Ice Cream vs. Human Breast Milk

Posted January 17th, 2012 – 158 Comments

In the last post, Meagan from Mutritious Nuffins asked me if I was serious about ice cream being more similar to human breast milk than any other food. And I am. In the words of Uncle Rico, “Oh I’m dead serious.” While ice cream is looked at as one of the king of junk foods, there is no question that it is more similar to human breast milk than any other food. There are some differences too. 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… Read more »

Thyroid and Nosebleeds, Heavy Periods, Bleeding Gums, Bruising, Anemia, and Low Platelet Count/ITP

Posted January 16th, 2012 – 108 Comments

Wow! If that ain’t the most Ray Peat title ever! Beat that old man! 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… Read more »

Diets are Like New Girlfriends

Posted January 8th, 2012 – 227 Comments

1) At first you can’t sleep at all 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… Read more »

The Calorie Myth Part 4 – Stool Volume

Posted January 4th, 2012 – 133 Comments

One other exception to the idea that calories in/calories out is just some unchanging closed system is the very simple but highly substantial changes that occur in stool volume depending on your metabolic rate. We’ve talked about how the type of food you eat determines how many calories your digestive system can absorb, but your digestive system can also increase calorie absorption or decrease calorie absorption based on whether it is actively trying to dissipate or hoard energy. 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… Read more »

2011 Reading List

Posted January 3rd, 2012 – 78 Comments

Wow, that time is upon us. The infamous time of year when I post the titles of all the books I read over the past year. Last year I hyped up this list to be legendary. But I didn’t come close to reading all the titles I wanted to read, much less get to many of the great books that many of you 180 faithful suggested I stick my nose in. I was tearing up the books through about March. Then I couldn’t be bothered with anything that wasn’t written by Ray Peat. He is still, despite obvious shortcomings in his ability to put all of the pieces of his knowledge together into something effective and practical, the most interesting living health and nutrition writer on the face of this earth that I… Read more »

The Calorie Myth Part 3 – The Basics

Posted December 29th, 2011 – 92 Comments

I didn’t have time to write a full-on post today, but wanted to keep our Calorie Myth series going. Here is a video on some of the basics of the simplistic “eat less/exercise more” approach to weight loss – and why this approach is an ineffective long-term strategy with negative physical and psychological side effects…

The Calorie Myth Part 2 – Digestibility

Posted December 26th, 2011 – 124 Comments

Continuing our conversation from the LAST POST, I want to continue to highlight the fact that whole food diets, raw diets, high-protein diets, and other coarse “health food” diets may not have some mystical slimming property, but may be reliant on inadvertent calorie restriction. Now if you have followed my work for a long time, you know that I don’t have an outright problem with “inadvertent” calorie restriction, nor do I have a problem with “unintentional” weight loss. These terms both imply that weight is lost automatically, without willful force against the body’s natural appetite and energy-regulating systems. I happen to believe that there is a huge fundamental difference between eating less and exercising more as a RESULT of something (change in diet, change in metabolism, increased insulin/leptin sensitivity, change… Read more »

The Calorie Myth Part I – Raw Food Weight Loss

Posted December 21st, 2011 – 114 Comments

“When Atwater burned foods in a bomb calorimeter… he assumed that humans could use all the energy present in a food and digested in the body. If foods burns in the bomb calorimeter, Atwater seemed to conclude, it produces the same amount of energy value in our bodies. But the human body is not a bomb calorimeter. We do not ignite food inside our bodies. We digest it, and we use calories to pay for this complex series of operations. The cost varies…” ~Richard Wrangham; Catching Fire Tis the season for people to start making New Year’s Resolutions to lose weight. Oh what fun! And so, I figured what better time to do a multi-part series on the huge scientific fallacy and oversimplification that is, for lack of a better phrase… Read more »

