Research of the Week No clear evidence that masks help against or prevent infection from respiratory illnesses. Archaeologists unearth a giant 7-foot sword along with an enormous burial site fit for a … giant? Status has deep roots. Insulin and peripheral neuropathy. The influence of kids on their parents. New Primal Kitchen Podcasts Primal Health Coach Radio: Jackie Fletcher Media, Schmedia Interesting thoughts on diet and the cause of obesity. Nice talk on sleep, ketosis, and satiety. Interesting Blog Posts The canine model of artificial general intelligence. How Steph Curry practices. Soci ..read more

When most people think about lifting weights, they think about their biceps, triceps, shoulders, and lats. Their legs, quads, hamstrings, glutes. They think about what to do with the body parts that move, that hold the weight, that push against the ground—but neglect to think about the abdominal muscles that brace, resist movement and allow you to even lift the weight in the first place. Abdominal bracing isn’t flashy or sexy, but it’s the most important part of lifting weights and moving your body through time and space. The best way to train your abdominal muscles are not sit ups, crunches ..read more

Technically, “cryotherapy” refers to any method of using cold therapeutically. Icing a sprained ankle, freezing off a wart, or sitting in an ice bath after a game of Ultimate Frisbee are all forms of cryotherapy. Today, though, I’m using the term cryotherapy to refer specifically to whole-body and partial-body cryotherapy chambers. Cryotherapy chambers use electric cooling or liquid nitrogen to expose users to super-chilled air in order to achieve various (supposed) benefits. The technology dates back to the late 1970s, and it used to be pretty niche, reserved mostly for top-level athletes and ..read more

Research of the Week Boron helps against COVID. Your fat cells know when you haven’t gotten sunlight. Don’t let them down. The gut biome regulates motivation for exercise. Worse indoor air quality, lower test scores. Mediterranean diets would work great for IBD if it weren’t for all those darn grains! New Primal Kitchen Podcasts Primal Kitchen Podcast: The Link Between Dairy Intolerance and Dairy Genes with Alexandre Family Farm Founders Blake and Stephanie Primal Health Coach Radio: Danika Brysha Media, Schmedia Contraband eggs. Not a great idea. Interesting Blog Posts Great piece on Chinese ..read more

Potatoes get a bad rap in many different health and diet communities. The keto and low-carb crowd says they’re too high in carbohydrates and will spike your blood sugar. The paleo guys are against them because they are neolithic foods from the New World that our Paleolithic ancestors had no access to. The autoimmune diet communities eschew them because they have various plant toxins that can cause inflammation and trigger sensitive and vulnerable individuals, and the conventional “healthy diet” people recommend against potatoes because they’re “empty white carbs.” Is this criticism warranted ..read more

The health world is fixated on fiber, constantly telling us how important fiber is and how we should all be eating more of it. Back in the day, our cultural obsession with fiber was all about being “regular.” You had to load up on fiber to keep things moving, so to speak. Nothing was more important. So we started our days with bland, tooth-cracking breakfast cereal that tasted like tree bark and sparked no joy. But hey, it was loaded with fiber and therefore good for us, right?  I’ve long been skeptical of that particular story, mostly because every major health agency that recommends hig ..read more

Despite being rational humans, we don’t always act in our own best interest. We know we should eat certain foods to look good, feel good, and get healthier, but often succumb to junk food that tastes good in the moment but makes us feel worse in the long term. We know getting to bed before 10 pm makes us perform better the next day, but it’s fun to stay up late. This is the human experience: the push and pull between our rational higher minds and what feels good in the moment. This is most evident in our relationship to working out. Working out is hard. It’s work. We are applying intense stres ..read more

I’m lucky to live in warm climates with year-round access to fresh produce, but not everyone can pop over to their local farmer’s market or co-op whenever they want and grab the ingredients for a big-ass salad. Farm-to-table cuisine is great, the Primal ideal even, but the reality is that cooking with fresh, local ingredients requires access and time to shop and prepare food that not everyone enjoys, not always. Many people rely on preserved food for much or all of the year to meet their meat and produce needs, “preserved” meaning frozen, canned, dried, or fermented. Whenever the topic of cann ..read more

When the keto diet first skyrocketed in popularity in the late 2010s, it quickly gained a reputation as the “bacon and butter” diet. Vegetables might appear on one’s plate as a small side of spinach or, more likely, cauliflower masquerading as everything from rice to pizza crust to wings. By and large, the focus was on limiting consumption to “keto vegetables” while focusing mainly on increasing fat intake. (I’m talking mainstream keto, mind you, not the Primal Keto Reset approach.) This, as you’d expect, led to no end of pearl-clutching from mainstream medical professionals and the popul ..read more

Research of the Week Less autophagy, more heart disease. Donating blood might be one way to lessen the risk of Parkinson’s. Ketones may help chemotherapy patients (again). Even if aspartame doesn’t increase anxiety in humans as it does in rodents, what do you have to lose by using stevia or monk fruit instead? The more boosters a person had, the greater their risk of getting COVID. New Primal Kitchen Podcasts Primal Kitchen Podcast: The Link Between Dairy Intolerance and Dairy Genes with Alexandre Family Farm Founders Blake and Stephanie Primal Health Coach Radio: Using Data to Guess Less and ..read more