As the weather has been so beautiful and hot recently I thought I’d talk a little bit about summer skincare and my favourite natural ways to take of my skin naturally during this time of year! The number one question you all ask me is what suncream I use, so I thought we should talk about that first…
Use a Good Sun Cream
I use a suncream called Yaoh, it’s from a tiny (and seemingly pretty random) brand but it’s amazing. I absolutely swear by it! It smells nice, doesn’t cost a fortune and it really works. It doesn’t contain any nasties and the first three ingredients are – Organic virgin olive oil, organic hemp seed oil, organic coconut oil – which I think is pretty awesome. I’ve tried other brands and found that either they coated my skin in a thick white paste that acted as a total sun block or they weren’t very effective so this is by far my favourite but if you know any good ones then please let me know as I’d love to hear!
Make Sure to Exfoliate
I’m not sure about you guys but I find my skin can get quite dry at this time of year, and there’s nothing less attractive then walking around with scaly legs! So start exfoliating every week. I either use a homemade blend of brown sugar and coconut oil (which is amazing, I’ll share the exact recipe soon) or a scrub from a company called Frank Body, which is made of coffee, almond oil, brown sugar and salt. I try to do this at least once a week and it does wonders for keeping my skin soft and happy! Plus when you exfoliate you keep your tan better, so if you’re after a summer glow make sure you start scrubbing.
Always Have a Good After Sun
If you do happen to spend a little too long in the sun then coconut oil is a dream, it works better than anything else to soothe and heal sun burn. I’ve never found an after sun that works anywhere near as well! You will feel pretty greasy when you lather lots of it on, so make sure you do it when you’re going to bed rather than when you’re going out, but I promise you’ll wake up looking and feeling so much better. If you happen to be somewhere with fresh aloe vera to hand then this is even better. I have to tell you that it’s pretty smelly, but if you’re really red then this is exactly what you need. Just rub the fresh aloe over your burn and feel it soothe your skin.
Do a Hairmask
As well as drying out your skin the sun can also really dry out your hair so you may want to do a hair mask after your holiday to rejuvenate it so that it’s soft and shiny again! Coconut oil is exactly what you need again for this, just rub a handful of it over the ends of your hair and leave it in for as long as possible – preferably overnight. Then rinse out the mask with lots of shampoo in the morning. It’s so easy but it will make your hair feel totally new!
from Deliciously Ella http://deliciouslyella.com/natural-summer-skin-care/
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We don’t want to say too much about this video besides it’s hilarious and you have to watch it. Also…this is further proof cats remain the dominant supreme beings. THIS is the face of nonchalant cat-tentment. Nope. Not impressed. Right up there with this one. (ps. You’re not seeing things. There is some salamander/lizard […]
Except for the mosquitos… or the occasional poison ivy… or itchy peeling sunburn.
It seems that itchy skin is an inevitable part of summer in some way or another.
Of course, homemade bug spray helps ward off most of the mosquitos, and homemade sunscreen helps avoid the sunburn in the first place, but it seems that at some point, someone forgets one or the other and ends up with itchy skin.
I always seem to be a magnet for mosquitos, so even just a couple minutes of cutting the boys’ hair outside or taking out the trash is usually enough to leave me with a few bites.
The solution?
Homemade Anti-itch Spray…
This anti-itch spray contains a mixture of potent natural remedies that helps eliminate itch immediately. I’ve tried it on mosquito bites, poison ivy, sunburn, chiggers, and even stinging nettle burns and good results.
The essential oils can be left out for use on pregnant women or children, but I’d still recommend checking with a doctor before using if pregnant or if you have a medical condition.
Carefully heat the witch hazel extract in a small saucepan until warm to the touch (about 130 degrees). This is to melt the menthol crystals and salt, which melt at about 115 degrees F.
Add the salt and stir until dissolved.
Using tweezers or gloves, add the menthol crystals to the witch hazel and stir until dissolved. Avoid touching menthol with your hands, as it can sting eyes or other sensitive areas if you touch them after.
When menthol is dissolved, add the aloe vera gel, apple cider vinegar and essential oils (if using) and carefully transfer to a spray bottle for use.
This will store for months at room temperature, but I prefer to keep in the refrigerator for extra cooling of itchy skin. This is one remedy I like to keep on hand, especially in the summer.
Ever struggled with itchy skin? What worked for you?
from Wellness Mama » Blog http://wellnessmama.com/55741/homemade-anti-itch-spray/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=homemade-anti-itch-spray
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Ugh. The inalienable right to practice yoga is not felt internationally, apparently. Russian officials have hopped on the anti-yoga train claiming the practice is “inextricably” linked to religion (aka Hinduism) and could “spread new religious cults and movements.” Via Time: According to the Moscow Times, which cited a report in the Russian Kommersant daily, the owners of two of the […]
Hanging out with the family this Fourth? Here are some fun Kids Yoga poses to spark up the summer holiday, from the team at Yogi Beans. This weekend, all around the USA, children and families will get together to celebrate the Fourth of July. We celebrate our independence, and the freedom that it grants us. As […]
If you’re active and knowledgeable about health and fitness, but still aren’t quite in shape like you think you could be, you’re probably just missing one or two crucial pieces. In this post I’ll tell you what those are — and share two key strategies for getting on track.
