Matt Metzgar

Leanness & Aging

A number of studies suggest that permanent calorie restriction (which isn't healthy and isn't something I recommend) can help extend the lifespan.  Yet researchers haven't been sure whether the effect was due to the subjects eating less or the resulting leanness of the subjects.

Some neat research has separated out the effects and shown that leanness does in fact extend the lifespan (at least in animal subjects).  Scientists were able to flip a genetic "switch" that let mice eat all they want yet still remain lean.

I have been curious about this for some time, speculating that being overweight accelerates the aging process.  People who are older and lean often look younger than someone in their 20s who is overweight.

I have also been wondering what the "optimal" degree of leanness is.  Hunter-gatherers have between 8 - 11 percent bodyfat from what I've read.  I don't what my bodyfat it is, it's normal - maybe 15 percent.  I think after the summer is over here in Vegas I will embark on a mission to get my bodyfat in the 8 to 11 percent range. 

Weight Gain and Loss

The past few weeks I've been busy and also have been doing some traveling.  This last weekend, I noticed that I gained some weight - not much, just a pound on the scale but I could tell the difference.

The reason for this gain was simple: I was busy and didn't get my normal walking in.  My eating didn't change at all during this time.  This points out a truth that isn't well-publicized: weight gain is primarily caused by underexercising, not overeating.

If you exercise enough, you can eat a pretty atrocious diet and still maintain your weight.  You may rot out your insides, but that's another story.

This week, I've cranked up the exercise and by the weekend I will most likely be back to my normal weight.  It can't be said enough: exercise is the primary determinant of bodyweight, not diet.

Sprinting and Resting

For years, I have done sprints in the "Tabata" style - a series of 20 second sprints with 10 second rest periods in between.  However, based on a few things I read, I've been trying longer rest periods the last couple workouts.

For yesterday's workout, I did 15 second sprints with 3 to 4 minutes rest in between.  I tried to go really hard on the sprints, almost at top speed.  I noticed today that the workout gave me a much different after-effect.  My legs felt more springy, and less banged up than when I do the Tabata workouts.

A lot of this idea is based on the way professional sprinters train.  They don't do much distance work, and they take long rests between sprints in practice.  Yet sprinters always look so healthy and vital, much more so than middle distance runners or marathoners. 

I will stick with these longer rest periods and see how it goes.

Self-Regulation

Some frightening statistics: 2/3 of the US population is overweight or obese.  The percentage of young people who are overweight has tripled since 1980.  30 percent of those over 21 are obese. 

Why has this problem gotten so out of hand?  I think one part of it is the American philosophy of individualism.  America is all about the individual: giving everyone a chance (supposedly) in capitalism, and giving everyone a vote in the democracy.  The fabric of our country was woven around independence.

Independence is a nice topic for stories, fables, and philosophy books, but it doesn't really describe how people operate.  I would instead argue that we are all inherently dependent, dependent on the people (or lack thereof) around us.

If people were truly independent, autonomous units, they could just flip a switch, so to speak, and start exercising to lose weight.  But we all know that's not the case, and the statistics I mentioned above merit this point.

Clearly, most people don't have the self-regulatory powers to maintain a healthy weight.  This does not mean that those people who can maintain a healthy weight are superior in some way.  It just means that for the average person, when it comes to he or she controlling their weight, the correct prescription is not, "you're on your own!"

So what's the answer?  In a nutshell, other people helping.  Studies show that various kinds of social support do make a difference for a person trying to lose weight.  Telephone counseling, internet couseling, "buddy" programs, are all effective.  If the government really wanted to help people lose weight, they would set up these types of programs in all communities. 

Supply and Demand

As has been obvious for some time, many metro areas are in a housing bubble.  Las Vegas has been a prime bubble market with record appreciation in 2004.  Evidence has been mounting for some time that the Vegas market has now peaked, and is now stalling and soon may be headed downhill. 

First, there are over 23,000 houses up for sale in Vegas, which I believe is a record.  It is difficult to know for sure due to the spotty press coverage out here.  When prices were rising, the local newspaper was quick to point out this news.  Now that prices have flatlined, there is only the occassional article about housing.

Second, the number of homes being sold each month is going down.  You put these together, rising supply and falling demand, and you have a simple economic result: a surplus.

Historically, high inventory levels is the first sign that a real estate bubble is going to burst or deflate.  Initially, sellers stay firm with their prices believing this is what their house is "worth".  Eventually, sellers get motivated to cut prices (or keep their selling prices the same over time as inflation rises), and the bubble deflates.

