Umair Yasin

When I started doing research on regenerative grazing on the internet I was surprised to see “regenerative grazing debunked” come up as a suggested topic. I thought why is this even controversial? It turns out some of the arguments in favor of it are controversial, especially how much carbon dioxide can soil building through better grazing practices take out of the atmosphere? And is that enough to offset the emissions of cattle? Opponents feel the benefits are exaggerated and dismiss this as a way to “greenwash” the meat industry. I agree the numbers are controversial, but regenerative grazing is still a very beneficial practice, as is regenerative raising of crops, or a combination of the two, as practiced on Gabe Brown’s farm . This is a major reason I think a compromise between wfpb and paleo diet advocates is important. I’ve seen arguments from wfpb supporters “debunking” regenerative grazing, and arguments from the other side “debunking” regenerative crop raising. In both cases w...

The weather has been pretty nice lately, spring like and not too hot. But it has been windy enough to make biking challenging. My local group is back to riding together. We still try to stay “socially distanced” although all have been vaccinated. On a recent ride we went out to the end of Redwood Retreat road and and back, with a nice lunch afterwards. I Passed by Guillemlo Winery’s vineyards on the way On the way back on Redwood retreat road we passed a farm that had some Alpacas: It is nice to be able to socialize with friends on rides. I’ve been riding with this group every Tuesday for years, but we had a hiatus of over a year due to the pandemic. from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/3wGtF4Y via IFTTT

Grain By Grain This is the fascinating story of Dr. Bob Quinn’s career, that also contains an important nutritional nugget about heritage wheat for people with foods sensitivities. I’ll summarize that first, then describe his decades of contributions. I had read in the past that some people who think they have gluten sensitivities may actually be intolerant to modern hybridized wheat, which was developed to improve crop yields. That is confirmed in this book in an interesting way. Dr. Quinn pioneered the heritage variety of wheat “kamut”, which was originally thought to be Egyptian (kamut is an ancient Egyptian word for wheat) but later found to be khorasan wheat from Mesopotamia. This wheat has actually been trademarked, so the term kamut may only be used if a specific set of growing practices have been followed, including organic farming, and they heritage grain may not be crossed with any other wheat. As for the food intolerances, He met a doctor in Italy that had patients wit...

The term “pegan” was coined by Dr. Mark Hyman, a preventive medicine specialist who has helped his patients achieved good health with diet for many years. His recommended diet has elements common to both paleo and a healthy version of a vegan diet, so he calls it The Pegan Diet, and recently wrote a book with that title. This is a very good book which I review below. First I’ll give my take on the compromise between the Whole-Foods Plant-based (wfpb) diet, of which a healthy version of a vegan diet is a subset, and the paleo diet. I think this compromise removes extreme aspects of both diets, and ends up fitting in well with mainstream guidelines. I discussed previously, wfpb emphasizes strict avoidance of overly processed foods (or as I summarize them, “junk”). It allows pretty much unlimited amounts of unprocessed fruits, vegetables, and legumes. Plenty of grains are also allowed, as long as they are minimally processed. Wfpb also recommends reduced consumption of animal produc...

Alex Huchinson’s “Sweat Science” column has an interesting comparison of the power output data for two riders in the Tour de France. The first is Marcel Kittel, a great sprinter who has since retired. The second is Tom Dumoulin, a “general classification” contender, which means he tries to win an entire stage race like the Tour de France (where he once placed second), or the Giro d’Italia (which he won). All-around riders like Tom have to be lighter and are generally less muscular than sprinters, because they have to be able to climb well. Tom Dumoulin in a Time Trial The sprinters are bigger and stronger, with higher peak power. But what is really interesting about these stage races is there is a rule that if you fall too far behind the overall leader, you are dropped from the race entirely. So there may be several days of hundred mile plus rides, and climbs over big mountain passes, that Marcel has to survive, just to get to a flat stage with a sprint finish at the end that is...

