Win a Paleobetic Diet E-Book – It’s Easy!

Posted on June 4, 2013 | 1 comment
Paleobetic diet, Steve Parker MD,paleo diet, diabetic diet, diabetes

Cover designed by my 14-year-old son, Paul

Just be one of the first 100 people to email me asking for it.

Why am I giving it away? I need some feedback on it.

You don’t have to be a PWD to get a copy. Perhaps you’re just a curious dietitian, nutritionist, certified diabetes educator, nurse, or physician.

If you get the e-book, please seriously consider giving me feedback via email:

  • What do you think of the Paleobetic Diet?
  • How could I make it better?
  • How was your experience with the distributor, Smashwords?
  • Would more recipes be helpful?
  • What did you think of the sections on diabetes drugs, hypoglycemia, and exercise?
  • If you tried it, did it affect your blood sugars? How did you feel, physically? Was your healthcare provider supportive? Did you lose any excess weight?
  • What do you think of the food options on the diet?

Be aware that the Paleobetic Diet e-book bare-bones version is only 9,000 words long. That’s short. It’s a how-to primer. I don’t go into evolutionary theory and the scientific underpinnings of the diet.

Here’s How You Win:

  1. Email a request for the e-book, to steveparkermd (at) gmail (dot) com, putting “paleobetic diet” in the subject line.
  2. I’ll email you back a coupon code that gives you a 100% discount on the e-book at Smashwords.
  3. You set up a free account at Smashwords, then act like you’re purchasing the book. Before checkout, you’ll be asked for the coupon code or discount code I gave you. Enter it. Bingo! Free e-book. You’ll get a choice of multiple e-book formats.
  4. Note that I only check my email every week or two, so don’t get in a big hurry.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts! If you win the e-book and never give me feedback, I won’t bug you about it.

Steve Parker, M.D.

PS: Remember, this offer is only for the first hundred people who email me. I don’t know if those copies will be gone in a few days or six months.

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But, Doc, I’m Too Fat to Exercise!

Posted on June 3, 2013 | 5 comments

IF YOU ARE MARKEDLY OBESE

The more overweight you are, the harder it will be to exercise. At some point even light exercise becomes impossible. Average-height women tipping the scales at about 280 pounds (127 kg) and men at 360 pounds (164 kg) aren’t going to be able to jog around the block, much less run a marathon. These weights are 100 percent over ideal or healthy levels. An actual “exercise program” probably won’t be possible until some weight is lost simply through very-low-carb eating, calorie restriction, or bariatric surgery. The initial exercise goal for you may just be to get moving through activities of daily living and perhaps brief walks and calisthenics while sitting in a chair.

Markedly obese people who aren’t up to the aforementioned extreme weights can usually tolerate a low-intensity physical activity program. At 50 percent over ideal weight, an average-height woman of 210 pounds (95 kg) is carrying 70 excess pounds (32 kg) of fat. Her male counter-part lugs around 90 pounds (41 kg) of unnecessary fat. This weight burden causes dramatic breathlessness and fatigue upon exertion, and makes the joints and muscles more susceptible to aching and injury. If you’re skinny, just imagine trying to walk or run a mile carrying a standard five-gallon (19 liter) water cooler bottle, which weighs only 43 pounds (19.5 kg) when full. The burden of excess fat makes it quite difficult to exercise.

If you’re markedly obese, several tricks will enhance your exercise success. I want you to avoid injury, frustration, and burn out. Start with light activity for only 10 or 15 minutes, gradually increase session length (e.g., by two to four minutes every two to four weeks) and increase exercise intensity only after several months. Your joints and muscles may appreciate easy, low-impact exercises such as stationary cycling, walking, swimming, and pool calisthenics/water aerobics. You may also benefit from the advice of a personal fitness trainer arranged through a health club, gym, or YMCA/YWCA. Check out several health clubs before you join. Some of them are primarily meat markets for beautiful slender yuppies. You may feel more comfortable in a gym that welcomes and caters to overweight people. Hospitals are increasingly developing fitness centers with obese orthopedic, heart, and diabetic patients in mind.

 

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Aside

I don’t think it’ll catch on. “IH” isn’t much better. Some of the old-timers still call it AODM: adult onset diabetes mellitus.

Read the rationale at MedPageToday.

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Posted on June 1, 2013

Do High Insulin Levels Cause Memory Loss and Dementia?

Posted on May 29, 2013 | Comments Off on Do High Insulin Levels Cause Memory Loss and Dementia?
dementia, memory loss, Mediterranean diet, low-carb diet, glycemic index, dementia memory loss

Don’t wait to take action until it’s too late

Insulin resistance and high blood insulin levels promote age-related degeneration of the brain, leading to memory loss and dementia according to Robert Krikorian, Ph.D. He’s a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center.  He has an article in a recent issue of Current Psychiatry – Online.

Proper insulin signaling in the brain is important for healthy functioning of our brains’ memory centers.  This signaling breaks down in the setting of insulin resistance and the associated high insulin levels.  Dr. Krikorian makes much of the fact that high insulin levels and insulin resistance are closely tied to obesity.  He writes that:

Waist circumference of ≥100 cm (39 inches) is a sensitive, specific, and independent predictor of hyperinsulinemia for men and women and a stronger predictor than body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, and other measures of body fat.

Take-Home Points

Dr. Krikorian thinks that dietary approaches to the prevention of dementia are effective yet underutilized.  He mentions reduction of insulin levels by restricting calories or a ketogenic diet: they’ve been linked with improved memory in middle-aged and older adults. His theory is also consistent with the commonly seen association of type 2 diabetes with dementia: overweight and obese type 2’s quite often have high insulin levels, at least in the early years.