You try to eat well and exercise. You’re pretty smart and knowledgable about fitness. You know what you need to do. But you still don’t look—or feel—the way you want to.
Here’s the good news: this is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, you’re probably a lot closer than you think. And, in this post, I’ll share two key strategies for getting on track.
“I work out a lot, but I still have this layer of fat around my stomach. Can you look at my photos? What do you think I should do?”
That was the last paragraph in a Facebook message I got recently, sent by a gentleman I met at a fitness seminar.
Now, being asked to look at physique photos and give exercise or nutrition advice may seem weird, but it actually happens a lot. And not just to me, but to all of our coaches.
These kinds of requests generally come from people who are knowledgeable about fitness. Some of them are fitness pros. Some have a little experience, some have a lot. Regardless, they are facing one or two uncomfortable things:
They’re not being as consistent with exercise and eating as they’d like and are having a hard time sticking to things.
They’re not getting the results they should based on how much they know about working out and eating healthy.
As I read his note, I realized he shared a lot of similarities with the men and women we help here at Precision Nutrition.
He admitted that when things get busy, it’s hard for him to be consistent. He frequently gets off track with his eating and he skips his workouts.
He told me he had tried a bunch of different workout programs and diets and knew what to do. But he was missing something important, something that could help make a difference.
He was a bit frustrated and embarrassed. He felt like he should have a better body to show for his knowledge and hard work. He was reaching out to me for a solution that could turn everything around.
And as it turned out, I knew exactly what he needed.
Why I knew what he needed
Now before I tell you what I told him, let me share why I had the solution to his problem.
Most people who visit Precision Nutrition don’t know this, but a good number of our clients aren’t complete beginners. Indeed, we have plenty of “intermediate” or “advanced” folks who come to us for help.
Of course, we still love—and take great care of—our beginner clients. However, many of our clients:
Already read articles on working out and nutrition. They exercise. They eat healthy, or at least try to. Most are the go-to “fitness expert” for their family and friends. Some (like Toni or Ron) are even personal trainers.
Are people who should be in great shape. And maybe at one point, they were in great shape, but now they’re having a tough time. Men (like Bryan) and women (like Laurie) who’ve become frustrated with a body that’s not as lean, strong, fit or healthy as they know it could be.
And because we’ve worked with thousands of experienced clients just like them—helping them get healthier and into the best shape of their lives—I knew exactly what he was missing.
The “missing link” to having your best body
Once you reach a certain level of knowledge and experience, the missing link is no longer a new exercise program, the perfect nutrition plan, or a new supplement to try.
The one thing you’re missing is this: being accountable—to someone or something—for your workouts and nutrition.
“Accountability is the acknowledgment of responsibility for your actions with the obligation to report, explain, and be responsible for the resulting consequences.”
In other words, accountability keeps you consistent because you have to report back what you’re doing—or not doing—in the gym and in the kitchen to someone else.
In fact, accountability is more important than personal motivation for this simple reason:
No one always feels motivated to go to the gym or eat healthy.
But if we have someone who’s checking up on us to see how things are going, we’ll get our butt in gear. Even if we don’t feel motivated in the moment.
We actually do the exercise—and eat the food—needed to look and feel great. And we do it over and over again, even when the going gets tough.
That’s why you can know exactly what to do. And you can even do it—exercise, eat good food, get eight hours of sleep—for short bursts. But you can still end up struggling.
Simply put: if you can’t be consistent, you can’t make progress.
And that’s why accountability—not the perfect exercise or eating program—is the thing that turns everything around. (Heck, maybe it can turn things around for you.)
So, the big question? How do you get accountability?
Here are two strategies you can use immediately.
Accountability strategy #1:
Commit to more… and/or less.
To be consistent, you need to commit to more, and/or less. Let me explain what I mean.
We all make half-hearted promises to ourselves, only to get frustrated and break them soon after. And that’s fine (and understandable). But for a different result, we need a different sort of commitment.
Option 1: Commit to more.
The idea is to commit to something bigger than yourself. Bonus points if you can make it fun.
One of the easiest ways is to set up a contest with friends. Who can go the longest without skipping an exercise day? Who can cook the most meals at home instead of eating out?
Notice that it’s not about achievement (who lost the most weight, etc.). It’s about doing.
Focus on and reward yourself for what you do (going to the gym, cooking a meal), not what you achieve, at least at first. Because that’s what you have immediate control over.
