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Hi folks, today we’re back for another edition of Ask a Health Coach! Erin is here sharing her strategies for making good health a priority during the pandemic, plus what to do when you feel like you’re putting in a lot of effort without a lot of reward and what she eats in a typical day. Got more questions? Keep them coming in the Mark’s Daily Apple Facebook Group or in the comments below.

Annie asked:

“I love the way I feel when I eat clean, but meal prepping always takes a backseat to all the other things I need to do, especially now that I’m working, parenting, and homeschooling. How do I carve out time to eat healthier?”

You’re not alone in feeling the pressure of doing it all. With all of our waking hours being consumed by work and family responsibilities, making time for the non-essentials like exercise and eating well (which I would argue are essential), seems nearly impossible.¹

At first glance, the issue is pretty straightforward, right? There’s not enough time. There are only 24 hours in a day anyway. But here’s the deal, people who feel like they have the least amount of free time, the ones who feel the most overworked, are actually doing it to themselves.

In this study, researchers had 7,000 participants estimate how much time was needed to accommodate their basic needs compared to how much free time they had in their schedules.² It turns out that their time constraints were an illusion.

The pressure of what we have time for and what we don’t has more to do with the things we assign value to rather than how many hours there are in a day.

That being said, everything we do in life is a choice – what we eat, say, and do, where we spend our energy and our money – they’re all choices. And, as you might guess, there are consequences of those choices.

There’s no doubt that your life is busier than ever right now. You’ve probably never worn more hats in your life, but instead of looking at food as an afterthought, or telling yourself you “don’t have the time,” I suggest you try giving it a little more attention.³ Here’s why.

If you choose not to make meal prepping a priority (or at least keeping healthy food on hand), the consequences might be that you find yourself grabbing snacks throughout the day, ordering less-than-healthy takeout, or not eating enough quality food, which can bring on an afterhours binge. And the consequences of those actions might mean you’re feeling foggy and fatigued day after day, making it even more difficult to do all the things you need to do.

Keep in mind, these are just consequences of your choices.

Also, you mention that you love the way you feel when you eat clean, so, you already know it’s worth it to take good care of yourself. You know how it feels when you can’t stop snacking on goldfish crackers in front of the TV versus the satisfaction you get from sitting down for a well-balanced meal eaten slowly where you enjoy every freaking bite!

While you might not have time to spend hours in the kitchen, how about throwing something in the crockpot before the day begins? Or making a big batch of chili or stew over the weekend. Or roasting a whole chicken and some veggies in the oven.

Again, it comes down to choices and priorities. How great would it be to have more focus throughout the day because you decided to put your health first? How amazing would it be to feel energized into the evening hours instead of feeling drained? By making a simple shift in your priorities, you could see a dramatic swing in how you feel throughout the day.

Adam asked:

“I’m really struggling here. With all the time I spend reading labels and tracking my macros, I’m finding that the effort is becoming greater than the benefit. I’m doing all these things but not really noticing any results. What gives?”

Ah, the sweet reward of bigger biceps or a smaller pant size. You’re not alone in wanting results. That’s why health and fitness is a $4.5 trillion industry.⁴ But I get it. You’re diligently putting in the work, day after day, and not seeing the outcome you’re looking for.

There could be a few different factors at play here, but one you might want to consider is a phenomenon called discounting, which basically means that the more effort you put into something, the less valuable the reward becomes. In a study published in Cognitive Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, researchers had participants do two simple tasks that would be rewarded with a cash prize.⁵ Sometimes the tasks involved high effort, other times it involved a low amount of effort. They found that the participants who put in more effort responded to the reward with less enthusiasm than those who put in less work.

You can blame the nucleus accumbens for that.⁶ It’s the part of the brain that’s in charge of the reward circuitand is based on two essential neurotransmitters: dopamine and serotonin. So, in a nutshell, it’s just how we’re wired.

Does that mean you shouldn’t put in the effort? It depends. In general, I don’t subscribe to the typical diet culture where everything is weighed, evaluated, and overanalyzed. I opt for teaching my clients to have an effortless relationship with food where they eat satiating, satisfying, nutrient-dense meals when they’re hungry without micromanaging every detail.

But if you take pleasure out of reading labels and managing your macros as you’re doing, keep doing it. I’ve found that in situations where people actually enjoy the effort they put in, the journey ends up being more rewarding than the destination itself.

“I’ve been following Mark’s diet for several years and I love seeing posts about what he eats during the day. But what does your day look like?”

Let me start by saying that knowing what works for you and your body is nutrition gold. It really is. You can read every nutrition book in the world, follow dozens of “healthy” food bloggers and influencers, and copy Mark’s diet (or mine) to a tee, but since every human is unique — and responds differently to different foods, it’s important to know what works for you.⁷

For instance, I follow the Primal way of eating fairly closely, as you might expect.⁸ Most nights you’ll find me with a grilled ribeye and plate of steamed veggies smothered in butter. Maybe a square or two of dark chocolate. But sometimes, I’ll have an evening where I partake in some good old-fashioned carbs and dairy. For me, nothing beats delighting in a few perfectly crispy, salty roasted potatoes accompanied by a thick dollop of rich, organic sour cream.

I know exactly how my body responds to foods like these. And armed with this information, I can choose to treat myself without any fuss or worry. I encourage you to find what works for you too. When you start your day with eggs and bacon do you feel satiated or starving? When you drink coffee are you wired or alert? When you indulge in carbs do you get sleepy or energized? Like I said, everyone’s different and no amount of researching how other people eat will give you the same answers as listening to your own body.

Got thoughts? Share ‘em in the comments below.

The post Ask A Health Coach: How’s Your Relationship with Food? appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

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By far the most exciting health trend to hit the scene in the last few years is the Carnivore Diet. Tens of thousands of people are adopting it. Passionate online communities devoted to discussing and extolling the virtues of exclusive meat-eating have sprung up. And while in raw numbers it isn’t as big as keto, “carnivore diet” is running neck and neck with “vegan diet” on Google Trends for the past year. It’s one I’ve been watching for a long time.

Over ten years ago, I addressed the idea of a zero-carb carnivorous diet right here on this blog.

A few years ago, I went over the advantages and shortcomings of the carnivore diet and even gave my suggestions for making it work better.