Raising Metabolism Naturally

Posted December 15th, 2011 – 131 Comments

Hey buckaroos – Just wanted to let you guys know that I did a guest post on raising body temperture as a tool to increase the chances of getting pregnant. Nothing terribly new, but it is short and concise and has stimulated some decent conversation in the comments over at Naturally Knocked Up… http://www.naturallyknockedup.com/raise-basal-body-temperature

Increased Alcohol Sensitivity

Posted December 13th, 2011 – 53 Comments

I don’t think I’m allowed to post comments on Mark Sisson’s site. I was banned a couple years ago. But I was checking out his most recent post and tried to post this comment on the topic of increased sensitivity to alcohol and caffeine on a low-carb Paleo diet, which I don’t think showed up. My response was… “Alcohol and caffeine cause sugar levels to crash on a cellular level. They are perhaps the most potent triggers of these crashes, which you can test by monitoring your urine with an agricultural tool called a refractometer. A reading below 1.5 denotes a crash. Below 0.5 is considered very severe. The fewer carbs you eat, the more prone you are to these crashes – for one because you are not offsetting the effects… Read more »

Epic Lunches

Posted December 12th, 2011 – 66 Comments

I’ll be the first to admit – I’m enjoying Chief-style eating. By Chief, I of course am referring to sporadic 180 commenter Chief – the One and Only. Chief has advocated since his first appearance here that one feast per day is all a person really needs, and that this practice is congruent with many traditional cultures (not that I really care about traditional cultures’ eating habits, but that was part of Chief’s reasoning). So by Chief-style, I’m referring to glorious buffet-style eating to the point of maximal fullness, followed by not eating again until I am really hungry (usually sometime the following day). At first I was resistant to this idea, as buffet-style eating has always shown to increase the number of calories people eat when eating to appetite. … Read more »

MAXercise

Posted December 9th, 2011 – 80 Comments

In the newest 180 book, Diet Recovery (which you can now order a printed copy of until I run out of them – click HERE for more information), I coin the cheesy name “MAXercise” to describe the basic concept (with a few tweaks) of what Phil Campbell, founder of the Peak 8 or “Sprint 8″ exercise system, discusses in the following interview with Joey ”Mad Dog” Mercola. The Lady Krill-a! This interview came out recently and I found it to be pretty good. Plus it’s just hilarious for a nerd like me to watch Mercola butcher things like “Tabata” exercises, calling them “Tinata.” I wonder if he’s also heard of the Mexican interval training known as Pinata? And Mr. Campbell? Well, his voice is just so damn money. He even mentions the motherland in the video… Read more »

Should You Ice an Injury?

Posted December 5th, 2011 – 71 Comments

I was feeling like a wuss after Martin Berkhan emasculated all the peoples of the earth that don’t do deadlifts for fear of back injury. So I went to the gym, did some deadlifts, and swiftly injured my back – reminder #1,248 that the world’s greatest expert on Matt’s health is Matt. I tweaked it, ironically, by changing my form a little after noticing in the mirror that I was doing the movement a little asymmetrically. Well, that’s probably because my frickin’ back is crooked and I should be doing them asymmetrically! It wasn’t bad or anything, just a little kink. But it did hurt, get really stiff, and became fairly swollen and inflamed. This happens to me every so often. My back has always been one of my… Read more »

Scienceitis

Posted December 2nd, 2011 – 6 Comments

Hey everyone, just wanted to let you guys know that I did a short, silly little article on www.zentofitness.com that was posted earlier this week. It’s about a nasty virus that’s being spread around like raw butter on sourdough bread at a WAPF conference. The link below will take you there… http://zentofitness.com/scienceitis/ No doubt inspired by Martin Berkhan’s article “Fuckarounditis.” Make sure you get vaccinated!!!

