How and where your carbs are stored is key to knowing what to eat

Carbs are stored as either fat or glycogen (stored sugar). The key is that there are two types of glycogen that go in two very different-sized "storage bins" in the body, each with a different primary purpose:

Storage Bin 1: The liver - holds about 100 grams of carbs which are used to keep general circulating blood sugar up to the brain and muscles during the day

Storage Bin 2: The skeletal muscles - hold about 200-600 grams of carbs depending on how much muscle you have; these carbs are used primarily for the muscles themselves, but can be "dumped" into the bloodstream when the liver runs out if necessary. It is key that there is a very wide variation in how easily people "let go" of the sugar in their muscles, which is reflected in how easily some people hold on to muscle mass while others lose it fast.

Secondly, it is key that the fructose you eat (from fruit and sweets) can only be stored in the liver--remembering that liver stores are relatively small. Therefore you can easily go over your storage capacity when you eat too much fructose, and the excess automatically turns to fat. The point: fructose is easy to overeat. Little bits throughout the day are better than gobs all at once.

Thirdly, those trying to build muscle mass will get no use out of fructose in terms of replacing the sugar in their muscles after working out, as fructose will never end up in muscles. Instead, they need to eat starches like root vegetables, beans, potatoes, and grains (though grains have many downsides). Again, these cannot be eaten all at once, better in small bits throughout the day so as to avoid jacking blood sugar up, which spikes insulin and leads to more carbs stored as fat.

Finally, always eat some protein with carbs to keep your blood sugar from dropping through glucagon.

Vitamin D crucial in winter

Just about everybody is deficient in Vitamin D in winter, and many are severely deficient. Muscle weakness,

In summer when the sun is intense enough, we make this "sunshine vitamin" out of circulating cholesterol when the sun's rays hit our skin and eyes, but the intensity of winter sun is not strong enough to do the conversion. This is because the extremely indirect angle of the sun in winter diffuses solar energy such a wide area that any given point on earth receives only a fraction of summer sun intensity.

-Vitamin D has to build up in the body, it doesn't happen all at once. But you can definitely feel the effects as your stores increase. Having said that, you can't just chug it because the body can only absorb so much at a time. The best approach is to buy the highest possible dosage and take 1 in morning and 1 at night, maybe even one more in afternoon until you feel it build up.

-The FDA had long kept the maximum Vitamin D allowed in supplements very low. They finally changed this a few years ago, so now you can get the dosage you really need.

-"My vitamin pill says it has 100% of Vitamin D." Not even close to enough. We absorb a fraction of the vitamin supplements we take.

"Sugar is sugar" commercial is blatantly false in multiple ways

There are literally dozens of types of sugar which are all different and have different effects in the body. "Sugar is sugar" is completely false.
The Corn Refiners Association popular commerical "Sugar is Sugar" tries to claim that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is just like cane sugar (regular table sugar).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyj2N-AspqU

A Princeton University study showed again what everybody knew from experience, that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) - which is the main ingredient in most sodas and lots of junk food - is more fattening than regular table sugar.
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/

A 2009 study featured in Time magazine had a similar finding:

All Sugars Aren't the Same: Glucose Is Better, Study Says
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1892841,00.html

On top of this, the commercial presents HFCS as "corn sugar", a seemingly natural product, which it is not by a longshot. Dextrose (a form of glucose), not HFCS, is the natural sugar found in corn and it is not a health problem, in fact it is what bodybuilders take post-workout because it is sugar in simplest form. HFCS, on the other hand, is an artificial substance created by putting corn starch through a series of three industrial enzymatic processes.

HFCS has also been implicated as the primary source of AGEs (Advaced Glycation End Products) which are now known to cause cardiovascular problems (esp. endothelial dysfunction) as well as Alzheimer's.

Moreover, even a basic understanding of sugars and how humans process them tells you that "sugar is sugar" is false. There are many types of sugars which are processed very differently by the body. Some are processed in the liver, some in the intestines, some do not need processing at all. Moreover, different sugars require different enzymes to break them down, ex. starches require amylase enzymes, sucrose needs sucrase, etc. and different people have more or less of these enzymes which results in differing abilities among people to break down different types of sugars.

For example, all of these are chemically different categories of sugars:
Monosaccharides - glucose/dextrose, fructose, galactose, xylose and ribose
Disaccharides - sucrose and lactose
Polysaccharides - starches (from bread to potatoes to rice etc.) and glycogen (stored sugar in muscle and liver)

Myths about fat from documentary "Fathead"

This short funny clip "Big Fat Lies" from the documentary "Fathead" explains in a nutshell how fat came to be vilified.

Big Fat Lies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8WA5wcaHp4

Truth is, while there are industrial junk-food fats like soybean oil and corn oil (i.e. in Fritos and potato chips) that are not healthy, there is a much larger list of fats that are good for you adn that people have eaten as a primary fuel source for thousands of years, from plant fats like nuts, coconut oil, and olive oil to animal fats like dairy cream and meat fats if not overcooked.

As mentioned in previous posts, fats are slow burning fuel, carbs are fast-burning fuel, and these are the only two fuels humans have. So if you're not eating enough fats, your going to necessarily overeat carbs by a landslide, which cause weight gain, send your blood sugar through the roof, spike your insulin, make you tired and likely diabetic.

Excessive sitting is a health hazard apart from lack of exercise

Spending way too much time sitting is a serious health hazard, regardless of how much much you exercise when not sitting. Scientists suggest "interrupting" sitting by walking around periodically, standing while talking on the phone or to others, etc.

Experts: Sitting Too Much Could Be Deadly
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/20/health/healthy_living/main6119907.shtml

Your Health: Too much sitting puts the body on idle
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/painter/2010-02-01-yourhealth01_ST_N.htm

Lead still in DC water

If you move to DC, you have to have your water tested for lead. Lead poisoning in the water supply continues to be a problem in DC, despite public awareness of the problem for decades.