What do you think you can accomplish with just one month of consistent workouts and healthy eating? What about one year?
Option 2: Commit to less.
This is the tough one. Our natural tendency is to overpromise and underdeliver, especially to ourselves. One of the easiest (and most counter-intuitive) ways to stay consistent is to do the opposite.
Underpromise and overdeliver. Consider every promise you’re about to make to yourself a rough, first draft.
Before truly committing, ask yourself, “On a scale of 1-10, how confident am I that I could do this every day for the next 30 days?”
If your gut reaction is anything other than “9” or “10”, find a way to make that promise smaller or easier.
E.g., turn “I’ll cut out sugar every day” into:
“I’ll stop eating each meal when I’m 80% full.” Eat what you’re already eating, just slightly less.
“I’ll eat one (more) home-made meal a day.” Focus on mindfully creating a single meal.
“I’ll eat one big salad a day.” Focus on eating one more well-chosen meal, even if you have to buy it. Even fast food chains have salads with chicken these days.
And turn “I’ll go to the gym every morning at 6AM” into:
“I’ll do 40 air squats at home, right after waking up.” Do something with no travel or equipment required.
“I’ll get two solid workouts in per week, scheduled in my calendar, and go from there.” Reduce the commitment to something you can always stick to; do more only if you can, making it entirely optional.
“I’ll park further away from work / school and walk the rest of the way.” Even easier.
Those are just examples, of course. You’ll find one that works for you.
Keep reducing the commitment until it feels too easy for you. Until you can answer “9” or “10” without even thinking about it. Those are the things that you can actually do consistently.
If you can do more on any particular day, then great, go for it. But don’t commit to it. Your daily accomplishments can be big, but keep your commitments relatively small. This way, you turn predictable disappointment into daily, pleasant surprise.
Your daily accomplishments can be big, but keep your commitments small.
Often this is both a humbling and liberating experience for people, especially people who are well educated about health and fitness.
Humbling, because we often kid ourselves into thinking we can do much more than we actually can. (And that’s both normal and entirely okay.)
Liberating, because when we realize that the only way to make a big change is to make a series of small ones like these, “consistency” and all that it brings finally become possible.
The question most people have is here, though, is: will that actually work? Will such small changes actually do anything?
The answer is yes, when done in sequence. Once the first one is done, the second one is even easier, and so on. It’s amazing how powerful “making things easier” actually is.
In fact, it’s exactly how we coach our own clients. Which leads us to the third option.
Option 3: Commit to both more and less.
Commit to something big and external (like the friendly bet with your friends or co-workers).
And while doing so, commit to tackling only one part of that larger commitment at a time. Reduce the size of each mini-commitment until you feel almost 100% confident you can actually do it for 30 days.
In our coaching, we combine both methods: the big, group commitment and the smaller, personal, daily commitment.
For the big commitment, we give away $250,000 in cash prizes each year to our best clients. Not just the ones who had the best results, mind you—also the ones who best stuck with the small, daily commitments.
That’s right, we break down the process of getting in the best shape of your life into small commitments. Small enough for each client to do them.
Then we string those together for 12 months. You can view the results here on our site; suffice it to say, they’re compelling.
So change the way you commit. Go big, and go small. The results will pleasantly surprise you.
The only way to kick-start your progress is to change the way you commit. Don’t go halfway. Go bigger or go smaller, or both.
Accountability Strategy #2:
Get some help from at least one other person.
Let me tell you a quick personal story.
There was a time, a few months ago, when I started skipping one or two workouts each week. Why? Because I was “busy.”
The exercise didn’t matter much in the context of one week—it’s not like I was getting out of shape every time I skipped one. But they added up. Within a month I’d missed nearly half of my gym time. Not good.
And it was showing in the mirror. I looked a little less “in-shape” than I would have liked. Plus I just felt crappy and a little guilty.
Obviously my problem wasn’t a program one. No special workout routine, new diet plan, or magical supplement could help.
What I had was an accountability problem. No one was checking to see if I was doing my workouts. And because of that, I was slacking.
So the next day I called a personal trainer friend and asked if he had any openings.
Even though I know how to work out and eat healthy, I asked if he would write my workouts and train me at his gym a couple times per week.
I made myself accountable to him.
Of course I could still skip my workouts if I wanted to. But that would involve actually calling and canceling an appointment with him.
Not surprisingly, ever since I became accountable to my friend, I haven’t missed a single workout. And I feel incredible.
What can you learn from this?
First, know that we all sometimes struggle with staying in shape. (Yes, even fitness professionals like me.) It’s no big deal and doesn’t mean you’re deficient in any way. It just means you’re human.
Second, know that if you’re struggling to get in shape the best thing you can do is hire someone to keep you accountable. It could be a coach you pay money to or a friend who will meet you at the gym.
It’s a lot easier to stay consistent when you’ve got a coach checking up on you.
