The military has a lot invested in training pilots and decided to fund a study to find out which foods are best for them. The University of North Dakota researchers found the 45 pilots who ate the fattiest foods, such as butter or gravy, had the quickest response times in mental tests and made fewer mistakes when flying in tricky cloudy conditions. Surprisingly, after those on the high-fat diet, those on the high carb diet performed the best, with the worst performance from those on the high protein diet.
Enig, Mary., and Sally Fallon. ?Caustic commentary? Wise Traditions, 2009;(10)4:41

Nutritional and Physical Degeneration is one of the most ground-breaking books ever written on the link between nutrition and health. Dr. Weston A. Price, a dentist from Cleveland, became very disturbed by what he saw in his patients. He started to see a link between the decay he found in the mouths of his patients and pathologies found elsewhere in the body like diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, gastrointestinal complaints, and more. Dr. Price also found that crowded, crooked teeth were becoming more and more common, along with facial deformities like overbites, narrow faces, lack of well defined cheek bones, and underdevelopment of the nose. Dr. Price did not believe these problems to be in any way normal; He believed they were the result of poor nutrition. The worse a person?s diet was the more decay he found in their mouth. The more decay a person had in their mouth, the higher the rate of pathologies in other areas of the body.

More than 70 years ago Dr. Price decided to search the world for primitive people who lived entirely on indigenous foods. His travels took him from islands in the South Seas to Alaska to Africa and many places in between. He visited Australian Aborigines, Swiss villages, Eskimos, traditional American Indians, Amoazonian Indians, African tribes, and more. Dr. Price and his wife Florence traveled for ten years during the 1920’s and 30’s when groups of people completely isolated from civilization could be found.

Throughout his travels, Dr. Price kept a record of his findings with pictures and detailed assessments. What he found, to be called astounding, is an understatement. Dr, Price discovered that primitive people untouched by civilization, who subsided on a diet of indigenous food, had outstanding physical development with little to no dental problems, heart disease, diabetes, or any other diseases we know believe to be a normal consequence of life.

Dr. Price?s findings were not surprising to other investigators and explorers. However, the excepted explanation at the time was that primitive people were ?racially pure? and that the maladies we see in civilization were due to ?race mixing?. This theory was untenable to Dr. Price who found that the individuals in groups he studied who abandoned their traditional diets for foods provided by traders or missionaries, or who moved to a more civilized area were found to develop tooth decay and degenerative conditions.

The diets of these primitive groups of people were vastly different. Some were mostly cooked food while in others most of the food was consumed raw including animal sources. Some diets were based on sea food, others on domestic animals and others on wild game. Some diets were based on dairy while others consumed a variety of fruits and vegetables and grains.

The common thread between all the groups Dr. Price investigated was none of them contained any refined devitalized foods like white sugar, flour, pasteurized or skim milk, and refined or hydrogenated vegetable oils. All the diets contained animal foods of some type and some salt. Dr. Price analyzed the primitive diets and found they all contained four times the amount of water soluble vitamins and minerals, and ten times the amount of fat soluble vitamins compared to the modern American diet.

Unfortunately, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, the permanent record of his travels, is nonexistent to today?s modern medical community. This book is more important to our health and welfare today than it was 60 years ago. Our food supply, if it could be classified as food, is devoid of almost all nutritive value. We need to incorporate the fundamentals of primitive nutrition and return to nutrient dense whole food. We need to get back to local farming and turn away from manmade supermarket garbage that is destroying our health.

Anyone interested in becoming truly healthy needs to read Nutrition and physical degeneration

Mike weighs in on the pros and cons of hormone replacement therapy, soy lecithin, creatine and HFCS. He also reminds us that while there is a lot of good information on the internet, it’s important to research and consult with experts before using a product. Just because a product is legal doesn’t mean it’s safe or that it works.

Here’s a sample from the article:

Q: Hi Mike,

I was doing some research on HGH in my downtime, and the use of it to treat chronic conditions and developmental issues. Now, I came across this website http://www.rajeun.net/ as a result of my surfing. I had a look at the eight-point anti-aging program this guy has sorted out for himself and thought to myself, ?Gee Justin, be pretty cool if that worked, right??

Now some of it sounds like the usual bunkum; EDTA chelation seems to fit into that category for example.

