Plus, I would like to straighten out certain things about the diet so that if you were to be eating a grain and dairy free diet, you wouldn’t simultaneously be carbophobic – which is the primary kiss of death for most of those who fail on it.  Of course a Paleo diet doesn’t have to be low in carbohydrates.  I know that.  I recognize that.  But I consider the primary leaders of the Paleo Diet movement to be Robb Wolf, Mark Sisson, and Art De Vany.  And they are all spreading the same scientific saber-toothed Ligers (the mythical beast shown above) about carbohydrates and insulin.  The book is not even meant to be a slam on the Paleo diet (which has a ton of virtues), but more of a reality check about certain wings of the Paleo movement that are broken and featherless.  I want to take these broken wings and learn to fly again.

What I would like from you guys, is as many detailed stories about your experiences as possible to be included in the book – with your name shown or left anonymous (your preference).  I say “detailed” because if they aren’t, we’re going to have a bunch of stories that sound the same, like this generic Paleo Fail story that I just made up…

“Dude I felt awesome and had so much energy and lost weight and my skin got clear and all my health problems improved…  And 6 months later my energy and sex drive started to plummet, I was cold all the time – especially my hands and feet, I became phobic about eating any carbs and went even lower in carbs – this was a nightmare that went on for two entire years!  And my health problems started to all come back with new ones along with it.  And the weight started to creep back on again.  Finally I started eating carbs again.  At first I felt awful, hypoglycemic, and bloated with crazy hunger – and my skin broke out with tons of pimples.  But I noticed feeling warmer and my sex drive coming back so I pressed on.  And thank God I did.  After a few months I feel like my old self again.  And I’m leaner and more muscular than I was eating just 30 grams of carbs per day – even eating pizza and drinking soda!  Finally got my life back.  You rock Matt Stone!”

So yes, give me excruciating details about specific health problems.  I want to hear about the psychological entrapment of the ideology.  I want to hear about social anxiety of going to a restaurant with friends.  I want it all.  I wanna hear about how gluten used to give you problems, but doesn’t anymore.  Whatever you wanna share.

And I want it written with your intended audience in mind.  That intended audience will be someone who is probably doing the Paleo Diet, and struggling just enough to be curious about this book.  I want them to be able to relate to your stories, and see that there may be another way.  I want you to address the readers personally and remind them that you can relate to what they are feeling and how they are thinking.  Think about what you needed to hear back when you were doing it to get you to a better place.

It can be as short as a paragraph or long-winded – as in several pages.  I will probably publish them all.  And it’s important that I get a lot in the book.  I don’t want people to get the sense that there are a few anomalies – probably people who just weren’t “doing it right.”  I want people to see just how common this scenario plays out.  And while most of the physical problems you may have experienced were from restricting carbohydrates, if the popular Paleo books and websites in any way influenced your diet and beliefs about what you should and shouldn’t be eating – it’s fair game.

And hurry.  I don’t wanna give you a month to do it or you will take a month to do it.  My birthday is February 6th.  You can send me these as a birthday gift!  Or, in the words of Arnold… “Do it now!”

You can post them in comments below if you don’t mind them being public in the book.  If not, send me an email, subject: Paleo Fail, at sacredself@gmail.com

If you are new to the site and would like to read some of the Paleo/Low-carb criticism that has been published before, read…

Paleo Fail and Catecholamine Honeymoon

I of course saw that it could do some impressive things for others as well.  But like any set of dietary guidelines, the results are extremely mixed.  Some people do great and have some extremely bizarre and strange positives take place – from moles and skin tags falling off to sudden improvement in lifelong ailments like ringing in the ears, cancer, diabetes, or emotional problems.  Others get bloated, ill, fat, and depressed.

I’ve been thinking a lot more about the whole experience and trying to figure out exactly what kind of relief that people with certain health problems could expect and why.  I mean, what is it about the program that caused the great results for the people who experienced it?  Likewise, why did those who failed miserably and had significantly poorer health on the RBTI program see those results? Anyway, here’s an update on what I think about many RBTI-related things…

Pork – This is one thing I continue to avoid.  It has a verifiable effect on body chemistry.  It has a tendency to cause urea levels, salts, and urine brix to become overly elevated in the short-term, with continued consequences as body chemistry tries to sort itself out from the dramatic and sudden change.  I believe that foods like shellfish and the big game fish like marlin, tuna, shark, etc. trigger a similar, but more modest effect.  Because one of my biggest problems – chest pain, was most likely eradicated by lowering my urea levels and getting these out of my diet, I continue to avoid them.  The other “no-no” foods, like nuts, chocolate, and so on I’m not so concerned about.  But that is just me personally.  If I had a chronic constipation issue I might take the consumption of nuts or popcorn for example, much more seriously.

Lemonade – I don’t think that there’s any question that the biggest trigger of problems for people who don’t do well on the program, is the drinking of the lemonade – and drinking on a schedule in general.  This triggers more problems than anything else, and, because it is the weirdest and most tedious and annoying part of the program, you probably won’t catch me advising anyone to do it.  While it may have some purpose for some conditions – and I would hate to deter someone away from trying it if they have a serious condition, for most people it’s a strange, obnoxious, and TOTALLY unsustainable and unrealistic practice.  I cringe anytime I have to squeeze a lemon after my 4-5 months of lemonade making.

Min-Col – I’m repeatedly impressed with Min-Col specifically. Just taking it regularly for two days is enough for me to notice an appreciable difference in my overall well-being, and in the strength of my teeth, fingernails, etc.  I’m still pretty damn enthusiastic about this mineral supplement, and feel that it makes sweating over the mineral content of the foods you eat a lot more irrelevant.

The Refractometer  – Man I’m blown away by this, and have more to say about this than any other RBTI component.  To me, the greatest discovery of RBTI is the connection between urine solute and what’s going on at the cellular level.  I believe that sugar and salt are the primary fuels for driving true mitochondrial and metabolic activity, and there are TONS of people making the mistake of drinking too many fluids – thus diluting the concentration of salt and sugar at the cellular level and leaving them feeling cold, flat, depressed/anxious/irritable, and hypometabolic with cold hands and feet.

Just the other day I spoke with a gentleman who has been following the work of Ray Peat for over a year who was seeing his body temperature plummet by day, with serious problems with cold hands and feet.  He was drinking 2-3 quarts of milk per day and a quart of juice as well, which was way too much fluid and was washing him out.  He had problems for months but this seemed to basically clear up in a day or two of eating more solid food.

