Friday, April 1, 2011 at 12:17AM ANTHROPOLOGY
ENERGY
NUTRITION
MODERN DISEASES
Sunday, March 20, 2011 at 08:22PM 
Guest Post by John Michael
Tired and stressed from work, low on money, and pressed for time, the other day I walked into a fast-food restaurant in Bogotá called Carnitas, which in English might best be translated as either “Little Meats” or “Meaties.” Expecting to find within the standard selection of American fast-food items, like hamburgers, pizzas, and hot dogs, all made from unknown ingredients of a dubious origin, I was surprised to find, alongside these items, a variety of steaks.
Both intrigued and enticed by this discovery, I ordered a churrasco combo, which consisted of a rump-steak filet atop a cornmeal tortilla, a side salad, a bowl of steamed Andean potatoes, and a bottle of water. I sat looking at the food arrayed before me, and realized that if I’d held the tortilla and the potatoes, and perhaps requested a bit more salad in exchange, then this meal would actually have been quite Paleo.
If you’re like me, then you know that fast food is generally bad for you. Whenever I walk into a fast-food restaurant, I have to make an effort not to be driven back out of the restaurant’s front doors by the horror stories that I’ve heard. Whether it’s the story of the factories in New Jersey where the scents for hamburger meat and French fries are manufactured, or the story of the meat that’s not really meat, but instead an amalgam of non-meat ingredients concocted by some mad food scientist, American fast-food restaurants have gained a notoriety of mythical proportions in recent years.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 09:44PM II. 46 Posture should be steady and comfortable.
II. 47 [Such posture should be obtained] by the relaxation of effort and by absorption in the infinite.
II. 48 From this, one is not afflicted by the dualities of the opposites
-From The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali, by Edwin F. Bryant
In these three sutras, Patañjali summarizes the implementation of asanas, or postures, that aspect of the Indian discipline of yoga most readily recognized by non-practitioners. Originally developed to keep a yogi’s body fit and healthy so that he could spend the rest of his day seated in deep concentration, seeking with his mind the ultimate goal of his yogic practices, illumination, asanas are now performed by millions of Americans for their health benefits.
At the beginning of the yoga documentary Enlighten Up! a variety of opinions regarding yoga’s age is presented by prominent American yogis, with the range falling between 40,000 and 2,000 years old. But, according to the book Yoga in the Modern World, an excerpt of which is found at The Magazine of Yoga’s website, yoga as we know it in the United States is a relatively recent creation, which for most practitioners takes the form of Modern Postural Yoga (MPY).
Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 05:49PM Does Alzheimer’s Disease start in the liver?
According to ScienceDaily, a recent study in The Journal of Neuroscience Research suggests the liver might be the source of beta amyloid found in the brain of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
Unexpected results from a Scripps Research Institute and ModGene, LLC study could completely alter scientists' ideas about Alzheimer's disease -- pointing to the liver instead of the brain as the source of the "amyloid" that deposits as brain plaques associated with this devastating condition.
This unexpected finding holds promise for the development of new therapies to fight Alzheimer's."
(Maybe it also point the way to understading the cause. Is AD a dietary disease?)
Using a mouse model for Alzheimer's disease the investigators found “significant concentrations of beta amyloid might originate in the liver, circulate in the blood, and enter the brain. If true, blocking production of beta amyloid in the liver should protect the brain.”
Source
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110303134435.htm
Saturday, March 5, 2011 at 08:44PM Anthropologist Mary Stiner lectures at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on Mar. 7, 2011:
What is the legacy of the human ecological footprint in deep time? Our speaker explores the question by sorting out some features of Paleolithic meat diets in Mediterranean Eurasia. These involve predator-prey dynamics, transitions in energy acquisition, and the allocation of labor. By the Late Pleistocene, foragers were restructuring the living communities around them, with consequences for both diet and demographic robustness. These changes in turn altered social relations within early forager societies and also affected the development of cooperative networks across human society.
Learn more here.
Mary Stiner, Paleolithic in Anthropology Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 07:10PM 
When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shop-keepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them — as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon — I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.
Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau was a dedicated walker, who, in his essay “Walking,” admitted to not feeling well unless he spent “four hours a day at least” afoot, traveling through fields, meadows, and forests. Yet, in spite of this national icon’s praise of “sauntering,” a striking characteristic of most American city streets is the absence of pedestrians upon them.
Among the excuses used to avoid walking are unpredictable weather, unsafe neighborhoods, the fear of getting lost, and a lack of time. Additionally, there are the car-related excuses, including the damage to health caused by exhaust, the dangers of distracted drivers, and the unwanted attention a lone pedestrian can attract.
