Celiac and Fat-Soluble Vitamins

One of the things I've been thinking about lately is the possibility that intestinal damage due to gluten grains (primarily wheat) contributes to the diseases of civilization by inhibiting the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins. If it were a contributing factor, we would expect to see a higher incidence of the common chronic diseases in newly-diagnosed celiac patients, who are often deficient in...

Cincau Hijau - Kendalikan Tekanan Darah Tinggi Pasti nikmat sekali minum es cincau di hari panas terik seperti sekarang ini. Rasa dahaga hilang, manfaat kesehatan pun diperoleh. Kandungan seratnya cincau cukup tinggi. Penelitian Prof. Dr. Sardjito dkk dari Yogyakarta berhasil membuktikan bahwa penyakit darah tinggi bisa dikendalikan dengan cincau. Ada empat jenis cincau yang dikenal masyarakat, yaitu cincau hijau, cincau hitam , cincau minyak dan...

The Seat of Power

Have you ever wondered why the buttocks is one of the most attractive parts of the body on both sexes?The shape of the buttocks comes mostly from the gluteal muscles (maximus and medius), superimposed by a layer of fat. The 'glutes' are some of the strongest muscles in the body, due to their large size and efficient leverage. Thrusting doesn't even come close to tapping into the glutes' tremendous power. What does? Heavy lifting. Sprints. Jumps....

Real Food VIII: Ghee

All this talk about butter is making me hungry. Richard mentioned in the comments that he bought some ghee recently and has been enjoying it, so I thought I'd post a recipe. Ghee is the Hindi word for clarified butter. It's butter that has had everything removed but the fat. Rich in fat-soluble vitamins and lacking the sometimes problematic lactose and casein, ghee has rightfully been considered...

Meditation

Meditation is the single most effective tool I've ever found for cultivating calmness, positivity and self-acceptance. It's an ancient technique that's simple and free. In fact, it's so simple, I'm about to teach it to you in five minutes over the internet. I personally practice Zen meditationseveral times a week, by myself and with a sitting group. Meditation is not fundamentally a religious practice, although it has been used by spiritual people...

The Dhamma Brothers

I saw a movie a few nights ago called 'The Dhamma Brothers'. It's about a meditation program at Donaldson correctional facility in Alabama, one of the most violent prisons in the country. Two Bhuddist teachers of Vipassana meditation led a 10-day silent retreat for a volunteer group of inmates. They got up at dawn and meditated for several hours each day. Some of the inmates went through an amazing transformation.They were forced to confront...

Vitamin K2, menatetrenone (MK-4)

Weston Price established the importance of the MK-4 isoform of vitamin K2 (hereafter, K2) with a series of interesting experiments. He showed in chickens that blood levels of calcium and phosphorus depended both on vitamin A and K2, and that the two had synergistic effects on mineral absorption. He also showed that chickens preferred eating butter that was rich in K2 over butter low in K2, even when the investigators couldn't distinguish between...

Activator X

Activator X, the almost-mythical vitamin discovered and characterized by Weston Price, has been identified! For those of you who are familiar with Weston Price's book 'Nutrition and Physical Degeneration', you know what I'm talking about. For the rest of you, allow me to explain. Weston Price was a dentist and scientist in the early part of the 20th century. Practicing dentistry in Cleveland, he was amazed at the poor state of his patients'...

Foraging

A friend and I went hunting for morels today in the Wenatchee forest. There was only one on the entire mountain, but we managed to find it:We also found two "spring kings": spring-fruiting boletus edulis, also known as porcini or cepe. Firm and nutty, without a trace of bugs:Raw is my favorite way to eat a good spring king. Here's an older one that was 6" across. Too old for me so I left it for...

More Masai

I left out one of the juicier tidbits from the last post because it was getting long. Investigators Kang-Jey Ho et al. wanted an explanation for why the Masai didn't have high serum cholesterol despite their high dietary cholesterol intake (up to 2,000 mg per day-- 6.7 times the US FDA recommended daily allowance).They took 23 male Masai subjects aged 19 to 24 and divided them into two groups. The first group of 11 was the control group, which...

Masai and Atherosclerosis

I've been digging deeper into the health of the Masai lately. A commenter on Chris's blog pointed me to a 1972 paper showing that the Masai have atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries. This interested me so I got my hands on the full text, along with a few others from the same time period. What I found is nothing short of fascinating. First, some background. Traditional Masai in Kenya...

Hormesis

Why are we so soft today? Why is it that our ancestors were able to perform feats like killing bears and wooly mammoths in snow-swept grasslands? How do present-day tribesmen withstand days of ultra-cold temperatures in Northern Greenland and prolonged periods without water in scorching hot Kenyan deserts? Why is it that a century ago, children in the Swiss alps ran barefoot through ice-cold mountain...

Nature's Laws

Last night I was watching a little video clip of the Jack LaLanne show. LaLanne was an advocate of strength training and whole foods nutrition whose TV show ran from the 1950s through the 1980s. In the clip, he describes how his father died an early death due to heart and liver disease. A quote that really stuck with me was when he said his father died due to "disregarding nature's laws". That pretty much sums up my philosophy. Live in a way...