Taking Electrolytes When Running In Death Valley

Kenneth Posner:

"Salt/electrolytes

"I didn’t take any supplemental salt or electrolytes during the run. Further, the foods I consumed were generally low in sodium. None of my teammates took salt or electrolyte supplements.

"While the sports-drink industry markets the importance of electrolytes, Tim Noakes has argued that the body contains enough salt and electrolytes to last for weeks. Further, he points out that in a hot environment, the salt content of sweat and urine drops by 90-plus percent. People see white, crusty sweat on their clothes after running because their bodies are ridding themselves of the excessive salt contained in the typical western diet (Noakes 2012). Ironically, people see the salt crusts and, worrying that they are running low on electrolytes, eat more salt—when they actually may have more than they need.

Talk about putting your money where you mouth is!

If you can run 292 miles through Death Valley without supplementary salt, I think we can put that myth to bed.

Full version (from the link above) here (PDF).

Iatrogenic Ebola?

"iatrogenic /iat·ro·gen·ic/ (i-ă´tro-jen´ik) resulting from the activity of physicians; said of any adverse condition in a patient resulting from treatment by a physician or surgeon."

I was surprised to read this:

"In the end, you discovered that the Belgian nuns had unwittingly spread the virus. How did that happen?

"In their hospital they regularly gave pregnant women vitamin injections using unsterilised needles. By doing so, they infected many young women in Yambuku with the virus. We told the nuns about the terrible mistake they had made, but looking back I would say that we were much too careful in our choice of words. Clinics that failed to observe this and other rules of hygiene functioned as catalysts in all additional Ebola outbreaks. They drastically sped up the spread of the virus or made the spread possible in the first place. Even in the current Ebola outbreak in west Africa, hospitals unfortunately played this ignominious role in the beginning."

From here, 'In 1976 I discovered Ebola - now I fear an unimaginable tragedy'

Lovely.

News From The Cereal Industry

"For the last decade, the cereal business has been declining... And the drop-off has accelerated lately, especially among those finicky millennials who tend to graze on healthy options... "...Cereal sales have long been subject to dips brought on by food fads like the Atkins diet or bagel mania. And many cereals are neither gluten-free nor protein-rich, so they fail to resonate with the growing number of consumers who are gluten-intolerant or adherents of the so-called paleo diet.

"...“Additionally, there’s a small but very active and influential group of millennials who are focused on health and don’t like processed food. Guess what, cereal companies? They want to kill you.”"

Hey, it's nothing personal, I'm sure.

"...It also found a way to capitalize on Chex, which had produced consistent sales but little growth since General Mills acquired it in the 1990s. “We had tried everything to move the needle: new advertising, new flavors — and then we marketed it as gluten-free, and it took off,” Mr. Murphy said.

"...MOM, which is owned by the descendants of its founder, John Campbell, also has had success with a relatively new brand, Mom’s Best cereals, “because of an absence of negatives,” Mr. Reppenhagen said. “No hydrogenated oils, no preservatives, no artificial flavors and colors — we even use vegetable dyes in the packaging.”"

Adding protein is also big, apparently. Ick: I wonder what kind of protein they're adding?

Your Sperm Talk To Your Children

"In a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Qing-Yuan Sun of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and colleagues used a drug to make male mice prediabetic. And unexpectedly, their offspring also became prediabetic as adults.

Was this due to the fathers' behavior around their offspring? No—the males were there solely for mating. Instead, becoming prediabetic caused epigenetic silencing of some genes in the pancreas of these males (an organ centrally involved in diabetes). And the same epigenetic changes occurred in their sperm as well, also affecting their offspring's pancreases.

This applies to behavior too, as reported in a recent paper in Nature Neuroscience by Isabelle Mansuy of the University of Zurich and colleagues. Prior work showed that if you stressed young male mice, as adults, they differed from control mice in how readily they explored a new environment and how quickly they gave up trying to cope with a challenging task (findings pertinent to understanding anxiety and depression).

