Matt Metzgar

Conversion to www.mattmetzgar.com

Originally, this blog was setup as mattmetzgar.blogs.com, and the domain name www.mattmetzgar.com forwarded to that address.  I've now enabled "domain mapping", so that www.mattmetzgar.com should show up in the address bars of all posts. 

This is just a change to make everything cleaner and simpler.  The old mattmetzgar.blogs.com and all the old links should still work fine.  There may be some temporary disruptions, but everything should be sorted out in the next day or two.

Acne

To be blunt, I think the medical community's treatment of acne is just awful.  You see all kinds of young people suffering from acne, and what do the doctors recommend: pills, lotions, washes, etc.  None of which gets to the root cause of acne: diet.

Loren Cordain's book on acne is soon coming to paperback.  He's shown that in "primitive" populations, there are virtually no signs of acne.  Yet here in the U.S., there are thousands of cases.  So why does acne "magically" appear on the faces of U.S. teenagers?

Finally, researchers are starting to show that the modern diet is the true cause of acne.  For example, this study shows how a low-glycemic diet reduces acne.  This study shows that high dairy consumption is related to acne development.

These two studies strike a chord with me because of my experience with a sure-fire acne generator: chocolate milk.  I remember in high school, if I drank chocolate milk I would soon get pimples.  Luckily, I figured out this relationship pretty quick and quit drinking it.  From then on, I had no problems.

I feel sad for modern teenagers who are misinformed about the real cause of acne.  I see some young people at the mall with bad acne and I wish they knew better.  But I'm sure their doctors will keep on promoting pharmaceutical junk that does them no good.  Acne can be successfully treated with a Paleo diet, if only doctors would prescribe it.

I'm optimistic that eventually word will get out about the acne-diet relationship.  I just wish it would happen sooner than later. 

Hunter-Gatherers and Obesity

Here's a good article that looks at hunter-gatherers and obesity.  It points out that when hunter-gatherer populations are introduced to refined carbohydrates, they suffer obesity.  Specifically, they suffer "truncal" obesity, or insulin resistance.  The authors point out that modern humans often have trouble with refined carbohydrate, as evident by the high rate of diabetes in Western populations.

The Blood Sugar Hypothesis II

Last year, I posted my doubts about the blood sugar hypothesis.  The blood sugar hypothesis basically says that if you balance your blood sugar and insulin levels, you will lose fat.

In my earlier post, I speculated that this is only true for a portion of the population.  I still think that is true, but now I think insulin is at the root of many other current health problems for a larger percentage of the population.

I think as people age, a life time of refined carb consumption starts to catch up with them, whether they are genetically susceptible or not.  In my post on abdominal fat, you can see the many connections between aging, insulin action, and abdominal fat.

One example is a person I work with.  If you judged his weight by BMI standards, he would be normal weight.  Yet his body shape says otherwise.  He has little to no fat on his legs and upper body, but he has quite a potbelly. 

To me, this really jumps out as a metabolic abnormality.  I don't think his condition is caused by a simple more-calories-in-than-out relationship.  The more probable explanation is that he has poor insulin sensitivity due to refined carb consumption.

Medical professionals are starting to realize this as well.  It started with height-weight charts, and then the BMI.  Now many researchers suggest that a patient's waist should be measured as well.  This is because waist circumference is starting to show as a risk factor for more and more conditions.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to post more about insulin sensitivity and how different foods affect it.

Fasting to the Rescue

A couple of weeks ago, I started to feel like I was getting sick.  Maybe it was something I ate, or perhaps it was a virus.  At any rate, I obviously wanted to avoid any downtime.

I did some reading and found out how animals acted when they were ill.  Generally, they eat very little or nothing at all and just rest.  I tried my best to duplicate this strategy.

I fasted for about 30 hours, and during this time I just laid around and slept a lot.  And lo and behold, a day later I was mostly back to normal.

This is the second time in a year that I've used fasting to fight off a cold/virus.  I've tried everything in years past - Vitamin C, zinc, echinacea, etc. - and it never seemed to make much difference.  Fasting is the only strategy that I can see that's really helped to stave off illness.

My incident is just anecdotal, but I would like to see some research studies done as far as fasting as a defense against the common cold.  I'd be willing to bet it works to some degree.