Do 2 things:
Commit differently, become accountable.
In the end, the message I wanted to communicate to the guy on Facebook was this:
“It’s completely possible to know exactly what you’re doing… but still struggle to improve your body. And that’s totally OK. In fact, it happens to a lot of people and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
But there’s a simple fix, and it has nothing to do with a new workout or diet plan. All you have to do is commit a little differently and make yourself accountable to at least one other person.”
So if you’re reading this and you’ve struggled with fitness in the past, or are struggling with it right now, I encourage you to do the same: change the way you commit and become accountable to someone else.
Want us to help keep you accountable and consistent?
If you’d like some help staying consistent with your exercise and eating plan, we’d be happy to help. In fact, we’ll soon be taking new Precision Nutrition Coaching clients.
You see, we accept new clients every 6 months, and coaching spots typically sell out in hours. However, those motivated enough to put themselves on the presale list get to register 24 hours before everyone else. Plus, they receive a big discount at registration.
So put your name on the list below—because, as always, spots are first come, first served, and when they’re gone, they’re gone.
The basic idea of the acid-alkaline hypothesis is that if we eat acid-forming foods, we get sick, and if we eat alkaline-forming foods, we’ll be healthy and we’ll be protected against disease. There are three claims of the acid-alkaline hypothesis. One is that diet affects the pH of our blood. In other words, how acid-forming or alkaline-forming the foods are that we eat directly affects the pH or acidity of our blood. Number two would be that our urine pH is an accurate indicator of our health, and by extension, we can use these urine test strips that proponents of the hypothesis recommend and determine, first of all, whether our blood is acidic by measuring our urine acidity, and second of all, by extension, we can use these urine test strips to determine our health. And then the third claim would be that acid-forming diets contribute to modern disease.
In this episode, we cover:
5:15 What Chris ate today9:10What is the alkaline hypothesis?10:32 Critique of the alkaline hypothesis
Steve Wright: Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. You are listening to the Revolution Health Radio Show. I'm your host, Steve Wright, co-author at SCDlifestyle.com. This episode of RHR is brought to you by 14Four.me. Now, what is 14Four.me? Well, it’s a good question you asked. It’s Chris Kresser’s 14-day healthy lifestyle reset program. If you’re someone who has been listening to this show and you’re still trying to put together all the pieces of great health, maybe you’re still struggling with low energy, a little extra weight right now, digestive issues, acne, or anything like that, you know that Chris talks about the foundation of all health starts with four areas: diet, sleep, movement, and stress. These things can be very hard to create in your life. If you’ve ever tried to create multiple healthy habits at once, they are difficult, and what the 14Four program is, is a step-by-step way to integrate them all at one time. Whether you’ve fallen off the wagon or you want to get on the wagon for the first time, I’d really encourage you to check out 14Four.me and give it a try. Now, with me is integrative medical practitioner, healthy skeptic, and New York Times bestselling author, Chris Kresser. Chris, how’s the day going? Chris Kresser: The day is going great. How are you, Steve? Steve Wright: Chris, my new word is conflicted. Chris Kresser: OK, right. Good. You’re moving away from the fine and great and good. I remember now. Steve Wright: Yeah. Chris Kresser: All right, you’re conflicted. Steve Wright: Yeah, it’s 83 outside and we’re inside. Chris Kresser: Yeah, it’s beautiful here, too. Well, you know, we’re doing this for the benefit of all humankind, so that should be some consolation. Maybe that’s the conflict you’re experiencing. Steve Wright: Yes, yes. No, I am willingly choosing to be here and do this now. Chris Kresser: All right. Steve Wright: But I just wanted to be honest. Chris Kresser: Good. Well, from what I learned talking to you before this, you’re headed to a music festival this weekend, and I’m headed up to Tahoe with Robb Wolf and Dan Pardi and family, so I guess we can’t complain too much. Steve Wright: Nope. I think we’ve set up the conditions to be working inside and unplug this weekend. Chris Kresser: Good. All right. Steve Wright: So before we get into today’s question, Chris, people are literally dying to know, what have you been eating today?
