Butter and Your Brain

This is your brain; this is your brain on butter:

Pretty fascinating stuff. I wonder if the difference between butter and pork fat is the linoleic acid content? I also wonder if cream, of which I eat a lot, and from which butter is made, has the same effect?

I've certainly noticed better mental acuity since going paleo, but I haven't tracked the variables the way that Seth has.

An Overview Of The Science Of Barefoot Running

From The Science of Sport blog:

"...The evidence so far suggests that barefoot running produces some potentially beneficial changes, mostly related to how running form and kinetics are altered without shoes. However, it also points to a potentially large group of people who, when running barefoot, may have increased risk of injury, especially early on - these are the people who continue to heel-strike when barefoot, and who may 'force' a forefoot landing, leading to huge strain on the calf muscle and Achilles tendons....

"In terms of advocacy, I believe that barefoot running will help most runners. It may be as part of a training programme where barefoot running helps with adaptation because it loads the joints differently, activates muscles in different patterns and therefore provides a good training impulse. For some, barefoot running (or minimalist shoes) will go on to become the 'only way'. For others, it will remain a training technique, and that's fine too. But I'd certainly look at incorporating it, just for the training adaptations it provides...."

I don't agree with his assessment of injury as stated in this post. I think the evidence is quite clear for certain types of injuries that they are caused by the changes in form one sees when wearing sneakers.  And you only need one clear injury linkage to decide that sneakers are worse than barefoot.

The Science of Sport guys continue to get the logic backwards.  Barefoot is the null hypothesis, as Lieberman regularly points out.  It's the default.  You need to prove that the shod condition is an improvement over that.  And, cold weather aside, it's quite easy to show that it's not an improvement.

Of course there does need to be a careful conversion away from sneakers, just like you need a period of rehabilitation after a long period in a cast, as they correctly note.

Follow-up to "Linoleic Acid and Blindness"

Finally rediscovered the study that led to this post in the first place:

"Seddon et al.'s single prospective cohort study found that fish intake did not affect the progression to advanced [Age-Related Macular Degeneration] overall, or in a high [Linoleic Acid] consumption group, but did protect against the progression to advanced ARMD in the low (below median consumption) LA consumption group.20 This parallels what was observed exclusively via a significant test for trend in the Seddon et al. study described earlier with reference to its investigation of the influence of the intake of omega-3 fatty acids on preventing the onset of advanced ARMD.15 However, the results from neither study can be used as yet to provide a conclusive answer to their respective research questions. Both require replication and a plausible explanation."

 Sounds like they've now got replication and a plausible explanation (see the original post).  Prevent blindness: skip the seed oils.

Linoleic Acid, Fat Rats in Labs, and Fat Humans

Stephen Guyenet recently posted:

"...High fat diets, particularly in combination with refined starches and sugars, were among the most effective. The composition of these diets has been refined since then, and modern "purified" high-fat diets reliably induce obesity in susceptible strains of rodents. The most commonly used diet is Research Diets D12492, which is 60% fat by calories, and composed mostly of lard, soybean oil, casein, maltodextrin, sucrose and cellulose (7). It tastes kind of like raw cookie dough, and the rats are crazy about it."

Turns out a whole big chunk of science has been drawing faulty conclusions:

This post moved to Substack. 

"Foot Strike Patterns of Recreational and Sub-Elite Runners in a Long-Distance Road Race"

Runblogger on his day job:

"Although the biomechanical properties of the various types of running foot strike (rearfoot, midfoot, and forefoot) have been studied extensively in the laboratory, only a few studies have attempted to quantify the frequency of running foot strike variants among runners in competitive road races. We classified the left and right foot strike patterns of 936 distance runners, most of whom would be considered of recreational or sub-elite ability, at the 10 km point of a half-marathon/marathon road race. We classified 88.9% of runners at the 10 km point as rearfoot strikers, 3.4% as midfoot strikers, 1.8% as forefoot strikers, and 5.9% of runners exhibited discrete foot strike asymmetry. Rearfoot striking was more common among our sample of mostly recreational distance runners than has been previously reported for samples of faster runners. We also compared foot strike patterns of 286 individual marathon runners between the 10 km and 32 km race locations and observed increased frequency of rearfoot striking at 32 km. A large percentage of runners switched from midfoot and forefoot foot strikes at 10 km to rearfoot strikes at 32 km. The frequency of discrete foot strike asymmetry declined from the 10 km to the 32 km location. Among marathon runners, we found no significant relationship between foot strike patterns and race times."

We've got a long way to go.

Barefoot in NYC

Pete Larson took this video at the 2011 NYC Barefoot Run on Governor's Island in New York.  I'm the runner on the far side of the group (the one with a head).

So if you've ever wondered what I look like running, this is it.  This was right after the start of my longest barefoot run to that date: 8 miles, or 4 laps of the island.  (I didn't measure it, but was told it was a 2-mile lap.)  Feet felt great afterward, although I was ready to stop when I did. Always stop before you have to. :)



Unfortunately it was a bit overcast that day, and Pete was hiding in a bush so as not to make the barefoot runners get "prancy". So it's a little dark.

P.S. I don't know why I hold my thumb up that way, but it's the only way I was able to 100% identify myself in this video. :) Hey, Haile Gebreselassie runs like he's holding a school book, so I'm allowed this quirk.

Mark Allen on Proper Running Form

Thanks to Luis:

"Talking about instructors, two weekends ago I attended a camp that Mark Allen gave down here. His lesson on proper running technique was simple: 1- take your shoes off and run around the oval, 2- note how it feels, 3- replicate it with shoes on, 4- do this every week. Here is a picture of him explaining this (I am the one with the red hat):

http://www.markallenonline.com/yearly.aspx "