I recently discussed the concept of regenerative agriculture in my review of the book Sacred Cow . I have been researching this fascinating topic further and am convinced that regenerative agriculture of both plants and animals (or a combination), is a crucial step environmentally. It can drastically reduce carbon emissions and even remove CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it in the soil. I also found that the evidence for regenerative grazing discussed in the previous review is more controversial than I thought. I’ll touch on that below. What does seem to be more universally accepted is that regenerative farming of plants, with and without animals integrated into the mix, is much more sound environmentally than current conventional farming practices. Reversing Man-made Soil Degradation. In modern agricultural practice, high-yield monoculture crops are grown. This means an entire field is planted with one commodity crop like wheat, corn, soybeans, etc. Not enough organic matt...

Sometimes we can make too big a deal sweating the small details of healthy lifestyle. These few measures seem simple and doable, and as the study shows, make a big difference. FOOD, FACTS and FADS Americans don’t live as long as people in most other high-income countries. We hear so much about how healthy habits are the recommendations of the medical community, but often they come across as vague and not specific enough. How many times has your doctor said, “watch your diet” as you leave his/her office. Here are the highlights of a study that actually investigated the adherence of these habits and how they related to longevity rates. Researchers found that people who maintained five healthy lifestyle factors lived more than a decade longer than those who didn’t maintain any of the five. A Study led by Frank Hu at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health analyzed data from more than 78,000 women and 44,000 men who participated in two nationwide surveys (Nurses Health S...

I discovered something interesting about doing isometric training using exercise bands: When you are holding against a challenging resistance, your muscles start to shudder a bit. This is quite noticeable because the bands start to vibrate. This interesting phenomenon is because your nervous system recruits muscle fibers to take the load. As fibers fatigue, and their strength “drops out”, others have to be recruited to replace them, which is not a totally smooth process. Eventually not enough can be recruited and you can’t hold the load. I remember seeing this in strongman shows like “World’s Strongest Man” when they do static holds, their muscles noticeably shudder towards the end and you know they’ll soon lose their grip. Here is the great Mark Felix setting the world record for the Hercules hold: Felix beats his own HERCULES HOLD WORLD RECORD And here is four time World’s Strongest Man Magnus Ver Magnusson doing the same event long after his retirement, at the age of 56!: Le...

  If you’ve made the commitment to get in shape this year, you’ll have to increase the level of physical activity in your daily life. Generally, you’ll need to burn more calories than you’re ingesting, so you should be prepared for hours of high intensity exercise. If you’re not used to this degree of physical activity, you can feel burned out rather quickly. These tips will help you stay motivated.   Keep Things Exciting While going to the gym a few days a week is important in helping you meet your strength training requirements, hitting the gym every day will get old pretty quickly. Before you know it, you’ll be finding excuses not to go to the gym. Instead, plan on going to the gym two or three days a week. You can find other activities that you enjoy for those other days. Try bicycling, swimming, or jogging.   Celebrate Realistic Victories You can’t expect to lose five pounds a week and, when you set that goal for yourself, you’ll just be setting yourself up fo...

That is the name of a fascinating book by Dr. Will Bulsiewicz. He is a well-regarded expert gastroenterologist (“gut doctor”) both as a practitioner and clinical researcher. The main thesis of the book is that our gut microbiome , or the trillions of bacteria in our small and large intestines, play a major role in nutrition and health. He gives strong evidence that a lot of individual differences in digestion and food sensitivities are less attributable to genetics, and more to the status of these bacteria. And this status is largely affected by what we eat. The good news is that it doesn’t matter what our current status is, it is highly changeable by fixing our nutrition. Too often it is assumed that if we have certain food sensitivities, we simply have to avoid those foods for life. The most common misconception is that this is true for prediabetes and diabetes and carbs- “your body doesn’t handle carbs well, you have to keep your carbs low”, in an oversimplification. In truth, y...