What Chris ate today
Chris Kresser: Well, let’s see. I had some chorizo. We recently bought half a pig from a local rancher, a pastured, acorn-fed pig, and so we have some chorizo from that, which is really delicious. And some plantains fried in some coconut oil and raw sauerkraut, so pretty standard. And I have not eaten lunch. I’ve decided to skip lunch today, so it’s 1:30 when we’re doing this show, and I’ll probably just go through to dinner because I have a lot of stuff going on. That’s my version of intermittent fasting, as we talked about a few shows ago. Steve Wright: OK, perfect. Well, before we get into the question, I just want to let all the listeners know that this podcast is really created by you and for you. If you’d like your question answered on the show, please go to ChrisKresser.com/PodcastQuestion and submit it there. So, Chris, what’s the question for today? Chris Kresser: We have a great question from Melissa, and this is something that comes up a lot, so I’m looking forward to answering. Let’s give it a listen. Question from Melissa: Hi, Chris. This is Melissa Milam. I am in school right now to become a nutrition therapist, and I run across some conflicting information sometimes, and today I ran across the relationship between protein and calcium metabolism. My textbook states that high dietary protein intakes are known to increase urinary calcium excretion, and some research suggests that animal protein is more detrimental to calcium metabolism, so I just wanted to hear your thoughts on this and see what research you have to offer. Thanks a lot! Chris Kresser: OK, so what Melissa is really referring to here is the whole acid-alkaline theory, and I’ve actually written a couple of critiques of this hypothesis on my blog a couple of years ago. We’ll put those in the show notes. I’ve also spoken about it, delivered public presentations on this topic recently in two different venues. One was at the Weston Price Wise Traditions Conference a couple of years ago, and the other was just very recently at Paleo f(x) in 2015 in Austin here. But if you didn’t have a chance to go to those conferences and you haven’t read the blog articles, this should at least help clarify this particular part of the hypothesis and Melissa’s question, of course, specifically, and then if you need more background and want to dive a little bit more deeply into this topic — which I recommend; it’s pretty interesting, and there are a lot of misconceptions and misunderstandings out there about it — then you can check out those articles on the podcast or I think you can purchase a recording of both the Wise Traditions presentation and the Paleo f(x) presentation. The Paleo f(x) one is a little bit more recent and had some updated info, so maybe if you had to choose, that would be the best one. Steve Wright: So, Chris, are you telling me that the acid-alkaline theory, hypothesis, myth — whatever we decide it is today or whatever you tell me it is today — that’s in the medical textbooks and is being taught?
What is the alkaline hypothesis?
Chris Kresser: That’s a good question. There’s part of it that’s in medical textbooks and part of it that’s not, so maybe we should do a little background. The overall acid-alkaline hypothesis, the basic idea is that if we eat acid-forming foods, we get sick, and if we eat alkaline-forming foods, we’ll be healthy and we’ll be protected against disease, and there are three basic claims of the hypothesis. One is that diet affects the pH of our blood. In other words, how acid-forming or alkaline-forming the foods are that we eat directly affects the pH or acidity of our blood. Number two would be that our urine pH is an accurate indicator of our health, and by extension, we can use these urine test strips that proponents of the hypothesis recommend and determine, first of all, whether our blood is acidic by measuring our urine acidity, and second of all, by extension, we can use these urine test strips to determine our health. And then the third claim would be that acid-forming diets contribute to modern disease. Melissa’s question is specifically about third claim, and that’s what we’re going to spend most of the time talking about. In terms of what’s in medical textbooks and medical studies, you will not find any reliable medical studies or textbooks that claim that what we eat affects the pH of our blood because the pH range of our blood is so tightly controlled by our body that it’s not possible to alter it just by what we eat, and the reason for this is that even slight changes in the pH or acidity of our blood can lead to very, very serious consequences, including death. So it doesn’t make sense from an evolutionary perspective that we would be able to dramatically lower or raise our pH just by what we eat or we could easily kill ourselves off, and that’s not really what evolution is all about. So that first claim is pretty easily dismissed, and the second claim, which is that urine pH is an accurate indicator of health or that our urine pH is a good reflection of our serum pH, you will actually find some studies that make that claim, but they’re also easily dismissed, and there are many more studies that have found that the pH of our urine does not in any way reflect the pH of our blood and, therefore, it’s not a reliable indicator of anything other than how well our kidneys are functioning because one of their main jobs is to buffer the blood and remove any excess acid that might accumulate from protein digestion. So the first two claims are pretty easily dismissed, and there’s not even very much debate about them in the scientific literature. The third claim, however, is addressed at length in the scientific literature, and if you just do a cursory search, you can find studies that support this idea that consuming acid-forming foods will lead to excess calcium excretion in the urine, and it’s easy to come to the conclusion that acid-forming foods — which would be animal products, among other things — are negative for bone health because of that. Steve Wright: Before you dive into this third area, really quick, just to summarize, number one, blood pH is way too tightly regulating. That’s a total myth that food affects that. Chris Kresser: Yeah. Steve Wright: Number two, the pH of our urine is not related to the pH of our blood. However, the pH of our urine, for those people who have maybe been testing this, it does indicate potential kidney function. Chris Kresser: Well, it measures how much acid you’re excreting in the urine, specifically, and yeah, that can indicate kidney function, but it’s not necessarily pathology. One of the kidney’s normal jobs is to filter excess acid from the blood, and when it does that, of course, it then is eliminated through the urine. And there’s a whole sustainable process there, where when protein is digested, acids are buffered by these bicarbonate ions that are made by the kidneys, and that reaction produces carbon dioxide, which is an acid, and the carbon dioxide is exhaled by the lungs, which is, by the way, the biggest source of acid elimination in the body by far, that exhalation of carbon dioxide, and it happens very quickly. And then that reaction where the kidneys buffer bicarbonate ions also produces salts, which are then excreted by the kidneys, and during the excretion of those salts, the kidney makes new bicarbonate ions that replace what was used up in the buffering of the acid, and that just produces this ongoing sustainable cycle that’s not adverse for bone health in any way. We’re starting to kind of jump into the critique, but let me first tell you a little bit more about the hypothesis because, otherwise, the critique won’t make sense. The hypothesis — and, by the way, this is a specific kind of subset of the acid-alkaline hypothesis, which is called the acid-ash theory of osteoporosis, and the basic idea is not as simple and wrong as, you know, eating acid-forming foods raises acid in our blood and that affects our bone health. As we’ve established, that’s not really accepted at all in the scientific literature. This is a little bit more nuanced, and the idea is that when you consume acid-forming foods, it doesn’t change the pH of the blood directly, but the body pulls minerals out of the bone in order to maintain a stable blood pH. So if you continually are eating net acid-forming diets with animal products, then you eventually will pull enough calcium out of your bones that you’ll start experiencing bone demineralization and osteoporosis.