Earlier this year, I explored the notion of a seafood-based carnivorous diet.

Today, I’m going to pull it all together and give an overview—a definitive guide, if you will.

Instantly download your Primal and Keto Guide to Eating Out

Okay, so what is the Carnivore Diet?

It’s quite simple (which is part of the appeal and effectiveness). You eat meat and don’t eat plants.

If it explored three-dimensional space by hoof, claw, wing, or tail, had live kin or laid eggs, and defended itself with direct action, non-violent resistance, or by fleeing, you can eat it (and its products). If it rooted itself to the ground, reproduced by bee, consumed sunlight and water, and defended itself with chemical compounds, you cannot eat it (or its products).

If it sounds extreme, you’re right. The carnivore diet is unlike anything most people have ever considered.

But adoption rates aren’t exploding because everyone’s deluding themselves: People are reporting real benefits.

Clearer thinking: If a carnivore diet induces a state of ketosis, it will also increase mitochondrial biogenesis in the brain and reduce brain fog. This allows your brain to generate more energy and clears out excess ammonia which slows down the thinking process.

Improved gut health: A carnivore diet is an extreme elimination diet. It eliminates all the most common triggers of gut inflammation, including fiber, lectins, grains, legumes, sugar, seed oils, and in some cases dairy. If any of those foods are the cause of your gut inflammation, removing them from your diet will improve your gut health and even allow it to heal.

Weight loss: Weight loss gets a whole lot easier when you’re not starving. Most people who go carnivore find they’re unable to eat enough to gain body fat; the diet that is most satiating while still being nutritious will almost always come out ahead without even trying.

What Do You Eat On a Carnivore Diet?

At the heart of it, the carnivore diet is very simple: eat only animal foods and do not eat plant foods.

Do Eat

Meat: beef, lamb, bison, pork, chicken, turkey, venison

Seafood: fish, shellfish, shrimp, crab, lobster

Animal foods: eggs, bone broth, animal fat, bone marrow, organs

Eating food from all three categories on a consistent basis is important for obtaining all the nutrients you need.

The following foods are contentious and not all carnivores eat or accept them.

Dairy: milk, cheese, cream, butter; some carnivores avoid lactose and only eat low-lactose dairy like hard cheeses and butter and cream.

Honey: since honey comes from bees, which are animals, honey is technically a carnivore-friendly source of carbohydrates.

Most carnivores allow salt and pepper. Some use herbs and spices and even things like garlic. Some carnivore dieters avoid coffee, tea, and alcohol because they’re made from plants. Others permit them.

Carnivore vs. Keto

If carnivore sounds a lot like keto, you’re right. There are many similarities between carnivore and keto.

They’re both lower-carb and higher-fat than other diets.

They may both help you reach ketosis.

They both involve eating a lot of animal products.

The main difference is that keto contains plants and carnivore isn’t necessarily low-carb.

You could be keto and eat entire salad bowls full of leafy greens.

You could be carnivore and eat 100 grams worth of carbohydrates from milk.

You could be carnivore and eat more protein and more moderate amounts of fat, while keto is by definition a high-fat diet.

But, as commonly practiced, the two can be very similar. Most carnivore dieters eat close to zero carbs, a good amount of fat, and are in ketosis much of the time. Most keto dieters eat more animal products than the average person. It’s very easy to combine the two. In fact, there’s a clinic in Hungary called Paleomedicina that does exactly this, using a high-fat “paleolithic ketogenic” carnivore diet (2:1-3:1 fat:protein ratio) to treat patients with otherwise intractable chronic autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes, Crohn’s, and rheumatoid arthritis. Not only are they getting great clinical results, they’re getting great results and closely tracking relevant biomarkers.

Which leads me to the next section…

Who Should Try Carnivore?

Anyone can try it. Populations for whom carnivore seems to work best are people with autoimmune or immune ystem diseases like eczema or rheumatoid arthritis, and people with gut disorders like IBS or Crohn’s.

Why?

People with autoimmune and gut disorders almost always have dysfunctional and dysregulated gut biomes, and carnivore represents a hard “reset” for the gut. You pull out all the fermentable fibers and sugars and carbohydrates and gut-disrupting antinutrients found in plant foods and go back to square one.

Carnivore Diet Pros

Animal nutrients are more bioavailable.

Plant nutrients usually undergo a conversion process before humans can utilize them, and not every human has the same conversion capacity. Meanwhile, animals and their constituent parts contain nutrients in the perfect form for other animals to absorb. Retinol is the “animal form” of vitamin A, and it’s far more effective than beta-carotene, the plant form. Long-chained omega-3s found in seafood are far more effective than shorter-chained omega-3s found in plants, which must be converted to the longer “animal form.” Name a nutrient, and it’s probably more bioavailable in animal form.

Animal foods contain unique nutrients you can’t get in plants.

Some of those essential and/or helpful nutrients only occur in meat, like creatine, carnosine, taurine, or vitamin B12. If you don’t eat meat, there’s literally no realistic way to obtain these essential (or conditionally essential) nutrients without relying on supplementation, which didn’t exist until the last hundred years.

Animal foods have no toxins.

Because animals can run and bite and claw and fly to get away from predators, they don’t need to employ kind of passive chemical warfare that many plants use to dissuade predation. Plants cannot run. They cannot move, and so they must manufacture chemicals that irritate guts or outright poison the animals who seek to eat them. There are no phytates, lectins, gluten, oxalates, or other problematic compounds in a ribeye. Except for blatant allergies and intolerances to red meat, like the ones that arise with a Lone Star tick bite, meat is safe from a toxin standpoint.

Eating meat made us human.

When hominids ate very little meat, maybe grabbing a leg bone here, a lizard here or a mouse there, our brains were much smaller and less impressive. As hominids progressed and grew more intelligent, their diets changed to include more and more animal food. They started out as scavengers, cracking bones and skulls left behind by more obligate predators. They developed thrusting weapons.  They became incredible throwers and developed lethal projectiles. They developed language and tactics to coordinate assaults and lay traps. And as the meat poured in, the brains grew. Humans as we are them today emerged stepwise with meat.

