Monthly Finds - April 2011

ANTHROPOLOGY

• Phonetic Clues Hint Language Is Africa-Born - The New York Times

ENVIRONMENT

• EV Charging Stations Springing Up in Major Retailers' Parking Lots - EcoGeek
• RV Parks Act as EV Charging Hot Spots - EcoGeek
• New Freeway Danger: Roadside Air Pollution Causes Brain Damage in Mice - Discover
• Where the Buffalo Roam - Mother Jones

FITNESS

• Is Sitting a Lethal Activity? - The New York Times

NUTRITION

• Diets High in Fish (and Meat) Linked to Stronger Bones - Primal Wisdom
• Is sugar toxic? - The New York Times
• The American diet in one chart, with lots of fats and sugars - Grist
• Meat Musings: Are Cold Cuts Primal? - Mark's Daily Apple
• Organic agriculture: deeply rooted in science and ecology - Grist

Inflammation impairs frontal lobe brain function

One of the great advantages of the Paleolithic diet when compared to the SAD (Standard American Diet) is the normal balance of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. While both are important for health, the ratio of the two should be in balance with roughly equal amounts of O-3 and O-6. As Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS writes -

Now if you go back and look at the diet of all the hunter-gatherer societies, the “natural” diet of Paleolithic man, and the basic diet of any civilization that lived off the land, eating unprocessed and unrefined foods, you find an interesting relationship between the consumption of the two types of fatty acids: It was always in balance. 

Now consider the SAD diet: the ratio of O-3/O-6 is 1/15! And that is a conservative estimate. The inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids are much higher than the anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids. As Artemis P. Simopoulus of the Center for Genetics, Nutrition, and Health in Washington DC notes - 

A very high omega-6/omega-3 ratio, as is found in today’s Western diet, promotes the pathogenesis of many diseases, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, osteoporosis, and inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. 

In addition to contributing to the development of these diseases, evidence is building that inflammation also affects brain function. In the March 30, 2010 issue of Neurology, H Wersching and colleagues detail their research on the effects of inflammation on higher-level thinking called executive function, specifically on planning, decision-making and self-control. The researchers measured high-sensitivity-C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation, in 447 persons (average age of 63 years) without a history of stroke. High-field MRI scans of the brain were obtained in 321 of these. Sophisticated measures of brain integrity were performed including "fluid-attenuated inversion recovery sequences for assessment of white matter hyperintensities, automated quantification of brain parenchyma volumes, and diffusion tensor imaging for calculation of global and regional white matter integrity, quantified by fractional anisotropy (FA)."

The subjects with high C-reactive protein, thus inflammation, had evidence of "cerebral microstructural disintegration" primarily affecting the "frontal pathways and corresponding executive function", clear evidence that inflammation disrupts frontal brain processes. 

Time for more vegetables.

Related Entries:
An "Insight of the Decade": Chronic inflammation kills
Are mainstream nutritionists beginning to recognize the value of Paleolithic nutrition?

Health Care Without Harm

Health Care Without Harm is an international coalition or hospitals and other health related organizations that "shares a vision of a health care sector that does no harm, and instead promotes the health of people and the environment. The coalition is "working to implement ecologically sound and healthy alternatives to health care practices that pollute the environment and contribute to disease."

Learn more through the video or at Health Care Without Harm.

Ocean Acidification by the Numbers

500
Billions of tons of CO2 emitted through fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) and deforestation since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

30
Billions of tons of CO2 currently emitted each year.

800,000
Years since atmospheric CO2 has been as high as today.

30
Percent of CO2 produced by humans over the past two centuries that has been absorbed by the oceans.

1,000,000
Tons of CO2 absorbed by the oceans every hour.

25
Percent of ocean species that spend at least part of their life in coral reefs. 

80
Percent of loss of coral reefs in the Caribbean from 1977-2001.

2050
Year the oceans coral reefs predicted to loose "ecological functionality." 

Source: The Acid Sea, National Geopgraphic

Doctor's elevated cholesterol drops quickly on Paleo diet

One doctor's remarkable response to the Paleolithic diet.

PlosBLOGS: "The Anthropology of Obesity"

Evolutionary analysis can prove indispensable when considering endemic obesity rates – obesity can be viewed as a problem resulting from the contrast between Paleolithic genetic programming and the present-day obesogenic environment.

PlosBLOGS: Neuroanthropology just posted a bibliography on obesity arranged in the following topics: 

• Evolution and Obesity
• Biocultural Perspectives
• Social Determinants of Health
• Change in Diet
• Obesity Culture
• Health Behaviors
• Economic Influences
• Neuroanthropology Posts

Diets changed from Paleolithic times through the agricultural and industrial revolutions. With the advent of globalization it is of no surprise that change is being observed in food acquisition, consumption, and preparation patterns. Obesogenic environments are on the rise with the homogenization of diet that occurs initially with an increase in consumption of traditional food items, and the subsequent introduction of fast foods, convenience foods, and industrialized food items that are nutritionally devoid.

 This is a great post and resource. Check it out.

Dr. Lustig presents "Sugar: The Bitter Truth"

Robert H. Lustig, MD, Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, holds no punches during his lecture on "Sugar: The Bitter Truth." He takes a direct blow at sugar as the primary culprit for the obesity epidemic. The middle section on biochemistry is tedious, although it contains some pearls. If you want to jump through that section, pick back up at 1:08:29 on the time bar.

