Paleo-Style Meals

Karen De Coster is an accountant of some sort who seems to have lots of hatreds. She offers dietary advice below without reference to a single scientific study of what she recommends. Her advice is however on its face ludicrous. She is an advocate of the "caveman' diet.

I had to laugh when I read what she says about a normal Western diet. These are the effects of a normal diet that she lists: "obesity, diabetes, inflammation, autoimmune disorders, heart disease, cancer, ambiguous mental disorders (such as depression and anxiety), and dubious behavioral disorders". She left out the most important one: An unprecedentedly long lifespan!

The caveman diet may well be a good way of controlling weight. Almost any consistently-followed dietary discipline probably is. But the other claims are just an expression of the common elitist hatred of everything that normal people enjoy

The term "living like a caveman" is plastered all over the mainstream news these days, drawing in folks who are curious about this new "caveman diet." The media has become inordinately curious as to how so many people can overcome burdensome weight problems and scores of health issues by adopting an eating plan that is essentially a rejection of modern food convenience and a return to sanity through personal responsibility.

The paleo or "primal" lifestyle is receiving an abundance of attention because enquiring minds want to know more about it. The main thrust behind the paleo or primal lifestyle is that we humans are hunter-gatherers, and our genes are partial to the real food just like our ancestors. We have not evolved to adapt to the heavily processed, high-carbohydrate, grain-loaded, industrial oils-based garbage diet of the modern era. Those of us who reject this conventional diet negatively refer to it as the Standard American Diet (SAD). The effects of this food have been devastating on all of human health, and not only in America. Everywhere the SAD is embraced, people are suffering all of the same afflictions associated with modern western civilization: obesity, diabetes, inflammation, autoimmune disorders, heart disease, cancer, ambiguous mental disorders (such as depression and anxiety), and dubious behavioral disorders.

Mark Sisson’s newest book, 21-Day Total Body Transformation, is not a gimmicky guide for daft dieting and short-term sculpting. Instead, it’s a book on how to live real – eating real food, employing real movement, and adapting to your modern life through the application of evolutionary principles. The book not only challenges the Standard American Diet, but it also rejects the overly-stressful and time-consuming exercise patterns that have become common practice for folks who struggle to lose weight through fitness.

Both movement and food are crucial elements in transforming your health, and Sisson places a high emphasis on diet because years of disinformation, from the scientific community as well as the government-media establishment, have confused an issue that is actually very straightforward once you come to understand some of the basic concepts.

Don’t let the book’s title mislead you – the 21-day transformation is not about going from out-of-shape to svelte in three weeks so you cram yourself into those undersized clothes hanging in your closet. Instead, Sisson describes the book as a 21-day adventure, or transformation, to eliminate old habits and replace them with new ones. He calls it a transformation "that will last for the rest of your life." This transformation is best described as a move from the Standard American Diet and futile chronic exercise to primal, evolutionary-based practices that take the most advantageous conventions from our ancestors and reshape them for modern life. Sisson calls this "dialing in your eating, exercise, sleep, and play for the rest of your life."

This book is a follow-up to Sisson’s mega-selling 2009 release, Primal Blueprint, for which Mark received many accolades for the book’s originality and precise message. For many folks, however, adopting new habits, after a lifetime of established routines, presents them with a thorny challenge without a blueprint to guide their action plan. This book serves that purpose.

Sisson lays out the framework by introducing eight key concepts that form the core of the transition from one who engages prevailing practices to a freethinking and empowered individual. Adherence to these concepts will serve to reform the reader’s habits and establish some new ways of thinking that supplants conventional wisdom. The eight key concepts are, in summary: (1) reprogramming your genes through choices (2) discovering optimal gene expression, or finding your own perfect recipe for health (3) transitioning from a carbohydrate-based metabolism to a fat-burning metabolism (4) controlling body composition through food quality (5) understanding why grains are unnecessary (6) unraveling the lies and myths about fat (7) knowing the role of exercise in weight management, and (8) maximizing fitness with minimal time.....

Eating right – real, whole foods – is so simple, yet so misunderstood, and most people don’t have a clue where to start. Fighting through the food demons and exercise mythology is not always a clear path at a time when there is so much conflicting information being cranked out from second-rate sources and so-called "health experts" are ramming conventional nonsense down the collective throat of the disoriented populace.

More fanaticism here




Simple liquorice pill that takes the misery out of the menopause

"The numbers involved in the study were too small to be sure the liquorice had any effect"

It probably brings back happy childhood memories. But liquorice could also help take some of the misery out of the menopause. A pill containing the sweet root cuts the number of hot flushes women experience by up to 80 per cent, as well as helping to keep bones strong, researchers say. And there are no side-effects to boot.

The pill produced ‘remarkable’ results when taken daily by women who were close to or going through ‘the change’, the scientists insist. This is thought to be because plant chemicals in liquorice have a similar effect to the female sex hormone oestrogen, levels of which plummet around the menopause.

A U.S. fertility conference heard that in future, liquorice-based supplements could provide women who cannot or will not take traditional, oestrogen-based hormone replacement therapy with an effective alternative.

The oestrogen in the pills, patches and implants used by up to one million British women can cause headaches, dizziness, stomach cramps and nausea. In addition, fears that HRT raises the risk of breast cancer and heart problems have refused to go away.

The researchers, from the University of Southern California, gave supplies of liquorice extract called licogen or a placebo pill to 51 women who were going through or who were close to the menopause. The volunteers, who had an average age of 51, took a pill once a day for a year. They also kept diaries to note their symptoms.

It took eight months for the women to see any improvement. But within a year, most of those taking the liquorice found that the number of hot flushes and night sweats they had each day fell by 80 per cent – or from an average of ten to just two.

And instead of waking an average of four times, their sleep was disturbed just once or twice, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s annual conference heard.

Hot flushes and night sweats affect most women in the years leading up to and after their last period. Most women are bothered by them for four years, but they can disturb sleep, zap energy, cause embarrassment and reduce quality of life for up to 20 years.

Researcher Donna Shoupe said: ‘Women really felt it worked and made a difference.’

The liquorice also seemed to slow the thinning of bones that comes with age.

Unfortunately, eating it as a sweet rather than as a concentrated supplement is unlikely to do much.

The researchers were funded by a liquorice company but carried out the study independently. They added that HRT should still be a woman’s first choice.

David Sturdee, president-elect of the International Menopause Society, said the numbers involved in the study were too small to be sure the liquorice had any effect.

But he added: ‘Anything that we can get that is non-hormonal and would be useful as an alternative to HRT… must be welcomed.’

SOURCE