Some quick thoughts

The biochemistry is already there!

Here is a post from Chris Kresser yesterday about fat selection and health.  I am always interested in studies like this, for several reasons.  Naturally, one of them is that it lends itself to supporting my ideas!  But also, I think it is funny how studies like this get all the publicity and notoriety, when we have seen time and time on this blog, and many others, and in the research that this is what should happen.  As always, my personal bias is in the biochemistry and molecular mechanisms that are used by our body, and in these fields we have learned that this is what we should expect when do this kind of experiment on human subjects.  The underlying biochemistry has been developed, and now we put that into practice into these kinds of studies.

Move!

I saw this video of an interview with Ido Portal posted the other week, and it was simply amazing.  Everything about it was inspirational, my favorite quote was "Move, because if you don't, tomorrow you might not be able to"!  So true.  I think I am going to start to implement some of this kind of stuff into my own work.  It doesn't take much to just move around in any way you can imagine, and in my first few goes it has been really fun.  It is also true play, which is something Mark Sisson has talked about frequently, and is tough for many people to implement.  However, all it take is just moving, whatever you can think of, just do!  And always remember that any position you can think of that you can't do is simply some where you could improve.  When you watch the video he makes it all look so easy, but in practice almost everything he does is impossible!  He has a great youtube channel, I would recommend everyone spend some time on it.

Gut Health and Biofilms

Here is a very interesting blog post that deals with a new theory on how pathogenic bacteria might be hiding out in places we don't even know.  I think this is a pretty interesting theory, and has some important applications for everyone.  One of the main things I got out of it was that we might have bacteria that are hiding away in the hard to reach parts of our intestines, and these guys can be brought to life at very inopportune times.

I notice that many times when I eat problematic foods (alright you caught me! Usually this is drinking alcohol), or lots of gluten I will very soon after get sick.  While I used to think this was indication of some sort of gluten intolerance, I now think it is probably due to these biofilms.  When we destroy the villi that make up our intestine we expose these bacteria, and if we also have created a little leaky gut we can quickly get them into circulation and ready to cause havoc!  However, our villi will regrow and cover them back up soon enough, so you can recover from this type of illness rather quickly, which is what have experienced many times. While I don't think we need to go all out on something like this, including some probiotics, maybe some vinegar-y salad dressing every now and then would be helpful to reduce our biofilms.

The Business of Paleo

Here is a cool article I found via Melissa Mcewen's twitter feed.  I feel exactly the same way as this guy, and some of the ideas he presents have made me start to dislike some of favorite bloggers.  I do understand that they do this for a living, so they need to sell products, but sometimes it just goes too far.  What ever happened to just wanting to help people?  There is so much free information out there I can't imagine what they provide in these certifications and pay-to-read programs.  Plus almost all the research they use to make them is mostly free too (why we don't have more free access to scientific literature is beyond me. I wish I was still living on a college campus!).

I do still count myself as a proud member of the ancestral health community, but the direction it is going is definitely worrisome to me.  I will still pay to attend bigger events like AHS because of the community interaction and information sharing, but the rest of this stuff makes us seem like we're just looking to make a buck.  I enjoy doing research and learning new ways to tweak what I do to be a more holistic human being, and gladly share it with anyone who comes across this blog, sadly it seems like this view is in the minority of paleo bloggers these days.  Hopefully it is just a stage...