You can read all about her throwing career and pick up plenty of training tips in her autobiography (affiliate links: UK, US).

Tessa with her gold medal

***

Who was Tessa Sanderson?

Tessa was born in St Elizabeth, Jamaica but emigrated to the UK when she was just eight years old, to follow her parents who had already gone over to find work.

After showing great promise as a young athlete in a number of sports, she became the UK’s leading javelin thrower during the mid-1970s.  She won silver in the 1978 European championships and gold in the Commonwealth Games three times (1978, 1986, 1990).

During the 1980′s, she was engaged in an ongoing athletic duel with Fatima Whitbread, similar to the duel between Steve Ovett and Seb Coe over the 1,500m.  Fatima’s career took a steeper and more dramatic trajectory (including a world record) but ultimately Tessa lasted longer, competing until her retirement in 1996.

***

Strength training for throwing

In her autobiography, Tessa talks extensively about training and, specifically about strength training for throwing.  It’s actually one of the great points about the book, which is a great muddle of different topics and thoughts.  The details on training are actually quite plentiful.

***

Overweight implements

She was a great fan of overweight implements, and was delighted when her strength coach made a set of wooden balls weighted with lead for her to use when she wasn’t able to take her javelin with her to train.  She notes that the balls were weighted to one, two and three pounds.

***

Weights and plyometrics routine

In one part of the book, Tessa gives some details of her routine.  It was eye-opening for me to see the importance of sprints for her as well as the weight training.  She breaks it down as follows:

• Mon (am): weight training
• Mon (pm): bounding
• Tues (am): basketball and medicine ball work
• Tues (pm): sprints and starts
• Weds (am): weight training
• Weds (pm): track work (probably more sprints and starts)
• Thurs (am): basketball and medicine ball work
• Thurs (pm): bounding
• Fri (am): weight training
• Fri (pm): additional pulley work with weights
• Sat: REST
• Sun (am): throwing and drills
• Sun (pm): track work

***

Weights

For her weight training, Tessa refers in various places to squats, leg presses, snatches and bench press.

She notes she was working with 175lbs for both the bench and the snatch and also refers to specific pulley work designed to replicate her javelin throwing muscles with a multi-gym machine.

***

Easy recovery runs

Tessa is also a fan of short, easy jogging-style runs.  However, she is at pains to point out that she does not recommend long-distance running for anyone, including the general public who want to lose weight, as she thinks it causes stress to the body, in a bad way.

***

Aggression

I am fascinated by athletic psychology and how sometimes aggression is helpful and sometimes it isn’t.  Sometimes, for some people, it takes them to a completely different level of performance and for others it makes them tight and slow.

Tessa describes one of her best throws as a young athlete in the European Cup in 1977, when all the competitors were required to use a javelin that the East Germans had been training with but no one else had used.

Angry at this unfair advantage, she took a longer run-up and launched the javelin like a missile. She beat the existing Olympic champion, Ruth Fuchs, by several metres…

***

Injury

Unlike Paula Radcliffe, Tessa was fortunate enough not to have a series of serious injuries, but she did suffer some difficulty with a technique-related shoulder injury and she had one remarkable lower extremity injury.

When taking part in the 1982 National Indoor 4 x 100m relays, she completely ruptured her achilles tendon, such that it was not there when palpated.  She had to have it reattached and stitched back.

Her rehabilitation was led by her strength coach, who started her back on free bodyweight squats and the leg press machine, moved onto partial squats and then finally full range of motion squats.

During her convalescence, she lost a great deal of her throwing muscle, she notes that the calf of her injured leg reduced by 1.5 inches in circumference.  Fortunately, her strength coach was both experienced and positive and brought her back up to speed for her Olympic competition in 1984.

***

Summing up

I read Tessa’s autobiography mainly to see the other side of the Fatima Whitbread – Tessa Sanderson athletic duel but I was pleasantly surprised to find out a great deal about training for throwing.

You can read about both in her autobiography (affiliate links: UK, US).

***

CB: Mike, most of my interviewees tend to work in the strength and conditioning field, either as coaches or personal trainers.  In fact, I don’t think I have ever interviewed a nutrition blogger before!  We’re breaking new ground here.  So can you give a little background on where you come from and what you do?

Mike: I’m the most unlikely blogger on nutrition you’re likely to meet.  I work as a consultant  by day in areas that have nothing to do with nutrition and I’ve never had much interest in anything to do with food and held a pretty crappy diet for most of my life, up until around August of last year when it all suddenly and dramatically changed.

CB: Great opening!  It’s almost like the start to a book… And am I right in thinking that you created your blog, Fat Fiction, because you were interested to see why you had developed gall stones and whether there was a natural cure?

Mike: That was the catalyst but it started a little before that in 2009 when I decided I’d get fit and into shape.  I’d slowly morphed into a fat lookalike of my teenage self over the years, and while I’d never gone on a diet as such, the idea of rolling into middle age looking like a teletubby finally got to me.

So I started running and gymming it, stopped eating ‘junk food’ and went from about 3 stone overweight to 4 and a half.  That’s right – upwards.

The Michelin Man Mike: photo by Hyku

***

I didn’t understand, nor to be fair give it much thought until I got gallstones in the middle of last year.  I set about doing sifting through pubmed papers to see if I could establish why and ‘discovered’ the Pima Indians who really kicked off the obesity epidemic in early 1900s who simultaneously became beset by gallstones (over 50% of the over 30s have them, male and female).

Until that point, I’d never read a single article on nutrition, so I didn’t know that my ‘discovery’ of the Pima obesity/gallstone connection is pretty much the first thing dieticians learn.

However, this ignorance was pretty handy.  The common wisdom is that the Pimas got fat through junkfood which isn’t true, at least not by today’s definitions. The Pimas originally became fat and plagued with gallstones with two small changes in their diet: eating sugar and replacing soaked corn flour with refined white flour.

So after reading that, I cut out flour (I wasn’t eating much sugar) and lost several stone, mostly in the space of a few weeks. I was more amazed than anything else, and thought I’d probably be able to reverse gallstones too – so Fat Fiction was born.

CB: Inspirational.  If only more people were so proactive about seeking the answers to their own problems, our knowledge about what works would be so much greater.  And where are your thoughts at the moment on the gallstones project?

Mike: The weight loss was permanent, but the cure to gallstones it was not.  I’m still convinced of the cause of gallstones – but removing the cause clearly doesn’t provide a cure.  I’ve made a few changes and I’ll see how I get on in a year.  It very much seems like a slow process.  In the meantime though, I’m focusing on things which interest me more that I’ve discovered along the way.

CB: Interesting.  I’ll look forward to seeing how you get on.  And while your site started as a project on gall stones, things have snowballed and now you are investigating a thesis, that our obesity crisis is being caused by malnutrition.  I have to say, I liked the parallel you draw with beri beri and pellagra, it’s a graphic way of bringing your theory to life.  How did that idea come to you?

Mike: Purely through research.  I figured that if refined white flour was that damaging to us, what about other grains?  Have they ever caused illness? Turns out millions of people have died of malnutrition after refining rice and corn. The difference is with wheat is that we tend to eat to compensate for the lack of nutrients: beri beri and pellagra sufferers just starved to death.

Again, as I started reading around, I discovered there was an entire food movement (paleo) that revolves around the idea that all grains, as well as legumes are damaging to humans to us.  I don’t buy into the extremes of paleo but the core tenets: don’t eat processed food, keep off gluten and don’t worry about saturated fat, I agree with.