People continue to wonder what the problem is with DC schools, citing money, socioeconomic factors, etc. How about kids, particularly "Poor kids who live in older buildings" (Jaffe) being poisoned by lead?

Lead in D.C. water is a public health disaster by Harry Jaffe
http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/harry-jaffe-lead-dc-water-public-health-disaster

CDC Report: D.C.'s Water May Still Contain Lead from the DCist
http://dcist.com/2010/12/cdc_dc_pipes_still_may_be_contamina.php

High Lead Levels Found in D.C. Kids
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/26/AR2009012602402.html

Water-cleanup experiment caused lead poisoning
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/40275/title/Water-cleanup_experiment_caused_lead_poisoning

Wikipedia entry: Lead contamination in Washington, D.C. drinking water
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_contamination_in_Washington,_D.C._drinking_water#2004:_Washington_Post

Caffeine after exercise inhibits muscle building

Personally, I'm not a big fan of caffeine, as one cup of coffee at noon keeps me up at night. Which makes it that much more baffling how for a few years there I downed multiple liters (literally) of diet Coke a day (i.e. was addicted). The only caffeine I get now is in occasional chocolate bars or the little bits left in decaf, which I think is good (still enough caffeine to keep me up at night).

But regardless of how much caffeine you can tolerate, caffeine following exercise is a bad idea. In a nutshell, caffeine inhibits the building of muscle, which is exactly what you don't want during the 30-90 minute post-workout (PWO) "anabolic window", a special time for building muscle.

According to Ori Hofmekler, author of the popular Warrior Diet and an upcoming book "Unlocking Your Muscle Gene", caffeine inhibits mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin), the muscle-building mechanism. This is OK, he argues, before excercise, because you don't build muscle while you exercise but rather aftward. It works against recovery, however, post-workout.

Hofmekler cites three thing that "spring-load" mTOR so that it can come back with a vengeance when the time comes to build muscle: fasting, exercise, and caffeine. When the spring is released, it builds muscle (assuming there are enough amino acids available from protein). Drinking coffee after exercise prevents the spring from being released.

"Fasting, exercise and coffee inhibit mTOR in a way that can be compared to a spring being compressed in a closed box."

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/04/16/ori-hofmekler-on-coffee.aspx

Fats explained

This article from Mercola.com disspells myths about fat and breaks down how essential fats are to our diet, particularly saturated fat, a great source of energy which was condemned as a cause of heart disease.

Notes:
-The "bad" fats are trans fats and excessive omega 6s. Both were/are pervasive in the junk-food industry.
-While omega 3s are great, do not buy cheap fish oil because it may have contaminants like PCBs, etc. Paying more for "pharmaceutical grade" fish oil is worth it. Having said that, krill oil is now the new thing that is supposed to be better than fish oil, we'll see...

The Forbidden Food You Should Never Stop Eating by Dr. Joe Mercola
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/09/01/enjoy-saturated-fats-theyre-good-for-you.aspx?e_cid=20110901_DNL_art_1

FODMAPS foods for IBS

For people with IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), there is a vast array of "trigger foods" that varies widely from person to person. It is an arduous process of tira and error to figure out which ones are problematic. One researcher tried to simplify all possible triggers into a single system called FODMAPS.

Foods on the FODMAP Diet
http://ibs.about.com/od/ibsfood/a/The-FODMAP-Diet.htm

Time to kill the killer

Here's the basic idea: there are three main things that clog arteries and give people heart disease, stroke, etc., but now there are new ways to get each one of the three out without surgery. Summary is at the bottom.


Heart disease is the #1 killer in the US, just above cancer and way beyond all the others. Many people feel fine, seem healthy, go running for miles a day, then have a heart attack.

For decades people with heart disease have been given temporary "band-aid" solutions (ex. statins, stents, bypass surgery--the "drugs and surgery model") that only treat symptoms rather than attacking the underlying problem: clearing plaque from the arteries. What's new is that we now know how to treat the actual problem itself, viz. we know how to get plaque out without surgery. It's not that complicated, anyone can do it, and the mechanisms are explained on many sites on the net.


Put differently, you can reverse the path toward a heart attack and transform your arteries to a much healthier state allowing an exponential increase in blood flow that will lower blood pressure, deliver nutrients better, etc.

The solutions are summarized in brief at the bottom, and if you already know all about what heart disease is, the explanations of the solutions are in the middle.

What heart disease is

There are 3 major substances that form the plaque in the diagram above. They are:

LDL Cholesterol (bad cholesterol) - a yellow waxy lipid (form of fat, which is key)
Calcifications - deposits made of calcium (a mineral, which is key)
Fibrin - a fibrous protein that forms meshlike clots over wounds (protein is key)

"Heart disease" (leading to heart attacks) occurs due to atherosclerosis, hardening of the arties that occurs when the inner walls are splattered and coated with hard, tough substances (plaque) that build up over a lifetime, not all at once. It is not a stretch to say that pretty much every adult has some form of heart disease because arteries have been clogged little by little, year by year. Trans fats, which everyone who ever at processed foods during the 80s and 90s inhaled by the gallon, has a special ability to create plaque. Hence the drastic explosion of heart disease in adults. Also, there may be particular places where arteries might be especially blocked ("acutely"), posing a higher risk.

Why do we have plaque at all?
It is the body's way of patching up damaged arteries, kind of like spackling in a hole in the interior wall of a pipe. However, when there's too much spackle over time, it fills up the space in the pipe making it hard for blood to flow. The body has natural mechanisms for getting rid of plaque (including HDL or "good" cholesterol), but the problem is these slow down with age. So we need another solution to tip the balance toward getting rid of plaque rather than accumulating it.

So how to get these three forms of plaque out?
This is no longer a question; it is known, but by no means instantaneous. Basically it is a plumbing problem that requires three different "Dranos" to attack the three problem substances, and all three have been identified--and multiple options to remove each.