But — and it’s a big but — in your opinion, if this guy keeps at what he’s been doing, does he have a routine that might give him an advantage over the rest of us when it comes to staying healthier for that bit longer? And following up, if you yourself wanted to go about living for a very long time, would you go down the same path this dude is going down?

In closing, respect for all for your time and encouragement Mike, a whole heap of people appreciate your attitude and your efforts in keeping guys fitter, healthier and happier.

Best regards.

A: Justin,

When it comes to living longer, does it give him an advantage over us? I don’t think there is enough evidence to answer that question. One thing is for sure, your quality of life definitely improves. Men who properly use hormone replacement therapy show an elevated sense of well-being and mood. If it didn’t work, it wouldn?t be such a huge business. There are anti-aging clinics popping up all over the world.

There are parts of his program however, that are a little suspect. Two that jump out at me are EDTA chelation for getting rid of metals in the body, and taking Vermoc to get rid of parasites. My advice to Ellis is to get the hell out of that God-forsaken toilet of a country.

Another part of his program that I take exception to is his endorsement of using Erythropoietin or EPO. EPO is a drug used in the clinical setting to increase hematocrit (red blood cell) levels. EPO is a natural substance produced by the kidneys that stimulates bone marrow to manufacture red blood cells. This drug, if used improperly, can result in death — as seen with Olympic athletes trying to gain an edge in endurance events.

Low hematocrit levels can be caused by many different conditions including blood loss, chemotherapy, HIV or nutritional deficiencies. Obviously, if the cause is nutritional, you’d want to use supplements, not a drug. Just because your hematocrit is low normal, it is no reason to jump on EPO. What Mr. Mexico doesn’t understand is that the drugs he is on, especially testosterone, increases your hematocrit levels. I believe Ellis’ site is a little on the irresponsible side.

Mike

Fat is it friend or foe? Well if you ask most, including health care professionals, they’ll say foe. It’s time for people to wake up! The current ways of eating aren’t working. Just a few years ago, for the first time in history the top six books on the New York Times Best Seller list, were about the same subject: diets low in carbs, moderate to high protein, high in fibrous carbs (vegetable), and moderate fat. Why is this topic so popular? They work!

One of the biggest reasons protein diets work is the consumption of fat. That is, fat minus the abundance of carbs. Fat has many functions outside of being used as an energy source, and certain fatty acids are essential. Without eating them you’d literally get sick and die.

But how does fat help our diet? Well, fat satiates the appetite, and helps to stop the cravings for sugar. And probably most importantly, fat when combined with a low sugar intake actually aids in burning fat as fuel. That’s right, fat helps burn fat. When fat is restricted, our bodies have a defense mechanism built in through evolution for survival. Our bodies will actually stop using fat as fuel in an effort to preserve our stores for future use.

Bodybuilders have known this for years through trial and error, while dieting for shows, they would reach a certain body fat percentage and suddenly plateau for no apparent reason. We found that by adding fat to the diet like olive oil, or coconut oil, would jump-start the body to burn body fat. It’s not the amount of food you consume that is the problem. It’s the types of food you’re consuming.

Sounds bizarre doesn’t it.

For decades we have been taught that fat is bad for us, carbohydrates are good, and that the key to a healthy weight is eating less and exercising more. Yet with more and more people acting on this advice, we have seen unprecedented epidemics of obesity and diabetes. With seven years of research, Taubes argues persuasively that the problem lies in refined carbohydrates (white flour, sugar, easily digested starches) ?via their dramatic effect on insulin, the hormone that regulates fat accumulation?and that the key to good health is the kind of calories we take in, not the numbers. There are good calories, and bad ones. Taubes traces how the common assumption that carbohydrates are fattening was abandoned in the 1960’s when fat and cholesterol were blamed for heart disease and then?wrongly?were seen as the causes of a host of other maladies, including cancer. He shows us how these unproven hypotheses were emphatically embraced by authorities in nutrition, public health, and clinical medicine, in spite of how well-conceived clinical trials have consistently refuted them. He also documents the dietary trials of carbohydrate-restriction, which consistently show that the fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be.

Good Calories Bad Calories is the end of the debate about the foods we consume and their effects on us.