My take is that it was a combination of a few things:

1. Animal meat, fat, and animal-based nutrients. The human expanded as we ate more and more meat, although the causality isn’t clear . It could be the nutrients, protein, and calories found in animal foods provided a stimulus for brain expansion. It could be that our desire for meat necessitated an expanding brain to enhance our intelligence, cunning, tool-making, and hunting ability—that those humans whose brains expanded were better adapted to hunting. It could be all of that at once (my guess).
2. Fire. With fire, we could extract more calories from both plant and animal foods—cooked tubers are more digestible than raw and fire allowed us to access the residual calories bound up in bones and connective tissue. Paleo-anthropologists call this “grease processing”: boiling pulverized animal bones in animal skins to extract every last drop of fat, gelatin, and protein.
3. Seafood. Early humans were coastal dwellers. Researcher Stephen Cunanne has been beating this drum for over a decade, showing through anthropological and neurological evidence that the long-chain omega-3 fatty acid DHA was necessary for human evolution and brain development.¹

The point is undeniable, though: the expansion in human brain size and intelligence clearly coincided with the rise in meat consumption.

Now, none of these arguments confirm that we should only eat meat and eschew all plant foods. They do confirm that meat is a natural part of the human diet—and a major part.

Carnivore Diet Cons

Detractors point out some potential cons to the carnivore diet. How do they hold up?

No fiber.

Detractors say carnivore is unhealthy because it precludes fiber. Is this true?

For one, it’s not quite true that carnivore diets contain no fiber at all. Animal fiber exists in the form of gristle, cartilage, and connective tissue, and at least in other obligate carnivores like cheetahs, can provide prebiotic substrate that enriches the gut bacteria.²

Two, it’s unclear whether fiber is necessary. Clearly, it’s not essential in the sense that you will die without it. And there’s evidence that “more fiber” is necessarily helpful in digestive disorders, and may even be harmful. But there is good evidence that prebiotic fiber offers beneficial metabolic and gut health effects in the average person eating an average omnivorous diet. And no, it’s not just about fecal hypertrophy. There is real evidence that feeding your gut bacteria soluble and prebiotic fiber can enhance health and produce beneficial metabolites.

Where the question remains is whether those benefits occur in carnivorous dieters, or whether carnivorous dieters need fiber. Is fiber necessary only on omnivorous diets? Perhaps. I suspect we’ll learn more as time goes on.

Micronutrient deficiencies.

While meat is a great way to get bioavailable sources of most B vitamins and many other unique nutrients, plants are the primary sources of folate, magnesium, potassium, and vitamin C in the diet.

If you’re not careful, a low-carb diet can lead to low levels of folate.³ Dr. Ted Naiman has seen this in carnivore patients of his who are otherwise healthy and robust. The best sources of folate on a carnivore diet are liver (which you can’t eat every day because of excess vitamin A) and egg yolks (which must be pasture-raised or follow a specially-formulated diet to be really rich in folate). Eggland’s Best Organic eggs are actually a decent source of folate and readily available if you can’t get pasture-raised.

There are no great animal sources of magnesium, with the best probably being halibut and cod. Snails and fish eggs are also good sources.

Meat is a good source of potassium but you have to make sure to consume all the juice. That means eating your meat rare and letting it rest before cutting into it.

Chris Masterjohn had a great talk with Paul Saladino about the vitamin C/carnivore issue. Chris’ stance was that while a well-made carnivore diet can provide enough vitamin C to avoid scurvy, it might not provide enough vitamin C to be optimal and do the “extra stuff” vitamin C can do. Paul was more skeptical of the need for higher levels of vitamin C. Where both agreed is that a carnivore must eat organ meats (liver and kidney, especially) to obtain enough vitamin C.

If you don’t eat dairy or bone-in small fatty fish, you risk calcium deficiencies—so consider incorporating them.

The potential exists for micronutrient deficiencies. Eating a bunch of turkey breast or ground beef won’t cut it.

No vegetables.

In previous posts, I’ve supported the idea that plants are important to eat, or at least incorporate as medicinal inputs—in marinades, in teas, in small amounts.

I stand by that assessment. I still like vegetables. They don’t affect me in a negative way and they taste good. They’re low-carb, provide helpful micronutrients, and reduce the formation of harmful fatty acid peroxides in the digestion process.⁴ Used in marinades and sauces, plants and herbs can reduce the formation of carcinogens during the cooking process. And every traditional culture we’ve ever seen—even the Inuit and Masaai—consumed plant foods on a regular basis and considered them important and even essential.

If you are someone who reacts poorly to the plant compounds found in vegetables, you may be better off not eating any. Vegetables aren’t required for survival like meat and animal fat are required. But if you can tolerate vegetables, it’s a good idea to eat them. To me, the benefits are great enough that I recommend most people (even carnivores) sample vegetables until they find some they can tolerate. Remember: there’s a difference between eating vegetables for calories and eating vegetables for medicinal purposes.

There are also acute issues that sometimes arise with carnivore diets.

Carnivore Constipation

What happens if you’re not pooping like you should?

Confirm you’re actually constipated. Carnivore is a low-residue diet. There’s not much left over after you absorb everything. You’re not eating loads of fiber and most of the nutrients you’re taking in are highly bioavailable. No matter what happens, you won’t be practicing fecal hypertrophy like you were on an omnivorous diet containing fiber. Your “lack” of pooping may be totally normal.

Get more electrolytes. Salt, magnesium, and potassium all impact your digestion. Potassium and magnesium in particular are required for optimal muscle contractions, including the muscle contractions that move food along the digestive tract. Salt provides the chloride we need to produce hydrochloric acid, aka stomach acid.

Check your fat intake. A mistake some people make when starting a carnivore diet is eating too much lean meat. Adding in fattier cuts of meat can speed things up.

Give it time. Your gut biome is adjusting to the new environment. Things may take awhile to normalize. Resistant starch can help here.

Carnivore Diarrhea

Back when Joe Rogan went carnivore for a spell, he had incredible energy and body composition shifts but first had to get past the “explosive diarrhea.” Reports from others around the Internet suggest that this isn’t rare for people just starting out. What to do?

Too much fat, too fast. Increase fat intake more gradually.

Rapid shifts in the gut biome. Suddenly removing all the substrate your gut bacteria were eating can throw things off. Give it some time.

Resistant starch if it persists. If the diarrhea lasts longer than a couple days, try a little raw potato starch (for resistant starch) to improve consistency.