More on the Paleo Diet

I took at look at the full-text of the recent study on the Paleo diet.  The authors listed exactly which foods were used during the study.  I am listing the foods here to show how modern foods can be used to simulate an ancient Paleolithic diet:

Allowed food ad libitum: All fresh or frozen fruits, berries and vegetables except legumes, canned tomatoes without additives except for citric acid, fresh or frozen unsalted fish and seafood, fresh or frozen unsalted lean meats and minced meat, unsalted nuts (except peanuts), fresh squeezed lemon or lime juice (as dressing), flaxseed or rapeseed oil (as dressing), coffee and tea (without sugar, honey, milk or cream), all salt-free spices.

Allowed food in restricted quantity: Dried fruit (ad lib 2 days/week), salted seafood (one meal/week), fat meat (one meal/week), potatoes (two medium sized/day), honey (used in marinade once/week), cured meats (as entrée once/week), mineral water (only when drinkable tap water was not available).

Prohibited food: All milk and dairy products, all grain products (including maize and rice), all legumes (including peanuts), charcuterie products (for example, sausages, pâtés and so on), canned food (except tomatoes, see above) and all forms of candy, ice cream, sorbet, soft drinks, juices, syrups, liquor, sugar and salt.

Abdominal Fat

As men get older, they tend to add fat to the waist.  As was shown in the National Runners Study, even large amounts of weekly running do not stop the gradual increase of waist circumference over the years:

(Williams PT. Evidence for the incompatibility of age-neutral overweight and age-neutral physical activity standards from runners. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 1997; 65:1391-6) (Note: the vertical axis label should be centimeters.)

So what can stop or slow this increase?  Resistance training seems to be the best exercise option.  In this study(pdf), resistance signfiicantly reduced abdominal fat - especially subcutaneous fat.  (Visceral fat is the fat surrounding internal organs, while subcutaneous fat is the "love handle" fat.)  Resistance training is also effective for women, too, with this study(pdf) showing the addition of resistance training leading to greatly reduced subcutaneous fat.

As far as diet choices, a low-glycemic diet shows the most promise for reducing abdominal fat.  There is a connection between the dietary glycemic load and visceral fat, as is shown in this study.  In fact, you can use waist circumference to predict (pdf) how insulin resistant a person is.  And finally, an expanding waist measurement over time predicts declining insulin sensitivity over time as well.

Getting the Ball Rolling

It seems to have taken quite a while, but finally a research study utilizing the Paleolithic diet has been performed.  In this study, subjects followed a Paleo diet for just three weeks and began to see benefits.  This included decreases in weight, waist, and blood pressure.

Hopefully, this study will jumpstart other clinical trials of the Paleo diet.  Researchers have already tested lesser diets like the Atkins and Ornish plans.  It's time for the Paleo diet to take center stage.

Weights + Cardio = Success

Here's an older study(pdf) that at the effects of different types of training in men.  Subjects were split into three groups - endurance training only, strength training only, and concurrent strength and endurance.  In a nutshell, the results were:

• The endurance only group lost fat mass but also lost lean mass
• The strength only group gained lean mass but had no change in fat mass
• The concurrent group lost fat mass AND gained muscle

What was unique about this study was that it also measured changes in metabolic rate.  The groups had the following changes in basal metabolic rate after the training period:

• The endurance only group had a decrease of 48 calories per day
• The resistance only group had an increase of 113 calories per day
• The concurrent group had an increase of 82 calories per day

So while the resistance only group increased basal metabolism the most, this group did not perform any cardio, and hence their total energy expenditure wasn't high enough to cause fat loss.

The clear winner is obviously the concurrent group.  There was some of the interference effect, with the concurrent group not gaining as much strength as the resistance only group and not gaining as much aerobic capacity as the endurance only group.  But to me, this is just splitting hairs.  For the average person who is trying to get into shape, performing strength and endurance work provides the best of both worlds - muscle gain and fat loss.

Let's Focus on the Positive

I saw this news article the other day, "Overweight people get less out of exercise".  The article comments on a recent study in the Journal of Sports and Conditioning Research.  The study compared resistance training in lean versus overweight/obese subjects.

The overweight subjects gained 4 to 17 percent less strength compared to the lean subjects.  But I dug deeper, and found that both groups gained the exact same amount of muscle mass.  So while the lean group did gain slightly more strength, the overweight group was able to build the same amount of muscle mass - which would increase metabolism, and help to improve body composition over the long term.

Why did the media report focus on the negative strength differential instead of the equal amounts of muscle mass?  My guess is that negative headlines attract more attention, and a story with the headline, "Lean and Overweight Have Same Capacity for Muscle Growth," may not have garned as many readers.

Yet by writing the story in this way, the journalists are doing a disservice to those that are overweight.  Someone overweight could easily read that headline and think, "see, it doesn't matter if I exercise or not."  Those who are overweight need hope, not deflation.