While he characterizes the Paleo foods as "raw" - not true of the Upper Paleolithic and maybe not since Homo erectus - he gets it right: the Paleo diet would prevent obesity and its many associated illness such as Type II diabetes.

Replacing Disposability with Biomimicry

Anthony "Van" Jones presentation at TED on the impact of disposable plastics on social justice and how biomimicry might move us forward.

Lecture - Paleolithic Nutrition: What is the Evidence?

Dr. John will be giving a lecture on Paleolithic Nutrition at The Medical Center of Aurora, South Campus at noon on Monday, April 25 and at the TMCA North Campus at noon on Friday, May 6.

Beginning with the origin of farming in the Neolithic, the presentation will move to a review of modern diseases and the benefits of the Paleolithic diet. The lecture will close with a response to some of the critiques of this dietary approach and some final observations.

Portions of the lecture will periodically be presented in written form on PaleoTerran.

Landfills, A Modern Barbarism

Today is Monday, and the streets of my neighborhood are strewn with trash. Last night, my neighbors and I set our bags of garbage along the sidewalk in expectation of the morning pickup. In the hours between then and now, poor people looking to make a bit of money tore through our trash bags in search of recyclables like plastic bottles or cardboard boxes. As I went for a stroll this morning, I found myself disgusted by the piles of garbage that littered the sidewalk. “But what’s the difference,” I suddenly asked myself, “between throwing our trash in the street and throwing it in a landfill?” “Aside from the obvious hygienic benefits,” I mentally replied, “one is just further away from the other.” And as I continued to consider this thought, I began to wonder whether if, by throwing our garbage into landfills, we weren’t throwing it onto the streets of our future generations.

My curiosity led me to research modern waste disposal, and, as you would expect, what I discovered was somewhat disheartening. The waste that you and I generate in our daily lives is commonly known as Municipal Solid Waste, or MSW, which, according to the Center for Sustainable Systems, consists of “common household waste, as well as office and retail wastes, but excludes industrial, hazardous, and construction wastes.” The Center for Sustainable Systems goes on to state that the “[t]otal annual MSW generation in the U.S. has increased more than 67% since 1980, to the current level of 254 million tons per year,” and that, “[i]n 2007, 54% of MSW generated in the U.S. was disposed of in 1,754 landfills.” The EPA echoes this statement, and adds that in the U.S. “33.8% [of MSW] is recovered and recycled or composted, [and] 11.9% is burned at combustion facilities.” While one may like to think that depositing MSW in landfills at least distances the problem from us, the Center for Sustainable Systems deflates this conceit, stating that, “[e]nvironmental implications of landfill disposal include the loss of land area resources, potential leaching of hazardous materials to ground water (proper design limits this possibility), and emissions of methane (CH4, a greenhouse gas) to the atmosphere.” And the technique of incinerating waste is also painted in a grim light; “[t]he incineration of MSW generates a variety of pollutants (such as CO2, heavy metals, dioxins and particulates) that contribute to environmental and human health impacts, such as climate change, smog, acidification, asthma, and heart and nervous system damage.”

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Choosing People over Cars to Build a Better City

Parque Simon Bolivar, Bogota, Colombia

In my country, we are just learning that sidewalks are relatives of parks – not passing lanes for cars.

Over the past 80 years we have been building cities for cars much more than for people. If only children had as much public space as cars, most cities in the world would become marvelous.

          Enrique Peñalosa, Mayor of Bogotá, 1998-2000

On my second day in Bogotá, I was seated in a sidewalk café with two friends, and, as I was about to take a sip of aromatica, which was the local version of herbal tea, in this case containing stalks of fresh lemongrass and peppermint, I sneezed three times in rapid succession. “Welcome to Bogotá,” one of my friends responded in an almost sardonic voice. A few days later, when I was walking with another friend along the Carrera Septima, one of Bogotá’s main avenues, I gestured at the clouds of thick and dark-grey diesel exhaust in which we were surrounded, and noted that Bogotá had the most terribly polluted air of any city that I had ever lived in. “Oh,” she replied in a conciliatory tone, “but it’s not half as bad as it used to be.” And the truth is that Bogotá’s air was once much worse than it is today.

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Bogotá’s Plume of Pollutants

Guest Post by John Michael

When I think about the air that our ancestors must have breathed during the Paleolithic, I imagine that it was relatively pristine and healthy, with the exception of those times when natural disasters like volcanoes or wildfires filled the atmosphere with noxious fumes; but events like these were not the rule, I imagine, and our ancestors no doubt regularly partook of an air that left them feeling healthier with each breath, and from which they had little to fear.

Such is not the case for me these days. I currently find myself living in Bogotá, the densely populated urban metropolis that serves as the capital of Colombia, and which, with over eight million inhabitants, contains a whopping seventeen percent of the country’s population. A large number of Bogotá’s inhabitants moved to the city as refugees, being displaced from their homes by Colombia’s seemingly interminable civil war, which has been fought for the past forty-seven years. This rapid and disorderly exodus from the countryside has caused unregulated housing to sprout up throughout the city. Locals know these provisional neighborhoods as casas o barrios de invasion, or, “invasive homes or neighborhoods,” in which basic amenities like running water and sewers are absent, and in which the inhabitants live in frightening poverty. This sudden and haphazard increase in size has led to multiple problems for the city, with the most ever-present and irritating of these being for myself the horrible quality of its air.

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