If you noticed, the reasons for diarrhea track closely with the reasons for constipation. Changes to the gut biome can manifest differently along the same diarrhea/constipation spectrum and often have the same solution.

Carnivore Diet Supplements

If you do it perfectly, a carnivore diet should contain all or most of the nutrients you need to thrive. But supplements can make it easier, and they may optimize your experience. A few to consider:

• Magnesium
• Mineral water
• Freeze-dried organs
• Fish oil
• Collagen
• Broad-spectrum polyphenol blend
• Electrolytes

Magnesium: Important electrolyte, vital participant in over 300 physiological functions, and rather hard to get on a pure carnivorous diet. Almost everyone should be supplementing with magnesium.

Mineral water: A good mineral-dense sparkling water like Gerolsteiner is a nice way to obtain hard-to-get minerals like magnesium and calcium.

Freeze-dried organs: The ideal is to eat liver, heart, kidney, and/or spleen on a regular basis. They’re more nutrient-dense and contain wide ranges of nutrients you won’t find elsewhere in the animal. If you can’t or won’t eat fresh organs, you can get freeze-dried capsules.

Fish oil: If you’re not eating seafood, you need a source of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids. Fish oil is the most straightforward way to get them.

Collagen: Collagen is necessary to balance out your intake of muscle meat—which will be elevated on a carnivore diet. In the absence of a steady intake of gelatinous bone broth or direct consumption of connective tissue, collagen peptides become essential.

Broad-spectrum polyphenol blend: The carnivore people go back and forth on polyphenols. Are they plant poisons? Plant pesticides? The point remains that the evidence in favor of polyphenol intake is quite robust. And yes, polyphenols are stressors. They act as plant toxins that our bodies interpret as hormetic stressors and trigger a beneficial response. I wouldn’t take something like this every day (nor do I), but I would take it intermittently as a stand-in for intermittent plant consumption.

Electrolytes: Electrolytes are essential, especially on any carb-restricted diet (keto, low-carb, carnivore, etc). There’s this dedicated electrolyte supplement that Robb Wolf helped design, or there’s my own Collagen Quench mix that also contains collagen, vitamin C, and polyphenols (from fruit powder) in addition to the potassium and sodium.

So, Does Carnivore Work?

Carnivore appears to work.

A big part of staying healthy in the modern environment is the erection of artificial boundaries and the self-administration of artificial hardships. We could eat 10000 calories of junk food a day if we wanted. We could sit on the couch and be entertained and have all our food delivered to us if we wanted. Most of us never have to do an iota of actual physical labor if we don’t want to. But because doing that would make us sick and fat, we limit ourselves to moderate amounts of healthy real food, we go the gym, and we make it a point to take walks. These are artificial interventions we enact to emulate the ancestral environment to which we are adapted. These are boundaries.

There isn’t a simpler boundary to set than “eat animals, don’t eat plants.” And therein lies the power.

Now, I’m not going carnivore anytime soon. Although I have shifted my eating in that direction, I’ll always die on the “Big Ass Salads are great” hill (even if I’m loading them up with extra meat and cheese). Carnivore is exciting because it reveals that there’s room for extremes:

It shows that eating only meat won’t kill you—and it may make you stronger. It won’t give you diabetes, colon cancer, heart disease, or make you obese. A diet based on animal foods is safe and, for many people, optimal.

Gut health is paramount. Health starts in the gut, as Hippocrates said, and extends to every manifestation of your wellness. Carnivore might not be the only way to fix a leaky, dysfunctional gut, but the fact that it’s so good at improving gut health-related conditions should give you pause.

Plant foods are not benign. The popular conception of a “healthy diet” is one awash in leafy greens, broccoli, whole grains, and other plant foods. Mountains of produce, a “baby’s fist-sized piece of lean meat.” Even those of us who’ve been weird enough to eat low-carb diets rich in animal fat for years often have a tough time washing that stereotype from our consciousness.

Carnivore repudiates what all the health authorities tell us to do. It’s the exact opposite of what our moral and scientific “betters” have been preaching for decades. And because I’ve always been an iconoclast, someone who bristles at the thought of being told what to do, this appeals to me. I’ve never been convinced by the shoddy evidence that meat is bad for us. That entire legions of people are eating nothing but meat and failing to come down with the colon cancer and heart disease they’re “supposed to” is endlessly satisfying.

Once more, I don’t think carnivore is necessarily sustainable for a lifetime, especially if you don’t take special care to eat nose-to-tail-to-tendon-to-tripe-to-skin. But I do think it’s worth a hard look for people with autoimmune diseases, gut disorders, or those people for whom no other diet has worked. I think carnivore-adjacent eating will become a thing. I think carnivore cycling paired with cycles of omnivory will prove useful for a great many people.

What about you, everyone? Have you tried the carnivore diet? Would you?

References

1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25373088/
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22074361
3. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/bdr2.1198
4. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf040401o

The post The Definitive Guide to the Carnivore Diet appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

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Cody Haun is the epitome of a 21st century strength scientists. As he ventures out on his own, leaving academia for private practice, he is set up to track, analyze, and assess every aspect of your training and nutrition.

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What do you know about cumin? Cumin seeds are pungent, potent little things with the ability to significantly change the trajectory of a dish. They are featured prominently in Mexican, Mediterranean, Indian, Middle Eastern, and certain Chinese cuisines.

Back in the Middle Ages, cumin was one of the most popular – and most accessible – condiments for the spice-crazy Europeans, and stories tell of soldiers going off to war with loaves of cumin bread in their satchels for good luck. Cumin originated in the Mediterranean, and it was used extensively by the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Persians, and just about everyone in that region.

Cumin vs. Caraway

It’s not a good idea to substitute cumin for caraway, or vice versa. They are somewhat similar in appearance, but vastly different in taste. Cumin gives Mexican and Middle Eastern recipes their signature aroma, whereas caraway is most common in Eastern European dishes. Cumin seeds are larger than caraway seeds, and cumin is a more warming spice than caraway.

Cumin is often confused with caraway, which is actually called “cumin” in multiple European languages.

Health Benefits of Cumin

Cumin is in my top 10 favorite spices mostly for taste, but the benefits for health don’t hurt.