CB: Sounds pretty much like a decent summary of paleo to me!  Let me impose on you for a moment.  I read a number of entertaining and informative articles on your site and several times came away with the strong impression that obesity is caused by malnutrition.  However, I couldn’t bring it all together myself.  If you had to pitch the idea to a strongly sceptical audience, how would you go about it?

You mean without using an n=1 story right? OK, in a nutshell:

Eat less and move faster – conventional wisdom – is a none too subtle way of saying you’re greedy and lazy.  And of course, a lot of people are greedy, but to even suggest that nearly 2/3 of the western world have suddenly discovered greed in around the 1970s is frankly absurd.  Lazy doesn’t work either.  Gyms and aerobic exercise as routine became popular in the 1970s and we exercise more now than we did then. So if it’s not sloth nor greed to blame.

It’s the hunger that people are feeling that’s causing weight gain. Hunger is cry for nutrients and or energy. As excessive body fat is effectively an energy store, hunger in the obese is a cry for nutrients (vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, protein) and not energy.  And as well as daily functioning, these nutrients are required to burn off body fat. If they had them, they wouldn’t feel hunger and they would burn body fat rather than look for food.

Obesity is a disease of malnutrition, not greed.

This explains the success of protein heavy diets.  Not because man should live off protein, but because if you’re fat, the only nutrients you need to survive other than water can all be found in high doses in meat – protein, fats, vitamins and minerals.

CB: Awesome, remember folks, you read it here first!  Can you explain a bit more about why you think wheat is so bad for the body?

Mike: It’s gluten that I have it in for, and so white flour (concentrated gluten) is the worst, narrowly pipping sugar as the primary cause of obesity.  In short, gluten is stripped of any nutritional benefit, it’s addictive, it damages the GI tract in non-celiacs as well as celiacs which affects ability to absorb nutrients, and like all grains, contains lectin – an effective antinutrient that prevents absorption of key vitamins and minerals. In short, it sucks.

CB: Agreed, but the dieticians out there still won’t accept this.  It’s all this “healthy whole grains” for the heart rubbish.  So there are a lot of people who are criticising the idea that wheat is bad for you at the moment.  I think some of them are the conservative dieticians who just can’t let go of the food pyramid, despite what new research is telling them.  However, I think others are  just uncomfortable with the idea that the obesity crisis didn’t occur in neolithic times but more recently.  How would you respond to this?

Mike: Usually the argument boils down to something along the lines of well Jesus wasn’t fat was he? And it’s true – traditional whole wheat bread never did our parent’s generation much harm.  And it still doesn’t in moderation if:

• it’s  made from grains that have not been bred for higher gluten
•  it’s made with that contains the original bran rather having bran added in
• it’s made without enzymes to unnaturally speed up the baking process to a couple of hours
• it’s made with stoneground flour rather than flour from high speed centrifuges

Good luck finding that anywhere in your local Tescos eh? It’s no coincidence most of these changes happened in the 1960s-70s – the same time the obesity epidemic kicked off in earnest.

And I agree, some dieticians are very sniffy about paleo eating but appeals to authority wash over me.  Barefoot running didn’t come from podiatrists, the economic disasters of recent months weren’t predicted by economists and obesity is not being cured by dieticians…

CB: You are becoming very quotable, you realise?  And lots of people are talking about the importance of gut flora at the moment.  How does that tie into your theory?

Mike: If I could start the blog again, it’d start with gut flora. I’d even go as far to say that all sustainable weight loss requires a change in gut flora, whether you’re aware of it happening or not. Bacteria are crucial in absorbing nutrients, and it’s well known the obese have markedly different gut flora than their normal weight counterparts.

Additionally, the bacteria in your gut digest your food and can suppress or enhance appetite. Wheat and sugar are a particularly lethal combination in disruption of gut flora and although I wouldn’t recommend it, broad spectrum antibiotics plus abstaining from both grains and sugar I suspect is the fastest way of losing weight you could choose.

CB: Our governments here in the UK have allowed the obesity crisis to get completely out of hand.  I’d like to vote for you to be our new health secretary.  Assuming you’d take the job on, what would be your manifesto?

Go on then, thanks!  OK, leaving aside the thorny issue of NHS restructuring and food security, I’d make Eric Pickles do aerobics outside Westminster every day – in lycra hotpants – until the British public agreed not to eat any more crumpets.

Failing that, in terms of obesity it’s all about the food supply. I’d look to baseline obesity numbers, then tax food shops and the processed food manufacturers for any increases in national obesity rates, but share the reduced NHS costs of any decreases too.

At the moment it’s in the drug companies interest to find medical solutions, the food manufacturers to make people eat more, and the big shops to make us buy more of the lowest quality, cheapest fodder you can buy which incidentally has the highest mark up. The only way out that mess is to incentivise and/or punish the root cause – low nutrition processed food.

And as for food labelling and all this traffic light nonsense – bin it. Instead, take the average size of the punter who eats your food, and put their silhouette on the label by law. The bakery aisle would look like a Viz cartoon in no time.

The Viz version of Superman: photo by So_Rayne

***

CB: Pull no punches, Mike!  Finally, I have to say that I really enjoy reading your writing, I always come away from your blog having learned something and your sly sense of humour is one of the few that makes me laugh out loud when reading.  Are you going to write a book? (hint, write a book)

Mike: Thanks Chris, no plans not least because keeping one site update takes time enough.  And if I did I may have to change the name – about half the traffic to the site comes from people looking for fiction about fat people.  Or change the content, one or the other…

• Avoiding mobile phone radiation
• Avoiding contact with fungicides
• Not using male pattern baldness treatments
• Not coming into contact with plastics like BPA
• Eating a high-fat diet
• Eating meat
• Avoiding toxic heavy metals
• Not getting fat
• Maintaining good posture
• Maintaining high status
• Not getting stressed
• Getting plenty of sleep
• Having sex regularly

While that’s a good list of things to concentrate on, bear in mind that these are things that reverse reductions in testosterone and may not necessarily increase it substantially if it is at normal levels for that variable already.

***

Boosting testosterone above normal levels

Once you’ve cracked the things that reduce testosterone, the first thing you’ll want is a list of things that make it go up even further.