Critique of the alkaline hypothesis
That’s the theory, and that’s what Melissa’s nutrition instructors were alluding to. And like I said, if you just do a quick search of the literature, you will find studies that show that eating acid-forming foods does lead to higher calcium levels in the urine, and researchers initially assumed that these higher calcium levels were coming from bone, it was being withdrawn from the bone, as I just said the theory states. The problem is that assumption turned out to be wrong. There was a big meta-analysis in 2009 of five high-quality studies, and they did find a linear association between the amount of acid in the urine and the amount of calcium in the urine, but there was no association between the amount of acid in the urine and calcium levels in the body. So if you put it more simply, if you eat more protein, you will pee out more acid and calcium, but the amount of calcium in your body doesn’t change. How is that possible? Well, other studies have shown that eating more animal protein actually increases calcium absorption, and this has been shown in human isotope trials where they tracked the progress of calcium through the body, and I have a slide — This is a podcast, so you can’t see this, but in the presentation, a show a slide. It’s a chart that shows as protein increases from 1 gram per kilogram of body weight to 2.1 grams per kilogram of body weight, you see a significant increase in the amount of calcium in the urine. Then they have another figure on the right that shows that as you increase protein by that same amount, there’s a corresponding increase in the amount of calcium that’s absorbed in the intestine into the bloodstream, and that increase in intestinal calcium absorption compensates for any loss of calcium that might happen in the urine, and the overall calcium balance either doesn’t change or it actually even goes up with higher-protein diets. So as you can see, this is a misconception. Her professors or instructors are saying that high dietary protein increases urinary calcium excretion, and then they make the assumption that, therefore, it’s bad for bone health, but that’s only part of the puzzle, and they’re not understanding the increase in intestinal absorption of calcium that animal protein and protein in general leads to. Does that make sense? Steve Wright: Oh, it totally makes sense, especially if you take a step back and look at, for instance, I don’t know, eating one cup of meat or one cup of vegetables and the amount of calcium that might be coming in that’s usable in each scenario. Chris Kresser: Yeah. Steve Wright: And then trusting that the body knows how to actually regulate its own nutrient stores. Chris Kresser: Yeah. There are a lot of different ways to look at this, too. We just talked about the mechanistic view of how intestinal calcium absorption compensates for any potential loss in the urine, but there are a lot of other ways to look at it, too. For example, instead of looking at the effects of animal protein on an intermediate marker of bone health, like calcium, why not just look directly at studies that examine the relationship between animal protein intake and more specific markers of bone health, like bone mass or bone microarchitecture or bone strength? It’s the same kind of idea as, you know, instead of looking at the relationship between saturated fat intake and cholesterol, why not just look directly at saturated fat intake and heart disease? Because that’s why we would be looking at cholesterol in the first place, as a predictor for heart disease, right? But you can just look directly at studies that examine the relationship between saturated fat and heart disease, and you see that there isn’t much of a relationship. Now, in the case of protein and bone health, if you look at these direct markers of bone health, there was, for example, a 2009 meta-analysis in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that looked at 61 different studies, and they found a strong positive association between protein intake and bone health. On the other hand, there have been controlled trials where they have experimentally induced protein deficiency — so they’ve dramatically restricted protein intake — and that has led to deterioration of bone mass, microarchitecture, and strength, which are the hallmarks of osteoporosis. But we can go further. We can also say, what does the research tell us about the importance of protein for bone health? And if you do that kind of review, you will find that there are three potential mechanisms through which higher protein intake positively impacts bone health. Number one is that protein contains a bunch of amino acids that are really important for bone. Number two is that eating more protein increases IGF-1 levels, and IGF-1, in turn, increases bone growth and bone mass. And then number three, eating more protein lowers levels of serum parathyroid hormone, and we know that high levels of serum parathyroid hormone are associated with low bone mineral density, high bone turnover, and an increased risk of fractures. Steve Wright: Well, I think that sums it up pretty well. Chris Kresser: I’m not done, though! We have to keep going! So animal protein, I think, is especially important for bone health. So far, we’ve just been talking about the relationship between protein and bone, but we have studies that have shown that changes in muscle and bone mass track together, so that tells us that things that are good for muscle are typically good for bone, and vice versa. And we know that leucine is an amino acid that signals that protein is available for muscle synthesis, and animal proteins typically contain high amounts of