 2013 – 103 Comments

By Matt Stone There are three quick answers to this common question… Because you’re stressed. Because you didn’t sleep enough. Because you ate enough. Everyone in the health industry thinks that eating a meal should make you perk up and want to instantly break out into the Humpty Dance or other similar variant. Maybe throw in a high-intensity interval while you’re at it. Just for kicks. If you do get sleepy after eating, your nutritionist or dietitian is ready to send you off to the lab for food allergy testing or start pulling out every delicious thing in the world from your diet. No more sugar, dairy, or wheat for you. Enjoy your brown rice and lean turkey breast. Oh dear please don’t go swimming for at least an hour after a feast like that! Ironically,… Read more »

Stress and Metabolism Webinar

Posted April 29th, 2013 – 30 Comments

By Matt Stone Lianda Ludwig – some of you who participate on the 180D facebook page might recognize her name, has stuck with some of the basic principles of this site for quite a while. It was tough going at first. It’s hard to eat enough food to raise your metabolism and function well when it just sits there like a friggin’ rock. But eventually her metabolism rose, her health returned, her gastroparesis vanished, and her body fat levels reached their peak and have now started slowly falling. This is always nice to hear, but even nicer to know that a woman over 60 years of age can even pull it off successfully. Anyway, she has a lot of lessons from this experience to share and is hosting a webinar on stress, metabolism,… Read more »

How Many Carbohydrates Should YOU Eat?

Posted April 27th, 2013 – 215 Comments

By Matt Stone “C’mon, fire me up. Pour your sugar on me. Oh, I can’t get enough. I’m hot, sticky sweet. From my head to my feet, yeah.” ~Def Leppard The answer to our question, and just about any health and nutrition question, is “it depends.” But the following is a level-headed, science-based, as well as experience-based set of guideposts to help you determine the right answer for you as an individual. Carbohydrates have received a thorough lashing of late with the explosion of self-proclaimed nutrition experts on the internet, of which I was guilty of being one myself when I first started doing this (and bashed carbohydrates in favor of fat in delusional hopes that fat was some undiscovered ideal fuel source…. uh, not so much as it turns… Read more »

Earthing: Medical Discovery or Quack Scam?

Posted April 24th, 2013 – 86 Comments

By Matt Stone “What do you think about that Mr. Blue Duck? That’s Quacktastic ack ack ack ack.” ~Billy Madison Earthing as a health idea is the practice of connecting oneself to the ground – via direct contact or a mat or sheets that are grounded (or shoes as I wrote about in THIS POST). The objective, for lack of a better way to describe it, is to protect oneself from all the voltage that we are exposed to in the modern world. Here is a good demonstration (albeit a shaky one with brain-damaged kids in it) using a voltmeter, showing the difference between being grounded or “earthed” and not being earthed… Clint Ober is the primary force behind this modern movement. Personally, I think earthing holds a lot of potential and… Read more »

Best Female Health and Fitness Books & Articles

Posted April 22nd, 2013 – 50 Comments

By Matt Stone Hey it’s ladies night here at the D. Here are some things I’ve been reading lately or that I feel pretty confident is good – written by women or about women… The first is Taking Up Space: A Guide to Escaping the Diet Maze by Amber “Go Kaleo” Rogers. Amber has written for the site in the past with an article on Strength Training for Women. She is probably the most closely-aligned person on earth with the general sentiments at 180D when it comes to fat loss and unnecessary dietary restrictions – so much so that she adopted me and Napolean Dynamite’s phrase “Eating the Food” and went on to start a huge group on Facebook with that name. Her book is short and sweet and is one of the sanest things ever… Read more »

The Best Natural Birth Control Method

Posted April 21st, 2013 – 253 Comments

By Matt Stone “Back then we didn’t have these fancy birth control methods. Like pulling out!” ~Pops; Dirty Work Everyone has their own criteria for determining what constitutes the BEST birth control method. For some, that means the method that makes you the least likely to get pregnant. For others, the best might be one that works very well and doesn’t make you depressed, fat, covered in acne, dead from a blood clot, and diabetic with no sex drive. This is a health website. Any and all hormonal methods must be thrown completely out the window. Most birth control relies on administering the death hormone estrogen, which is extremely toxic in excess, and even appears to be somewhat undesirable at normal levels. Anything good that you’ve heard about it is probably being mistaken for progesterone, as doctors have been thoroughly confused… Read more »

Why is it Good to Warm Up Before Exercise?