• Wearing the colour red – in an article published by two members of the very psychology department that I attended in my first year at university in Durham, it is noted that wearing the colour red substantially increases a team’s odds of winning and that this might be caused by hormonal factors, including the raising of testosterone.
• Playing on home turf - according to Testosterone, Territoriality and the Home Advantage, by Neave and Wolfson, Physiology and Behaviour (Science Direct) playing on your home ground increases testosterone, which accounts for the substantial number of more games that are won by home teams that by visiting teams.
• Winning – if you win a competition, your testosterone levels rise, as noted in Testosterone levels and winning and losing in human competition, by Booth, Shelley, Mazur, Tharp and Kittok, in Hormones and Behaviour (Science Direct). However, it’s a dangerous game you play, as losing will reduce your testosterone…
• Backing the winner – and if you can’t win yourself then you should always try and back a winner, as noted in Testosterone changes in vicarious experiences of winning and losing among fans at sporting events, Bernhardt, Dabbs, Fielden and Lutter, Physiology and Behaviour (Science Direct). Again, you’ll want to make sure your information is sound, though, as it’s lower testosterone for you if they lose.
• Showing dominance – as noted in Implicit Power Motivation Moderates Men’s Testosterone Responses to Imagined and Real Dominance Success, by Schultheiss, Campbell and McClelland, Hormones and Behaviour (Article), it doesn’t have to be a formal competition that you win to increase your testosterone levels, it can simply be a “dominance contest” or a power struggle at work or socially.  When that sinks in, remember what Scott Adams wrote about raising testosterone?  Check it out here.
• Showing dominant body language – in Power Posing: Brief Non-Verbal Displays Affect Neuroendocrine Levels and Risk Tolerance, Carney, Cuddy and Yap, Association for Psychological Science (Article), the authors explain how holding powerful yet normal poses can substantially change the levels of testosterone that the body produces.  This is not just avoiding poor or submissive postures to avoid reducing testosterone but actually engaging in positive, powerful body language to produce extra testosterone.
• Resistance training – just for the avoidance of doubt, resistance training does substantially increase testosterone levels, as Hormonal Responses and Adaptations to Resistance Exercise and Training, by Kraemer and Ratamess, Sports Medicine (Article) shows.  And just in case you were wondering, the training doesn’t have to be finished within 45 minutes.  This is a myth based on no known studies, as my friend Doctor Michael Hartman has explained here.
• Sprinting – according to Androgen responses to Sprint Exercise in Young Men, Derbré, Vincent, Maitel, Jacob, Delamarche, Delamarche, and Zouhal, Physiology and Biochemistry (Thieme e-Journals), sprinting also increases testosterone levels.
• Amino acid supplements – some studies on amino acids after exercise have been shown to increase testosterone levels in the post-workout window.  Sure, it’s not a huge effect but if this thing was easy then everybody would be doing it, right?

***

Determined to find more options?

• Charles Poliquin describes his nutritional protocol for helping athletes increase their testosterone levels.  I have no idea whether any of it works but it probably won’t hurt…

***

That’s all folks.  The long-awaited stress series starts next week, so make sure you’ve got your thinking heads on…

This week, I have collected some studies on testosterone.  I’m going to see what causes it to be reduced.

***

Testosterone is good for our health

First of all, let’s just remind ourselves that, unlike oestrogen, testosterone seems to be very good for our health and longevity.  Let’s take a quick look at some research conclusions:

Testosterone insufficiency in older men is associated with increased risk of death over the following 20 yr, independent of multiple risk factors and several preexisting health conditions (Low serum Testosterone and mortality in older men, Laughlin, Barrett-Connor and Bergstrom, JCEM)

In men, endogenous testosterone concentrationsare inversely related to mortality due to cardiovascular diseaseand all causes. Low testosterone may be a predictive markerfor those at high risk of cardiovascular disease (Endogenous Testosterone and mortality due to all causes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer in men, Kay-Tee Khaw, Dowsett, Folkerd, Bingham, Wareham, Luben, Welch, Day, AHA)

Low testosterone levels were associated withincreased mortality in male veterans (Low serum Testosterone and mortality in male veterans, Shores, Matsumoto, Sloan, Kivlahan, AIM)

***

Things that reduce testosterone

OK, so now we’ve established that more testosterone is good for our health, let’s have a look at what reduces it.

I have to say, despite testosterone being such a great thing, it seems that there are plenty of things that can reduce our levels of it.  For such a robust, manly hormone, it does seem quite delicate…

Mobile phone radiation – it seems that mobile phone radiation reduces testosterone, in rats at least (Effects of mobile phone radiation in Wistar albino rats, Meo, Al-Drees, Husain, Khan, Imran, Saudi Medical Journal)

Fungicides – by disrupting the action of androgens during gestation, certain chemicals present in food, consumer products, and the environment can induce irreversible demasculinization and malformations of sex organs among male offspring (Synergistic disruption of external male sex hormone development by a mixture of four antiandrogens, Christiansen, Scholze, Dalgaard,Vinggaard, Axelstad, Kortenkamp, and Hass, Environmental Health Perspectives)

Some male pattern baldness treatments – it appears that male pattern baldness treatments use antiandrogens like finasteride to block hair loss.  Antiandrogens cause reductions in testosterone (ibid.)

Plastics like BPA – just as BPA seems to cause increased oestrogen levels, it causes reduced testosterone levels as well (Bisphenol A may cause testosterone reduction by adversely affecting both testis and pituitary systems similar to estradiol, Nakamura,Yanagiba, Duan, Ito, Ai, Asaeda, Tagawa, Li, Taya, Zhang, Naito, Ramdhan, Kamijima and Nakajima, Toxicology Letters)

Eating a low-fat diet – eating a low fat diet decreases your testosterone levels.  (Decrease of serum total and free testosterone during a low-fat, high-fibre diet, Hämäläinen, Adlercreutz, Puska, Pietinen, Journal of Steroid Biochemistry), and (Diet and serum sex hormones in healthy men, Hämäläinen, Adlercreutz, Puska, Pietinen, Journal of Steroid Biochemistry)

Not eating meat – it seems that not eating meat causes decreased testosterone levels (Dietary and hormonal interrelationships among vegetarian Seventh-Day Adventists and nonvegetarian men, Howie, Shultz, AJCN)

Toxic heavy metals – no, not the musical kind.  Apparently, certain heavy metals including mercury, cadmium, cobalt, and copper cause a reduction in testosterone production because of their toxicity. Other metals, including lead, zinc, aluminum, chromium, iron, nickel, and lithium, do not appear to have this effect (Toxic effect of heavy metals on cells isolated from rat adrenal and testis, Ng and Liu, In vitro cellular and developmental biology)

Diabetes and obesity – both diabetes and obesity have been strongly associated with low testosterone, so try to avoid both, if you can (Testosterone concentrations in diabetic and non-diabetic obese men, Dhindsa, Miller, McWhirter, Mager, Ghanim, Chaudhuri, Dandona, Diabetes Care)

Poor posture – by assuming a closed, subservient posture, with slumped shoulders or downward-looking gaze, you can reduce your testosterone levels.  By standing tall or sitting with an open posture and maintaining the appearance of good self-esteem, you can raise your testosterone levels (Brief non-verbal displays affect neuroendocrine levels and risk tolerance, Carney, Cuddy and Yap, Psychological Science)

Low status – it has been found that in groups of primates, the highest-ranking males have the highest testosterone concentrations while immigrant males had the lowest testosterone concentrations (Social factors increase fecal testosterone levels in wild male gray-cheeked mangabeys, Arlet, Kaasik, Molleman, Isbell, Careyand Mänd, Hormones and Behaviour)

High stress levels – it seems that stress levels are inversely related to testosterone levels in both humans and animals (Reciprocal changes in corticosterone and testosterone levels following acute and chronic handling stress in the tree lizard, Moore, Thompson and Marler, General and Comparative Endocrinology)

Lack of sleep – lack of sleep appears to reduce testosterone levels in a way that means they don’t bounce back very quickly (Endocrinological and catecholaminergic alterations during sleep deprivation and recovery in male rats, Andersen, Martins, D’Almeida, Bignotto, Tufik, Journal of Sleep Research)

Not having sex – lack of sex also means lower testosterone levels, which is ironic since often young people give up sleep so they can have sex, or in the case of most parents of young children, vice versa (Male and female salivary testosterone concentrations before and after sexual activity, Dabbs and Mohammed, Physiology and Behaviour)

***

So it seems that there are quite a few things that cause our testosterone levels to go down.  And, since high testosterone levels seem to be a good thing for our health, I guess you could say that all of the things on that list are therefore bad for your health.