A simple but accurate and extremely useful way to look at it is that we need to get rid of a mineral, a fat, and a protein. That's where the solutions lie. For two of these, the fat (cholesterol) and the protein (fibrin), we already know how to break them down because our bodies' enzymes break them down every day when we eat them. There are now ways to apply the same eynzyme action used in our stomach to our arteries, called systemic enzymes. The mineral (calcifications) is a little different, but can be removed as well.

How Long it Takes

These methods start working right away, but do not work overnight. To put it simply, if you have been coating a wall with random layers of three types of paint over a lifetime, it is going to take many passes of different "paint removers" to get it off. But it will come off, and more importantly even if just a small fraction of the plaque comes off in a month that fraction of newly-recovered space in the arteries may hugely improve circulation--even prevent a heart attack if the blockage was bad.

Here is a breakdown of how to attack each of the three plaque-forming substances. An important point is that all three together clog arteries, layered haphazardly on top of each other over time. Therefore to be successful in removing plaque one has to attack all three. For example, you can attack exposed cholesterol but there may be more underneath layers of fibrin and calcifications, so to get to the cholesterol you have to remove the others first, and vice-versa.

Attacking Cholesterol
To get rid of cholesterol there are two options, both pretty simple thanks to modern science.
1. Take Lipase supplements as systemic enzymes.
Lipases are the natural enzymes that our bodies produce to break down lipids i.e. fats in food we eat. Since cholesterol is a lipid, Lipase will eat it up--but the cholesterol we need to attack is out in the arteries, not in the stomach. Therefore the key is that the Lipase supplements have to be taken as systemic enzymes. This means they have to make it past the stomach into the rest of the body. To do this, you just take them far away from meals on an empty stomach.

Notes on Lipase:
-Side effects? That's the good part about systemic enzymes. These are natural enzymes we already have and make in our bodies and there are very few side effects.

-Lipase can lower your blood cholesterol level in the process of removing arterial cholesterol. Pretty big additional benefit.

-Systemic enzyme therapy is a huge area of discovery in science today, not just for heart disease but for treating cancer and other diseases. There is a multitude of websites about systemic enzymes.

-Enzyme names generally share the same root as the thing they break down, i.e. proteases break down protein, sucrases break down sucrase, lipases break down lipids, etc.)

2. The other way to reduce cholesterol in arteries is known as Essential Phospholipids (EPL) in Liposomal form (the only form that works). EPL are basically simple substances derived from soy lecithin that, when they come in contact with cholesterol, cause a reaction that lowers cholesterol's melting point below human body temperature. The point: you basically melt cholesterol out of your system.

EPL only works in Liposomal form because it cannot survive the stomach's acidic environment intact and make it out beyond into the bloodstream unless it is "packaged" in microscopic capsules called liposomes. There will no doubt be many more brands in the future but right now a good one is LipoPhos Forte.

Attacking Fibrin
This one is easy--just taking proteases as systemic enzymes. Fibrin is made of protein so any protease (protein-eating or "proteolytic" enzymes) will eat the up, and protease supplements are available all over the place, cheaply, in many forms.
In fact many people take these reguarly just for general health, to get rid of protein deposits in your body.

Again, only systemic proteases will affect the fibrin in you arteries i.e. taken on an empty stomach far away from food (just like lipase above).

Here are some good proteases. There is loads of information about them all over the net and what they can do for all sorts of issues, heart disease is only one. Again, because they are natural enzymes they have remarkably few side effects:

Bromelain - pineapple enzymes. Cheap yet has been called the Miracle Enzyme for good reasons. Can take bunch, but too much or your insides will feel tender--bromelain is the main ingredient in meat tenderizer (since meat is made of protein). Helps digest meat/proteins, too, which is good for IBS, if you use it as a regular food enzyme.

Nattokinase - from the traditional Japanese food natto, derived from fermented soy. More expensive than bromelain but hailed as a big discovery and also as a possible reason why Japanese people have fewer heart attacks.

Serrapeptase - silkworm enzymes. More expensive, the most recent of the three to be used. More information is being developed as studies are done, but it is available in Vitaminshoppe.

Note about strokes, blood thinning and clotting:
All three of these proteases eat up the fibrin that clots are made of and thin blood. If you have stroke issues or are taking blood thinners, they not a good idea; a better idea would be to get off the artifical blood thinners and switch to these natural blood thinners that can easily dissolve problematic clots for good.

Attacking Calcifications
Chelators are substances that bind (chelate) other substances. Calcium Disodium EDTA is a substance that binds to calcium, it is used in products from soda to salad dressing. It is also the only current solution for calcifications in the arteries.

Like the EPL above, EDTA does naturally absorb well into the body, so don't bother taking regular EDTA capsules, only 5% is absorbed. The best way to get it is in Liposomal form (again, liposomes are tiny capsules that act as "packages" to carry whatever is put in them, protecting it through the stomach's acidic environment).
Because companies realize that customers want both EPL and EDTA to treat heart disease, they actually put them together in a product called Lipophos EDTAthat contains both of the key substances in the same liposomes

Note:
Both the EPL and EDTA descirbed above are now given intravenously by doctors. They are calling the EPL treatments "Plaquex" and the EDTA just intravenous EDTA chelation. Intravenous EDTA has been done for years but Plaquex (do-it-yourself Plaquex) is very new, just in the past few years. Again it is made of just soy lecithin so there is very little issue with side effects. These intravenous treatments are great ways to do both, except that a) they are 10 times more expensive than doing it yourself and b) doctors will only do it if you have demonstrated late-stage heart disease. Basically, our medical system is designed on the "drugs and surgery" model that treats problems when they become exacerbated, rather than the preventive medicine model which aims to keep problems from arising in the first place.

