Best Sellers In Men's Running Shoes

At Amazon, no minimalist shoes until no. 17, the Merrell Barefoot Trail Glove.  Next it's the Tough Glove at 44, and Vibram FiveFingers KSO at 50.  (I'm skipping the New Balance Minimus MT10 at 47, because it's got a heel rise.)

Still a long way to go...

"Constipation Myths and Facts"

If you were wondering.  Some interesting information in there.

"The Doctor Told Me He Could Not Believe It"

I can:

"He told me that I was lucky to be walking and that I would be in a neck brace for about a year and we would just have to see how my body took to the bone fusion. He then said that he doubted that I would ever be able to do high intensity sports again...."

"...But since my diagnosis was grim I decided to look into everything that could possibly benefit me. I began researching what might help my recovery and stumbled onto marksdailyapple.com. At first I was just intrigued by how different of an approach it was from everything else I had come across. After reading for a long while, a lot of it seemed to make sense to me and I decided that I would give it a shot.

"Over the next few months, I stopped taking supplements, stopped eating grains and legumes, and ate a high omega 3 diet with clean protein..."

Hmm. That diet sounds familiar. Oh yeah:

"What exactly was this diet? Here's how it was described in the paper (note: cereals = grains):

"...instead of cereals- for example, bread, oatmeal, rice, and tapioca- an increased allowance of potatoes and other vegetables, milk, fat, meat, and eggs was given. The total sugar, jam, and syrup intake was the same as before. Vitamin D was present in abundance in either cod-liver oil or irradiated ergosterol, and in egg yolk, butter, milk, etc. The diet of these children was thus rich in those factors, especially vitamin D and calcium, which experimental evidence has shown to assist calcification, and was devoid of those factors- namely, cereals- which interfere with the process."

Cod-liver oil is a good source of omega-3 fats, of course.  It's not suprising at all that a diet that heals your teeth would also heal your bones.  And our caveman ancestors recovered from some pretty brutal injuries, so it's not surprising at all that the paleolithic diet should help bones to heal.
Read the whole thing.

Authentic Paleolithic Sports

"Wife" being carried

This is excellent:

"Wife Carrying Championships feature many similarly strange rules, and perhaps the oddest one is this: the wife you carry doesn’t even have to be yours. According to the official rules, “The wife to be carried may be your own, the neighbor's, or you may have found her further afield.” The only requirement is that she is at least 17 years old.


"The World Championships originated in Finland and take place there annually. There’s historic context to all this: some say the event commemorates a 19th-century marauder whose gang raided small villages to steal food and kidnap the town’s women. Others think it recalls a custom of young men sneaking into neighboring villages to steal someone’s wife for their own, literally carrying them back to their own house. Sure, it’s barbaric, but realistically, there probably weren’t many other sports in early Finland aside from wife stealing...."

Stealing wives was a part of many cultures.  This sport could have world-wide appeal.

"Sounds Gross, Works Great: Fecal Transplants Cure Nasty C. Diff Infections"

Given the predelictions of the medical profession, it's only used as a last resort:

"A new review of more than two dozen scientific reports involving 317 patients, some dating back 50 years, finds that fecal bacteriotherapy, commonly known as fecal transplant, cured the problem in 92 percent of the cases. Nearly all got better after just one treatment. That's a better record than other treatments, including probiotics, toxin-binding molecules and an experimental vaccine."

The bacteria from the healthy donor out-compete the bad bugs, and you get better without using antibiotics to destroy your symbiotic biome. 

Which is what causes C. Diff infections in the first place.

"Advice For Novice Marathoners by Arthur Lydiard"

Read the whole thing:

"Eat normal meals during race week. People who have been training thousands of miles have a greater ability to lift their blood-sugar levels than the untrained. You've been hearing alot about carbo-loading these days, take my advice, forget about the carbohydrate-loading and eat your normal meals. Don't overeat on race day. If you have eaten well the week before a race and lightened the training workload, you should not require very much food on the day of the race. If you are racing early, a light breakfast of cereal with some toast and honey, tea or coffee should be sufficient---and the less the better. On race day and the day before, do not eat foods that will form gas in your stomach. Gas can cause pain and cramps throughout the large intestine."

Does A Healthy Diet Cause Distress?

I don't think it should. 

"Too Many Vegetables? How To Prevent Gas and Digestive Problems Caused By Healthy Eating":

"The number of questions I get from people about bloating, gas and other digestive problems is not small, and since it is a sensitive subject I’m sure the questions I get represent just a fraction of those of you with concerns."

One of the real joys of adopting a "paleo-style" diet has been a great reduction in gas and digestive upset.  "Elimination" is a better way to put it, in fact.  (I originally wrote "near-elimination", but that is not correct, in my experience.) So my inclination is that if you're suffering, that's prima facie evidence that you're not eating a healthy diet.

Ms. Pino has a number of good suggestions, but I think the best one would be to follow a program like the Primal Blueprint or the Perfect Health Diet for 30 days, and see if you can't just eliminate your digestive upset entirely.  It worked for me and for my family.

In my experience, grains, vegetable oils, beans, and starch are the main offenders, in that order.  (Vegetable oils are typically produced from grains or beans, so that's not too surprising.)  Another note: "lactose intolerance" is a typical side-effect of wheat poisoning, and often goes away once wheat is eliminated.  I consider "lactose intolerance" to be a symptom of wheat poisoning, in fact.

So skip the Beano, and skip the beans.  You just might feel a whole lot better.

Ms. Pino's of a similar opinion.