I mentioned in my post about water that both tap water and mineral water have oestrogenic compounds in them, that are carcinogenic.  However, I didn’t really present a full case, which I hope to here.

Please note that this article is based on desktop research for interest purposes only and if you want detailed and specific information about cancer, I would start with Cancer Research UK.

***

Oestrogen can cause cancer

Let’s start here, because there seems to be a good consensus in the medical research community that oestrogen and oestrogenic compounds can cause cancer under certain circumstances.  However, the average man and woman in the street probably haven’t really taken this on board.

Here are just a couple of examples:

• Oestrogen appears to cause head and neck cancer in young women, by causing pre-cancerous cells to move and divide by triggering the activity of an enzyme (BBC)
• Exposure of the mother during pregnancy to exogenous oestrogen seems to increase the risk of her sons of getting:
  • Testicular cancer (Estrogen exposure during gestation and risk of testicular cancer, Depue, R H, Pike, M C, Henderson, B E, PubMed), and
  • Prostate cancer (Early Estrogen Exposure Leads To Later Prostate Cancer Risk, Gail Prins, Shuk-Mei Ho, Science Daily)

It’s a grim picture, especially when you come to look at oestrogenic compounds and how common they are…

***

Oestrogenic compounds are everywhere

There also seems to be a reasonably strong consensus that we are exposed to a number of oestrogenic compounds that cause cancer in Western society, including:

• BPA – Bisphenol A (BPA) is a compound that has been used to make food containers since the 1960′s and yet has been known to be oestrogenic since the 1930′s (Wikipedia).  The FDA currently holds that ”recent studies provide reason for some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior, and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children” (FDA).
• Other plastics – Other plastics also cause oestrogenic effects (Endocrine disruptors in bottled mineral water: total estrogenic burden and migration from plastic bottles, Martin Wagner and Jörg Oehlmann, Science Daily, SpringerLink)
• Soy – Soy also contains oestrogenic compounds, Soy and soy-derived products contain isoflavones that mimic the actions of oestrogens and may exert adverse effects on male fertility (Soy, phyto-oestrogens and male reproductive function: a review, PubMed)
• Drinking water – in 2008, the US Geological Survey reported that there were 85 man-made chemicals in the water supply, including birth control hormones (mainly oestrogen) and pharmaceuticals.  The recommendation is that we use reverse-osmosis filters to remove such contaminants to protect our health (Scientific American).
• Artificial hormones - using oestrogen replacement therapy seems to be risky from a cancer point of view (A meta-analysis of the effect of Oestrogen Replacement Therapy on breast cancer risk, JAMA)

***

So how does oestrogen cause cancer?

I find it interesting that despite the consensus that oestrogen causes cancer (Cancer Research UK), there is no generally accepted mechanism by which this works.   This reminds me of the lipid hypothesis of heart disease, which also has no accepted mechanism, as Dr Malcolm Kendrick makes clear. 

However, unlike the lipid hypothesis, there are one or two contenders for a sensible mechanism:

• Cell division theory – some researchers think that oestrogen encourages certain cell types to divide more often and that more cell divisions means a greater likelihood of cancer-causing mistakes
• Gene activation theory – other researchers think that oestrogen turns on certain genes inside cells at the wrong time and that this encourages cancer
• DNA damage theory – there is some laboratory evidence that oestrogen can directly bind to, and damage, DNA (PubMed)
• Somatic hypermutation theory – somatic hypermutation is the mutation mechanism by which the immune system adapts to new threats.  Oestrogen switches on the gene that activates the mutation in immune cells and it has been linked to the formation of certain cancers, also via mutation (JEM) 
• Trophoblast theory - one of the more wacky theories of oestrogen causing cancer is the trophoblast theory, which you can read in detail about in my article about William Donald Kelley.  Tropoblast cells are placental cells, which are said to be activated by oestrogen. 

I think that the somatic hypermutation theory has a lot of internal coherence, speaking purely as a lay person, but I have to say that I find the trophoblast theory a much simpler, more all-encompassing and therefore more exciting.  That obviously has no bearing on whether it is true or not…

***

How to avoid exposing yourself to too much oestrogen

Since the mechanism by which oestrogen causes cancer has not been determined,  it is difficult for people to give firm recommedations about how to manipulate exposure in order to reduce the likelihood of developing cancer.

However, many sources have proposed ways to decrease excess oestrogen and avoid oestrogenic compounds as follows:

• Avoid oestrogenic plastics – avoiding eating food that has come into contact with BPA or other plastics is a good way to avoid inadvertently consuming oestrogenic compounds.
• Don’t eat soy – just don’t eat it, OK?  And remember, they try to stick it into almost everything these days, so be sure to read the label.  Hang on, scratch that.  Just don’t eat anything that comes in a packet or has a label on it and you’ll be fine.
• Improve your digestive health - in my post about the digestive system, I noted that excess oestrogen is excreted by the body via the large intestine.   However, some bacteria that live in the gut can cause the oestrogen to be reabsorbed, increasing the oestrogenic effect on the body (Effect of milk and lactobacillus feeding on human intestinal bacterial enzyme activity, Goldin BR, Gorbach SL, PubMed)
• Get a reverse osmosis water filter – this is something I am looking into at the moment so watch out for a review in due course.

***

 That’s all folks.

Over the last few weeks, though, we’ve covered quite a lot of ground.  Here’s the highlights:

• 1: The digestive system – for food to be useful to us, it first has to be absorbed.  The digestive system does this for us but do we really understand how it all works?  What’s more, why do we have such a different digestive system to other apes?  Our guts, mouths and teeth are all much smaller…
• 2a: Macronutrients: fats – part one – fats are pretty essential for us to survive but they get such bad press and it is all unjustified!  Find out about the lipid hypothesis and why it is the biggest nutritional error that we have made.
• 2a: Macronutrients: fats – part two – you might not have paid much attention to me when it comes to talking about why fats are actually quite good for you, so in this post, I went off and found half a dozen medical practitioners who are saying the same thing.
• 2b: Macronutrients: proteins – like fat, protein is essential for us to survive but high intakes get criticised for reasons that don’t stand up well when you interrogate them.  Let’s go find out what the recent research is saying…
• 2c: Macronutrients: carbohydrates – carbohydrates for me are the nitrous oxide of macronutrients.  You need them when you want to go really fast but trying running on them all the time and you’ll blow up your engine.  Or something like that.
• 3: Vitamins and minerals – this was one of my favourite posts, as I managed to cram all kinds of anecdotes and stories into it that have been simmering away in the back of my head.  And, rereading what I wrote, I still hold my position on the relative importance of vitamins and minerals in comparison with other factors, like stress and sleep.  If you’re not managing stress and sleep, you’re wasting money on vitamins, in my opinion.
• 4: Water – water is such a basic and essential commodity that we have supplies of it piped into our homes.  And yet, there is so much disagreement over how much we need to drink for optimal health and whether the additives that the Government puts in it (and the hormones that end up in it) are bad for us or not.
• 5: Healthy eating guidelines – in this article, I get down to brass tacks and figure out what kind of diet we should be eating.
• 6: Weight management – and if you want to lose a few pounds, this might be interesting.
• 7: Evaluation of popular diets – as you may know, I’m a big fan of the Paleo Diet, which is, by my reckoning, the most popular diet ever in terms of longevity… Still, other people think that their diets are worthy of consideration but, frankly, I don’t see that there is much good evidence to switch.
• 8: Diets for endurance athletes – the big question for most people when it comes to endurance athletes is whether they can follow the Paleo Diet.  Happily, there are experts around who can show us not only that it is possible but how to do it.
• 9: Diets for strength athletes – that’s this post.  Let’s get stuck in…

***

Nutrition for strength athletes

My course notes suggest that the only factor that needs to be manipulated for the diet of a strength athlete is the macronutrient ratios.  For a strength athlete protein intake should be 1.4-1.8g per kg of bodyweight (0.64g – 0.82g per pound) per day.  Fats should still comprise no more than 30% of calories and carbohydrates should make up the remainder of the calorific requirement.