As is usually the case with spices that have been in use for thousands of years, cumin appears to provide a number of potential health benefits. It contains anti-glycation agents, antioxidants, and anti-osteoporotic, and much more. Note that many of the surnames in the following PubMed links are of Indian origin.

Cumin, along with ghee and a host of other spices, played a prominent role in the Ayurvedic medicinal traditions, and I love seeing a lot of these supposedly “old wives’ tales” get preliminary scientific justification:

• The jury is still out on whether dietary AGEs¹ are worrisome, but it’s clear that the formation of endogenous AGEs is a much bigger concern, especially for diabetics. In diabetic rats, cumin extract was more effective at reducing blood glucose and AGE production than glibenclamide, an anti-diabetic drug.²
• Cumin’s anti-glycation properties proved useful in another study, in which diabetic rats were able to stave off cataracts after oral dosing with cumin powder.³
• Another study found that cumin extract reduced total cholesterol, triglycerides, and pancreatic inflammatory markers in diabetic rats.⁴ These effects were marked by a reduction in elevated cortisol and adrenal gland size, an increase in the weight of the thymus and spleen, and replenishment of depleted T cells. There was a dose dependent response, but all doses had beneficial effects.
• An extract of cumin had anti-osteoporotic effects on rats, similar to estradiol, but without the associated weight gain. Cumin-dosed (orally, 1 mg/kg) osteoporotic rats had increased bone density and improved bone microarchitecture.⁵
• Cumin protected the livers of rats from ethanol- and rancid sunflower oil-induced toxicity.⁶
• One study even seems to suggest the potential for cumin to help weaning addicts off of opiates by reducing tolerance (yeah, it could increase the subjective high, but it would mean less product was required) and dependence.⁷
• Antioxidant content of commonly available commercial cumin in Pakistan was found to be “potent.”⁸ It’s unclear whether the same holds true for cumin in other countries, but I imagine it probably is. Go with whole seeds and grind as needed, if possible, as ground cumin (and anything, really) will be more exposed to the air and thus more liable to degrade. If you’ve got ground cumin, store it in the fridge in an airtight, sealed container. It also helps to heat the seeds before grinding to really release the flavor. I usually toast them on a cast iron skillet over low heat for a couple minutes (just wait for the smell and don’t let them burn), but one study⁹ found that microwaving whole cumin seeds actually preserved the aromatic and antioxidant compounds better than traditional oven roasting. Go figure.

It is thought that some of the health benefits are magnified when you pair cumin with coriander.

Black cumin isn’t the same as culinary cumin – its uses are more medicinal.

What Is Cumin Good For?

Curries are great and expected places to insert cumin, of course, but why not branch out and explore? Cumin used to act as a replacement for expensive black pepper for people who couldn’t afford it, so why not treat it like that yourself and add it to things you’d otherwise never think to? Cumin and scrambled eggs. Cumin and sweet potatoes. Cumin and homemade stock for a nice hot drink before bed. If you’d eat it with black pepper, try it with cumin – not for any health benefits, necessarily, but just for a nice change of pace. My latest favorite is beef (any cut will do) marinated in lime juice, wheat-free tamari, and cumin. I just did a batch of bone-in short ribs like that with homemade beef broth, and it was incredible. I highly recommend it.

Cumin Recipes

Here are a few recipes featuring cumin as the star of the show:

Cumin and Coriander Lamb Stir Fry

Salmon Zucchini and Lemon Skewers

Instant Pot Lamb and Sweet Potato Stew

Cuban Mojo Chicken

How Do You Pronounce Cumin?

Depending on who is speaking, you may hear cumin pronounced as KYOO-min or KOO-min. The official pronunciation is KYOO-min.

Now you know.

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Deadlifts with dumbbells or kettlebells are kind of pointless unless you’re doing single-leg variations. Wrong.

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For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering a reader question about beans. But it’s not just about beans. It’s about something called the Bean Protocol, a rather new dietary approach that many of my readers have expressed interest in. The Bean Protocol is supposed to improve the liver’s ability to clear out toxins, thereby preventing them from recirculating throughout the body in perpetuity. Today, I’m going to discuss where it fits in a Primal eating plan.

Let’s go:

Hi Mark,

Have you heard about this “Bean Protocol”? From what I can tell people are eating tons of beans and getting great results. It’s supposed to remove toxins from the liver or something else that only beans can do.

What do you think?

Thanks,

Matt

I did some digging around. I read the Bean Protocol coverage over at PaleOMG, where Juli has been following the protocol for several months now and seeing great results. There’s a Bean Protocol E-course that I did not sign up for, but I think I have a decent handle on the topic.

How to Do the Bean Protocol

Here’s the gist:

• No caffeine
• No sugar
• No dairy
• No gluten
• No processed food
• No factory-farmed meats; no fatty meats
• Eat 6-8 half-cup servings of beans or lentils a day.
• Fill the rest of the food with lean meat, leafy green vegetables, alliums (onion, garlic, leek, etc), and cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower).

What’s Supposed to Happen on the Bean Protocol

The soluble and insoluble fiber in the beans binds to toxins which the body can then flush out more easily. Without the fiber from the beans, your body can’t process and excrete the toxins, so they simply recirculate, stay in the body, and sometimes express themselves in the form of acne and other diseases. Adherents credit the bean protocol for fixing longstanding issues like acne, Crohn’s, and many other conditions.

Is this true? Is there any evidence of this in the scientific literature?

Well, there isn’t much direct evidence for beans improving liver clearance of toxins, but there is circumstantial evidence. For one, prebiotic fiber is good for liver health. There are plenty of studies to support this.

Synbiotics (a combination of probiotics and prebiotics) and BCAAs taken together improve hepatic encephalopathy, a feature of liver failure where the liver fails to detoxify excess ammonia.¹ However, it does not do so directly. The fiber isn’t necessarily “binding” to the lead and excreting it. Instead, it does so by increasing levels of lead-binding gut bacteria which in turn bind and excrete it, shoring up the gut lining so that lead can’t make it into circulation, increasing bile acid flow, and increasing the utilization of healthy essential metals (like zinc and iron). The bacteria are essential for the effect; pre-treatment with antibiotics abolishes the benefits. So we can’t say for sure that the fiber itself is “binding” to the toxins.