To sum up:
A. Cardiovascular blockages are made of three things that can now each be removed without surgery.
1. Calcifications removed by Liposomal EDTA
2. Cholesterol removed by Liposomal Essential Phospholipids (EPL) and/or high potency Lipase supplements taken on an empty stomach between meals (ex. Lypo Gold by Enzymedica)
3. Fibrin removed by protein-eating enzymes such as Bromelain, Nattokinase, Serrapeptase

B. To be effective requires targeting all three because they are haphazardly layered on top of each other, so that you may need to get through one to get to either of the other two.

C. LipoPhos EDTA combines both 1 and 2, EDTA and EPL.

Epigenetics, Blood Types, and Genotypes

Dr. Peter D'Adamo has spent his whole life studying blood types in humans, continuing the life's work of his father. His research centers around hematology (studying blood and blood-related matters) and immunology (study of the immune system including allergic reactions, pathogens, etc). His published works take the form mostly of diet books like the Blood Type Diet and more recently the Genotype Diet, but in reality the word "Diet" distracts from wider theories by making it appear to be another gimmick approach. In fact D'Adamo writes about anthropology, adaptations and and human behavior as much as diet. His approach in the last book revolves around epigenetics, captured in the title "Change Your Genetic Destiny" with the subtitle "Turn off the bad genes, turn on the good ones."

The Genotype Diet by Peter D'Adamo
http://www.genotypediet.com/index.shtml

What is Epigenetics?

First of all it has nothing to do with Tom Cruise or John Travolta -- that's Dianetics.

Epigenetics is based around the scientific discovery that a given gene can express itself in a variety of ways depending on external forces, not just on the internal "programming" of the gene. Sure, you probably can't change your basic eye color, but it turns out there are many genes which respond differently your diet, environment, and behavior. You can "work with them" to change the way they express themselves. Hence the prefix epi i.e. oustide the gene. Epigenetics was the subject of a January 6, 2010 Time magazine cover story.

Not only this, but new research indicates that you can actually pass on alterations in your genes based on your experiences. In other words, the genes inherited by your kids are not etched in stone, but are affected by what happens to you. Hence, not only do your genes define your destiny, as the Time headline says, but they do not define your children's destiny either.

If you walk 30+ minutes a day, it turns out you can "turn on" certain genes designed to recognize when you are on the move and therefore store less fat.

Another useful example is the gene controlling the body's starvation mechanisms. D'Adamo observes that crash/starvation diets backfire for many people (especially those he calls "thrifty types" viz. Gatherers and Warriors) because they "turn on" genes that cling even harder to stubborn body fat when they sense starvation.

For this reason D'Adamo suggests that pregnant mothers should be sure to eat plenty of food and never go on low-calorie diets; if they do they will be passing on genetic messages signalling starvation to their kids that will actually result in children who hold on to more fat.

Similarly, D'Adamo suggests that people who have lived through prolong famine will pass on altered genes as a result.

How D'Adamo's Genotypes Intersect with Epigenetics

Dr. D'Adamo finds six human biological models that he calls "Genotypes":
Hunter(can only be blood type O)
Gatherer (only O, B, or AB)
Explorer (any blood type but often negative)
Warrior (A or AB)
Teacher (A or AB)
Nomad (B only)

The point of D'Adamo's six Genotypes is that if you are going to work with your genes you need to know more about what they are. It is not to define or limit people but to reveal certain genetic commonalities among groups.

While humans are extremely diverse, D'Adamo believes that each person has certain (not all) genetic traits corresponding to only one of of these six sets. It is no more limiting than saying somebody is right-handed or left-handed (or ambidextrous); there are really only a couple options any way you slice it.

Moreover, Genotypes are not a character judgement but rather simply an observation based on empirical evidence, and it does not define a person it just defines an aspect of a person, not the whole (as Aristotle said, a whole can never be defined by even an infinite number of its aspects). To use an analogy, it is as if there were millions of different types of cars, but in certain basic ways all were variations on six basic models, each with particular commonalities detectable despite all the differences.

These types are based clearly-defined biological traits, and D'Adamo pinpoints may distinctive body shapes, bone structures, and other concrete telltale signs that mark the difference between types.

He also classfies the six types by their biological outlook, not just mentally but in terms of allergies, metabolism, disease, etc:
Reactive types - Hunter and Explorer
Thrifty types - Warrior and Gatherer
Tolerant types - Nomad and Teacher

Maybe most importantly, he shows the weak spots where each type tends to get into trouble in terms of diet, exercise, work, etc. nearly all of which come from their natural strengths being overused and turning into weaknesses. He shows how to rebalance the system to allow strengths to be strengths again. For example, the Hunter type is naturally keenly responsive to subtle changes in the environment in order to hunt effectively, but in everyday life this leads to allergic reactions to things like cat hair, pollen, etc., and so the solution is to bring the reactive biological mechanisms back into balance through diet, exercise, and occasional supplements.


D'Adamo believes humans are in some ways more alike in their genotypes than in race or ethnicity; viz. a Chinese hunter with O blood is in in some ways more like an Inca or African hunter than a Chinese nomad with B blood. (They're brothers from another mother.)

That said, I think it is clear that these genotypes are not the whole picture. Obviously apart from genotypes different ethnicities share common genetic traits, otherwise they would not be identifiable as groups, and there is clearly much more needed to understand an individual than just their genotypes. However, what D'Adamo offers is one large and innovative piece of the puzzle.

Take a look at this set of maps of world distributions of blood types of native populations from http://anthro.palomar.edu/vary/vary_3.htm








There are clear differences in the geographic distributions of the different blood types. (Keep in mind that this shows natives, not the layers of immigrants and colonists who came later.)

Take for example the marked difference in Type B blood distribution. In the Indian subcontinent and the African Sahel regions Type B makes up 20-30% of native population; in North America, however Type B is nonexistent, as is Type A. In fact Native Americans are virtually all type O.

