Last night I gave a successful presentation on paleo living at Run to Live with Helen Williams of the Surrey Nutrition Clinic . The audience was mainly runners (obviously!) and there was a lot of interest in the action of insulin on the body’s energy systems. One of the issues that came up in the Q&A at the end was that eating a paleo diet would be difficult and time consuming “I just don’t have time to do all this cooking!”.

But surely if a paleo diet improves your health and extends your lifespan, then it creates time rather than consuming it? Does being paleo actually give you the time to do all the cooking? Is it really complicated?  These questions went round my head on the way home from the seminar.

I got home at 9.30pm tired and hungry and made dinner. Grilled thin cut lamb chops, olives, feta cheese in lemon juice and avocado. I sat down to my simple flavourful dinner at 9.45pm having also prepared my lunch for the following day. Two paleo meals ready in 15 minutes.

In my view being paleo gives you more time to live, it doesn’t take it away.

Here as a link to the BBC report on the findings of a new survey that has “discovered” that half of the children in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have got tooth decay. I don’t know why Scotland was excluded but I doubt Scotland’s results would be any better.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31960772

“Dr Sandra White, director of dental public health at Public Health England, said it was good news that tooth decay levels were falling and more children were brushing their teeth twice a day, but there was no room for complacency. 

Tooth decay is a serious, preventable disease and this survey echoes the need to urgently reduce the amount of sugary snacks and drinks in our children’s diets. Fluoride is indisputable in preventing tooth decay and by brushing teeth using fluoride toothpaste and also introducing water fluoridation where needed, we can significantly improve our children’s dental health.”

Here is the 2012 version of John Yudkin’s classic 1972 book “Pure White and Deadly” that pointed out the need urgently to reduce the amount of sugar in people’s diet to prevent amongst other things, dental caries which, he points out, is a serious but preventable disease.

And here is a picture of Surgeon Captain TL Cleave who in 1966 published the book Diabetes, Coronary Thrombosis, and the Saccharine Disease in which he said this about tooth decay:

“What can, indeed, be achieved by removal of the cause in the case of the dental diseases discussed here is well seen in the two-year study, 1955-7, by G. L. Slack and W. J. Martin, in which schoolchildren were given slices of apple after meals. These children, as long as they were given the slices of apple, not only got significantly less caries than the control children did, but they got much less gum disease, too. To the purely dental result could be added the reduction in potential other disease that follows from the evidence presented in this work. It is into educative channels of this type, plus some subsidization of school tuckshops to sell fruit, nuts, raisins, etc., instead of sweets, that fluoridation costs would seem better directed.”

I particularly like the comment about fluoridation.

Yep, definitely no room for complacency…. I am sure John Yudkin and Surgeon Captain TL Cleave would agree.

http://www.dietdoctor.com/the-difference-in-food-says-it-all

In this post you will find some photos of the different food served at the Low Carb/High Fat conference in South Africa, an obesity conference in Stockholm and a conference on diabetes in Vienna. It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious a problem.

This is where 40 years of conventional wisdom has got us…

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/is-constant-ketosis-necessary-or-even-desirable/#axzz3Tmp3XcS1

After approximately 13 years in almost constant ketosis (even I fall out of ketosis occasionally) I have not noticed any detrimental effects apart from that I am 13 years older than I was when I started. I suspect that may have happened anyway. Thankfully I don’t feel 13 years older 🙂

Two changes in me do make me wonder what the effects of it may be:

• my previous, sometimes cripplingly acute, hay fever vanished almost immediately and has never returned. It has completely utterly gone and I used to get it bad!!
• the painful, anguish inducing, acid reflux I used to get after every meal has not occurred (to the best of my memory) in 13 years.

And one change that didn’t happen was that I didn’t inherit my father’s epilepsy that appeared in him when he reached 40.

Are these three things connected with lowering systemic inflammation, an intolerance or allergy to gluten and the effect of ketosis on my brain? I don’t know. Maybe they are but in any event, my life is better with the first two and definitely without the third.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-running-blog/2015/mar/04/marathon-training-recovering-from-the-long-run

“So it is really important post-run to eat carbs, especially for those with a high glycemic index.” What she doesn’t say is that high GI foods spike your insulin levels, driving your body to convert excess carbohydrate into fat.

“Carbs initiate an insulin response, which in turn lowers your blood-sugar level by driving carbohydrate back into the muscles, where it is stored again as glycogen.” What she doesn’t say is that once the small glycogen stores are full, the remaining sugar is stored as fat.

“If you are away from home, don’t have any products handy or need to make a last-minute purchase from the petrol station on the way back from a long run, you can also make some educated choices to try to not impede your recovery. Avoid anything too high in fibre or fat, such as nuts or chocolate, as these can be slow to digest. Avoid anything that has a lot of mayonnaise or cheese in it, as it will have a high fat content. Baked crisps can be a source of carbohydrates, aren’t too high in fat and will deliver some salt, too. Low-fat flavoured milkshakes, or even a hot chocolate made with milk, may be an option if you don’t have the appetite for solid food.” What she is basically saying here is eat sugar. In my view, any advice that says “buy food from a petrol station” is wrong. Just think about that for a second… advice on buying food… from a PETROL STATION??

My advice is, become fat and keto adapted. Burn body fat during your run – you have thousands of calories of it even if you are slim. Escape the tyranny of the high carb/high insulin producing diet with its sugar rush and sugar crash, cravings for food and mood swings and you won’t need to eat the “food” you might find in a petrol station. You will do your levels of inflammation the world of good to. 

Normally I don’t bother with breakfast, preferring instead to prolong my overnight fast until after my first workout which is usually at around mid-day. As I am now almost permanently in fat burning mode, I don’t get hungry and so not eating breakfast isn’t an issue for me. Today, however, I decided to have some breakfast as I wont be working out. I had some bacon in the fridge but I am still staying away from eggs at the moment so the classic primal “bacon and eggs” wasn’t an option. So here is my alternative; bacon, almond butter and creme fraiche. Delicious!!