I think in the RBTI world many have led themselves to believe that sugary things like fruit will “raise the sugars” and plain water is the only thing that can bring it down.  But this simply isn’t the case.  Any excess fluid of any kind can make you urinate frequently with urine that is too clear with too little solute (another reason I have a huge problem with the drinking schedule, 8 ounces of fluid per hour is more than anyone but the most obvious “high sugar” people can tolerate). Any fluid can dilute your system too much.  Noticing this has led to me making some recommendations that I haven’t heard elsewhere in RBTI when someone has a tendency to crash, urinates too frequently/clear urine, and has symptoms that coincide with it including cold hands and feet…

Low Water Content Foods:

The hardest time for most people to hold on to their salt and sugar is from about 10am to lunch.  Because of this, you might note that eating foods with a high water content causes greater sugar crashes.  When I was on the full program, eating a breakfast of say, oatmeal with juice and a big slice of watermelon and then trying to drink the water and lemonade?  Fuhgeddaboudit!  I would be peeing every 15 minutes with urine solute well below 0.5 brix – and feeling cold and flat.

Enter the pancake… Eating pancakes, waffles, muffins, banana bread, fried eggs, cookies, fruit pie – without much food with a higher water content such as milk, juice, and fruit?  Now that’s what I’m talkin’ bout.  These foods will make you much warmer and keep your sugars from crashing.  I think one of the greatest benefits of processed foods like this isn’t even that they are more digestible but the fact that the water content is lower.  This is a godsend for those who are really in a low metabolism rut, as even the smallest amount of fluid from food or drink beyond the bare minimum requirement to stay hydrated can cause some pretty violent crashing.  Even having breakfast cereal with milk can be too much fluid for some.

Salt:

Consuming more salt really keeps sugars from crashing, but only because it has the opposite effect of drinking/hydrating.  The salt restriction of RBTI seems to be pretty nonsensical anyway.  You will probably notice some great benefits by eating food that is pleasantly salty instead of trying to eat a low-salt diet.

Dried Fruit: 

When sugars crash below 1.5 on a refractometer, the standard advice I heard was to eat a “[bite] of fruit.”  Fruit has a high water content.  A fruit that is not very sweet and has a very high water content, like an apple, will do precisely nothing to bring your “sugars” up.  It’s like one step forward and one step back.  I have been steering people toward foods with zero water content to bring sugars up more effectively.  Eating a handful of dried fruit, a very sweet Medjool date especially, works much better.  Something salty might be even better.  I suspect a handful of pretzels would be the ultimate snack for the low sugar dip.

1.5 Refractometer reading:

This is considered “ideal.”  Don’t look at a set number and attribute an ideal status to it, especially if you are not following the full RBTI program and are not testing (like most people).  At 1.5 I feel pretty much like ass, with cold hands and feet and many obvious signs of being “washed out” I like to call it.  You may notice that you don’t feel really toasty and happy until your urine brix gets up into the 3’s and 4’s.  I would encourage most casual RBTI’ers like myself who are trying to take advantage of some of the basic ideas without it cutting into your lifestyle, to pay more attention to biofeedback to determine your ideal “sugar level.”

Overfeeding: 

It’s obvious that this increases the sugar level for most people, preventing crashes, increasing warmth and circulation, decreasing frequency of urination, and so forth.

Anyway, I hope this was an interesting read for those of you who were Jonesin’ to hear more about RBTI.  I will keep bringing up some things on it periodically, and may even do a short book on the refractometer and “hypoglycemia” this spring.  Stay tuned.

For those still interested in the RBTI package I put together last year, I have just lowered the price from $59.95 to $39.95 to make it a little more affordable.  If you haven’t heard about RBTI, you can read a little bit about what this eBook/audio/video collection on the topic is all about HERE.

Lastly – the image at the top of the page as well as the nice RBTI graphics you see off to your left are the work of the wondrous graphic designer Chuck Johnson – aka Castle Grok.  If you need any graphic design work done, he does some great work at the absolute cheapest price you’ll get quality work.  Remember him if you do need some work like this done.  You won’t be disappointed.

Let’s look at a real life example.  A woman in her 20’s contacted me because of some serious emotional ups and downs and some general feelings of fatigue.  Stuff like, you know, getting to work, staring at her desk for a minute or two, and then bursting into uncontrollable crying fits.  My first question was, “are you urinating more frequently?”

The answer was yes, so she ordered a refractometer, and began closely monitoring her urine.  After a week, she sent me some refractometer data…

Dec 8th:

• 6am= 5
• 730am= 4
• 9:40am= 4.5
• 11:00am= 2
• 12:00 pm = 2
• 1:05pm= 1
• 2:30pm= 2
• 4:30pm= 3.5
• 6:00= 0
• 7:00 = 0

Dec 9th:

• 4:00am = 4
• 6:30am= 4
• 8:30am= 4
• 9:30= 1
• 10:15am= 0
• 11:45= 2.5
• 3:00= 6
• 5:30= 0

Dec 12th:

• 7:30a= 3
• 9:00am= 1
• 10:30= 0
• 1:00p= 2
• 3:20= 3
• 6:00= 1.5
• 8:00= 1

As you can see, there are some dramatic fluctuations, and she is hitting 0 at least once per day, if not twice.  This probably explains why she is having unexplained emotional meltdowns at frequent intervals that don’t seem to have much to do with anything situational.

I helped her change a few things that prevented these crashes. Emotionally she saw significant improvements.  But there was a problem…

She had an extremely heavy period, and broke out with bruises all over her body.  She has a long history of battling anemia and was diagnosed by a doctor as having dangerously low iron levels.  This was most likely caused by a combination of some pretty harsh restricted dieting in her past (very low-carb), and a combination of marathon running and lots of hiking/cycling/skiing and other forms of long-duration, strenuous exercise.  While all this activity keeps her body looking very fit and attractive by modern standards, this caused several health problems to surface (night sweats, autoimmune disease, deadly food allergies, loss of period for a year or so – and of course this chronic battle with anemia).  She made big improvements by ditching the low-carb diet – autoimmune disease and loss of period have resolved themselves just fine.  But exercise is still a big part of her life.