Here are D'Adamos quick descriptions in the heading

"Hunters: Tall and athletic, with a square jaw, energetic and intense. They often suffer from allergies, asthma, or rheumatoid arthritis. Blood type O.
Examples: Michael Jordan, Maria Sharapova, Katherine Hepburn, Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan, Vin Diesel

Gatherers: Sweet-natured, emotional, and natural problem solvers, tend to have a high BMI. They struggle with appetite regulation and crash dieting. Blood type O or B.
Examples: Elvis, Oprah, Mikhail Gorhachev, Marilyn Monroe, Orson Welles

Teachers: Sinewy and flexible, with a square jaw, are naturally exuberant with a calm outlook. They are vulnerable to bacterial infections. Blood type A or occasionally AB.
Examples: Abraham Lincoln, Che Guevara, Bjork

Explorers: Muscular, adventurous, and often accident-prone, smart and visually oriented. They're sensitive to caffeine, fragrances, and medications. Any blood type.
Examples: Charlie Chaplin, Prince Charles, Bear Grylls, Julius Caesar

Warriors: Charismatic and quick-witted, flush when nervous and have a hard time relaxing. They're beautiful in youth, but age early and steadily. Blood type A or AB.
Julia Child, James Gandolfini, Hilary Clinton, Michelangelo’s “David”

Nomads: Very tall or short, often with red hair or green eyes, are quiet, witty, optimistic, and rational. They have sensitive digestive tracts. Blood type B or AB.
Winston Churchill, Jack Nicholson, Paul McCartney

Additional notes:
O is the oldest type and is pre-agricultural. They are meat eaters and are found in high numbers among the most ancient and pre-agricultural populations such as most of Africa, the Berbers, the Basques, Native Americans like Mayans and Incas, Celtic regions. Diets like "The Paleo Diet" are suited more toward O types.

A types (Warrior and Teacher) are the agricultural types. They are really the only ones who ever want to consider anything close to a vegetarian diet. That said, many, especially Northern Europeans, are big meat and fish eaters as well. Diets like "The Mediterranean Diet" are suited more to A types.

Nomads are always B type, found predominantly in Asia. D'Adamo believes that type B emerged as humans traveled eastward out of africa, becoming nomads across the vast open plains of Asia. Even within Europe, B blood shows up on the map much more in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe, where it is extremely rare.

AB blood is the rarest of all; it is a pairing of opposites. A blood and B blood are incompatible in blood transfusions. They are literally allergic to each other. Yet some famous people including several presidents like JFK, Obama, Bill Clinton, also Mick Jagger have been AB. ABs literally carry opposites inside them and I have noticed they are frequently are "bridgers" they often talk about how two seemingly irreconcilable forces are actually unified. Ex. Obama: "There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America." If you watch his speeches he speaks in this type of pattern all the time.

Explorers (often negative), according to D'Adamo, are mostly native to the West. They are opposite people. When people say X, they do Y. When the crowd goes left, they go right. The do the opposite to explore new ways and open up new avenues. According to D'Adamo, they are a product of the Ice Age, a topic too long to go into here but spelled out in his explanations online and in the book.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The Genotype Diet is one of those books that opens up an entirely new way of thinking that is not merely abstract but extremely useful.

In addition, Asians have studied blood types in much more depth than Westerners, to a point where everyone knows their own type and associates certain characteristics with different types.

There is a remarkable book by Japan's ABO society out of print but still out there used, You Are Your Blood Type. It is completely based on public surveys of thousands of people and their behaviors. Incredibly interesting. Moreover, it goes into how different types relate to each other in marriage, in work, etc. In Asia, blood types are well known and associated with certain characteristics, influencing marriage, work, etc.

You Are Your Blood Type
http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Your-Blood-Type/dp/0671633422

Iron levels are key

Knowing one's iron levels is crucial to long term health. For guys, the problem is more often excess iron (iron overload), but for women it is more likely deficiency (resulting in anemia). Either can be corrected easily but many people are not aware of their iron levels.

Technically there are a number of ways of measuring iron, including blood levels and stored levels. But anyone can find out a basic measure of your blood iron levels simply by donating blood at the Red Cross (you can also find out your blood type this way, it is printed on the ID card they send you in the mail). Before they draw blood they will do an iron test to make sure the levels are high enough to take out blood. They give a number that one can check against the recommended range.

Excess iron builds up in your liver and when the liver is full it floats around in the body, potentially doing a lot of damage. A prominent book on the subject is The Iron Time Bomb, summaries can be found all over the net.
http://www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com/ebook.asp?page=Iron%20Overload

Those who turn out to have excessively high iron levels used to have to go give blood every month or so to lower them, but now it has actually become very easy to lower them due to a cheap extract from rice bran called IP6. It chelates (binds to) iron, escorting it out of your body. Iron levels come down very quickly.

Those who have low iron can eat more foods containing iron--however plant-based iron is not absorbed well, so meat is a better option.

You can find out how much iron (or other nutrients) a food has at
nutritiondata.com

Fiber and detox

It is baffling how so many fiber supplements claim to be for detox when in fact they do not have the type of fiber involved in detox.

Soluble fiber is what most supplements contain.

Insoluble fiber is the one that is good for detox, yet it is very rarely found in supplements. Good ways to get it are from the skins of vegetables, from seeds like chia or flax (flax for women only), nuts, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_fiber

The sugar and caffeine daily rollercoasters

Many people (including myself for years) ride two rollercoasters simultaneously all day, the sugar rollercoaster along with the caffeine rollercoaster. It's a wild ride, not one I wish to repeat. Often, they go together, as people jump on the caffeine rollercoater looking for a pick-me-up from the downs of the sugar rollercoaster. Here's how it goes:

1) Eat way too many carbs and way too little protein at a meal

2) Hyper - Blood sugar skyrockets (hyperglycemia) to unhealthy levels due to excess carbs, creating hyper-energy state

3) Crash - Since high blood sugar eventually spikes insulin, which takes sugar out of the blood sream, it is followed by a low blood sugar (hypoglycemic) crash; this up and down is the first rollercoaster. Further, eating too little protein results in insufficient secretion of glucagon hormone, which could have helped to mitigate the crash. Glucagon is the natural counter to insulin that sustains blood sugar levels even when insulin is high.