Dr. K suggests the following measures to prevent dementia and memory loss:

  • eliminate high-glycemic foods like processed carbohydrates and sweets
  • replace high-glycemic foods with fruits and vegetables (the higher polyphenol intake may help by itself)
  • certain polyphenols, such as those found in berries, may be particularly helpful in improving brain metabolic function
  • keep your waist size under 39 inches (99 cm), or aim for that if you’re higher and overweight

Nearly all popular versions of the paleo diet would qualify as being low glycemic index.

I must mention that many dementia experts, probably most, are not as confident  as Dr. Krikorian that these dietary changes are effective.  I think they are, to a degree.

The Mediterranean diet is high in fruits and vegetables and relatively low-glycemic.  It’s usually mentioned by experts as the diet that may prevent dementia and slow its progression.

Read the full article.

I’ve written before about how blood sugars in the upper normal range are linked to brain degeneration.  Dr. Krikorian’s recommendations would tend to keep blood sugar levels in the lower end of the normal range.

Steve Parker, M.D.

PS: Speaking of dementia and ketogenic, have you ever heard of the Ketogenic Mediterranean Diet?  (Free condensed version here.)

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“It Is the Soldier”: A U.S. Memorial Day Poem

Posted on May 27, 2013 | Comments Off on “It Is the Soldier”: A U.S. Memorial Day Poem

It is the Soldier, not the minister

Who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the Soldier, not the reporter

Who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the Soldier, not the poet

Who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer

Who has given us freedom to protest.

It is the Soldier, not the lawyer

Who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the Soldier, not the politician

Who has given us the right to vote.

It is the Soldier who salutes the flag,

Who serves beneath the flag,

And whose coffin is draped by the flag,

Who allows the protester to burn the flag.

 —Charles M. Province

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Some Evidence for Tubers Being Paleolithic Human Food

Posted on May 27, 2013 | Comments Off on Some Evidence for Tubers Being Paleolithic Human Food

My impression is that some versions of the paleo diet don’t include tubers.

Here’s part of an abstract at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

Three grinding stones from Shizitan Locality 14 (ca. 23,000-19,500 calendar years before present) in the middle Yellow River region [north China] were subjected to usewear and residue analyses to investigate human adaptation during the last glacial maximum (LGM) period, when resources were generally scarce and plant foods may have become increasingly important in the human diet. The results show that these tools were used to process various plants, including Triticeae and Paniceae grasses, Vigna beans, Dioscorea opposita yam, and Trichosanthes kirilowii snakegourd roots. Tubers were important food resources for Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, and Paniceae grasses were exploited about 12,000 y before their domestication.

Did you catch “grasses” and “beans”? Could these be the verboten grains and legumes?

I know the tubers/roots above are not the white and sweet potatoes I include on my paleo diet. The latter are a New World phenomenon, and domesticated to boot.

Steve

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“NeanderThin” Now Available As E-Book on Kindle

Posted on May 25, 2013 | 1 comment

I just learned that Ray Audette’s NeanderThin is available as a Kindle edition. Ray is one of the godfathers of the modern paleo diet movement. His book was first published in 1995. Here’s the book’s description at Amazon:

In a revolutionary approach to weight loss and improved health, author Ray Audette presents his groundbreaking “caveman” diet–an eating program that stems from the notion that what we ate before agriculture and technology evolved is still what our bodies need to function effectively, stave off disease, and stay lean and healthy.

Read NeaderThin and you’ll discover:

How to become a modern-day Hunter-Gatherer and give up the addictive foods and habits that have kept you unhealthy and overweight
How a high-calorie, high-fat diet can actually make you leaner.
Tips for getting started on the NeanderThin Diet, sticking with it, keeping a food diary, and more.
Becoming Neander-Fit, a five-week exercise plan to complement your new diet.
Dozens of delicious, easy-to-prepare NeanderThin recipes, including Chili, Cold Shrimp-Stuff Avocados, Lemon Thyme Pesto Chicken, and Coconut Ice Cream.

I’ve written about Ray before (here and here). Rather than this being a new edition, I think the Kindle version is simply a digitalization of his original book.

Check it out.

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My Grand Canyon Adventure

Posted on May 24, 2013 | Comments Off on My Grand Canyon Adventure

About 10 days ago, I hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon with a Boy Scout troop. That’s 4,800 vertical feet down. Of course, I had to hike back out, too. I wrote a short piece about it at one of my other blogs. Click if interested.

-Steve

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Is Human Evolution Happening Faster Than We Realize?

Posted on May 24, 2013 | Comments Off on Is Human Evolution Happening Faster Than We Realize?

Yes, according to an article at Wired magazine. A sample:

Look out, future, because here we come: scientists say the speed of human evolution increased rapidly during the last 40,000 years — and it’s only going to get faster.

The findings, published today by a team of U.S. anthropologists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, overturn the theory that modern life’s relative ease has slowed or even stopped human adaptation. Selective pressures are still at work; they just happen to be different than those faced by our distant ancestors.

“We’re more different from people 5,000 years ago than they were from Neanderthals,” said study co-author and University of Utah anthropologist Henry Harpending.

 

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That Explains a Lot: Our Brains Are Shrinking

Posted on May 24, 2013 | Comments Off on That Explains a Lot: Our Brains Are Shrinking

…and nobody knows why although there’s no shortage of conjecture. From an article at Discovery magazine:

 

John Hawks is in the middle of explaining his research on human evolution when he drops a bombshell. Running down a list of changes that have occurred in our skeleton and skull since the Stone Age, the University of Wisconsin anthropologist nonchalantly adds, “And it’s also clear the brain has been shrinking.”

 

“Shrinking?” I ask. “I thought it was getting larger.” The whole ascent-of-man thing.

 

“That was true for 2 million years of our evolution,” Hawks says. “But there has been a reversal.”

Read more.

 

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