  A Mac is technically a PC since PC just stands for a personal computer. However, when people talk about Macs versus PCs, what they are really discussing is Apple versus Windows. These two popular brands of computers have many things in common, but they use slightly different software and hardware. To figure out which option is best for them, people need to take into account these key factors.   Price and Availability Windows operating systems and hardware are produced by a variety of companies, including HP, Dell, and Lenovo. Meanwhile, Apple is the only company that produces Macs. This means that it is often easier to find Windows-based PCs in stores. Due to the wider availability, Windows PCs are also more affordable and budget-friendly. This is a good thing for most people, but some desire the exclusivity and brand name appeal of a Mac.   Software Options Over the years, Windows has encouraged a variety of developers to write software for Windows. This makes i...

https://www.eatsleep.fit/blog/ I found out about an interesting study on sports nutritionist Jeff Rothschild’s blog . There is a lot of advice out there about training and breakfast, often contradictory. My take was that it was fine to do a long low intensity session before breakfast (also known as “train fasted”). But I thought it was a good idea to eat breakfast, with a decent amount of carbs, before a higher intensity session. This was put to the test in the new study. There were 3 groups of cyclists that did a hard interval session that lasted an hour. The first had no breakfast, the second a high carb breakfast, and the third a low carb breakfast. The difference in their performance? None . It doesn’t seem to matter. Now I’ve certainly had the experience that my performance is impaired, or at least feels like it, on hard days with no breakfast. But they tend to be longer hard days, like closer to three hours with high intensity thrown in. I don’t really like those kind of ...

This is a great post that talks about doctors using food as a cure. I especially liked hearing that Boston Medical Center has a rooftop farm! FOOD, FACTS and FADS “Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.” This famous quote is often attributed toHippocrates. But, as research byDiana Cardenas in2013 shows, this quote can not be found anywhere in Hippocrates’ writings. Diana Cardenas discovered that the quote started to emerge from 1926 on and really started to get popular in the 1970s. There are good reasons for the quote to go round, though. Hippocrates considered nutrition one of the main tools that a doctor can use. More than that, dietary measures play a lead part in the original oath of Hippocrates. I But theoriginal Greekoath, literally translated, says: “I will apply dietetic and lifestyle measures to help the sick to my best ability and judgment; I will protect them from harm and injustice.” The dietetic and lifestyle measures are just one word in Gr...

I biked to Harvey Bear County Park. the hiked to the top of the Willow Springs trail and rode back down and then home, about a 2 1/2 hour workout, one of my local favorites. It was a great outing, it was beautiful today. It’s been hot all week but cooled down nicely today. I caught what may well be the last of the green grass in our hills for the season. We’ve had a pretty dry spring, very little rain in April, so the hills are turning “golden” already. In a wetter year they can last until June but it doesn’t seem likely this year. I’m glad I got out a lot this winter and spring and enjoyed the green while it lasted. from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/3o5TbOg via IFTTT

Nada GamalEldeen has a site with health tips. She asked me to contribute to her “ GlowUp Challenge ” which features health tips from various contributors. Mine is #9 under “go for a walk”: “The best activity for health is one that is fun for you, so it’s easier to be motivated. For example, walking. The best time to go for a walk is whatever time of day you can do it consistently. For many, that is first thing in the morning, because it is harder to come up with excuses and it is before “life interferes”. You may have to get up a little earlier. To make it a habit: “Just do it” for the first few days, then hopefully you’ll start to enjoy it.” from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/3xXZ7Ny via IFTTT

As I mentioned in the kick-off to my latest series on nutrition, I’m concentrating on what new things I’ve learned since I last concentrated on this area, and any ways my views have updated. One thing that has changed is that I would no longer categorize the whole-foods plant-based (WFPB) diet as an alternative to mainstream dietary guidelines. Now, in my opinion, I’d say rather that WFPB is a subset of mainstream guidelines, where you choose less animal foods and more foods like beans and nuts. This is an important point because WFPB is sometimes thought of as extreme, but if you look at it this way it is quite reasonable. The term WFPB is used to distinguish from an unhealthy vegan diet. WFPB is, in a nutshell: no junk, a variety of healthy minimally processed plant foods, minimal dairy, and  reduced  meat (including fish). A healthy vegan diet is a subset of WFPB that has  no  animal foods. Unfortunately, “whole food plant based is quite a mouthful”. So the sho...