4) When fatigue from low blood sugar hits (dip in the sugar rollercoaster), reach for caffeine to "wake up" and get "energy" (begin caffeine rollercoaster). Caffeine stimulates your adrenal glands to produce adrenaline, giving an "adrenal high".

5) Crash again when the adrenaline from caffeine wears off in 4 hours, resulting in fatigue, irritability, headache, or confusion. Moreover, spiking adrenaline repeatedly through caffeine, day after day, leads to adrenal fatigue in the long term, a burnout of the adrenal glands, with its own constellation of symptoms (see article below)

Repeat cycle morning, afternoon, and evening.

The point: you don't have to ride either of these cycles. You aren't supposed to be tired after meals. Changing the type of food you eat by lowering carbs to a more reasonable amount and including more protein and fats will prevent the insulin spike that sets off this cycle.

The hidden dangers of caffeine: How coffee causes exhaustion, fatigue and addiction
http://www.naturalnews.com/012352.html

The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Nutritional Programs

People have very different metabolisms but this is a good basic starting point for nutrition by Jon Berardi a prominent sports nutritionist.

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/berardi17.htm

Key additional points:
-Eat decent amounts of fat, including saturated fat. Low fat diets were a fad of the 80s, now science has shown it was a bad idea that pushed millions towards diabetes
-Know the difference between good and bad fats
-Don't skip breakfast and eat a solid amount of protein with breakfast--that's your #1 energy source; just carbs i.e. cereal/bread/juice will spike your insulin and you'll crash in an hour or two
-Never drink a soda again as long as you live, unless it is the last drink on earth.
-Never drink a diet soda again as long as you live, even if it is the last drink on earth. They have no value except as neurotoxins including aspartame.
-Eating vegetables is key particularly because they contain fiber, which fills you up and makes your system run better. Figure out what vegetables contain more fiber and eat those.

"Burner types"

Essential reading to get an idea of where you fall on a spectrum based on where you most naturally get your blood sugar from: either from sugar that you eat (called "sugar burners") or from muscle that your burn up into sugar ("muscle burners"). Their diets are totally different.

http://blog.metaboliceffect.com/2010/10/18/the-me-burner-types/

TV/computers and kids: bad combination

"Before the age of 3, children's brains go through rapid development and are being physically shaped in response to whatever they are exposed to. Exposing children to fast-moving images for sustained periods at this time can inhibit their ability to sustain attention, and hinder their development of social skills."

It has been shown that the rays from TV and computers alter young children's developing brains. TV and computer screens emit blue light, the only rays the eye cannot block out. This can alter one's sense of time as well as day and night, it keeps adults up at night. Moreover, TV produces extremely fast images which are not found in nature. Children become accustomed to being passive observers of a hyper-speed world flying by.

Doctors recommend that kids should not be exposed to any TV and internet before the age of 3, and between 3 and 7 very little if at all, "one hour a day at most".

So it's not just that TV leads to kids being sedentary. TV has detrimental effects apart from the couch-potato problem. As this link shows, exercising apart from TV "doesn't make up for kids screen time".
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/10/27/exercise-doesnt-make-up-for-kids-screen-time.aspx

The nature of early childhood learning offers other reasons not to expose children to TV and Internet.

In Rousseau's book Emile: or, On Education, he explores the question of what constitutes a good education for kids. Railing against the over-civilized "educations" of his contemporary French enlightenment society much the way many people railed against Tiger Mom, one of his conclusions is that young kids should not learn to write and read and construct arguments until they have learned to interact with the world i.e. do things first. This theory is echoed by modern childhood developmental psychology, which finds that by nature kids up to middle school are predominantly "tactile-kinesthetic learners", they learn by touching and doing: bumping into stuff, clapping to songs, cutting with scissors, kicking balls, acting out, playing tag, etc. Learn to cut a piece of wood. Learn to climb up a ladder, smell a forest, kick a ball, bake a cake, tie your shoes, wash your hands, draw, make a poster, ride a bike. Gardens and farms, people, walking, fresh air, cooking and shopping, music, sports, museums, painting...

In short, kids are naturally designed to learn by doing. Thus is there a more un-kinesthetic and therefore un-kidlike experience than to sit idly in front of a TV--no matter how "educational" the program? This is Rousseau's problem in Emile: that kids were being "educated" like adults rather than as what they are, kids. Watching TV is purely audial and visual, completely devoid of the very touch and movement that is kids' primary learning mode (unless they're dancing along with a dance instructor...).

There is nothing about computers that can't be learned when one is 10, 20, or older.
Some parents (or teachers) may believe that young kids need to get experience with computers to keep up with a "tech-savvy" generation. It's just the opposite. What kids need is freedom from TV and computers to learn to interact with the world, move and do things, viz., to be kids. Kids need a chance not to be sitting in front of a glowing screen.

http://blogs.mercola.com/sites/vitalvotes/archive/2007/04/24/Why-You-Want-to-Keep-Your-Baby-Away-From-the-TV.aspx

"Chronic cardio" is not a good way to lose fat and/or change your body composition

One time my car broke down and a tow truck came to get me. The driver turned out to be a kickboxer. He said he couldn't lose his belly fat, even though he ran six miles a day. Long cardio sessions day after day have been called "chronic cardio." It is counterproductive for losing fat.