Assuming we have a hard-training, 75kg (165lbs) strength athlete eating 3,000kcal per day, this would break down as:

• Protein – 105g – 135g (420kcal – 540kcal) – 14% – 18%
• Fat – 100g (900kcal) – 30%
• Carbohydrate – 390g – 420g (1,560kcal – 1,680kcal) – 52% – 56%

I suspect that a strength athlete eating this diet would probably find it hard to stay in their weight class, as the impact of the carbohydrates would cause them to gain weight, both fat and muscle.

***

Other perspectives on macronutrient ratios

Dr Clay Hyght notes in his article on high performance nutrition that between 1.5g and 2g of protein per pound of bodyweight (3.3g – 4.4g per kg) is generally regarded as the level required for serious strength trainees.

Assuming our hard-training 75kg person is eating 3,000kcal, and keeping fat the same at 30% of total calories, this would break down as:

• Protein – 248g – 330g (990kcal – 1,320kcal) – 33 – 44%
• Fat - 100g (900kcal) – 30%
• Carbohydrates – 195g – 278g (780kcal – 1,110kcal) – 26 – 37%

You could probably take the middle road here and say that this is a 40/30/30 diet in favour of protein but that does depend on what you think about the importance of fat in the diet.

***

Chris Lockwood, a nutrition researcher, wrote a fantastic article on T-Nation about his research into protein requirements.

He concluded that for trainees who are engaged in serious levels of activity, an RDA of 1.36g of protein per pound of bodyweight (2.92g per kg) is appropriate.  So, again, for our hard-training 75kg person eating 3,000kcal, this would break down as follows:

• Protein – 248g – 330g (876kcal) – 29%
• Fat - 100g (900kcal) – 30%
• Carbohydrates – 306g (1,224kcal) – 41%

You could probably say that this is a 40/30/30 diet in favour of carbohydrates but that does again depend on what you think about the importance of fat in the diet.

***

Personal observations

Speaking personally, and lifting weights five times a week (including squatting and deadlifting twice) this is what I have found works for me:

• I tend to eat something like 45 – 50% fat, 30 – 35% protein and 15 -20% carbohydrates, with all of my carbohydrates being in the form of vegetables after my workout.  This keeps fat gain to a minimum when gaining weight and also stops me getting tired during the day.
• My main fat sources are: beef, egg yolks, coconut, avocado and olive oil.  I don’t really eat any nuts at the moment and I have been off dairy for a while (except for double cream at weekends).
• If I eat carbohydrates during the day or when I haven’t been lifting, I get sleepy quite quickly.  That includes fruit.
• I need some carbohydrates after my workout (sweet potato has been favourite so far) or else I am tired the following morning and my next workout is ruined.  I do need to replenish my glycogen, I have found.  Having said that, my workouts tend to have a fair amount of volume in them at quite high intensities.
• If I let protein levels drop below about 1g per kg then I start to feel hungry and tired after workouts.
• Putting protein levels up through the roof by eating loads of chicken and tuna (which is mainly protein and not much fat) doesn’t really sit well with me.  I prefer to eat more fat, frankly.  I feel better for it.
• If I let fat levels drop too low, my recovery is slower after hard workouts.
• If I eat grains, I have to drop down from five workouts a week to four.  So even if I thought the Paleo Diet was complete rubbish, I would still not eat grains, because I like doing five workouts a week…

***

Thanks to all of you who stayed the course.  Next week, I’m starting a new series on stress, which I believe is a critical factor in health.

I went on to explain in that post that there have been a number of very successful general practitioners who have treated people while not believing in this theory.  Henry Bieler was one and the author of The Metabolic Typing Diet, William Wolcott, was another.  For the sake of argument, lets call them followers of metabolic medicine, as a shorthand for people who believe that the body’s metabolism is key to understanding its level of health or disease.  Whether they would accept such a designation is debatable but we’ll ignore that for the time being.

***

How is this relevant?

Well, it seems that there are many people who find themselves unable to jump from the germ theory completely over to the other side (myself included).  However, it seems clear to me that the hardline germ theorists are missing something important.  They simply aren’t interested in health anymore.  They are only interested in the absence of disease.  They have moved away from any study of the idea that the state of the organism might be important in the susceptibility of the organism to disease.  And they don’t accept that we are in any way biochemically different from each other.

For example, I am persuaded that stress makes people more susceptible to colds and flu, as well as to heart disease.  How it all works is beyond me but it seems that the weakened immune system can be more easily overrun.  That puts me somewhere in the middle between either extreme.

And all this makes me very curious about what the followers of metabolic medicine think about how we can improve our health by improving our metabolism.

That curiosity has lead me to do a little background digging on a few of the pioneers…

***

Metabolic medicine researchers

Here are some of the pioneers of an alternative approach to medicine.  I hope you find them interesting and I hope it helps you to consider that there are a minority of medical practitioners out there who don’t necessarily believe that filling you full of drugs and slicing bits off you is always the best approach. And before we begin, just a quick note: if you are opposed to any approach not based on the current status quo, or you are emotionally involved in any way, please don’t vent your spleen at me by letting me know what the mainstream medical community thinks about these researchers, as I already know…