Critically, the offspring of those males showed the same behaviors. Again, Dad wasn't doing any parenting. Instead, the stressful upbringing caused epigenetic changes (due to those micro-RNAs) in sperm. In a tour de force, the authors injected micro-RNAs from sperm of stressed males into fertilized eggs—passing on the behavioral trait. Thus, early life stress changed adult behavior of male mice, who passed it on to their offspring via epigenetic changes in their sperm."

Summing up the prior state of knowledge about sperm and epigenetics, the author states: "Naturally, this is turning out to be wrong."

Naturally. The most remarkable thing about Science, I think, is how it lays bare the arrogance of man.

Weston Price observed, in the 1930s:

"While it has been known that certain injuries were directly related to an inadequate nutrition of the mother during the formative period of the child, my investigations are revealing evidence that the problem goes back still further to defects in the germ plasms as contributed by the two parents. These injuries, therefore, are related directly to the physical condition of one or of both of these individuals prior to the time that conception took place.

"A very important phase of my investigations has been the obtaining of information from these various primitive racial groups indicating that they were conscious that such injuries would occur if the parents were not in excellent physical condition and nourishment.

"...In the light of these data important new emphasis is placed on the quality of the germ cells of the two parents as well as on the environment provided by the mother. The new evidence indicates that the paternal contribution may be an injured product and that the responsibility for defective germ cells may have to be about equally divided between the father and mother.

"...We are apparently dealing here with a factor which, while it may be related to the germ plasm and to the prenatal growth period, clearly involves other forces than those that are at work in the case of hereditary defectives. Since these changes have to do directly with disturbances in growth of the head, particularly of the face and of the dental arches, we are concerned with such evidence as may be available as to the nature of the forces that readily affect the anatomy of the skull.

"The general architecture of the body is apparently determined primarily by the health of the two germ cells at the time of their union. This architectural design may not be completely fulfilled due to interference with nutritive processes both before and after birth."

Nice to see Price confirmed.

And if there's a way to turn these triggers on, there's a way to turn them off.

In other news:

[Paragraph breaks added for readability.]

"Because germline mutations are the source of all evolutionary adaptations and heritable diseases, characterizing their properties and the rate at which they arise across individuals is of fundamental importance for human genetics.

After decades during which estimates were based on indirect approaches, notably on inferences from evolutionary patterns, it is now feasible to count de novo mutations in transmissions from parents to offspring.

Surprisingly, this direct approach yields a mutation rate that is twofold lower than previous estimates, calling into question our understanding of the chronology of human evolution and raising the possibility that mutation rates have evolved relatively rapidly...."

Surprisingly? Direct measurement is best for a reason, any carpenter can tell you that!

But at any rate, I suspect that the epigenetic effect will prove to be much more important that currently thought, and will explain how a low rate of mutation can produce high rates of change: if you can turn genes on and off in response to the environment, you can adapt without needing to change genes, and in a more predictable fashion.

That trait would be evolutionarily useful...

Yes Virginia, The Paleo Diet Was Low-Carb

[tl;dr: Clear evidence for carbohydrate level of ancestral diets.]

One of the "diet gurus" I follow and whose work I appreciate (the Prescript-Assist Probiotic was remarkable, thanks!) is Chris Kresser, formerly known as the Healthy Skeptic. I first came across Chris when he interviewed Stephan Guyenet, in Chris's first podcast back in 2010.

Recently, Laura Schoenfeld, who works with Chris as a dietician posted an article titled "Is a Low-Carb Diet Ruining Your Health?" I scanned it, tried to comment, but as commenting on Chris' site no longer seems to work for me, moved along. Then Chris posted a follow-up, "7 Things Everyone Should Know About Low-Carb Diets" because apparently, and not surprisingly, the previous post got a bit of attention.

"Last week, my staff nutritionist Laura Schoenfeld wrote a guest post for my blog called “Is a Low-Carb Diet Ruining Your Health”. Perhaps not surprisingly, it has caused quite a stir."