Doing cardio (i.e. 45-90 min jogs) is not "bad" in itself as some bodybuilding sites say and plays a big role in keeping weight under control. Done a couple times a week it just reduces your overall weight, both fat and muscle. However, you don't want to lose too much muscle since muscle mass is a key component that helps burn fat. When you do cardio excessively, you lose so much muscle that you burn fat less effectively. As a result people often end up "skinny fat", with really skinny legs and arms (no fat and no muscle) but still carrying fat on their belly/thighs/etc. (depending on what body type they have).

See "Slow-mo cardio and interval training" on this "Tools of the Fat Loss Physique Page"
http://blog.metaboliceffect.com/2011/07/25/tools-fat-loss-physique/

Protection from the sun

Excessive sun can do a lot of damage to your eyes and skin. Personally, super-bright sun has often left me blitzed, totally fatigued, while I actually like gray skies. But I am beginning to realize that it is lack of nutrition not just genetic predisposition that has been the problem.

Specifically, most people don't get anywhere near enough of two powerful and natural antioxidants which are extremely effective at protecting from the sun: lutein and astaxanthin.

Lutein (like its sisters Zeaxanthin and Cryptoxanthin) is especically concentrated in the eyes. It filters out blue light and allows you to withstand stronger rays. You may notice your eyes become richer in color if you eat more of it. You can get lutein in kale (huge amounts) and spinach as well as egg yolks and a number of other colored-skin foods.

Astaxanthin is what makes salmon pink and is found in ocean animals and plants. It has been called "nature's sunscreen" and prevents sunburn. I love salmon personally but it is usually dry in a can and farmed (not wild caught) as sushi, so as an alternative astaxanthin supplements are very cheap.

If you eat a lot of lutein and astaxanthin, you will notice your sun tolerance go up significantly.

Too much fructose can be dangerous and fattening

We live in an Age of Fructose. The average American ingests an amount of fructose per day that is wildly beyond what humans have eaten for thousands of years. This is due to the addition of artificially-produced sweeteners to just about anything you can imagine; there are "sweetened" forms of cereals to milk to vitamin pills. There is even sweetened toothpaste. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is the notorious sweetener of choice, a cheap artificial byproduct of one of our nationally-subsidized staple crops, corn.

Many health problems are related to excessive fructose:

-Excess fructose has been linked to insulin resistance, i.e. your cells stop listening to insulin and do not receive nutrients in your blood stream even when they are present. Result: those nutrients end up being stored as fat rather than used.

-Excess fructose casues glycation. Like the caramel on Cracker Jacks, AGEs (Advanced Glycation End Products) are burned excess sugars that form when blood sugar is too high, particularly from fructose. These sticky AGE molecules are now being found by doctors to be a culprit in a huge variety of chronic diseases like diabetes, heart diesease, and alzheimers.

-Excess fructose causes gout. It causes high uric acid levels, which is all gout is.

-Worsens diabetes. Fructose was once (and still is by some) touted as the best sguar for diabetics. Turns out to be the worst. Agave syrup, marketed to diabetics, is straight fructose. It is marketed as a health product due to its low glycemic index (GI), but this belies the other effects, especially glycation, which is elevated for diabetics.

For some people, 25 grams a day is about as high as you want to go. If you drink a couple sodas a day, you just quadrupled that limit. One high-fructose corn syrup drink has a wildly unnatural amount of fructose. If you get stuck and need a sugar hit, buy a can of soda and dump half of it out before you start drinking.

For others, like me, who do not process fructose well, cutting out fructose altogether is a good idea. You have to get your carbs frmo other sources, there are plenty from fibrous carbs like legumes to quality starches like quinoa, and also milk if you can tolerate lactose. Fructose is one of many types of sugar which all carry different properties. It is very sweet compared to other sugars like glucose, lactose, maltose, etc. Besides straight fructose, which is actually found in relatively small amounts in fruits, it is also one of the byproducts of sucrose which includes common sugars like table sugar. When you eat white sugar, it breaks down into one glucose and one fructose molecule, so, to be clear, when a package says "sugar" half of it will turn into fructose.

Healthy and Unhealthy Fats

One of the great nutrition myths of the 80s and 90s: that fat-free foods made people lose fat. This myth caused millions of people to eat totally opposite to their nature. Left only with carbs for fuel, it sometimes caused diabetes.

Another myth was that eating fat caused you to become fat. In truth, eating healthy fats actually helps you lose fat.

But fats on the whole are healthy, with some major important exceptions. Good fats: almonds, olive oil and olives (though olives often have a lot of sodium), milk fat (preferably unpasteurized), palm oil, moderate amounts of chocolate (low-sugar which is tough to find), coconunt oil, organic animal fat like in hamburgers not overcooked, high-quality fish oils, chia seeds, flax seed (though they say men should stick with chia), etc.

If you don't really understand fats, you really almost cannot be healthy in the industrial food society we live in. It is worth the time to figure out not just the basics but the fine details, because fats can kill you.

Basically there are two fuels that people burn: fats and carbs. If you don't eat fats you have to eat more carbs. To be stored as excess fat on your body, you have to burn fuel too fast so that there is a surplus. This is easy to do with carbs because they burn quickly, but it is hard to do with fats because they burn slowly.

Eating more fats and protein is also good for diabetes. Carbs drives up insulin in a big way whereas fats do not. Eating fat-free pushed millions of people toward diabetes and/or insulin resistance because each time they traded in fats for carbs, they spiked their insulin in an unnatural way.

Having said that

a) eating too many fats can make you sick. You have to figure out how much is right for you. You can't just inhale a gallon of cream, you won't be able to process it. (I've tried drinking a pint of cream in one shot; though it wasn't too bad compared to what you might expect, I did feel queasy a couple hours later). Also many people do not process plant fats well in their livers and so plant oils can have a toxic effect if you eat too many.

b) there are "fats that heal & fats that kill". The industrial oils like soybean and corn oil used in junk foods are fats that kill. There really is never a good reason to use corn or soybean oils, and yet they have been a staple of American cooking in the industrial food era because they come from our subsized grain crops. They kill because they have a super-lopsided ratio of inflammatory (Omega 6) to anti-inlammatory (Omega-3) fats. Trans fats are deadly as well but are being phased out in most foods, though somehow they still exist.