Allium, Inulin

The Bean Protocol is also rich in allium vegetables like garlic and onions, another source of prebiotic fibers shown to improve liver health and toxin clearance. For instance, inulin given to rats prevents acute cadmium toxicity.² Inulin also increases bile flow.³ Moreover, compounds found in garlic improve glutathione activity in the liver and enhance its ability to metabolize toxins.⁴

Cruciferous Vegetables

The Bean Protocol also emphasizes cruciferous vegetable consumption. The crucifers, which include cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and kale, can exert beneficial effects on liver health. Sulforaphane, one of the most prominent compounds in cruciferous vegetables, has well-established effects on toxin clearance. It can speed up the clearance of airborne pollutants and counter the carcinogens formed from high-heat cooking.⁵⁶

Back to Basics

By emphasizing lean meats and eliminating sugar, alcohol, and industrial food, you are eliminating the major causes of fatty liver in the diet: sugar, seed oils, and alcohol.

My point is not to disparage the Bean Protocol. I think it has some merit. My point is to point out that beans alone probably don’t explain the benefits people are seeing. There’s a lot more going on than just beans.

Lectins and Phytic Acid in Beans

Okay, okay. So while beans aren’t the only (or even necessarily the best) way to obtain prebiotic fiber to modulate gut bacteria and improve liver health and therefore toxin clearance and metabolism, they are promising. But aren’t beans bad for you? Aren’t they neolithic foods full of lectins and anti-nutrients that are anything but Primal?

Lectins are anti-nutrients and beans do have them. Studies show that they can damage the intestinal lining, prey upon already-damaged intestinal lining, and prevent the body from repairing that damage.⁷ If they make it into the bloodstream, they can bind to cell membranes throughout the body, trigger autoimmune reactions, and cause real havoc.⁸ People have actually been hospitalized from lectin poisoning.⁹

But here’s the thing: cooking and soaking deactivates the majority of legume lectins.

• In one study, navy and kidney beans showed 0.1% lectins leftover after cooking.¹⁰
• One study found that pressure cooking kidney beans for 30 minutes eliminated all hemagglutinin activity.¹¹
• In another, a combo of soaking and cooking white beans completely eliminated activity of the most pernicious lectin, the one responsible for kidney bean poisoning: phytohemagglutinin.¹²

Most of the research indicting legume lectins used animals consuming large amounts of raw lectins. Those people who got lectin poisoning ate undercooked kidney beans. Don’t eat raw or undercooked beans and make sure they’re soaked overnight. Canned beans are also prepared pretty well.

Okay, what about phytic acid?

Phytic acid is the primary storage form of phosphorus in plants. When you eat a food containing phytic acid, it can bind to several other minerals, like calcium, magnesium, and zinc, and prevent their absorption. Diets based entirely in high-phytate foods can thereby lead to nutrient deficiencies. As legumes are one such high-phytate food, people are justifiably cautious about basing their diet on them.

Soaking legumes is really good at reducing phytic acid. In one study, cooking straight up without soaking reduced phytate by 20%, cooking after soaking in the soaking water reduced it by 53%, and cooking after soaking in fresh water reduced it by 60%.¹³ Another study found that cooking in fresh water after 16 hours of soaking with a 3:1 water:bean ratio eliminated 85% of phytate.¹⁴ That basically takes care of the problem.

If you want to really eliminate phytic acid you can sprout your legumes. You can also buy pre-sprouted beans.

What about the carb content of beans?

Legumes are higher in carbs than many other Primal foods but not as high as you might think. The musicality of the legume partially offsets its carbohydrate density. All those sugars and fibers being digested by gut bugs and producing the farts are carbs that you aren’t consuming as glucose. If you pay attention to “net carbs,” you’ll love legumes—at least compared to something like potatoes or bread.

Which, by the way, is why legumes appear to be so helpful in the Bean Protocol.

A half cup of cooked black beans has 20 grams of carbs with 7.5 coming from fiber.

A half cup of cooked chickpeas has 30 grams of carbs with 5 coming from fiber.

A half cup of cooked pinto beans has 22 grams of carbs with 7.7 coming from fiber.

A half cup of cooked lentils has 20 grams of carbs with 7.8 coming from fiber.

And much of that fiber, remember, comes in the form of galactooligosaccharides, that same prebiotic shown in studies to improve gut health and even increase lead excretion. But these are also FODMAPs, which, depending on your gut biome, can be helpful or painful. Some people won’t be able to handle the gas, some will get downright painful bloating, while others will get huge prebiotic benefits. Your mileage may vary, so just figure out what works.

Are beans actually nutritious, though?

Legumes aren’t nutrient-dense compared to something like liver or oysters, but they’re more nutrient-dense than grains and many other foods.

Again, a half cup of beans isn’t very many carbs. Maybe 20 grams, with only two thirds of that turning into glucose. You’ll get a lot of food for your gut and a decent whack of some important nutrients like folate, copper, magnesium, and manganese. That half cup of black beans provides 32% of your daily folate requirements, 20% of copper, 14% of magnesium, and 17% of manganese. A half cup of lentils provides 45% of your daily folate requirements along with 28% of copper and 21% of manganese. Not bad for a measly 20 grams of carbs.

A Plea: Lentils

If you want to try the Bean Protocol and insist on doing the 8 servings a day version, I’d recommend you go with lentils.

A cup of standard lentils gets you:

• 40 grams carbs, almost 16 g fiber.
• 230 calories.
• 18 grams protein. Legume protein can’t replace animal protein, but it can offset some of your requirements.
• 90% of folate.
• 28% of vitamin B1 (thiamine), 25% of vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid), and 21% of B6 (pyridoxine). B vitamins generally aren’t issues for folks eating Primal, but they can’t hurt.
• 55% of copper.
• 17% of magnesium.
• 43% of manganese.

Lentils added to a meal slow gastric emptying, which should keep a person fuller longer.¹⁵ This is in contrast to most sources of refined carbs, which increase a person’s hunger.

Another benefit is that lentil prep is simple. They contain less phytic acid than most other legumes and require less soaking (or none at all) and cooking time than other legumes to reduce it. If you want to sprout lentils, they sprout much quicker than beans.