1. George Watson - as I noted in my review of The Metabolic Typing Diet, George Watson was the originator of the theory that people could be divided into two groups: fast oxidisers and slow oxidisers.  He suggested that fast oxidisers need plenty of protein and fatty meats while slow oxidisers need plenty of carbohydrates.  He also developed a theory that our nutritional choices impact on our moods and therefore our mental health.  He wrote a book on this called Nutrition and Your Mind, which I may well be reviewing at some point in the future.
2. William Donald Kelley – reading Kelley’s work just blows my mind because he was so far ahead of his time.  He developed pancreatic cancer in 1962 and was given two months to live.  However, he fought hard and developed a dietary system that allowed him to live until 2005, when he died at the age of 80.
   1. Diabetes – Kelley suggested that diabetes was a set of symptoms produced by the body that signals that our carbohydrate metabolism is in serious disarray.  I guess most people reading this would accept that.  However, mainstream medicine wants people to carry on eating lots of sugar and taking medication to manipulate insulin levels rather than changing our diets.  He suggested just changing the diet and the problems would go away.
   2. Cancer – where Kelley got radical was in suggesting that an exact parallel could be drawn with cancer.  He proposed that cancer was a disorder of protein metabolism caused by inadequate production of protein digesting enzymes.  He also believed that cancers were stimulated by the presence of excess oestrogen in the diet.  If this sounds familiar, it should, but you have to bear in mind that Kelley was born in 1925!  He suggested that the best way of improving the diet to avoid cancer was to eat plenty of organ meats but also proposed a whole range of different protocols for different ailments.  He also thought that cutting out tumours or treating them with chemicals was simply treating the symptoms and not the ultimate cause.  I’ll do a review of Kelley’s book, One Answer to Cancer, next week because he raises some very interesting questions.
3. Royal Lee – Royal Lee suggested in 1933 that “candy, all white sugar or its products, and white flour including its products such as macaroni, spaghetti, crackers, etc., should be absolutely barred from the diet of the child. All these are energy-producing foods that contain no building materials for the body. The consequences of their toleration are susceptibility to infections, enlarged tonsils, carious teeth, unruly dispositions, stunted growth, rickets, maldevelopment and very often permanent damage to many organs of the body (especially the endocrine glands) that depend upon the vitamin supply for their normal function and development.”  And yet if you do a simple Google search, you will find that Royal Lee is one of the most attacked of all of these health researchers.  Obviously, I don’t know the details of the controversies but frankly, by saying this, he has given more valuable health advice than pretty much anything that most Western Governments have done in the last 20 or 30 years.
4. Weston Price - as a dentist, Weston Price was instrumental in showing the world that the Western diet was making people ill.  He showed this by way of photographs that pictured healthy and happy native people who had been eating native diets.  They had great dental health and no caries.  He then showed what happened when these people ate Western diets.  Their teeth went bad and their general dentition deteriorated.  He concluded that the Western diet was at fault.  He promoted the consumption of organ meats.  Other researchers into metabolic medicine used his work to suggest that people needed to eat the diets to which there ancestry had become accustomed and therefore that there was no one single ideal diet.  His ideas are still promoted through the non-profit organisation, the Weston A Price Foundation.
5. Francis Pottenger – Pottenger’s name is probably the most well-associated name in science with cats outside of Schroedinger.  Over ten years, he experimented on over 900 cats, giving them a variety of diets.  One of the interesting diets he tried was cooked meat versus raw meat.
   1. Raw meat and cooked meat – Pottenger noted that in breeding the cats over a few generations, several things happened to the cats fed on cooked meat: as Wikipedia notes: “by the end of the first generation the cats started to develop degenerative diseases and became lazy; by the end of the second generation, the cats had developed degenerative diseases by mid-life and started losing their coordination, and by the end of the third generation the cats developed degenerative diseases very early in life and some were born blind. Many of the third generation cats couldn’t produce offspring. There was an abundance of parasites and vermin while skin diseases and allergies increased. Males became docile while females became more aggressive.  The cats suffered from most of the degenerative diseases encountered in human medicine and died out totally by the fourth generation.”
   2. My thoughts – I thought that the fact that the cats had an abundance of skin diseases and allergies should suggest that there is some impact of “the state of the organism” on the susceptibility of organisms to disease as a result of diet.  I also noted that the tendency of males to become docile and females to become aggressive might be linked to Kelley’s belief that excess oestrogen is a precursor to cancer.  It is also interesting that we have a high incidence of cancer in today’s society and we also have a society in which most males are quite docile and many females are quite aggressive.
6. Melvin Page – another dentist, Dr Page stood with many others in rejecting the consumption of refined starches and sugar.  He also took Weston Price’s work a step further.  He argued that there was a correct ratio of phosphorous and calcium in the blood and deviations from this would cause tooth decay.
7. Roger Williams – Dr Williams was a revered scientist and the head of several American institutions.  He was involved in the early discovery of several vitamins, including some of the B-complex.  He moved towards the study of nutrition and its effect on humans in later life and became particularly interested in individual differences, an area he regarded as paramount.  He had a run-in with the AA over the role of alcohol in the treatment of alcoholics, as he believed that the social aspect of drinking was important (remember that pesky stress factor?) but they practically ran him out of town.
8. Emanuel Revici – Dr Revici is one of the few other names on this list that maintained a strong position in the mainstream academic community.  He devoted a great deal of time to the study of cancer and how to alleviate pain and suffering of cancer patients.  He noted that cancer patients typically showed acid or alkaline imbalances in their blood and urine.  He found that by manipulating their acid or alkaline levels he was able to assist them.  He was also convinced that “frequently the damage done to any organism by disease is caused not by the pathogenic focus but by the body’s defines mechanisms” and so he tried hard to develop treatments that would bring the body back to its normal functions.
9. Henry Bieler – you can read more about Henry Bieler and his book Food is Your Best Medicine in my book review.
10. William Wolcott – similarly, you can read more about William Wolcott and his book The Metabolic Typing Dietin my book review.

***

As always, I find that this kind of reading raises more questions than it ever answers but if you have any illuminating thoughts for me or recommendations for further reading, please let me know.

In this post, I’m going to have a quick look at the course material that tried to teach us how to help endurance athletes improve their nutrition for their sport.  I’ve detailed below the key points in my course notes and then commented on what I think are the interesting questions.

***

My course notes

• Nutrition for athletes: my course notes assert that “one of the primary objectives for any athlete is the maintenance of glycogen stores” and that “a low carbohydrate diet does not supply suitable carbohydrate levels for athletes”.
• Energy stores: my course notes identify that the body’s energy stores comprise:
  • Fat, which can be calculated as the percentage of body fat (e.g. 15%) times bodyweight (e.g. 85kg or 85,000g) at 9kcal per gram (e.g. 15% x 8,500g x 9 =  114,750kcal
  • Carbohydrate stored as glycogen, which is typically around 1,500kcal
• Meal frequency:
  • Eating infrequently, such as two or three times per day is not ideal for an athlete
  • Eating infrequently causes blood sugar levels to fall, which causes the liver to break down muscles tissue to create glucose, as stored fat reserves cannot be used for this purpose
  • Meals should be consumed every two hours to prevent glycogen stores from being depleted
• Carbohydrate intake for exercise:
  • Before: carbohydrate loading (i.e. increasing carbohydrate in excess of the 55 – 60% already eaten) is advised
  • During: for events lasting longer than 90 minutes, performance is enhanced by 25 – 30g of high GI carbohydrate every 15 – 30 minutes, beginning at 90 minutes.
  • After: the enzyme responsible for the synthesis of glycogen is at its most active for a few hours before returning to normal.  50g (200kcal) of carbohydrate may be consumed immediately, either as a drink (750ml) or as a snack.  A larger meal should then be eaten within two hours.
  • Rate of glycogen restoration: glycogen levels are restored at around 5 – 7% per hour.  Therefore, it will take 17 – 20 hours to re-establish glycogen stores from a bout of strenuous exercise.
• Fluid intake for exercise: the following guidelines are recommended:
  • Carry water and drink at regular intervals, say every 10 – 15 minutes
  • Estimate the fluid loss prior to the event
  • Drink at least 500ml of water in the 2 hours prior to the event
  • For high intensity events lasting longer than 1 hour, an isotonic mix of 6% carbohydrate and water can ensure quick hydration
  • To avoid sodium depletion caused by excessive sweating in hot weather, consider adding 0.5g of salt to the athlete’s water intake

***

My thoughts

I don’t actually have a lot to say about the nutrition of endurance athletes.  You can probably sum up my beliefs very simply as:

• Glycogen replenishment is necessary
• Excess carbohydrate consumption is still going to cause health problems
• Eating lots of grains will compromise your immune system and your health
• Nutrition probably doesn’t make that much difference to performance