Food Rewards and Punishments

Posted November 30th, 2011 – 104 Comments

Don’t be turned off or bored by this title. This is a monster of a topic that scratches the surface of some ideas so powerful and pervasive that if you were to follow the rabbit hole to their origin, you would be presented with a completely different template for life, love, self-esteem, parenting, business, and human interaction – not just a mended relationship with the things you put in your mouth. We’re talking, at the core, about “intrinsic motivation” vs. the false presumptions made by the popular and foolishly-accepted psychological theory of “behaviorism.” In the model of behaviorism, it is generally believed that people need some kind of incentive, reward, or form of praise to be motivated to do an activity. And, on the other side of that coin, bad behavior… Read more »

Restrained Eating and Obesity

Posted November 21st, 2011 – 65 Comments

In the book Intuitive Eating by Eveyln Tribole and Elyse Resch, a classic study on dieting psychology was highlighted (and reminded me of Napolean in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure). In real life, I’ve been talking about this study a lot lately, because it is such an interesting example. Here is the section in the book discussing the appetite dysregulation caused by dieting/restrained eating, with a quick video discussion on it. Enjoy! And if I don’t post again before the big day, have a great Thanksgiving! I will probably not eat impressive amounts of food because I’m not on a diet, and overeating is not fun unless you are dieting – then it is orgasmic and food is so good you just can’t stop eating it! “One of the classic studies involved fifty-seven female college students at Northwestern University. … Read more »

Cold Hands and Feet

Posted November 15th, 2011 – 94 Comments

Me: It’s a W, for Weston Debbie: You mean like the Westin hotel? (we were staying at the Sheraton by the way) Me and Masterjohn: No (conveyed loudly, with large inflection in our voices, and in creative language) I just finished up with the 2011 Wise Traditions Conference, the annual conference of the Weston A. Price Foundation. I finally did my talk yesterday in the biggest ballroom, which was pretty flippin’ full – somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 people in there I would say. Having to wait all weekend to give my talk was tough. I felt like they were “icing the kicker” as they say in American football, and interestingly, my kickers were quite icy. So were my hands. I think of acute and chronic stresses alike as… Read more »

Polyuria, Nocturia, Bedwetting, Frequent Urination

Posted November 5th, 2011 – 110 Comments

Poly means many. Uria means pee-pee. Noct means night. I think you get what we’re talking about here. Ever since I started studying urine a few months ago, and have now examined several hundred people’s urine, some “clear” patterns have emerged. When metabolism starts to buckle, especially in the throes of an eating disorder or extremely restricted diet of some kind, “sugars,” or the amount of solute in the urine or relative concentration of the urine you could say, drops. Urine becomes very clear and the urge to urinate strikes as often as every 15 minutes in the midst of a “sugar crash.” Some cursory glances into the medical literature revealed something about urine concentrating defect, or defects in ADH (anti-diuretic hormone) coinciding with this kind of thing. I’ll look into it later… Read more »

Strength Does Not Equal Size

Posted November 2nd, 2011 – 92 Comments

Hey ladies and gentle men! Welcome to the new 180DegreeHealth! My brain is about to explode if I don’t get my thoughts out immediately! It’s been 11 long days since I’ve done a blog post! Gasp! I’m having withdrawals! What I love about blogging, and the all-encompassing nature of my work in general, is that I always feel that I have the liberty to write about whatever is on my mind. Well, the following may seem like a radical departure from what we’ve been discussing lately, but the game I love playing more than any other is spotting very obvious fallacies and pouring salt on them like a helpless, innocent slug. Today’s fallacy is that strength = muscle development. It does not. While I’m no bodybuilder or powerlifter, I do love learning… Read more »

Context

Posted October 20th, 2011 – 29 Comments

Well boys and girls, this will be my final blog post. I drank the RBTI Kool-Aid and it tasted good. And now, well, there’s not much left to write about. It’s all “in the numbers” you see. Okay okay, you’re not buying that for a second. You know me well. I have a severe writing problem, and there is no known cure. Even RBTI was unable to cure me of my condition. In fact it could be the worst flareup I’ve ever had. I put the RBTI cookbook together in 6 days for example, and will be releasing another book in two weeks – Diet Recovery: Restoring Hormonal Health, Metabolism, Mood, and Your Relationship with Food!But this really will be my final blog post on THIS blog. As soon as… Read more »