Hard-training athletes, and female athletes in particular, are particularly susceptible to developing anemia.  This is not a news flash.  It’s well known.  From an article entitled “Athletes and Iron Deficiency Anemia…”

Iron deficiency is a common problem for women athletes. Studies have routinely found that athletes, especially female athletes, are often iron-deficient or anemic. Iron is essential for athletic performance. One of its major functions is to carry oxygen to and carbon dioxide away from all the cells in your body. The brain also relies on oxygen transport and without enough iron you will find it hard to concentrate and feel tired and irritable. Iron is also needed to maintain a healthy immune system. If you don’t have enough iron you may be prone to more frequent infections.

Athletes and Iron Deficiency A combination of the following factors place athletes at risk of iron deficiency:

1. Inadequate supply of dietary iron. Athletes who avoid red meat have difficulty meeting the body’s iron needs.
2. Increased demands for iron. Hard training stimulates an increase in red blood cell and blood vessel production, and increases the demand for iron. (Iron turnover is highest for endurance athletes training at high intensity).
3. High iron loss. Blood loss through injury, or menstruation. In endurance athletes, ‘foot strike’ damage to red blood cells in the feet due to running on hard surfaces with poor quality shoes leads to iron loss. Finally, because iron is lost in sweat, heavy sweating leads to increased risk of deficiency.

Symptoms The symptoms of iron deficiency include loss of endurance, chronic fatigue, high exercise heart rate, low power, frequent injury, recurring illness, and loss of interest in exercise and irritability. Other symptoms include poor appetite, and increased incidence and duration of colds and infections.

The question is, what the hell caused her to break out with bruises and have a heavy period (both signs of low platelet formation)?  To be on the safe side, we decided to cut out gluten temporarily. That was one thing she had changed recently – as I encouraged her to eat calorie-dense carbohydrate-rich foods with a low water content to prevent the crashes on the refractometer. Stuff like cookies, waffles, and banana bread for example. Gluten is thought to have the potential to interfere with iron absorption.  It couldn’t hurt to err on the safe side.

However, I suspect this change had a lot more to do with something else – a large increase in her sugar intake.  I, as well as many others, have noted that while eating more sugar, fruit, and fruit juice especially (she was sipping grape juice throughout the day), that it is very common to start having increased bruising and bleeding gums.  Why this is, I don’t fully understand.  In theory, eating more vitamin C from fruit and juice should decrease bruising and bleeding gums, but in real life it seems to have the opposite effect.  Fortunately, after suffering from bleeding gums for most of 2011, since I started toying around with a high sugar intake (never very severe though), I am eating craploads of sugar, juice, and fruit with absolutely no gum bleeding at all anymore.  So obviously there is more to the picture, but it is an interesting observation nonetheless.

Of course, sugar doesn’t CAUSE bleeding gums, or heavy periods, or easy bruising per se (a young kid just cleared up bleeding and bruising issues eating an ice-cream based diet), a physical state in the body leads to these outwardly symptoms.  And something about sugar, or fruit, or juice, or all of the above seems to be capable of triggering some changes leading to that.  In some people. In some contexts.

There’s “irony” there in terms of anemia, because fruit and juice is very rich in vitamin C.  And vitamin C is supposed to increase iron absorption.  Iron, irony… wow that’s awesome to use both in such close proximity. I just high-fived myself in a public place. I would be embarrassed but the guy sitting next to me is wearing stone-washed denim with holes in the knees and a multi-colored velvet jacket – in Florida.  And off to my left a scary looking woman with black lipstick is yelling at someone about Jesus… “THERE ARE NO BUTS!!!!”  So I’m good.  Totally under the radar.

Whether relevant or not, I did find a very interesting article (from Florida) about research showing how harmful vitamin C can be in terms of increasing oxidative damage precisely because of its interaction with iron – so it’s not too far out of the realm of possibility that her increased intake of vitamin C via more fruit and grape juice (fortified with vitamin C) played a role in all this too – aside from the sugar…

If you have a bruise, a muscle sprain, an inflammatory disease or if you take iron supplements, exceeding 100 mg per day of vitamin C may be damaging to your body, according to a study by University of Florida researchers.

That’s because all of those conditions produce free iron, which reacts negatively with vitamin C in much the same way that the iron on bicycles and fences reacts with water and oxygen.

“You will rust inside, so to speak,” said Christiaan Leeuwenburgh, the senior author and an assistant professor in UF’s department of exercise and sport sciences.

In a study published this month in the journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine, several UF researchers worked with renowned vitamin C expert Barry Halliwell to test the effects of vitamin C and N-acetyl-cysteine (NAC, another water-soluble antioxidant) at the cellular level.

In this study, the researchers began with the hypothesis that vitamin C and NAC would speed the recovery of a muscle injury because of their anti-oxidant properties and ability to reach damaged cells quickly. Fourteen healthy men volunteered to have one of their arms injured by a machine that ruptured their bicep muscles and created swelling. Researchers then gave half of them a placebo and the other half a drink supplemented with about 700 mg of vitamin C and 800 mg of NAC.

“Initially, the vitamin C and NAC were given to prevent the injury, because we thought they’d have protective effects,” Leeuwenburgh said. “Instead, they were damaging.”

Anyway, no grand conclusions here as usual.  Just food for thought.  And this is a huge can of worms we’re opening here.  It’s a very complex subject.  But fixing it isn’t complex.  Her bruises went away within a couple of weeks, and she held onto the improvements in her refractometer readings.

On the topic of anemia specifically (which may or may not have something to do directly with this bleeding and bruising issue), anemia rarely has anything to do directly with iron intake, vitamin C intake, or otherwise.  Take for example that all 34 men in Ancel Keys’s starvation study developed anemia even though they were getting plenty of iron and vitamin C.

In my experience, the formation of hemoglobin and red blood cells and platelets and the building of overall blood volume and all that healthy blood stuff is facilitated much more by the calorie than any micronutrient, but only due to its exertion on the metabolism.  This woman, as expected, has low T3 levels.  So anemia will probably persist until that changes.  The author of the anemia/athlete article posted above is probably not realizing that this is the connection to endurance athletes – as endurance exercise is really rough on T3.  Endurance athletes in particular are often in a chronic energy deficit as this article describes.

Shockingly, her doctor told her to stop all exercise. I’m so proud.  It’s one of the few things of any intelligence that I’ve ever heard uttered by a medical doctor (although I wasn’t there to confirm it… the only things I’ve directly heard from a medical doctor are… “Pull your pants down,” “Turn your head and cough,” “We’re going to have to operate,” “Take these antibiotics,” “No that mysterious fever and liver pains you got after all 3 hepatitus B vaccinations couldn’t have been from the vaccine,” and “Your weight is a little too high, stop eating so much.”)  This is a big improvement over the last doctor she went to, who told her she had cancer and removed one of her ovaries, then told her it had come back with a vengeance and it was time for a full hysterectomy.  Turns out later, she didn’t have cancer at all, and never did. PUNK’D!!!