Posted April 20th, 2013 – 29 Comments

How to do a proper warm up before exercise

By Matt Stone Sometimes powerful and important reminders come from the most ridiculous and unforeseeable places. Like what happened to me yesterday for example. I was in a bad mood while driving, and as I passed by the local dildo shop there was a guy flying a small kite outside in the parking lot. Right there I was reminded to lighten up, and I immediately stopped brooding over what was annoying me at that moment (paying $35 for the worst Mexican food one could possibly conceive of) and began thinking of ways I could frame this event on my Facebook wall. I lightened up even more when a pickup truck pulled up with a giant pig statue in the bed while I was watching the cock-kiting bandit from a stopped position at a traffic light. I… Read more »

Men… Don’t Let Your Woman Eat Salad!

Posted April 17th, 2013 – 228 Comments

I write for an online magazine called Raw Attraction Magazine. I submitted a modified version of this late last night and figured it was worthy of being published on the site – at least until it’s published in the mag at which point I’ll probably have to take it down. In other news my two most popular books – Eat for Heat and Diet Recovery 2, will be available, along with 28 other books by some fellow health nerds, for just $39 in this special promotion going on from April 17-23 (a $479 value). Click HERE to check it out. It looks great. There are several books in there by long-time 180 followers, such as Elizabeth Walling, Emily Benfit, and Kendahl Millecam. Nice looking books girls! 5 Reasons to Take Away… Read more »

Soylent: Rob Rhinehart’s Childbrain

Posted April 15th, 2013 – 96 Comments

The movie "Soylent Green", directed by Richard Fleischer, based on the novel 'Make Room! Make Room!' by Harry Harrison. Seen here, Charlton Heston as Thorn witnessing for the first time the beauty of Earth's past, being projected for Sol. Initial theatrical release May 9, 1973. Screen capture. © 1973 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Credit: © 1973 MGM / Flickr / Courtesy Pikturz. Image intended only for use to help promote the film, in an editorial, non-commercial context.

By Matt Stone “What about the one you lobotomized… Did he get a refund?” ~Arnold, Total Recall I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what that quote has to do with this post. But it’s worth repeating I know that. Folks, the future has arrived. We have now ushered in the era of Soylent – the magical, lightly foamy, urine-colored food alternative. Rob Rhinehart, whose post on his liquid meal replacement lifestyle went beyond viral, is the inventor of this food alternative, and the possibilities… Ahem, I mean THE POSSIBILITIES, are endless. Solve world hunger! Lower food bills! Lose weight! Get smarter! Improve blood tests! I hope you heard that. I said blood tests. Because if you do something and your blood tests are “better” a few weeks later, well fuckinA man, that’s solid proof… Read more »

Laughter and Health

Posted April 13th, 2013 – 54 Comments

By Julia Gumm The word “humor” comes from the ancient Greeks. It refers to the practice of “humoral medicine,” a school of thought that proceeded from the notion that the four fluids or “humors” of the body, in balance or not, were responsible for the ups and downs of human health. These four humors and their corresponding organs and elements were black bile (gallbladder, earth), blood (liver, air), yellow bile (spleen, fire), and phlegm (brain and lungs, water). If a person had a tendency towards excess of one of those humors, it was believed that that was what determined their personality type, or as the term was at the time coined, their temperament- from the Latin temperāmentum, a mixing in proportion. Someone with excess of black bile was “melancholic”- introverted,… Read more »

Earth Runners Earthing Shoes

Posted April 11th, 2013 – 83 Comments

The following, and everything published at 180DegreeHealth is NOT a paid promotion. By Matt Stone I admit – I have dabbled in the world of peculiar health-oriented footwear – to some degree. For a couple years I wore a pair of those fugly Vibram 5-Fingers shoes. They were alright. I used them mostly for hiking in mountains and desert – hard on the feet but good on the body, as you had to walk carefully and gingerly to an extent that a lot less shock was being sent up into the knees, hips, and back. But my feet never really adjusted to the lack of protection because I just couldn’t bring myself to wear them daily. While the internet gives me electric courage (similar to the liquid courage of alcohol),… Read more »

Hot Water vs. Cold Water Thermogenesis

Posted April 8th, 2013 – 223 Comments

There is a growing trend in health circles about cold-water thermogenesis. Cold water thermogenesis, or the idea behind it, is to submerge yourself in very cold water for a prolonged period – let’s say 20-30 minutes. The objective is to encourage your body to produce more heat in response to this cold stimulation via increased thyroid output. It’s theorized to be an effective weight loss tool, or at least Tim Ferriss says so, therefore it must be true, and be useful for other things too. Jack Kruse has proposed using it for all kinds of medical purposes, such as recovery from surgery and other miscellaneous things. It could be yet another, non-invasive tool to have in the toolbox for use against disease. On one hand, it’s logical. I have spent a lot of time in cold… Read more »