Richard Wrangham figures our hominin ancestors tamed fire and started cooking with it 1.8 million years ago. A recent article at Slate reviews the debate among anthropologists. Some respected authorities date our mastery of fire from 12,000 to 400,000 years ago.
Any caveman worth his salt can start a fire, right?
Visit Wildwood Survival for the two-stone technique.
Let me know if you find a video demonstrating this.
Comments Off on How To Start A Fire With Two Stones
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged fire, fire starting, human evolution
Click for details. Kelly writes…
Too often I hear of reasons people cannot focus on their health due to workload, work travel and just always being on the run. Guess what? This doesn’t give you a hall-pass to eat at Five Guys, Popeye’s or Taco Hell. Sorry, I mean, “Bell.” But let’s be realistic. Just as you plan meetings each day/week, you can also plan in short workouts and meals, portable or not.
Comments Off on Kelly Schimdt Tells You How to Eat Paleo-Style on the Road
Posted in Uncategorized
I don’t have an answer, but Corbett and Morin-Papunin have some ideas in their new article at Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology. I’ve not read it, but here’s a quote from the abstract:
The Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) is a complex endocrine disorder characterised both by reproductive and metabolic disturbance, and is the most common cause globally of ovarian infertility. It is also a familial polygenic condition, linked genetically to both Type 2 diabetes and the metabolic syndrome. The striking evolutionary paradox of this prominent genetically-based condition, which impairs fertility, is that not only should it have diminished in prevalence, but it should have done so rapidly – unless there has been some form of balancing selection.
Comments Off on Why Is Polycystic Ovary Syndrome So Common If It Impairs Fertility?
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged evolution, fertility, PCOS, polycystic ovary syndrome
Here’s a quote from a recent Diabetes Care:
Improved therapeutics and health care delivery have brought remarkable declines in the incidence of … complications, with a 50% reduction in amputations from their peak in 1997 and ∼35% reduction in the incidence of end-stage renal disease. Similarly, 10-year coronary heart disease risk dropped from 21% in 2000 to 16% in 2008.
Left, right, or straight ahead (the road less travelled)?
Nevertheless, diabetes remains the leading cause of blindness, renal failure, non-traumatic lower-limb amputation, in adults 18 to 65 years of age.
Diabetes is expensive, too. We spent $174 billion (USD) on diabetes in 2007 in the U.S.
The companion essay by Dr. Robert Ratner also notes 79 million Americans with prediabetes.
In addition to lower rates of major diabetes complications, we now have 11 classes of drugs for treating diabetes, compared with just three or four a generation ago.
I’m hopeful that future research will point to dietary changes that can help control or prevent diabetes on a wide scale. The paleo diet and low-carb eating are two possible avenues.
—Steve
Comments Off on It’s the Best Time Ever to Have Diabetes
Posted in Diabetes Complications, Uncategorized
…or at least mutations. Wired.com has the article. A quote:
It’s easy to think humans have stopped evolving, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Though modern medicine and civilization’s graces make the struggle to survive more subtle, evolution’s engine keeps churning. In the last few thousand years, in fact, a time when human evolution was once thought to have slowed, it may actually have sped up.
I like the very first comment from Platos Cave:
Nothing in this article refutes the idea that in civilized society, no matter how many mutations occur, there is no natural selection to reproduce the more successful mutation at a faster rate. A dullard with bad eyesight may not be as attractive, but is likely to have just as many kids as a genius with good genes, in fact the genius is more likely to use birth control and reproduce his genes at a lower rate..
Cultural and Technological evolution happen at such a ridiculously faster pace than biological evolution that it would be irrelevant even if it was happening, which it is not.
Unlike Plato, I think human evolution is occurring and natural selection is at play. But medicine, technology, and culture mitigate or otherwise strongly influence the effect of natural selection.
Posted in Uncategorized
Offal includes tongue, heart, liver, kidney, intestine, pancreas, trotters, and ?
Offal is definitely paleo food. Primitive hunting is often hard and dangerous. I bet ancient hunters who harvested dangerous animals tended to eat most every part of the animal that was edible.
PrincipleIntoPractice wrote about her offal weekend. Take a look.
PS: I saw a documentary about the Alaskan salmon run recently. I was quite surprised to learn that grizzlies during this time of abundance strip off and eat the skin of the fish, discarding the meat.
Comments Off on We Should Eat More Offal
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged offal, paleo food, PrincipleIntoPractice
…in Salt Lake City. Visit PrincipleIntoPractice for details. An excerpt:
A word on research… Physicians are not scientists (save for physician scientists, a truly minuscule blip in the Venn diagram of the ancestral health community) and while anecdotes can be powerful, they are not the kind of evidence that will sway physicians, scientists, and practice.
I’m surprised the conference didn’t attract a larger crowd. As for me, I didn’t even hear about it until it was way too late to make plans.
Thanks to the medical student author of PrincipleIntoPractice.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged PAH, Physicians and Ancestral Health, PrincipeIntoPractice
Chris Highcock posted a one-minute explanatory video at his blog.
Comments Off on How Do Your Body Cells Work?
Posted in Uncategorized
The White House
[U.S. President Warren G.] Harding inherited an absentee presidency and one of the sharpest recessions in American history. By July 1921 it was all over and the economy was booming again. Harding had done nothing except cut government expenditure….
—Paul Johnson, in his book, Modern Times, 1983 & 1991
Comments Off on QOTD: Paul Johnson on Warren G. Harding and Recessions
Posted in Quote of the Day
ScienceDaily has the report. This is exciting. But hold your horses since human trials are years away.
Man’s Best Friend was also instrumental in the discovery of insulin.
h/t David Fisher RD
Comments Off on Gene Therapy Cured Type1 Diabetes in Dogs: Humans Next?
Posted in Uncategorized
Click pic to purchase book at Amazon.com. E-book versions also available at Smashwords.com.
Diabetic Mediterranean Diet
Paleo Diabetic 