Now I normally don’t like to put much focus on studies.  Anyone can go out and find studies that support whatever point it is that they are trying to prove.  And I think those tactics are cheap and falsely reassuring.  I have written about this at great length.  Having said that, this study is pretty interesting.

I have often quoted a passage by Henry Bieler that describes in great and specific detail what I consider to be a person with optimal health.  And in that passage Bieler writes…

It is possible for him to stand more treatments, operations and even more lung hemorrhages than any other type of patient.  He is the patient most often discharged as arrested or cured.

And of course, this patient he is describing has a nice, healthy metabolism.  “The temperature of his body is scarcely ever below 98.8, with hands and feet always pleasantly warm.” 

Hey, while we’re talking about Henry Bieler, note Bieler’s commentary on the blood of this superhero – a perfect tie in to the recent post on bleeding, low platelets, anemia, etc.:

The quality of the blood is characteristic.  A slight to marked polycythemia (more red cells than usual) occurs; leucopenia, or abnormal white cell count on the low side, is never noted.  The blood, which is of a rich, red color, clots quickly.  Fatal hemorrhage seldom occurs.” 

Anyway, this study was set up to see if there was any connection or correlation between low body temperature and mortality rate (risk of death) for patients entering the intensive care unit for treatment.  Well, there was a huge correlation, as one would expect…

The overall intensive care unit case-fatality was 1,944 of 10,962 (18%) and 828 of 6,133 (14%) for normothermia, 235 of 1,046 (22%) for mild hypothermia, 205 of 541 (38%) for moderate hypothermia, 43 of 72 (60%) for severe hypothermia… After controlling for confounding variables in logistic regression analyses, fever at presentation was not associated with any significantly increased risk for death. However, hypothermia was a significant independent predictor for death in medical patients.

Of course, we joked about how, when you go in to any doctor’s office or hospital they will check your body temperature for a FEVER.  If your body temperature is low, they ignore it.  In fact, she shared a story with me about how she went in with a body temperature WAY below normal and the nurse uttered one word…  “PERFECT!!!”

Sigh.

Anyway – I don’t want to make anyone think that body temperature is the one and only key to all health problems.  It is not.  But it is hugely significant and shouldn’t be ignored.  There are many health problems that can be improved as body temperature improves.  Low body temperature is just a sign of a much bigger story taking place beneath the surface.  And that story is much lengthier and more complex than I ever could have envisioned it being when I first went down that rabbit hole.

Anyway, get warm. Get those fingers and toes toasty.  Eat lots of tasty and soul-satisfying food, sleep well, don’t stress too hard, and don’t drink excessive fluids (particularly water, coffee, and alcohol).  It’ll help.

Sometimes we forget the really important things in life. Last week, I took my grand-children to a restaurant. My six-year-old grand-son asked if he could say grace.

As we bowed our heads he said, “God is good, God is great. Thank you for the food, and I would even thank you more if Nana gets us ice cream for dessert. And liberty and justice for all! Amen!”

Along with the laughter from the other customers nearby, I heard a woman remark, “That’s what’s wrong with this country. Kids today don’t even know how to pray.  Asking God for ice cream!  Why, I never!”

Hearing this, my grand-son burst into tears and asked me, “Did I do it wrong? Is God mad at me?”

As I held him and assured him that he had done a terrific job, and God was certainly not mad at him, an elderly gentleman approached the table. He winked at my grand-son and said, “I happen to know that God thought that was a great prayer.”

“Really?” my grand-son asked.

“Cross my heart,” the man replied.

Then, in a theatrical whisper, he added (indicating the woman whose remark had started this whole thing), ”Too bad she never asks God for ice cream. A little ice cream is good for the soul sometimes.”

Naturally, I bought my grand-children ice cream at the end of the meal.

My grand-son stared at his for a moment, and then did something I will remember the rest of my life…

He picked up his sundae and, without a word, walked over and placed it in front of the woman. With a big smile he told her, “Here, this is for you. Shove it up  your ass you grouchy old bitch! “

One difference, for example, is that ice cream has a much lower ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids. Because modern humans eat tons of omega 6 and very little omega 3, and don’t have as great of a power to convert these fatty acids into monounsaturated fats like a cow, the result is milk that is much higher in total polyunsaturated fats and omega 6 polyunsaturated fat in particular.  This is probably one of the reasons why the breast milk of most mothers is subpar, and makes kids sick (although most studies show it is still superior to formula – but I would argue that it depends entirely on which mom’s milk we’re talking about here). We’ve already discussed long ago the differences between the breast milk of a normal mom and that of a diabetic mother.

Okay moms, don’t get your panties in a wad.  I mention this to open your minds about ice cream, because your kid may need some ice cream to improve his or her health.  Ice cream is a powerful metabolism stimulator, and if you think breast milk is nutritious you should see ice cream!  Higher in omega 3 fatty acids, protein, calcium, phosphorous, magnesium, riboflavin, B12, B6, Pantothenic acid, thiamin, and Vitamin E.  Don’t overglorify breast milk and overfear ice cream.  The two are practically identical in many ways…

% fat –

Ice cream – 53%

Breast Milk – 55%

% sugar –

Ice Cream – 39.8%

Breast Milk – 38.7%

% Protein

Ice Cream – 7.3%

Breast Milk – 6.3%

% Saturated Fat

Ice cream – 57%

Breast milk – 45%

% Monounsaturated Fat

Ice Cream – 27%

Breast Milk – 38%

% Polyunsaturated Fat

Ice Cream – 3.5%

Breast Milk – 9.7%

% Omega 3 fatty acids

Ice Cream – 1.38%

Breast Milk – 1.19%

% Omega 6 fatty acids

Ice Cream – 2.2%

Breast Milk – 8.5%

Calcium per 100 calories

Ice Cream – 59 mg

Breast Milk – 46 mg

Cholesterol per 100 calories

Ice Cream – 40 mg

Breast Milk – 20 mg

Okay, so the main difference is that breast milk has less cholesterol, less saturated fat, increased monounsaturated fat, and increased polyunsaturated fat.  Thus, the same differences between ice cream and breast milk are the same differences between normal breast milk and the milk of a diabetic mother, which was found to have the following…

1) low cholesterol content, only one-fifth of normal milk; 2) decreased medium-chain [Saturated] fatty acids, suggesting impairment of fatty acid synthesis in the mammary gland; 3) increased oleic acid; and 4) high concentrations of polyunsaturated fatty acids, suggesting increased chain elongation.