Henry David Thoreau, Walking in Fitness Sunday, February 27, 2011 at 11:21PM ALTERNATIVE ENERGY
ANTHROPOLOGY
FOOD SECURITY
ENVIRONMENT
FITNESS
NUTRITION
MODERN DISEASES
TOXINS
Sunday, February 27, 2011 at 08:29PM 
TokyoWelcome to the Anthropocene. Man’s impact on the planet is now believed to be so great geologist are considering creating a new geological epoch. What factors are driving such a substantial impact on the planet? What will cause the geological record to mark our presence? If we are in the Anthropocene, when did it begin?
According to Elizabeth Kolbert writing in the March issue of National Geographic, Paul Crutzen coined the term “anthropocene” while attending a scientific conference. When the chairman kept using the term Holocene to describe the current epoch, Crutzen exclaimed “'Let's stop it, we are no longer in the Holocene. We are in the Anthropocene.' Well, it was quiet in the room for a while." That quiet has since led to a lot of thinking and scientists now considering the possibility that a new geological epoch has begun.
Stratigraphers are geologists that study the Earth's strata, the layers you can see at a roadside cut. Kolbert observes:
Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 09:35PM 
White-tailed Ptarmigan. Image: Footwarrior11,500 years ago in the Tanana lowlands of central Alaska, a three-year-old child died. The cause of death is not known. According to Natasha Pinol, writing for EurekaAlert, “the remains showed no signs of injury or illness, though that isn't surprising, since most health problems don't leave traces in bones.” The child, a member of a Paleoindian family or clan that was “among the first to colonize the Americas”, lived in a house.
Colored stains in the sediment suggest that poles may have been used to support the walls or roof, though it's not clear what the latter would have been made of. The entire house has not yet been fully excavated, so its total size is still unknown. (Pinol)
After cremation, the child was buried “in a large pit in the center of the home.” Archeologist Ben Potter of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, one of the discoverers, notes:
All the evidence indicates that they went through some effort. The burial was within the house. If you think of the house as the center of many residential activities: cooking, eating, sleeping, and the fact that they abandoned the house soon afterward the cremation, this is pretty compelling evidence of the careful treatment of the child.
Pinol writes:
In contrast to the temporary hunting camps and other specialized work sites that have produced much of the evidence of North America's early habitation, the newly discovered house appears to have been a seasonal home, used during the summer. Its inhabitants, who included women and children, foraged for fish, birds and small mammals nearby, according to Potter's team.
Evidence of a Paleolithic diet was discovered in sediment at the bottom of the 18-inch deep pit, specifically bone of “salmon, ground squirrels, ptarmigan and other small animals.”
The discovery provides a rare look at domestic life of the Paleoindians that crossed, or, more likely, descended from those that crossed the Beringian Land Bridge to Alaska. The report of the find will be published 25 February issue of Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Source: Child's cremation site reveals domestic life in Paleoindian Alaska at EurekaAlert
Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 10:32PM John Durant at Hunter-Gatherer found a great video about gorillas fed mostly processed food for years improving their health when returned to an original diet. David A Gabel of ENN writes:
After a 21 year old gorilla named Brooks died of heart failure at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo in 2005, a group of researchers decided to examine how the gorilla’s lifestyle affect their health.
For decades, zoos have fed gorillas bucket loads of high vitamin, high sugar, and high starch foods to make sure they got all their nutrients. At the Cleveland zoo, they have started feeding food such as romaine lettuce, dandelion greens, endives, alfalfa, green beans, flax seeds, and even tree branches which they strip of bark and leaves.
Watch these gentle giants and the progress they are making:
Gorillas in Modern Diseases Sunday, February 20, 2011 at 05:52PM A friend recently pointed me to a video of Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist, describing her stroke of insight. I previously commented on her book here. In video on TED, Dr. Taylor vividly describes the journey into her own mind and the different "personalities" of each brain hemisphere.
Sunday, February 13, 2011 at 10:18PM 
Swedish massage. Image: istockphoto.comI am currently on a weekend break in the mountains but no longer snowboarding since my cycling injury. I had a massage yesterday, probably the fourth in my life. The experience led me to consider the origin of this practice. While the written record of massage dates to around 3000 BC, what about massage itself? Could its origin much older and date back to the late Paleolithic?
My experience began at the “sanctuary”, a large dimly lit waiting area with a fireplace lending a cave-like atmosphere. The components of the massage (Swedish in this case) were music (specifically flute), oils, and human touch - each element available to humankind for millennia. In view of the millions of years of hominid grooming, it is reasonable to propose that this behavior became more structured with Homo sapiens, possibly at the time of Cro-Magnon, and led to massage or at least a massage-like practice. The flute is at least 40 thousand years old. Oil lamps were carried into the deep recesses of the Lascaux and Altamira caves by Cro-Magnon 13,000-18,000 years ago. Again, all the elements were there.
Massage in Rejuvenation