Matt Metzgar

Baby Sleep Cycles

The other week I purchased, "The 90-Minute Baby Sleep Program", a new book on how babies sleep.  I was interested in it because the book is based on biology and internal body clocks.  The core of the book rests on the Basic Rest and Activity Cycle (BRAC), which has been shown to exist in humans.  In short, people's alertness and energy tends to rise and fall in 90-minute cycles.  The book applies this idea to a baby's sleep pattern.

In practice, once a baby wakes up from overnight or a nap, a new 90-minute clock will start.  At the end of the 90 minutes, a younger baby will often be ready to go back to sleep.  Older babies can sometimes string 2 or 3 consecutive 90-minute cycles of awake time together before needing a nap.  But if a baby is tired after one of these 90-minute cycles, then they should be helped back to sleep.  Otherwise, the baby has missed this opportunity for rest and will get cranky throughout the day and evening.  Also, the sleep or nap itself may not go in 90-minute cycles, but whenever the baby wakes up, a new 90-minute clock begins.

I tried this the other week with our baby and it was exactly right, almost down to the minute.  Amazing!  We then started tracking it, and it has continued to work very well.  I wish I would have had this book some months ago, it probably would have saved me a few headaches.

After reading the book, I realized that many babies are probably sleep-deprived.  Of course, this is not a good thing.  Sleep deprivation in adults contributes to obesity; who knows how it affects a developing baby.

I give this book the highest rating.  It's based on science and is in accordance with biology.  It's good for babies and will lessen the strain on parents as well.  For more information, the author's website is here.

Food versus Exercise

This entry is just a recap of this post that shows the work of trainer Robb Wolf.  I think the story was so important that I wanted to retell it here.  The before-and-after photos below show the results of a 2-day per week exercise program along with a Paleo diet.  What's interesting is that the subjects were already in training when the "before" pictures were taken.  The idea is that a bad diet can block virtually all the effects of a good exercise program. 

Robb goes into detail about things in this word document.  The moral of the story is that if you're eating a bad diet in conjunction with an exercise program, you are really just spinning your wheels.

National Healing Month

One thing that's hard to accept about exercise is that less is sometimes more.  Rest is a necessary and crucial component of any fitness program.  Yet two things appear to be working against incorporating sufficient rest into any program:

• Doing something is usually more fun than doing nothing
• There is no profit to be made from telling someone to rest

I remember reading how Mike Mentzer would often advise new, overtrained clients to take off a month from the gym and then restart with his program.  Of course, he got immediate pushback because the people didn't want to stop.  It's hard to accept that in some situations doing nothing is superior to doing something different.

The body can continue in an overtrained state for a very long time.  And putting the brakes on this overtraining can even lead to a person feeling worse in the very short-term.  For example, even if a person is overtrained and they go to work out, they can usually still get a hormonal boost from it.  Over the long term, they are digging an even deeper hole, but it's a quick fix nonetheless.

Something else I've noticed is that there appears to be a hierarchy to the body's healing process.  Primary injuries or spots of wear-and-tear are healed first.  Then secondary spots are healed.  These secondary spots can be physical problems that have been swept under the rug so long a person didn't even know they were there.

For me personally, I have designated May as National Healing Month and I will be doing no heavy exercise this month.  I've taken various months off in the past, and it doesn't really set you back that much in terms of fitness.  National Healing Month would probably be very beneficial to some, especially recreational athletes who are saddled with minor injuries.  At the very least, it would remind people to give their bodies and themselves a break.

 

High Fat Heaven

Coincidentally, I have been thinking more about high-fat eating, and then Mark Sisson lays down this killer post about it.  Mark has been out of commission for a few months, doing no cardio and some light weightlifting, but his physique has remained stellar due to his correct eating.  He notes that his diet is sometimes up to 65% fat - enough to make a traditional doctor choke, but not that crazy from a Paleo perspective.

I was combing through my own records the other night, and I noticed my waist was the lowest a couple of months ago when I was eating the most fat.  I was literally just drinking spoonfuls of oil, yet my waist and weight declined.  Strange, but true.

I think part of this can be contributed to the idea that you have to eat fat to burn it.  Many scientists think of the body as a fat-hoarding machine, but that doesn't really make much sense to me.  Even at low body fat levels (<10%), there's still plently of fat to use.  In various studies, people have gone 30 days or more on water-only fasts, with minimal ill effects.  So why would the body jump at seeing any calorie excess and direct it to fat storage, if it can go weeks without any food at all?

One other connection to make comes from this statement (originally from a scientific journal) from this online book:

"Fasting or feeding a high-fat diet abolished lipogenesis (fat formation) in adipose tissue and reduced glucose oxidation markedly; lipogenesis increased to the highest levels on a high-carbohydrate, fat-free diet."