leucine, which, of course, then suggests that leucine may play an important role in bone health. We have observational studies that show that a high intake of animal protein is associated with greater bone mineral density and decreased rates of hip fracture, especially in the elderly. On the other hand, we have studies that show that eating less meat and more plant protein leads to worse bone health. There’s a negative association between vegetable protein and bone mineral density in both sexes, and elderly women on vegetarian diets have been shown to have increased risk of osteoporosis. And finally, we have the gold standard randomized clinical trials where protein has also been shown to benefit bone. For example, there’s a 2009 trial in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that found that in postmenopausal women, increasing protein from 10% of calories to 20% of calories improved intestinal calcium absorption and also decreased urinary DPD, which is a marker of bone breakdown, and an increased IGF-1, which, as we just talked about, has several different positive effects on bone health. And then the last thing that I’m going to say is there was a really exhaustive review on this topic published in the Nutrition Journal in 2011 that looked at 55 different trials, 22 of them randomized clinical trials, and the authors’ conclusion was this: “A causal association between dietary acid load and osteoporotic bone disease is not supported by the evidence, and there is no evidence that an alkaline diet is protective of bone health.” Booyah. Steve Wright: Drop the mic! Point made. There are some fascinating things to take away from this discussion. One quote — and I’ll probably butcher it, so I’ll paraphrase it the best I can — I believe it was Einstein who said, if you give me 60 minutes to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes figuring out the right questions to ask. Chris Kresser: Yeah. Steve Wright: And I have made this mistake over and over again. It seems like what happens is we are so quick to try to find the answer that we begin to look for surrogate endpoints that will help us with our biases or help us just make the problem easier. A surrogate endpoint, if you don’t know what that is, it’s — this is from Wikipedia — “a measure of effect of a specific treatment that may correlate with a real clinical endpoint but does not necessarily have a guaranteed relationship.” There’s a lot of surrogate endpoint research out there, and I believe that if you can think about the real endpoint, for instance, if we’re talking about osteoporosis in this case, if that’s the bullseye, you have sort of concentric rings coming out from that of surrogate endpoint data, and some this stuff, there are surrogate endpoints that are so far away from the bullseye that the relationships all break down. So I think one of the take-homes from this giant myth that’s been populated throughout the internet and throughout the world is about asking better questions and trying not to really force the answer too fast. Chris Kresser: That’s a really great point, Steve. In a way, I mean, that’s largely what this community of explorers and investigators at ChrisKresser.com is all about, continuing to challenge even our cherished beliefs, like the idea that — not that this was a cherished belief for me, but sacred cows, let’s say, like the idea that legumes aren’t paleo and shouldn’t be eaten because they have toxins in them. We have to continually go deeper and challenge our beliefs and continue to ask questions. That’s really what the process of science is all about. Just accepting something at face value because you’ve heard it a few different times or even because a teacher or a professor says it is generally not the best way to acquire knowledge, so kudos to Melissa for asking that question and for getting some clarification. I definitely encourage Melissa and others who want to get more info on this topic to read the two articles, which have a bunch of citations, references that you can pursue if you want to learn more, or to watch the full presentation from Paleo f(x). I think this is not a harmless theory. You know, some theories are wrong and they’re just relatively harmless, and some theories are wrong and they are definitely potentially harmful. I’ve written a lot about the potential for nutrient deficiencies on a vegetarian diet, and so I’m not going to rehash that here, but if you take an acid-alkaline diet through to its logical conclusion, you’ll end up on a vegetarian or even vegan diet. If you try to maximize the alkaline-forming quality of the diet, then you’ll pretty much be eschewing all animal proteins. And if you do that, you’re going to put yourself at higher risk for things like B12 deficiency, calcium deficiency, zinc deficiency, vitamin D deficiency, EPA and DHA deficiency, and all of the health problems that are associated with that. So it’s not just a benign misunderstanding; it’s a pretty significant one that could negatively impact the health of a lot of people. Steve Wright: Yeah, I would agree with that 100%. I think it’s also a really great example of how this n=1 experimentation can really fail you. I know of a lot of actual friends, you know, who will try something like this — and I have nothing wrong with people trying things — but they’ll buy into a myth like this, they’ll make changes in their lifestyle that we would generally think are good, for instance, eating more vegetables, eating more fruits, and they may have underlying health conditions that make meat or animal consumption, such as low stomach acid or GI infections or anything, a little harder for them to digest right now. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be searching for better health anyway, and so they reduce their animal consumption, they increase vegetables and berries, they get some feedback from some pH strips, and lo and behold, they’re a changed person in seven days, and now they’re off and running in this direction for a long time. I totally encourage doing tests and things, but what I’m finding more and more is people are forgetting to ask the assumption questions, like, what is this based on? What am I basing my n=1 trials on? And I think this myth, in particular, can cause a lot of harm in people who run with an n=1 idea if they don’t challenge the assumptions behind their own bodies. Chris Kresser: That’s another great point, Steve. Another example of that would be I just published an article today called “3 Reasons Gluten Intolerance May Be More Serious Than Celiac Disease,” and one of the commenters asked how reliable the tests are and whether you can rely exclusively on elimination provocation, and I think certainly elimination provocation is a very good idea if you don’t have access to this test, and for many years it’s been considered the gold standard for assessing non-celiac gluten sensitivity, but one of my concerns with it is we know there are “silent” forms of celiac disease where people don’t have obvious symptoms even when they eat gluten. The effect of gluten may be immune dysregulation that happens in the background. For example, maybe they start producing antibodies to pancreatic cells that produce insulin, or maybe they start making antibodies to thyroid. You can’t feel that, you know, until it’s already at the point where those organs are damaged and then you start to feel the decline in thyroid hormone production or the decline in insulin production via high blood sugar, and even that a lot of people don’t feel, and the only way they’re going to find out about it is if they get tested. So my concern is, like, let’s say you have someone who does elimination provocation and they don’t notice any obvious problem with gluten, and then they get a test for gluten intolerance and it turns out that they’re reacting to it. What is the cost for that person of going on to continue to eat gluten? Unfortunately, it could be fairly high. And there’s no way of knowing, necessarily, in that n=1 experiment that it’s a problem. I think there are a lot of situations like this, and I’m glad you brought that up. Steve Wright: Yeah, my pleasure. It’s taken me seven or eight years now to get to this point, so I think if we’re challenging some people’s beliefs today, and I think if you’re listening to this and feeling a little triggered by Chris and I are talking about right now, just know that we are supporting your changes in your health and we’re just giving you some sort of wisdom as guys who have done it to ourselves and been through long journeys ourselves and then also worked with a lot of people. Chris Kresser: Yeah, and I would add that there’s a wide range of responses to a vegetarian diet. One of the things that determines how someone will respond is genetic polymorphisms that affect how well we convert inactive forms of nutrients to active forms of nutrients. To use an example, some people are really good at converting beta carotene, which is a vitamin A precursor that’s found in plant foods, into retinol, which is the active form of vitamin A that’s found in animal foods. So if that people goes on a vegetarian, alkaline-based diet, they might not fare as poorly as someone who is almost entirely unable to convert beta carotene into retinol, and there are people like that, actually a fairly substantial number of people. So the first person goes on a vegetarian diet. They do OK. The second person goes on a vegetarian diet, and they start to experience signs of vitamin A deficiency, which can cause a lot of problems very quickly. Again, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. There’s a lot of different individual variation here that people aren’t even tracking and aren’t even aware of. Like, how would you possibly know that you’re the person that doesn’t convert beta carotene into vitamin A? Your doctor’s not going to test for that. I don’t even know if there are commercial tests for that available. So there’s a lot to this, and I don’t want to create the impression that you can’t figure it out just by experimenting. I think that’s very important and crucial, but the point we’re trying to make here is there’s a role for continuing to ask questions and asking the right questions and getting help from someone who can guide you through the kinds of testing that can reveal things that aren’t easily determined just through self-experimentation. Steve Wright: Yeah, that’s great. Well put, and I’m sure we could do a whole episode on the train we’re on right now, but I know you have some commitments today, and I have some other thoughts I’d share, but maybe for another time. Chris Kresser: Yeah. If someone wants to ask that question, go for it. Maybe you can give them the link. Steve Wright: All right. Well, thanks, everyone, for listening today. As we mentioned, ChrisKresser.com/PodcastQuestion to submit a question. Maybe you have some followups after this episode. We’d love to hear them. In between episodes, if you’re not following Chris on social media, go to Facebook.com/ChrisKresserLAc and Twitter.com/ChrisKresser. Follow him there for more updates. Like, if you didn’t know he was going to Paleo f(x), he posted about that quite often on social media, so if you like those kinds of updates, make sure you’re following him on social media.
from Chris Kresser http://chriskresser.com/dispelling-the-acid-alkaline-myth/
via Holistic Clients
