Yesterday I recommended 4000 IU of vitamin D each day as a good starting point for most people. Though, it’s difficult – nay, impossible – to provide a perfect, universal prescription for vitamin D3 intake. People, and their lifestyle behaviors and environmental conditions are just too different. It’s like with diet. Everyone does well with the basic building blocks, stuff like meat, fat, vegetables, fruit, and nuts, but the optimal ratios are going to differ for individuals based on genetics, dietary history, activity level, and glucose tolerance. Everyone needs vitamin D, but multiple confounding factors must be taken into consideration to determine the right dosage. To start with? Yes, 4k is a good starting point. From there, though, things get considerably more complicated – as they always do.
Now, I don’t want to overcomplicate things, however. The same basic advice holds: get unfiltered sunlight, avoid burning, and take supplements when sunlight […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

Bad science breeds diet mythology. Somewhere along the way someone screws up. The screw-ups can range from borderline deception and outright idiocy to a more subtle kind that is not apparent upon closer scrutiny and careful reflection by a third party. Sometimes the devil is in the details.
In many cases the mass media is to blame. Dumbed down translations of results, coupled with soundbites taken out of context and comments from “experts,” can easily distort the true meaning of a study. Sensationalistic headlines like “fruit is fattening” sells more papers than “HFCS in refined foods may cause weight gain”.
Sometimes we are to blame. When looking for the next cutting edge diet strategy or pill to optimize fat loss and muscle gain, we tend to look for stuff that validates our theories or fantasies. We are prone to readily accept any evidence, however weak and vaguely presented, as long as it […]

Original post by noreply@blogger.com (Martin Berkhan)

Bad science breeds diet mythology. Somewhere along the way someone screws up. The screw-ups can range from borderline deception and outright idiocy to a more subtle kind that is not apparent upon closer scrutiny and careful reflection by a third party. Sometimes the devil is in the details.
In many cases the mass media is to blame. Dumbed down translations of results, coupled with soundbites taken out of context and comments from “experts”, can easily distort the true meaning of a study. Sensationalistic headlines like “fruit is fattening” sells more papers than “HFCS in refined foods may cause weight gain”.
Sometimes we are to blame. When looking for the next cutting edge diet strategy or pill to optimize fat loss and muscle gain, we tend to look for stuff that validates our theories or fantasies. We are prone to readily accept any evidence, how ever weak and vaguely presented, as long as […]

Original post by noreply@blogger.com (Martin Berkhan)

I have to admit, I have only been exposed to thick bar training on a few occasions. I simply have never trained in a gym that had many thick barbells or dumbbells. My guess is that 99.9% of the people reading this article don't have access to thick bars either. I do have a solution for this, but first lets talk about how thick bars can significantly improve upper body development.

[If you can develop a vise-like grip, weights that once felt heavy will now feel lighter in your hands. This strength will transfer over to your entire upper body. I’ll discuss why this is the case in a second.]
How Does a Strong Grip Help With Pressing Movements?

I think most people understand the idea of grip strength helping pulling movements like chin ups and rows. It makes sense because if your grip is too weak you won't be able to hold […]

Original post by admin

From the presence of vitamin D receptors in our cells and vitamin D factories in our epidermis, along with the central role vitamin D plays in calcium metabolism, immunity, and gene expression, it’s pretty clear that having adequate vitamin D is an essential component of being a healthy, successful homo sapien. And yet, many health practitioners suggest that vitamin D deficiency is one of the biggest nutrient deficiencies in modern society. The question, then, arises: What’s the best way to get enough vitamin D – via oral supplementation or sunlight?
To determine that, let’s examine a few common questions surrounding the various modes of intake.

Is it natural?
This is a big one. We obviously care about how nature shaped human evolution. Shouldn’t then our mode of obtaining vitamin D also be “natural”?
For us humans, getting vitamin D from sunlight is the clear winner if judged by this standard alone. We are basically […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

Why think beyond Nutrition and Exercise?
Because there is so much more that is in our control.
We can’t change the air we breathe, our genetics or whatever the long term effects of being surrounded by cell phone signals, wi-fi, and the like…but we can control what we eat, how much we move AND we can control our actions.
And our actions DO EFFECT our physiology.
(Think about the feeling you get when you get caught doing something really bad…like a speeding ticket…it’s not just mental it is a whole body reaction.)
Here’s a great quote from Dr. Zhivago:
“Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike… Our nervous system isn’t just fiction, it’s part of our physical body, and it can’t be forever violated with impunity.”
There’s more to health than organic foods, protein, fish […]

Original post by Brad Pilon

Before phototropic plants began bending toward sunlight, before jellyfish developed ocelli, the light-sensing organs that allow them to distinguish between up (sunlight) and down, before the bikini-clad beach denizens began tanning en masse, and before the first house cat followed the sliver of sunlight around the room all afternoon, our primitive, microscopic marine forebears were flourishing by converting the sun’s energy into chemical energy usable by biological life. You’re probably aware of photosynthesis, the process by which plants, algae, and other organisms do it and produce byproducts like oxygen, but even the unicellular archaea that do not produce oxygen utilize sunlight for energy. And if you aren’t obtaining energy directly from the sun, you’re probably eating the organisms that do. Either way, sunlight directly or indirectly supports all life (well, except for the chemoautotrophs living in deep sea hydrothermal vents feeding off of inorganic energy sources like iron, ammonia, or […]

Original post by Mark Sisson