All in all, I’d say the Bean Protocol is worth trying if you’re interested or intrigued. I don’t know that the “8 servings of beans” is more important than the other stuff you’re eating or omitting, but I also know that sometimes things just work a certain way even if the hard clinical evidence hasn’t been established. After all, people used to say the same thing about Primal or keto.

If you do try out the Bean Protocol, be sure to keep us all informed and up to date on your progress. I’d be really curious to hear about it.

The post Dear Mark: What’s With The Bean Protocol? appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss

There’s strength in numbers. Never is this more true than when it comes to committing to working out.

It’s the reason people hire personal trainers or sign up for a bootcamp with a friend: Accountability. And what more convenient accountability partner than your intimate partner? If you live with the person, even better.

What if we’re at different fitness levels? How does that work?

Rest assured, it can still work, even if one person is much fitter, stronger, or faster than the other.

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To call this beverage tea might be a little misleading. “Creamy Mug of Cozy, Warming Deliciousness” is more accurate. It just plain feels good to drink this lightly sweet, vibrant blend of heated almond (or coconut) milk, turmeric, ginger, cayenne and honey. Turmeric tea will perk you up in the morning, calm you down at night and soothe sniffles and sore throats. It’s also a really pleasant way to end a meal.

At first glance, the ingredients might not sound like a combination you’d want to drink. Something magical happens in the mug, though, and the result is richer than regular tea, less intense than coffee and oddly delicious. Turmeric is the dominant flavor and admittedly, one that takes a little getting used to. Although not spicy itself, turmeric’s slightly bitter, earthy flavor is the perfect backdrop for other spices, which is why it’s a main ingredient in curry powder. The ginger and cayenne in this tea aren’t overwhelming because they’re floating in creamy, turmeric-infused milk that’s been lightly sweetened.

Turmeric is ginger’s mellow cousin and is a root used just as often for its bright yellow-orange color as it is for flavor. Turmeric powder is a frequent ingredient in East Indian, Middle Eastern, South Asian and Caribbean cooking and is also believed to have numerous healing properties. When cooking with turmeric, it’s most often used in conjunction with ginger and spices like cumin, cinnamon and coriander. Moroccan Chicken Casserole is one dish that benefits from turmeric’s flavor. If you’d like to use turmeric more often, you can also add extra turmeric to dishes that already have curry powder in them, like Butter Chicken or Beef Curry Meatballs. Or, after trying this recipe, you might just go through all the turmeric in your spice rack by brewing mugs of Golden Milk.

Two-ingredient Shortcut: Mix Golden Turmeric Collagen Fuel with warm almond or coconut milk. Just add mug. 

Servings: 1 cup of tea

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces (1 cup) almond or coconut milk
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• 1/2-inch wide round slice of ginger root, peeled and finely chopped
• Dash of cayenne pepper
• 1/2 – 1 teaspoon honey or other sweetener
• Optional additions: a small pat of butter, cinnamon, cardamom, scoop of unflavored collagen peptides

Instructions:

Gently warm the almond or coconut milk on the stove.

In a mug, combine the remaining ingredients.

Drizzle a teaspoon of the warmed milk into the mug and mix until the liquid is smooth with no lumps. Add the rest of the milk and mix well. You can leave the pieces of ginger in the tea, or strain it out before drinking.

Looking for more turmeric inspiration? Try these recipes to add a earthy flavor to your next meal.

Turmeric Scrambled Eggs

Turmeric Kale Soup with Ground Lamb

Pork Chops in Creamy Turmeric Sauce

Turmeric and Ginger Fish

For more ways to use turmeric in your routine, pick up a canister of Primal Kitchen Collagen Fuel in Golden Turmeric. 

The post Creamy Golden Milk Turmeric Tea Recipe appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

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Research of the Week

When pigs made it to Europe, their genes were completely overturned.

The genetic formation of the first Americans.

We’re more likely to remember the locations of places where we consumed high calorie meals. Makes sense.

Religious rituals trigger endogenous opioids.

Late night eating tends to be a bad idea.

New Primal Blueprint Podcasts

Episode 451: Kyrin Dunston MD, OBGYN: Host Elle Russ welcomes Dr. Kyrin Dunston to the podcast, an OBGYN-turned-functional-medicine doctor.

Primal Health Coach Radio Episode 80: Laura and Erin chat with Chrisa Zindra Boyce, a leader in the Handel Group who specializes in helping people realize their professional visions.

Media, Schmedia

Should we re-introduce predators to wild areas without them?

Mexico blocks the sale of some “cheeses” for containing vegetable fat.

Interesting Blog Posts

Science should really stop ignoring small farms.

What might a “new morality” look like?

Social Notes

It really is that simple.

True.

Everything Else

This is what they feed to diabetics.

The flaws of calorie counting explained.

Be like Rangers.

Things I’m Up to and Interested In

This should be in every homeschooler’s curriculum: Traditional French butter making.

Interesting new online magazine: Hyperion. Some health content, some future-casting about cities and AI, and other interesting stuff.

Great question: Vitamin D is cheap, plentiful, and it works. Why aren’t we using it?

Interesting question: What happens when you sever the connection between hunter-foragers and their prey?

Do babies need to eat meat?: Yes. Pay-walled, but the answer is yes.

Question I’m Asking

What would you add to school curriculums if you had ultimate power?

Recipe Corner

• Indian spiced burger patty.
• Baby, it’s stew season. Instant pot beef stew.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Oct 9 – Oct 15)

• Keto and Cancer: Where Do We Stand? – What’s the deal?
• A Primal Guide to Blood Pressure: 8 Common (and Not So Common) Interventions  – What might work.

Comment of the Week

“I wonder if increased dreaming happened at other stressful historical times? We’ve had them about every 80 years; the Revolution, the Civil War, WW2, and now (right on time). Strauss-Howe generational theory would suggest we are in a Fourth Turning, with an unknown large event still coming. Regardless what you think of that, historically we have not returned to an Era of Good Feeling without going through a massive calamity, larger than the last Fourth Turning was. Stay tuned, it might get worse..”

-Interesting question, jeff.

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Raise your hand if you’ve been feeling a little overwhelmed. Aside from the fact that being in the middle of a pandemic makes everything more stressful, you’ve got work obligations and family commitments, then there are food choices to make, at-home workouts you think you should be doing, and non-stretchy pants you’re feeling bad for not fitting into.