Anyway, you can see how I got to the above principles by reading the following comments on the course notes:

• Endurance athletes? – my first observation is that these guidelines were actually given for all athletes.
  • My thoughts – to avoid me getting too stressed and angry with the notes, I’ve chosen to assume that they haven’t actually commented on the guidelines for strength athletes at all.  Sadly, this isn’t actually much of a stretch.  If you take a look at their ideas about strength training, you realise that they have no direct experience of getting anyone strong, least of all themselves.  Anyway, moving on.
  • Lyle McDonald – and just to reassure myself that I am not going mad, Lyle McDonald confirms that there is no reason on earth why you would use the same diet for athletes at either end of the strength-endurance continuum.
• Meal frequency – the course notes on the subject of meal frequency present one of the most beautiful lies I have ever seen.  Working in Mergers & Acquisitions, I see quite a few lies, and most of them are pretty good.  A really good lie should contain as much truth as possible and only deviate from the truth where absolutely necessary.  A truly great lie is completely true apart from an essential detail or assumption that is omitted.  This section of the course notes is right up there with the truly great lies.  It is a great lie because if presupposes that the diet being eaten is a high-carbohydrate diet.  If this is assumption is removed then the whole house of cards falls down, there is no blood sugar drop and the body just gets on with breaking down the fats it has consumed for energy.
• Low-carbohdyrate diets – if you are interested in the ability of the human body to perform endurance activity with limited or even zero carbohydrates, this full article will prove fascinating.  It is a review of several key studies done in the Arctic and involving both Eskimo and Western teams involved in heavy daily endurance activity, as well as a review of several more modern studies.  The abstract states: “impaired physical performance is a common but not obligate result of a low carbohydrate diet. Lessons from traditional Inuit culture indicate that time for adaptation, optimized sodium and potassium nutriture, and constraint of protein to 15–25 % of daily energy expenditure allow unimpaired endurance performance despite nutritional ketosis.”  Protein was constrained as fat was consumed in much larger quantities.
• Fluid intake – I wrote about the various issues around water in an earlier post.
• The Paleo Diet for Athletes – I reviewed Loren Cordain and Joe Friel’s book on adapting the Paleo Diet for athletes quite a while ago.  I noted at the time that it also fell into the trap of assuming that all athletes were endurance athletes, just like my course notes.  But how is the Paleo Diet better for endurance athletes than just eating piles of jam sandwiches, like Graeme Obree.  As Cordain explains, the Paleo Diet is better for endurance athletes because it is:
  • A diet high in animal protein and therefore has plenty of Branch Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs), which are potent stimulants for building and repairing muscle
  • Rich in fruits and vegetables and therefore reduces blood acidity and prevents muscle protein breakdown
  • Rich in antioxidants, which promote optimal immune system functioning and thereby reduce the likelihood of illnesses
  • Replenishes glycogen stores through fruits and vegetables in the post-exercise window
• And if you are happy with tubers, then there is no reason why you should struggle to obtain all of the carbohydrates you could possibly want or need.  I think more people are beginning to realise this now.  I was pleased to see recently that swimming coach G John Mullen experimented with the Paleo Diet and found it suitable for athletic endeavours.
• Disadvantages of a Western diet – so turning the above points on their head, you might see that the disadvantages of a Western diet are that it is:
  • Lacking in sufficient protein and therefore cannot build and repair muscle effectively
  • Lacking in fruits and vegetables and therefore blood acidity is too high, which causes muscle breakdown (see John Berardi)
  • Poor in antioxidants and therefore poor in supporting the immune system so allowing illness to occur
  • High in grains, which are damaging to the health, cause inflammation and are bad for the gut and the immune system (see Robb Wolf)
• How important is nutrition really? – I am not entirely convinced that diet is as important for sport as some people think it is (see Will Gadd).  I suspect, like in health matters, that stress (and therefore sleep) is far more important.

***

Short and sweet this week, I’m afraid.

• Nutrition for weight loss – I knew from personal experience that it’s pretty much impossible to eat 55% of your calories in carbohydrates and lose weight healthily (yes, I know about the Twinkie guy).  Using this recommendation, if you are female or a smaller male, you are never going to get enough protein or fat in your diet and you’re going to get sore after your workouts.  You’re probably also going to lose muscle and your mood is likely to go down the pan.
• Nutrition for health – I also didn’t agree with the lipid hypothesis, which was the basic theory on which pretty much all of the discussion of nutrition.  This is broadly interpreted to mean that fat is bad and carbohydrates are good, as far as heart disease is concerned.  I had formed this opinion based on various articles and papers that I had read but I had never really sat down and worked all the way through it.  Fortunately, I came across Dr Malcolm Kendrick, who explains why fat consumption is irrelevant for heart disease, and Robb Wolf, who explains why carbohydrates are bad for heart disease.

***

So it’s all sorted then?

Well, no.  I didn’t want to stop there.  I wanted to understand more about how food and the body interact.  Dr Kendrick made me realise that food is not as significant for heart disease as we might expect and that stress is a far, far bigger factor.  

He also helped me understand why much of our discussion of superfoods is flawed because of ad-hoc hypotheses.  Also, Robb Wolf helped me understand that it is the metabolic syndrome (i.e. body composition) that is the driver for ill-health and not the foods themselves.  But that wasn’t the end of the road.  I had lots of other questions.

***

What sort of questions?

Well, my biggest question was – how many other assumptions have I been making?  What else may not be valid?

One of the big assumptions we all make, of course, is the idea that germs are the sole cause of certain diseases, also known as the germ theory of disease, and that the condition of the body has no role in whether we catch an ailment or not.  My first reading on this subject was the fascinating work Food is Your Best Medicine, by Dr Henry Bieler.  

Dr Bieler introduced the idea that germs might not be the sole cause of disease and might even be merely a coincident factor rather than a causative factor.  Obviously, a radical idea and certainly not a popular one!

For a more detailed discussion of the germ theory of disease and why Dr Bieler challenges it, check out my review of Food is Your Best Medicine.

***

So where are you going with this?

Well, another book that rejects the idea that germs are the sole cause of certain diseases is The Metabolic Typing Diet, by William Wolcott (affiliate links (UK, US).

Find out what type of metabolism you have inside

***

OK, I read the review of your crazy Bieler guy – why should I read this one?

I’ll keep this brief, after my long introduction…

• Background – The Metabolic Typing Diet is a more academically useful book than Food is Your Best Medicine.  It is a more complete work in that it gives a big background chapter at the beginning, explaining what other work people have done in this field.  It explains how the important work of Weston A Price was instrumental in the realisation that the health of natural populations on their ancestral diets was very good.  Switching to new, modern diets lead to a swift decrease in health and longevity.
• Development – the development of the metabolic typing theory is shown clearly, as follows:
  • Wolcott shows how he began with the work of William Donald Kelley, which suggested that people can be divided into two main categories, depending on whether their sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system is dominant.  Which system is dominant dictates which type of diet is better for them.
  • Wolcott notes that this theory did not always lead to the best results and that George Watson’s division by the rate of oxidation was often superior – people are either slow or fast oxidisers.  They either digest food really quickly or they don’t.  Fast oxidisers do badly on carbohydrates because they burn through the food like mad, get blood sugar spikes and end up hungry an hour later.  They need fatty meats and protein.  Slow oxidisers do badly on fatty meats because they can’t burn them quickly enough to get the fuel they need so they become sluggish and tired.  They need a supply of carbohydrates to keep them ticking over.
• The metabolic typing theory – Wolcott explains how he combined Kelley’s theory with Watson’s theory and came up with a dominance theory that explained how they interacted.  He then used this theory to create a set of questionnaires to establish where people lay on the spectrum.  The theory sets out that if you eat according to your type, you will enjoy good health.  If you don’t, you won’t.
• The first level of typing – the first level of the testing is given in the book is based on Watson’s theory and establishes whether you are a protein type, a carbohydrate type or a mixed type.  The book then gives chapters on each type to explain how to eat in order to fit in with your type.