So it appears that both fasting (as in intermittent fasting) or feasting on high-fat (Paleo) foods can contribute to lower body fat levels.  This falls in line with my feast/fast model I've discussed previously.

I believe the research will continue to turn away from the dysfunctional low-fat diet model towards higher-fat eating over the next decade.  Scientists are already testing high-fat diets to treat cancer, so the machinery is already in motion.  Until then, many people can potentially benefit from higher-fat eating in terms of health and weight loss. 

Green Works II

I was at the store earlier, so I decided to look at the Green Works brand versus typical cleaners.  As you can see in the picture, the Green Works cleaner costs $2.99 a bottle, while "409" (also made by Clorox) costs $2.29.  I don't know if this price differential is based on higher costs for the Green Works product, or if they are just trying to charge a premium for a health-conscious product.

I looked on the back of the "409" bottle, and it had listed: "Precautionary statement: Harmful to humans and animals".  So they are telling you right on the label that the product is probably toxic.  For me, I'd rather spend the extra 70 cents for a healthier product.

I have actually emailed Clorox to ask them why they sell both a toxic and non-toxic line of cleaners.  It wil be interesting to see if or what type of response I'll receive.

Green Works

After throwing out my toxic cleaning products last year, I have experimented with different brands to find suitable replacements.  Recently, Green Works products (from Clorox) have entered the marketplace.  I bought some the other week to give it a try.

The products seem to work as well as any typical cleaner.  And they are available at the local grocery store, so I don't have to make any extra effort to seek them out.  They are worth a try in my book.

I've started to wonder how Clorox can maintain their integrity by offering two lines of cleaners: a toxic version and a non-toxic version.  Why don't they just quit selling the old line and convert everything to Green Works?  Are any customers really going to get upset if they can't purchase their old toxic cleaners?  If so, maybe Clorox shouldn't want these people as customers.

Perhaps Clorox is in the process of changing their business model to focus on more environmentally-friendly products, I don't know. It's probably just a matter of time until these chemicals get (rightfully) banned in various places anyhow.  In the meantime, Green Works is at least a step in the right direction.

   

You Walk Wrong

Chris noted this article, "You Walk Wrong", that was recently published.  It discusses how most modern shoes impair our natural gait.  The article also discusses the development of various shoes that attempt to mimic barefoot walking.

I came to this same conclusion a few years ago.  The dress shoes I was wearing to work had the usual thick heel to them.  I noticed my knees began to hurt whenever I would wear these shoes.  I ditched them for a pair of flat, moccasin-type dress shoes and have never looked back.

Insulin Resistance and Breast Cancer

Here's a link to another new study showing the harmful effects of insulin resistance.  The study shows that early stage breast cancer patients have high levels of insulin and varying degrees of insulin resistance.  It is suggested that treatments focused on lowering insulin levels could be beneficial for breast cancer patients.

Obesity As Starvation?

Here's a great article(pdf) that looks at the effects of high insulin levels.  The article is focused on childhood obesity, but it can be applied to people of all ages.  Here is a passage in the article that shows how insulin resistance leads to obesity:

"How does this work? A thin, insulin-sensitive, 13-year-old boy might consume a daily allotment of 2,000 kcal, and burn 2,000 kcal daily (or 50 kcal/kg fat-free mass) in order to remain weight-stable, with a stable leptin level. However, if that same 13-year-old became hyperinsulinemic and/or insulin resistant, perhaps as many as 250 kcal of the daily allotment would be shunted to storage in adipose tissue, promoting a persistent obligate weight gain. Due to the obligate energy storage, he now only has 1,750 kcal per day to burn.

The hyperinsulinemia also results in a lower level of leptin signal transduction, conveying a CNS signal of energy insufficiency. The remaining calories available are lower than his energy expenditure; the CNS would sense starvation. Through decreased SNS tone, he would reduce his physical activity, resulting in decreased quality of life; and through increased vagal tone, he would increase caloric intake and insulin secretion, but now at a much higher level. Thus, the vicious cycle of gluttony, sloth, and obesity is promulgated."

Amazing - a person can be overweight, yet the brain signals them to eat even more.  As Gary Taubes showed, obesity is not directly caused by inactivity, but instead poor eating leads to both obesity and inactivity.

Alzheimer's Disease

I saw this new paper that proposed a unified theory for the cause of Alzheimer's disease.  Guess what they think is the ultimate cause?  Insulin resistance.

It seems to me that insulin resistance is connected to almost every disease condition.  And as I mentioned earlier, we already know what causes insulin resistance: refined carbohydrates.