It’s a lot. I get it, and it’s totally normal to feel overwhelmed. That said, staying in a state of overwhelm is a choice.

Yep, you heard me, it’s a choice. And if you’re ready to get out of the seemingly relentless spin cycle of life (and the tight chest and racing mind that come with it), stick around. I’ll be unpacking the real reason you get overwhelmed — spoiler alert, it’s not because your to-do list is too long — plus, four things you can do to change it.

Why Do I Get Overwhelmed?

I’ll give you an example from my own life. As a health coach, I’ll often hear my clients say that they just can’t do it. They can’t swap out their toast and cereal for breakfast. They can’t make time to get outside. They can’t get to bed earlier. They can’t…fill in the blank.

In my opinion, “I can’t” statements reflect limiting beliefs. They aren’t real; they’re just stories we tell ourselves, and identities we accidentally end up identifying with. It’s not that you can’t, it’s that something is holding you back. I find that most of the time, when I dig a little deeper, that thing is fear.

Types of Fear That Cause Overwhelm:

• Fear you won’t be able to handle it
• Fear of getting it wrong
• Fear you won’t get it done (on time)
• Fear that you’ll be judged
• Fear of the consequences
• Fear of not being in control
• Fear of being embarrassed
• Fear that you don’t really deserve it

Whether you’re experiencing worry, stress, or complete overwhelm, fear is usually at the helm, just FYI. But the goal here isn’t to be fearless (there actually are some benefits to fear),¹ it’s to not let it rule your life.

Anything that threatens your place in this world, i.e. your self-worth, can elicit a fear-based reaction. I’m sure you’ve heard of the fight-or-flight response, right? When you experience something that feels scary and stressful, the amygdala (the part of your brain that handles emotional processing) releases a rush of chemicals into the body.² The stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol flood your system, preparing you to fight or flee. Not only that, the amygdala instantly shuts down the neural pathway to your prefrontal cortex which temporarily impairs all rational thinking, making you feel disorganized and out of control.³

So, It’s All in My Mind?

Believe it or not, you’re causing this cascade of physiological effects by your thoughts alone, even though there’s no real danger other than the perceived consequences of what would happen if you failed or were embarrassed or weren’t able to keep tabs on all of your to-dos. When you’re feeling overwhelmed, your life isn’t falling apart — your thoughts are.

So, how do you reel it back in? This Yale studyshowed that it could be as simple as breathing.⁴ Researchers placed 131 university students into either a non-intervention control group or one of three 30-hour workshops that used wellbeing interventions, including breathing, mindfulness, and emotional awareness to combat stress. Before and after the workshops, the students were put through a stressful task that simulated a high-pressure performance situation.

They found that the group who participated in the breathing workshop were able to stay calm throughout the high-stress task. Plus, their heart rates held steady, they were able to think more clearly, and they actually performed the task more effectively.

4 Ways to Stop Yourself from Spiraling

Without a doubt, overwhelm is one of the greatest barriers to achieving your goals, but it is possible to move past it. It’s just your brain trying to keep you safe and with the strategies below, you’ll learn how to recognize the onset of overwhelm and take steps to regain the clarity and calm you need to get whatever it is you need to do, done.

Breathe

Since being in that state of overwhelm impairs your prefrontal cortex and sends adrenaline and cortisol coursing through your body, the best thing you can do for yourself is to slow down and breathe.⁵ It doesn’t matter what kind of breathing you do — box breathing, alternating nostril breathing, and diaphragmatic breathing all work. Just make sure that the method you choose is rhythmic, meaning that you breathe in and out for about the same amount of time. After a few minutes you’ll notice that your mind has slowed down and your energy is much calmer.

Try this: Here is a triangular breath exercise that I’ve created for my clients. Inhale through your nose, counting slowly to 6; hold for a count of 2 at the top; and exhale for a count of 8. Repeat for 1-3 minutes or until your mind feels calm again.

Check Your Stories

You know the limiting beliefs and thoughts that prevent you from achieving your goals? These are your stories. And I call them stories because they’re just not true. You may have picked them up from things you heard your parents say growing up or from an experience you went through. Maybe you decided along that you always drop the ball. Or that things always feel too big for you, and who were you to achieve big things anyway?! These narratives become a form of identity that not only reflects who we think we are, but also what we think is possible for us.

Try this: Next time you catch yourself doubting your greatness, turn it on its ear. Instead of saying, “I don’t think I can stick to a new way of eating” try “I am fully capable of doing new things.”

Take the Stairstep Approach

When I work with new clients, they often feel overwhelmed by all the things they think they have to do. There’s cleaning out the cabinets, figuring out which brands are canola-free, learning how to make their own bone broth/kombucha/beet kvass… This is about the time I sneak in my stair-stepping approach. This technique is awesome because it breaks the journey down into smaller steps, which is less intimidating than trying to leap to the end in a single bound.

Try this: On a piece of paper, literally draw a staircase. Identify the bottom step (this is where you are now) and then identify the top step (this is where you want to go). Figure out the very first thing you need to do to get to the next step, then do that thing! The rest of the steps will reveal themselves as you go.

Delegate

Just because you can do all the things, doesn’t mean you need to. A lot of times we get overwhelmed simply because we put too much on our plates. Just like there’s no gold medal for getting more done, there’s no punishment for doing less. Your worthiness has nothing to do with how much you accomplish or don’t accomplish. That being said, there’s also no shame in delegating out tasks and responsibilities.

Try this: Think about what areas of your life could use some assistance. Can your spouse cook up a healthy dinner tonight? Can your kids help you sort through Primal recipes? Make a list of the tasks you want to dole out and if you need help getting more comfortable with asking for help, read this.

Go From “I Can’t” to “I Got This”

Life can be overwhelming, even when you’re not in the middle of a pandemic. But by paying attention to your triggers, your stories, and your breath, you can restore your ability to think, to listen, and move forward. It does take practice, but eventually you can train yourself to respond rather than react. Follow these four steps and see how it works for you:

• Breathe
• Check your Stories
• Take the Stairstep Approach
• Delegate

How do you manage overwhelm? What tactics do you use to move through it or avoid it all together?

The post What it Really Means When You’re Overwhelmed (and 4 Ways to Move Past It) appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.