***

So do you buy into this mumbo-jumbo?

Well, it doesn’t make a lot of difference to me.  I come out pretty definitively as a protein type, which means I need to eat plenty of protein and fat along with green vegetables.  I need to avoid sugar an starches like the plague.  So apart from a few small tweaks around the selection of which vegetables I might find optimal, I wouldn’t need to change my diet at all.

If I were really struggling with the Paleo Diet and the test told me I was a mixed or carbohydrate type then I might be tempted to buy into the theory and to give it a couple of months doing the prescribed diet.  If that describes you, I’d be really interested to see how it works out for you.

I have talked a lot about how Dr Kendrick has demolished the lipid hypothesis and how he believes that stress is a bigger factor in causing heart disease.  However, until now, I have not explained what he has said about the bad science of the mainstream scientists, and, in particular, their use of ad-hoc hypotheses.

***

Why are we talking about ad-hoc hypotheses?  Are they even relevant?

They are very relevant.  They are the main reason why the scientific reporting in the media is so conflicted.  You know, one day they tell you that a group of scientists has found that drinking red wine is good for your health and the next day they tell you another group has found it isn’t… Who the hell are you supposed to believe?

***

OK, you’ve got my attention.  What is an ad-hoc hypothesis?

An ad-hoc hypothesis is a new hypothesis that a scientist adds to his original theory in order to save it from being dismissed because of an experiment that seems to show that his original theory is invalid.

A good example of an ad-hoc hypothesis that most people will be able to appreciate is common in the field of extra-sensory perception (ESP).  Extra-sensory perception experiments are notoriously difficult to reproduce in front of an audience that is sceptical about ESP.  The response of the ESP researchers has been to formulate an ad-hoc hypothesis.  This ad-hoc hypothesis is that the negative thoughts of the sceptical audience interferes with their readings!

You can see hopefully how the use of ad-hoc hypotheses can keep a dead theory alive in zombie form for decades.  Just like a dead parrot, the only way you can keep the original theory upstanding is by the judicious use of nails ad-hoc hypotheses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vuW6tQ0218

The only reason some theories are alive is because they are being nailed in place by ad-hoc hypotheses

***

OK, stop being funny.  What’s this dead parrot theory you are talking about?

The dead parrot theory is the lipid hypothesis of heart disease, which suggests that heart disease is caused by eating more saturated fat.  The more saturated fat you eat, apparently, the more at risk of heart disease you are.

If you were a sane person, you might then consider whether the evidence suggests this to be correct.  Let’s have a look.  Oh drat!  It looks like the French eat lots more saturated fat than we do but their risk of heart disease seems to be much lower.

At this point, a sane person would conclude that the hypothesis was not upheld and that we should formulate a new one.  Perhaps we could look at stress?  I bet the French are a lot less stressed than we are.  I mean, look at that 35-hour legal limit on the working week.  If that doesn’t give you a clear idea of their priorities then I don’t know what will.

However, someone determined to nail the parrot theory back on the perch would use an ad-hoc hypothesis.  Perhaps they might invent a concept called the “French Paradox” and then look for nutritional basis for this paradox with which to create an hypothesis.  Perhaps they might end up with the old cliches that French people eat more garlic and drink plenty of red wine.

They did use those old chestnuts to create an ad-hoc hypothesis? The scoundrels!

***

So what does Dr Kendrick say about The French Paradox?

Dr Kendrick has looked at the research into the claimed protective powers of the French Paradox ad-hoc hypothesis.

He has reviewed studies relating to the impact of garlic and red wine on heart disease and he has concluded that there is no evidence that any of these are protective against heart disease.  He asserts that the only studies that are even vaguely suggestive of some small impact have been done by people either funded by food manufacturers or by the food manufacturers themselves.  He suggests that the only reason that we even consider them to be a possible source of health benefits is because of the erroneous French Paradox.

But is it as simple as that? Let’s take a look…

***

Garlic

Garlic is supposed to improve our risk of heart disease.

However, a meta-analysis by Silagy that included direct contact with food manufacturers was inconclusive and when Silagy went away and did his own controlled experiment to see what the real picture was, he was surprised to find that garlic didn’t have any effect.

And Berthold, Sudhop and von Bergmann found exactly the same thing in their randomised and controlled trial.

Conclusion? Garlic has no effect on heart disease.

***

Red wine

We all hear in the media how red wine is almost guaranteed to improve our risk of heart disease.  And yet the media is confused about whether red wine is fundamentally good for you.  A perfect example is this article in the Telegraph, in which scientists are at odds over the recommendations of a recent study.  Is it a bottle of wine?  Is it a glass?  How the hell does it work anyway?

Dr Kendrick is convinced that we shouldn’t even be thinking in this way.  He thinks that our obsession with red wine being protective of heart disease is a blind alley.  He thinks we are looking at red wine purely because of the erroneous ad-hoc hypothesis of the French Paradox.

The Amercian Heart Association, while never knowingly up-to-date, makes it clear that the jury is definitely out, saying:

Over the past several decades, many studies have been published in science journals about how drinking alcohol may be associated with reduced mortality due to heart disease in some populations. Some researchers have suggested that the benefit may be due to wine, especially red wine. Others are examining the potential benefits of components in red wine such as flavonoids and other antioxidants in reducing heart disease risk.

The linkage reported in many of these studies may be due to other lifestyle factors rather than alcohol… No direct comparison trials have been done to determine the specific effect of wine or other alcohol on the risk of developing heart disease or stroke.

That seems pretty definitive to me.

Moving away from Dr Kendrick’s hardline scepticism and the dry-as-a-bone humourless stand of the AHA to recent research, this review of recent research was cautiously optimistic about the benefits of red wine for the prevention of heart disease.  However, there are enough comments in the review to suggest to me that they are not completely sure whether the small effect is due to the effect of antioxidants, polyphenols or any other small and interesting micronutrients or the relaxing effect of the alcohol causing a reduction in stress.  Are you spotting a trend here?

Conclusion? I still don’t know for sure but let me sum up where my head is at: based on what Dr Kendrick has said, I think people are studying red wine because of the French Paradox and because it could turn out to be the panacea of a foodstuff that is both enjoyable and healthy.  And it is a psychologically observable phenomenon that people do tend to find what they are looking for, even when they are scientists.

However, even if there are some small heart disease benefits of red wine (and I suspect that the majority of any effect would occur via a stress reduction), I think they are likely to be outweighed by the damage caused by alcohol to other areas of my health.  For more on why alcohol is really bad for you (and me), see Robb Wolf.  So my take on it is that I would only drink red wine if I wanted to have fun and I wouldn’t persuade myself that it was healthy so I could drink it all the time.

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Thanks to Jeff for suggesting this post.  Please go and say hi if you have the time.