OK. So I read on, but stopped here:

"#1: Paleo does not equal low-carb, and very low-carb/ketogenic diets are not our “default” nutritional state, as some have claimed."

I'm just going to follow up on this one point. And not get into the rest of his post, or Laura's post. I have issues with both of them, but all those issues stem from this one fundamental misconception. So I'm going to cover just one topic: was the Paleolithic Diet low-carb?

 This post has been moved to Substack.This post has been moved to Substack.

"Mother Nature Got It Right. Sensible Sun Exposure Is Important..."!

Indeed. And fixing your diet changes what "sensible" means.

I'll post an update to my "Vitamin D Experiment" soon... To sum it up, sunscreen is a thing of the past for me.

Thanks to Dr. Lagakos:

Shedding light on the role of sunshine vitamin D for skin health: "mothernature got it right" -@VitaminD_Holick http://t.co/yAuBJPjKM4

— Bill Lagakos(@CaloriesProper) August 13, 2014

Run For Your Life!

"...From this database, the researchers chose the records of 55,137 healthy men and women ages 18 to 100 who had visited the clinic at least 15 years before the start of the study. Of this group, 24 percent identified themselves as runners, although their typical mileage and pace varied widely. 

Running towards a longer life.

"The researchers then checked death records for these adults. In the intervening 15 or so years, almost 3,500 had died, many from heart disease.
"But the runners were much less susceptible than the nonrunners. The runners’ risk of dying from any cause was 30 percent lower than that for the nonrunners, and their risk of dying from heart disease was 45 percent lower than for nonrunners, even when the researchers adjusted for being overweight or for smoking (although not many of the runners smoked). And even overweight smokers who ran were less likely to die prematurely than people who did not run, whatever their weight or smoking habits. 

"As a group, runners gained about three extra years of life compared with those adults who never ran...." (Top link is to the NY Times account, here's the actual study.)

This is consistent with the Stanford Running Study, which I blogged about several years ago. They found that even people who ran for a period and then stopped enjoyed the same benefits, for the rest of their lives:

"Remarkably, these benefits were about the same no matter how much or little people ran. Those who hit the paths for 150 minutes or more a week, or who were particularly speedy, clipping off six-minute miles or better, lived longer than those who didn’t run. But they didn’t live significantly longer those who ran the least, including people running as little as five or 10 minutes a day at a leisurely pace of 10 minutes a mile or slower."

The study did not directly examine how and why running affected the risk of premature death, he said, or whether running was the only exercise that provided such benefits. The researchers did find that in general, runners had less risk of dying than people who engaged in more moderate activities such as walking.

"But “there’s not necessarily something magical about running, per se,” Dr. Church said. Instead, it’s likely that exercise intensity is the key to improving longevity, he said, adding, “Running just happens to be the most convenient way for most people to exercise intensely.” 

"Anyone who has never run in the past or has health issues should, of course, consult a doctor before starting a running program, Dr. Church said. And if, after trying for a solid five minutes, you’re just not enjoying running, switch activities, he added. Jump rope. Vigorously pedal a stationary bike. Or choose any other strenuous activity. Five minutes of taxing effort might add years to your life."

The SRC, however, suggest that there is something unique about running, that other vigorous activities do not provide the same benefit as running does.

"Differences between runners and controls for all outcomes continued to diverge after 21 years of follow-up. Interestingly, in our analysis of 21 years of data, aerobic exercise was no longer a statistically significant independent predictor of mortality. Sixty percent of deaths occurred during the 8-year period between our last report and the present analysis, and it is possible that with this additional mortality data, vigorous exercise has become more collinear with running and no longer is identified as an independent predictor of death. Further observation of this cohort, as the remaining 440 participants reach the biological limits of life expectancy, may be required to further clarify the independent role of nonrunning, vigorous exercise."

I'll keep running. And I'll keep doing other stuff, for the fun of it.