Low carb does not mean no carb

There is no such thing as a no carb diet. You can't function or retain muscle when you eat no carbs.

Having said that, low carbs works for a lot of people, though not everybody. The key to a low carb diet is that you have to get your fuels from somewhere else besides carbs, namely fats.

You can bacon, eggs, low-sugar chocolate, cream and milk, olive oil, nuts, seeds, etc. These fats are your fuels instead of carbs.

Eating cholesterol is not related to high blood cholesterol

High blood cholesterol has virtually nothing to do with eating cholesterol. There are people who eat lots of cholesterol and have low blood cholesterol, and people who eat low cholesterol and have high blood cholesterol. The dietary cholesterol-blood cholesterol link is a major misconception that prevents people from eating some of the healthiest foods like eggs, whole milk, and meat.

Cholesterol is an essential substance found in many parts of the body especially the brain. Some cholesterol circulates in the bloodstream, and 85% of this blood cholesterol comes from the liver, only 15% from diet. High blood cholesterol levels come from increased cholesterol released by the body into the bloodstream when it is imbalanced/diseased/etc., not from eating steak or an egg. In other words, if you have high cholesterol look at your overall health - essential fat imbalances, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc. And eat as many egg yolks (preferably raw and only organic omega-3) as you want. The cholesterol in these is good for you, great for your brain.

Also, cholesterol comes in two forms, good and bad HDL and LDL. That's another story...

Causes of heart disease

Heart disease has been killing Americans in droves for the last several decades. A quadruple bypass has become a common procedure. While recent studies have shown cave men also had clogged arteries, this disease is affecting younger and younger people. Some of the major causes of the recent epidemic of heart disease are:

a) Lack of eating greens like spinach in an industrial age diet. Spinach and certain other greens contain TMG which greatly reduces homocysteine, the natural byproduct of digesting meat that scrapes arteries. Homocysteine has been likened to "thousands of tiny bits of glass" running through the bloodstream. As the body heals the scraped arterial walls with scar tissue, it also clogs them.

b) Trans fats. These are industrial fats ("partially-hydrogenated oils") that are artificially altered to make them last longer. They are now illegal in New York City and generally considered poison. Whole Foods refuses to sell them. Yet anybody who lived through the 70s, 80s and 90s ate a lot of them. They were in everything from McDonald's to Little Debbie's to plain old Wesson oil. Trans fats have been strongly linked to heart disease. Incidentally, because they happen to be saturated fats, they unduly gave saturated fat a bad name.

Counting calories is a waste of time

Counting calories is a waste of time. It is like counting coins without thinking about what kinds of coins they are. What matters is not the number of calories but the type of calories you eat, because different types of calories have very different effects.

The following foods all have about the same calories:
Two tablespoons of sugar
A large chicken breast
A tablespoon of olive oil

Yet each has a completely different effect on the body, in fact a multitude of different effects. For example, the chicken breast cannot be stored as fat. It's impossible. It is highly thermogenic meaning it will heat up the body (which could be good or bad depending on the person). It will also repair muscle and steady blood sugar by triggering glucagon, the anti-insulin. The olive oil can slow some people down or be steady fuel for others. The sugar is too much for most people and will trigger excess insulin resulting in the vicious cycle of high and low blood sugar i.e. hyper- and hypoglycemia.

These are just some of the different effects that these foods have--and all of these effects are much more relevant to nutrition, disease prevention and reversal, and fat loss than the number of calories they contain.

Where weight loss comes from

I used to think losing fat came from working your butt off. Most people thought that and a lot still do. In the last decade or so, it has become apparent, including a Time magazine cover story, that this is not the case--with an asterisk.

To be sure, losing fat doesn't come from being lazy. And exercise is still essential because it has a major effect on how your body uses food. Not only lack of exercise but the wrong exercise can make it more difficult for your body to use food. But really, the majority of losing fat comes from good eating, which is hard to do because there are so many options people's heads are spinning... but that's another story.

In essence, weight loss is a byproduct of giving your body the right types of fuels that it needs. To do this you have to either a) be lucky, which some people are who are fit without giving much thought to what they eat or b) understand the basics of nutrition. If there is one thing for certain, it is that in nutrition one size does not fit all. Some people need lots of fats, some more carbs and low fat, and most in between. Also, people's needs change over time in both the long and short term. One of the best places to begin is with books that are based on this fact - that one size does not fit all. Books like the Metabolic Effect diet and Metabolic Type Diet are a good start.

Situps are a waste of time

Working out out abs (situps, crunches, etc.) is not only often a waste of time but can be counter productive. Neither Arnold Scwharzenegger nor Mark Wahlberg did/do ab work. There are a number of reasons why:

a) Working out your abs does nothing to make your belly thinner. It actually thickens your abs making your belly protrude. The only thing that makes your stomach smaller is losing overall body fat and/or waste through fitness and detox. The body does not "spot reduce" fat in individual areas.

b) Abs are realtively small muscles not even in the top 10 largest in the body. They give very low "bang for the buck" in a workout in terms of growth hormone and thermogenesis. Working out your biggest muscles (quads, lats, glutes, pecs etc.) gives the biggest bang for the buck. Doing hundreds of crunches is like eat lots and lots of lettuce.

c) Abs are worked in numerous other common exercises such as running, military press, curls, i.e. anything requiring the body to stay straight.

There is one exception to not doing abs: for those who already have a "six-pack" due to extremely low body fat and want to make their abs "pop" more through their skin. In essence, they want to make their stomach thicker, the opposite of what 99% of people want to do.

Health

"Health is the religion of those who have no religion."
-Some Canadian philosopher quoted in a museum in Quebec

Maybe so. But health is a good, albeit a relative one.