I don’t think there’s any question that ice cream is not only healthy, but far healthier than most human breast milk.  The only thing it is missing is vitamin C, so get all soccer mom on the kids and get some orange slices in ‘em too.  Overall in a battle of Ice cream vs. Human Breast Milk, I give the title to ice cream.  “But Matt, breast milk is natural! Nature knows best!”  Haha.  Modern breast milk isn’t much more natural to our species than Pam Anderson’s milk dispensers.

***NOTE*** I’m in no way suggesting that ice cream should be a substitute for breast milk when nursing an infant.  That is not the point of this post.  There are too many intangibles with breast milk and breastfeeding to expect ice cream, or any substitute, to fully take its place.  But human breast milk certainly has room for improvement!

Info. for this post came from www.nutritiondata.com.  French Vanilla soft serve vs. Milk, human

Okay, I don’t expect this post to really appeal to a broad audience.  I mean, that’s the most uncatchy title of all-time.  Well, other than the fact that I listed enough health problems that virtually everyone will have had some problem with one of those at some point.  Maybe that will lure in a few readers.

This post is important though, as there are some very interesting connections between all of these conditions and metabolism/thyroid.  Understand some of those connections and you will understand the human body better than most.  Be warned that this post will probably jump around a lot and seem a little schizophrenic, but bear with me.  I didn’t want to separate it into 5 different posts for the sake of redundancy.  Hopefully I can tie this all together at the end and stick the dismount.

As you may or may not know, I have been spending a lot more time talking to people over phone and Skype.  This has been incredibly rewarding, fun, and interesting.  Enough to where I haven’t done a post in 9 days!  How often does that happen!?

And there have been many connections of late to the above-listed conditions.  For starters, I have worked with a little boy who suffers from very low platelet counts and frequent nosebleeds.  Another is a 20-something female that has low T3 and iron-deficiency anemia, recently had the heaviest period of her life, and just broke out with bruises all over her body.  And of course, the bleeding gums and bruising issue, which is intimately tied to these other problems, is something that has surfaced at this blog before (but the pieces of that puzzle didn’t stack up at all – and I have really reconsidered some things since writing the Bruising Easily post – in fact, increasing vitamin C intake may be the worst thing you can do if you are anemic – which is probably why eating a bunch of vitamin C-rich fruit and juice can cause or worsen bleeding gums and related conditions… we may discuss this in the next post).

Here is a brief description at what is most likely the core condition for both of these cases (ITP), from NCBI (National Center for Boneheaded Information)…

Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura is a bleeding disorder in which the immune system destroys platelets, which are necessary for normal blood clotting. Persons with the disease have too few platelets in the blood.

ITP is sometimes called immune thrombocytopenic purpura.

Causes, incidence, and risk factors

ITP occurs when certain immune system cells produce antibodies against platelets. Platelets help your blood clot by clumping together to plug small holes in damaged blood vessels.

The antibodies attach to the platelets. The spleen destroys the platelets that carry the antibodies.

In children, the disease sometimes follows a viral infection. In adults, it is more often a chronic (long-term) disease and can occur after a viral infection, with use of certain drugs, during pregnancy, or as part of an immune disorder.

ITP affects women more frequently than men, and is more common in children than adults. The disease affects boys and girls equally.

Symptoms

• Abnormally heavy menstruation
• Bleeding into the skin causes a characteristic skin rash that looks like pinpoint red spots (petechial rash)
• Easy bruising
• Nosebleed or bleeding in the mouth

Treatment

In children, the disease usually goes away without treatment. Some children, however, may need treatment.

Adults are usually started on an anti-inflammatory steroid medicine called prednisone. In some cases, surgery to remove the spleen (splenectomy) is recommended. This will increase the platelet count in about half of all patients. However, other drug treatments are usually recommended instead.

The young kid should be an easy fix.  I got to actually see this kid over Skype, and he could wear a Cheerio as a necklace.  He is underweight, pale, depleted, and anemic-looking.  He has a severe low platelet issue and suffers from frequent nosebleeds.  And he has been RBTI tested for several months with consistently low refractometer readings (frequent urination could have been stuck in the title here as well), and overly-alkaline urine (constipation-proneness).  He is, of course, an enigma to the medical doctors who don’t really know what to do with him.

But all I see is underweight and hypometabolic.  His root problem becomes even more obvious when I start mentioning things like “macaroni and cheese” and mom proudly boasts that her kids didn’t even know what that was until they were like 5 years old – because they had been eating a “healthy diet” since birth.

Mom’s intentions were fantastic.  Commendable.  Raising kids on made-from-scratch homemade food is pretty awesome.  That’s love.  But kids don’t always do well on all that health food stuff.  This kid just didn’t like food and didn’t like eating.  Of course, his favorite foods – like ice cream and things, were really limited.  I told mom to supply his favorite foods in abundance – that the importance of getting him a large amount of easily-absorbable and enjoyable calories trumped absolutely all other concerns about diet.  She was like, “Ice cream – he’s gonna love you!”

A whole entire week later, this is the update from mom…

 I’ve been feeding [him] as much as we can get into him even bribing him with payment if he eats everything I send him for lunch and snack at school. The 1 day he didn’t want to eat and we couldn’t make him, he had a nose bleed that night, so he knows what he has to do. He’s been having ice cream for breakfast, lunch and supper. I send ice cream to school in a thermos frozen overnight. He loves it! I’m kind of not sure when not to give him water, this morning his sugar was at 5.5 ( 2nd pee of morning) without food, and then he had cantaloupe and ice cream for breakfast, and I gave him 1 oz of water b/c his sugar was high and 1 hour later his sugar level was 1.2. I’ve given him some candy now to bring it up. I send him about 16oz of liquid to school 1:1 orange juice and water, yesterday I gave him a bit more water than juice b/c his sugar levels when he got home had been up in the 5′s. So I’m not sure if that’s where I caused a problem or what. I’ve been going into the school and checking him about 11:20 ish during the week and he was always between 2 and 3.5. But I think my sugar drops when I eat too.  [He] has gained some weight over the past week at least a couple of pounds, and his energy is wayyyyyyyyyyy better. More than I’ve ever really seen him with, he is even pushing his limits more the little buggar. Any ideas on this water drinking would help, so I don’t get him too low or too high.