Tonight as I walked through the neighborhood, I found a house for sale that is a prime bubble example: a 1,400 sq ft house that was for sale for $364,000.  In any non-bubble market, this type of pricing would be looked upon as a joke.  Yet with the average home in California selling for over $500,000, maybe this is normal to some folks.

There is probably a slim chance that this home will sell at this price, given the large surplus of houses now available.  I will keep my eye on this and see what happens.

$$$ for Arnold

As I predicted last year, I believe Arnold Schwarzengger will win re-election as California's Governor in the coming November election.  However, it's good to put your money where your mouth is, so I just made an online donation to his campaign at www.joinarnold.com. 

I haven't followed Arnold's performance all that closely, but from what I've seen he's doing a hundred times better than your typical politician who's owned by special interests.  Now if Arnold can just do something about that LA traffic...

This Guy is Crazy

Here's something hunter-gatherers DID NOT do:  50 marathons in 50 days in 50 states, as Dean Karnazes is attempting to do.  Get the details here. 

Though I admire that this guy is trying to push the limits of human performance, he is probably taking years off his life.  A few years back some guys ran 7 marathons in 7 days on 7 continents, which isn't a real good idea either.

I ran a marathon once, and can't imagine doing it again.  Just the training for a marathon sets you up for injury, much less the race itself.  There are many better tests for fitness than a marathon.   

Best Bets

I've been thinking more about the activities that hunter-gatherers may have participated in.  Here's a partial list, based on circumstantial evidence and educated guesses:

1. Walking
2. Sprinting
3. Distance Running
4. Climbing
5. Dancing
6. Digging
7. Carrying Objects
8. Fighting
9. Throwing
10. Swimming

The details on these activities is where it gets sketchy.  We don't know how often they did certain activities, nor do we know the intensity or duration of them.  However, a good fitness routine should include all of these activities to some degree over time.

Symbolic Hunt

Here's a book I'd like to get my hands on, "An Interdisciplinary Study of Sport As A Symbolic Hunt: The Theory of the Origin and Nature of Sport Based on Paleolithic Hunting."

Modern sports usually have 5 to 12 players on each team, which is supposedly the number of young men in ancient hunter-gatherer tribes.  Sports are obviously male-driven (sorry ladies), and this seems to be a part of our evolutionary heritage. 

This book is a little too expensive, but maybe I can find it at the local university.

A Square Peg in a Round Hole

In my last post, I discussed Irving Dardik's Superwave theory, and its application to health.  Dardik believes that waves represent the form of healthy behaviors.  For example, research has shown that people with more heart rate variability are healthier than those with more narrow heart rate ranges.

Dardik applied this idea of waves to exercise.  In his opinion, linear exercising - for example, running at the same pace - is not healthy.  Instead, exercise should be done in waves, that is, a person exercises at an increasing pace until they are out of breath, and then rests for a while.

Science is starting to show that this type of exercise does indeed have benefits.  But does this prove that Dardik's theory is correct?  I have my doubts.

Art Devany, of Evolutionary Fitness fame, believes that exercise should be done in short bursts as well.  His theory is that of a "power law", a mathematical distribution that includes bursts of high-intensity activity.

So whose theory is correct?  Possibly neither.  The empirical evidence shows that short bursts of activity do have beneficial effects, but why?  The easiest explanation is that this type of exercise is part of the hunter-gatherer pattern.  Both the power law and superwave theories acknowlege the origins of physical behavior with our hunter-gatherer ancestors.  Yet in both cases, these two theories attempt to provide a theoretical system for activities where perhaps there is no system.

First off, no one really knows what physical activities the Paleolithic hunter-gatherers participated in.  We have archeological evidence, but there is no way to completely know what a "day in the life" was for an ancient hunter-gatherer.  Modern hunter-gatherer tribes have been pushed to geographical extremes and hence may not be representative of original hunter-gatherer societies.

For example, did hunter-gatherers just shoot poison darts at their prey and then saunter after them?  Or did they sprint after and physically fight their prey?  Or did they instead run prey down over several days?  No one knows for sure.

The Superwave and power law theories attempt to tidy up all these unknowns into neat little packages.  These theories, while entertaining, are far from conclusive.  Hunter-gatherer life was messy; too messy to fit into a nice academic theory.