Paleo for a special needs family

It took years to get our bodies into this dysregulated state, and it will take many years to fully recover. In the meantime, we have learned to patiently tend to our health. Following a Paleo lifestyle means keping our stress down, eating clean foods, eliminating grains & dairy, sleeping adequately, exercising appropriately, and keeping the focus on our health. The experience described above easily could have broken any marriage and family apart. Thankfully, we were able to use it to bond us together and created the peaceful and loving family we have always wanted.

PeaceLovePaleo

Contemplating a primal existence

Comuna Rhiannon, Ecuador. Image: John MIchael

I have always been a nature girl. I love to do anything outdoors. I climb, hike, sunbathe, I watch and listen to the animals, I smell flowers. I am not very attached to things like most are in our country. I own very little and live very simply. I like it that way. But I’m also cosmopolitan. I love the opera and stimulating conversation. I’m academic and highbrow. I love the pursuit of knowledge and the perfection of talents. I live for contemplating and creating.

How happy would I be without ...

Could You Really Live the Primal Life?
The Primal Parent

Update: New Mexico fire now a "megafire"

“Megafire” at Gila National Forest. Image: U.S. Forest Service 

The largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history continues to burn, having already charred an area larger than New York City. Known as the Whitewater-Baldy Fire Complex, the wildfire has become another in a series of “megafires” to torch the American West due to an unprecedented combination of drought conditions, climate change, and alterations in land-management practices.

Climate Central 

Related Post

Fire in Gila National Forest, New Mexico

Wayne of GoPrimal on "Organic vs Grassfed"

GoPrimal

Paleo diet helps young woman overcome anorexia

I know this is not a typical success story, but I feel that my mental success is equally as important as my physical success. I am finally looking forward to movies, meeting new people, completing my school work, and playing with my 17 month old. I now eat to live instead of living to eat/binge by myself.

Mark's Daily Apple

Getting fatter on the typical Western diet

Image: Newsweek magazineGary Taubes, an Investigator in Health Policy Research at the Berkley School of Public Health, has been battling conventional wisdom regarding nutrition for years. He has delivered his message in many forums including the 2007 book, Good Calories, Bad Calories and the 2011 book, Why We Get Fat.

His most recent contribution is an article in the May 14 print issue of Newsweek: The New Obesity Campaigns Have It All Wrong. Taubes notes that conventional wisdom regarding the cause of obesity is based on the concept of “energy balance”:

At its heart is a simple “energy balance” idea: we get fat because we consume too many calories and expend too few. If we could just control our impulses – or at least control our environment, thereby removing temptation – and push ourselves to exercise, we’d be fine. This logic is everywhere…”

Unfortunately, the "energy balance" concept is failing us: 42% of American will be fat by 2030. Even NIH Director Francis Collins has difficulty explaining the failure - “We are struggling to figure this out.” Taubes has another view:

There is an alternative theory, one that has also been around for decades but that the establishment has largely ignored. This theory implicates specific foods – refined sugars and grains – because of their effect on the hormone insulin, which regulates fat accumulation. If this hormonal-defect hypothesis is true, not all calories are created equal, as the conventional wisdom holds. And if it is true, the problem is not only controlling our impulses, but also changing the entire American food economy and rewriting our beliefs about what constitutes a healthy diet. (emphasis added)

Related Posts

• Did we start loosing willpower in the late 1970's?
• Paleolithic Nutrition: Diet and Modern Disease
• The Standard or Average American Diet
• Are mainstream nutritionists beginning to recognize the value of Paleolithic nutrition?

Research: Physical activity and consumption of fruits and vegetables lengthen life in women 70-79 years of age

Study: Fruit and Vegetable Intake, Physical Activity, and Mortality in Older Community-Dwelling Women

Publication: Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, May 2012

Goal: “To examine the relationship between fruit and vegetable intake, physical activity, and all-cause mortality in older women.”

Participants: 713 women aged 70 to 79 years

Measurements: “Total serum carotenoids, a marker of fruit and vegetable intake, and physical activity were measured at baseline. Physical activity was measured according to kilocalorie expenditure.”

Results: “The most active women were more likely to survive than the least physically active women.  …Women in the highest tertile of total carotenoids were more likely to survive those in the lowest.”

Conclusion: “The combination of low total serum carotenoids and low physical activity, both modifiable risk factors, strongly predicted earlier mortality. These findings provide preliminary support that higher fruit and vegetable intake and exercise improve survival.”

Update: Dragon returns to Earth

Image: SpaceX/Michael Altenhofen

Congratulations to SpaceX & NASA. As noted in an earlier post, on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) launched a cargo-carrying Dragon capsule on a Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station. Today, Dragon returned to Earth marking the successful completion of an historic mission. 

2012 Everest expedition cut short due to Warming

Everest Base Camp. Image: istockphotoA leading Everest outfitter, Himalayan Experience, is cutting short the 2012 season because of the increased risk due to the warming climate. Stephen Lacey writing for Climate Progress reports on the company’s decision:

Russell Brice, head of the leading Everest climbing operation Himalayan Experience, announced that he would pull his team off Everest, citing unprecedented temperatures that made climbing too dangerous. Heeding advice from experienced Sherpas worried about the warmth, Brice decided to cancel his 2012 expedition because of unstable ice.

Himalayan Experiences’ Billi Bierling, writing from Everest Base Camp notes:

While I am writing this basking in the unseasonably warm sunshine, the Himalayan Experience base camp is slowly being dismantled around me. “The last Sherpa loads were carried down from Camp I this morning and now all our equipment is off the mountain,” Russell said feeling relieved that all his Sherpas have been up and down the Khumbu Icefall safely. “It was hard for me to send the Sherpas through the icefall after I had made the decision to cancel the expedition due to the looming dangers there, however, we had no choice as we had to bring down around 250 loads,” he continued.

To Apa Sherpa, who has climed Everest a record 21 times, the warming trend over the past 20 or so years is readily apparent:

In 1989 when I first climbed Everest there was a lot of snow and ice but now most of it has just become bare rock. That, as a result, is causing more rockfalls which is a danger to the climbers.”

Also, climbing is becoming more difficult because when you are on a mountain you can wear crampons but it's very dangerous and very slippery to walk on bare rock with crampons."

Let it snow.

Other Mt. Everest post

Quote: Gluten "nearly derailed" David Hahn's 1999 Everest climb

Robert Krochmal, MD, a Primal Doc

I am passionate about the practice of Integrative Medicine not only because of the power it has to optimize health, but also because it promises a lifetime of learning and surprises for me. There is no better feeling as a physician than to see a client feel rejuvenated, to be filled with energy and enthusiasm for life…

Robert Krochmal, MD
Woodland Hills, CA
PrimalDocs 

Jet fuel & obesity

About 5 million more is spent every year in the jet fuel needed to fly heavier Americans, compared with 1960 weights.

Gary Taubs
The New Obesity Campaigns Have It All Wrong
Newsweek, May 14, 2012

New Recipes section on PaleoTerran

One of the most common requests I get from people who are starting to eat Paleo or Primal is finding recipes. There are a number of excellent bloggers who post detailed, sometimes witty, often delightful and frequently well-illustrated recipes. PaleoTerran has periodically linked to recipes, and at times added its own. In a new section simply called Recipes, you will find links to Paleo and Primal recipes from throughout the net.

The list will grow to about 100 links, and then older posts will be removed as new ones are added. This will keep the list from becoming static and difficult to use. I welcome your feedback in the Comments section of this post or at paleoterran (type the @ sign) me.com

(Yeah, I know, the "me" thing. I preferred .mac but Apple does not always get it right.)