Cheers to ice cream!

Anyway, I think he’s rapidly moving in the right direction.  Say what you want about ice cream John Robbins (who, incidentally, could also wear a Cheerio as a necklace), but it is the closest approximation to human breast milk of any commercially available food.  Ice cream is a miracle food in the right context.  It can also make you a “fatass,” using one of Chief’s terms, in the wrong context (I don’t see myself telling a mom with an obese and diabetic kid who had never had a homecooked meal to eat the same way as this lil’ fella – but fat or skinny, dieting can certainly take you to this state, no matter what your current weight).  By the way I told mom to cut out the bribes of course!  That is a surefire way to de-motivate him to eat.  Pointing out the nosebleed connection to his lack of eating, however, is very motivating.

Will his platelet levels come up?  I think this case study about a woman who received standard medical treatment (which involved barbaric things like spleen removal and other dumb, dangerous, and unnecessary shit that only the medical industry could dream up) followed by treatment for her hypothyroid condition for her Thrombocytopenia shows the metabolic connection pretty clearly…

The case of a 52 year old woman with chronic severe refractory thrombocytopenia is presented. Over a three year period, her platelet count was persistently less than 20 × 10⁹/litre (normal range, 150–400). She required repeated hospital admission for management of bleeding and received multiple blood transfusions. She was given repeated courses of steroids, immunosuppression, immunoglobulin, and splenectomy, without success, in an attempt to stop the chronic blood loss. Eventually, she was found to be profoundly hypothyroid. On correction of her thyroid deficiency the platelet count returned to the normal range and all bleeding stopped. The platelet count remains in the normal range three years later.

I love the line, “Eventually, she was found to be profoundly hypothyroid.”  I wonder how many times a nurse routinely checked her body temperature to make sure she didn’t have a fever, she busted out readings like 97F and below, and no one paid attention?  Sofa King We Tar Ted.  A low metabolic condition should ALWAYS be the very first thing checked whenever any health problem arises – physical, mental, emotional, or otherwise.  And thyroid hormone panels should only be a SMALL part of determining whether or not a low metabolic condition exists – as circulating hormone levels are only part of the equation (body temperature is only part of the story as well – as adrenal hormones can raise body temperature too while the thyroid goes on permanent vacation).  But I digress.

The other case?  The young woman with anemia, a recent super heavy period, sudden appearance of bruises?  Obviously there is a close connection here (BTW – she has a high body temperature and low thyroid hormone levels, a perfect case in point of what I mentioned above).

First note that every single man in Ancel Keys’s starvation study developed anemia as they lost weight.  As you lose weight, metabolism slows down.  As metabolism slows down, you form fewer and fewer red blood cells (and platelets, and leukocytes, etc.) – the result being “too little blood,” basically what the word “anemia” means.

Next consider the changes that fitness superhero John Berardi observed as he dropped from a potentially healthy 10% body fat level (although he was already flirting with low platelet counts, anemia, and leukopenia from the start – probably from being a calorie-conscious, health food nibbling, exercise fanatic for many years) down to an extremely unhealthy 4% body fat level, as reported in his eBook on Intermittent Fasting…

As you can see in the table above, my total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, and triglycerides all increased. While some might suggest this is a result of the high meat and high fat/low carb intake – and that this increase is a problem – many well informed physicians and physiologists would suggest otherwise.  Well-respected naturopathic physician, Dr. Bryan Walsh, suggests that increased cholesterol levels – within certain limits – can actually be an indicator of better health; especially when the cholesterol/HDL ratios are lowered and the triglyceride/HDL ratios decrease, as they both did during my experiments. In his words: “When it comes to blood lipids, I’d much rather have those after results than the before results.”

Moving in the opposite direction of my cholesterol levels, significant decreases in my haemoglobin, red blood cell, white blood cell, and platelet counts were observed.  While this may indicate a nutrient deficiency (not good), it also could indicate a decrease in bone marrow cell production (due to the negative energy balance and the intermittent fasting) or even an increase in the efficiency of these cell lines (which could actually be a good thing).

Again, after talking with Dr. Walsh, we concluded that my chronic negative energy balance probably led to the decrease in cell production at the bone level. This probably contributed to some of the fatigue I experienced during my experiments. I’d be interested in measuring these values again after a few months of weight stability, a bit higher training volume, and a few more calories. Perhaps these will come back to my pre-testing values.

Both thyroid hormones and testosterone are sensitive to energy balance. In other words, when energy balance is negative, these tend to drop. Therefore, I expected this small decrease in hormone levels. However, I’m not worried about the reductions since they’re very small.

In studies with more extreme energy deficits, testosterone and thyroid hormone levels drop to well below the reference range values. Since mine saw only small decreases, I didn’t suffer any testosterone or thyroid related problems, and I ended up preserving most of my muscle mass and strength while getting extremely lean. I’d say these drops aren’t anything to worry about.

To the contrary, according to Dr Walsh, with intermittent fasting, these reduced values could mean that I was becoming more efficient at using these hormones, reducing my requirement for their production. While this is pure speculation, there may be some merit to the idea. In fact, if intermittent fasting does contribute to increased lifespan/longevity, this potential increase in physiological efficiency may contribute to the effect.

Before continuing, I can’t resist commenting on the above.  Oh yeah dudical dudes!  It is totally like a good thing when you see a rise in LDL and simultaneous drop in testosterone.  These are hallmarks of aging in men, but “could mean” increased longevity in a parallel universe or something.  And a drop in platelets, WBC, and RBC all below the reference ranges for these values?  Health-o-rama to yo mama!  I know what you should do!  Increase training volume and see what happens!  When in doubt, go workout!  And then post pictures of your neato abs while brushing off the most obvious signs of health destruction to ever show up in a blood test as potentially being a good thing!

Hey boys, why don’t you get together and pursue work in a field that your intellect is more suited for.  I hear Wrigley field is running low on peanut vendors.  The start of the 2012 season is just around the corner!  Job openings are posted HERE.

Walsh is correct that a rise in cholesterol can be a good thing – when there is a simultaneous rise in testosterone, RBC, WBC, hemoglobin, and platelets!

Alright take it easy.  These guys are actually both pretty smart.  We all make mistakes, me more than most in the health/nutrition world, and they are thinking about things intelligently.  Dr. Bryan Walsh actually seems to be light years ahead of most health practitioners.  Berardi is certainly a step up from Bob and Jillian, even acknowledges that his health decline stemmed from being in a calorie deficit in the passage above, and his free eBook on intermittent fasting shows many signs of intelligent thought.

Okay, so case #2 is much more complex and even more interesting.  We will stop here and continue this in a later post, as it ties in exercise, autoimmune tendencies, gluten, vitamin C’s interaction with iron (fascinating), repeated crashes to 0.0 on a refractometer on a daily basis, and so much more.  Well, a little bit more at least.

As a final note to those who are finding this site for the first time and thinking that your platelet/bleeding/bruising/ITP/anemia problem can’t stem from the same problem as an underweight kid, and you’re thinking “Hey I ate lots of ice cream on my way to developing this condition,” it can, and probably does, stem from a similar root problem.  I would be more than happy to try to help you solve your own health mystery – hopefully before you lose your spleen or completely obliterate your entire system with corticosteroid abuse.

2)      You announce it to everyone on Facebook

3)      You are 100% convinced you’ve found something that you can do for the rest of your life

4)      You go on and on talking to your friends about it until they are sure you have gone crazy

5)      You bring it home for the Holidays and make your family feel uncomfortable

6)      You stop going out with your friends because of it

7)      Your friends and family express concern that you are going to end up hurt

8)      The more time passes, the less often you get an erection

9)      You enjoy eating it at first, but after a while even the smell of it makes your stomach turn

10)  After a few months you start daydreaming of other flavors, and want more variety

11)  At first you make a lot of tasty, homecooked meals – but then get lazy

12)  Over time you start to notice bad breath and body odor

13)  You start seeing things in the toilet that are strange, unfamiliar, and gross

14)  You lose your zest for life and start staying home and watching movies every night

15)  You pass no gas at first, then after a few months you start farting a lot

16)  You develop a strange rash

17)  Your sex life gets steadily worse

18)  It makes you feel cold, lifeless, and empty inside

19)  After several months you lose all your motivation to work out and stay in shape

20)  You start to cheat and feel really bad about it

21)  You spend time looking at alternatives on the internet, and watching videos

22)  You keep hearing that it’s your fault that things aren’t going well

23)  You tell everyone it’s over and they say “I told ya so, what were you thinking?”

24)  You find another and start the whole process over again

25)  After a few months apart you forget how horrible it was and you want to start over

Feel free one of you clever 180 ladies (Nipper? Haga? Hawaii Girl? Annabelle are you out there?) to create one of these with a boyfriend/husband theme or similar. I’m sure the peeps would love it.  I’m already laughing thinking of good ones, like:  “You wake up with 2 black eyes but continue to believe it’s good for you.” 

www.healthhype.com states that:

The color, volume and consistency or shape of stool varies from person to person. It is generally accepted that the normal stool is:

• tan to dark brown in color
• firm but soft
• elongated like a sausage
• passed at least 3 times a week
• volume of less than 200 ml or 200g per day

It is also typical, if you follow the work of the other Matt Stone, to see stool sing songs full of Christmas cheer.

This topic is of great interest to me, as my own digestive ability, transit time, and stool volume is almost fully controlled by my own rate of metabolism.  This has been true for many others as well, and was a major influence in what I wrote in the book 180 Degree Digestion.  There are other subtle nuances to changes in diet and changes in food absorption and transit time that may be of great interest to you as well.  Hopefully I’ll get into it before this post drags on for too long and I get booted out of the Starbucks I’m currently camped out in while writing this.

For starters, when I say stool volume I mean how much you poop.  I first noticed this phenomenon before I even started this here blog.  In the summer of 2004 (I think?), I started training for a 50-day solo backpacking trip where I wasn’t going to be resupplying my food at any point throughout the trip.  The idea was to go out into the Wilderness for as long as possible without any contact with civilization (anti-social much?).  Needless to say I needed to get my legs in shape.  My backpack was going to weigh 95 pounds – well over half my bodyweight to start.

After a couple of short backpacking trips in late June and early July I noticed that I had dropped quite a bit of weight.  Like 6-7 pounds.  I knew this was trouble.  The last thing I wanted to do was go out for my 50 day trip, knowingly going in with insufficient food, leaner than normal.  So for the 2-3 weeks before my departure I took it easy on the physical activity and ate as much food as I could stomach.  Awwww, my first RRARF!!!  Sniffle, sniffle.

My normal weight in those days was about a 170 frail, endurance exercise and vegetarian-eating pounds.  But I managed to go from the mid-160’s to a sloppy 176 by the time I was to load up and head out.  During this time my stool volume went really high.  In fact, when I started the trip, I was having 3 large bowel movements every day.  If 200 grams is normal, it wasn’t normal for me the first week of that trip!  I was passing maybe 500-600 grams in the early going if I had to guess.  After years working as a chef, I feel pretty confident estimating amounts of stuff in grams.  Plus I was like so a drug lord in Columbia.  You can totally see it right?  Total badass.  “Donde esta mi dinero El Guapo??  Donde!!”

What is interesting is that I was eating very little when I first started out.  I wasn’t very hungry, and could barely eat the bland oatmeal I had brought or the slimy trout I was reeling in.  My later estimates have put me at an average daily calorie intake of 2,600 while on that trip.  But all in all my calorie intake per day was fairly consistent.  So, if the amount of food and fiber I’m taking in each day was consistent, my stool volume should have been consistent.  Right?

Not even close!

The first week I had nice bowel movements an annoying three times per day.  You notice these things when you have to poop outside when it’s cold and mosquitos are everywhere.  By the second week I was down to two.  By the third week I was lucky to have one.  Slowly, and steadily – despite having very consistent food intake and activity levels, I was passing less and less stool.  By the 6^th week I was only going once every 3 days!!!  And these bowel movements, at most, were 50 grams!!! Like a tiny lump of coal!

What was happening was that as my body lost weight and I become increasingly emaciated (and cold, and impotent, and lethargic, and psychotic, and sleep-deprived – oh, and I peed like 40 times per day), and my body was becoming more and more thrifty – squeezing every last nugget of energy out of the food I was ingesting instead of just allowing it to pass through freely at a fast rate, largely unabsorbed.

Anyway, this is but another mechanism that changes as your metabolism slows down.  Your body absorbs more calories from the food you eat.  A sloth, the mammal with the lowest metabolic rate and a basal body temperature of around 93 degrees F, has a 30-day transit time!!!  That’s how long food it eats stays in its body.

Likewise, when you start increasing metabolic rate – and sure you will probably poop more if you are eating more to do this naturally (but that’s not the only factor in the equation), your body stops absorbing calories (and probably metabolic waste as well) so efficiently, and the pipes flush with a jackpot of fecal matter once, twice – sometimes even three or four times per day.  Beauties all of ‘em.

So keep this in mind.  Especially when it appears that obese people absorb more calories from the food they eat than the lean.  Got low metabolism?  But this can be fixed.  Or at the very least improved.

And so, what happened when I returned to civilization and ate enough to gain 15 pounds in 10 days or so?  My bowels returned more or less to normal.  Although I remained a little chilly for years until I really made the metabolism connection and began to get more aggressive at the dinner table.  At which point my bowel movements became the stuff of legend.  I hope someday I will be able to have a bowel bout live on pay per view vs. Paul Chek.  Finally!  There will be shit on tv worth watching!

The other interesting thing I wanted to discuss related to stool volume is what happens when you do eat a lot of indigestible material.  Let’s say you eat 30 bananas a day, like the gentleman described here by the 2^nd best health blogger in the universe, Anthony Colpo.  You are not used to doing this.  You are used to eating pancakes and syrup and filet mignon and pizza – all of which digest and absorb completely with very little residue.  Then you eat a high fiber, high FOS, high resistant starch, raw food that digests at a much lower rate.  What happens?

Shit happens!  Come on.  You had to see that one coming.

Eat 30 bananas a day for two weeks though and by the end of the two weeks your body is absorbing all those bananas much better.  You are still pooping a lot, but not as much as you were at the start and things are starting to come out more solid and formed.  It makes a transition, I believe, by slowing down transit time, and the undigested matter fosters massive bacterial growth (Ray Peat’s reasoning for avoiding bananas – bacterial growth yields greater serotonin production yields instant death and dismemberment in his theoretical world), which breaks much more of it down into short chain fats.

Okay, now that you have tried that – switch back over to the pancakes, pizza, and filet mignon.  Yep, you aren’t pooping at all now and are plugged up.  Even though you weren’t the least bit constipated and had decent stool volume before you ever touched a banana.

Anyway – not drawing any big conclusions from that in particular.  Just saying that a lot of it is transitional.  It’s interesting right?  And potentially useful as is any physiological happening.  And yes a lot of people who have been eating a coarse fiber-rich diet with lots of raw foods get constipated when they switch to more easily-digestible food.  But it is usually temporary, as is having diarrhea once you switch from a processed diet to one that is more unrefined.

Hope you liked this crap.

And then we all know what happened next.  I decided to step outside of the books and explore the weird, wacky world of RBTI – which, despite my recent silence about it on the site, was overall the most enlightening experience from the standpoint of practical application of dietary change I have ever encountered.  I will revisit it soon don’t you worry.  It’s badassedness never ceases to amaze me.  Nor does the simplicity of some of its most basic tenets.  It offered up something beyond what can be found in any book.  So I certainly don’t have any regrets that what I found wasn’t written on a page to be documented in the following list!  JT was right!  I did need to get out and get some real world experience.

And I’m of course flipping out over all of the things I hope to explore in 2012 – stretching out to explore the likes of Aubrey de Grey while loosely field-testing the health ideas of an anonymous Native American Rapper .  Should be interesting!

As always, I have highlighted the most influential books in RED for those who share the sickness with me.  And scroll to the end if you would like to hear a few words about how I personally went from hating reading more than watching paint dry to ripping through 50 or more titles per year for 5 straight years.  Hint:  It wasn’t through discipline, hard-work, goal-setting, or reward-chasing… and it required no motivation.

The Obesity Myth                                                                   Paul Campos

The Anderson Method                                                            William Anderson

The Homocysteine Revolution                                               Kilmer McCully

Intuitive Eating                                                                       Evelyn Tribole

Nutrition For Women                                                             Ray Peat

Generative Energy                                                                  Ray Peat

Progesterone in Orthomolecular Medicine                             Ray Peat

From PMS to Menopause                                                       Ray Peat

Body By Design                                                                     Kris Gethin

The Hungry Gene                                                                   Ellen Ruppel Shell

PACE                                                                                      Al Sears

Fat?So!                                                                                    Marilyn Wann 

The Perfect 10 Diet                                                                 Michael Aziz

Weight-Loss Salvation                                                            Stuart McRobert

The Craggy Hole in My Heart and the Cat Who Fixed It.      Geneen Roth

When You Eat at the Refrigerator Pull Up a Chair                Geneen Roth

When Food is Love                                                                 Geneen Roth

Riptide                                                                                    Barbara Hale-Seubert 

Losing It                                                                                 Laura Fraser

The Great Cholesterol Con                                                 Malcolm Kendrick

Mind and Tissue                                                                     Ray Peat 

Deep Nutrition                                                                        Catherine Shanahan

The End of Overeating                                                            David Kessler

Grow Young with HGH                                                          Ronald Klatz

The Solution to the Dangers of Modern Nutrition       B.J. Hardick and Kimberly Roberto

Play as if Your Life Depends on It                                          Frank Forencich

Exuberant Animal                                                                   Frank Forencich

Change Your Body, Change the World                                   Frank Forencich 

Psychodietetics                                                                        Emmanuel Cheraskin

The Don’t Go Hungry Diet                                                     Amanda Sainsbury-Salis

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers                                                 Robert Sapolsky

Choose Life or Death                                                              Carey Reams

 META Medicine                                                                      Richard Flook

F**K It                                                                                    John Parkin

Soil Fertility and Animal Health                                             William Albrecht

The Health Theory                                                                  Challen Waychoff

Health Guide to Survival                                                         Salem Kirban

Introduction to the RBTI                                                         Challen Waychoff

The Secret is in the Diet                                                          Challen Waychoff

The Only Health Guide You Will Ever Need                           Challen Waychoff

Choose Life                                                                             Challen Waychoff

RBTI Level I                                                                            Challen Waychoff

RBTI Level II                                                                           Challen Waychoff

RBTI Level III                                                                         Challen Waychoff

CNS Workout                                                                          Pete Sisco

Train Smart                                                                             Pete Sisco

Punished By Rewards                                                             Alfie Kohn

The 10,000 Year Explosion                                                     Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending

Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder                    Samuel Wilson Fussell

Catching Fire                                                                          Richard Wrangham