8 Steps to a Painfree Back by Esther Gokhale

8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back: Natural Posture Solutions for Pain in the Back, Neck, Shoulder, Hip, Knee, and Foot (Remember When It Didn't Hurt)

8 Steps to a Pain Free Back is one of the most thought provoking book I have read.  Its power is twofold: first, its approach of looking a populations which have few back problems and second, its conciseness and practicality.  This book reminds me of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston Price except that Gokhale deals with teeth instead of backs.  Price was a dentist and went looking for answers about dental decay and ended up finding broadly useful information about nutrition.  Gokhale started her search looking for a way to solve her back pain and developed a broadly useful concept of posture.

The main difference between Price and Gokhale is the path they have chosen for spreading their message.  Price took a more scientific and theoretical approach in his lengthy book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.  He went deep into the concepts behind his theory, described experiments he had conducted, and gave a lot of supporting evidence.  This book was attempting to convince medical professionals, so the housewife looking to improve her cooking would not have gotten much out of it.  Gokhale started by offering lessons teaching people correct posture and has moved from there to writing a book showing people how to teach themselves correct posture.  To my knowledge she has never written a book going into depth about her theory, discussing the different populations she has interacted with, describing her experiments, and presenting in depth case studies.  Hopefully, she will do this sometime in the future.

8 Steps to a Painfree back has a introductory chapter giving the background for the book and describing how the reader go through the lessons.  Next there are 8 chapters each describing and teaching one aspect part of correct posture.  The reader is supposed to do only one chapter a week to allow the lessons to sink in before going on to the next chapter.  Finally, there is an appendix with exercises to help learn the posture.  The 8 lessons are:

1. Stretch sitting
2. Stretch lying on your back
3. Stack sitting
4. Stretch lying on your side
5. Using your inner corset
6. Tall standing
7. Hip Hinging
8. Glide walking

The book and lessons are well thought out, but many of the concepts are still difficult to grasp.  It is hard to go from a verbal desription to a mental image of how your body should look.  It is also difficult to actually make your body carryout a process you conceive in your mind.  The large number of pictures in the book make this conceptualization as easy as possible.  When she describes a concept you will be able to look at pictures of people doing the concept correctly and people making common mistakes.  This is very helpful.

Esther's posture can be summarized by a few key points.  It takes a lot of work to actually incorporate these into how you lie, sit, stand, and move. 

• The pelvis should be anteverted
• The back should be straight not hunched or swayed
• The shoulders should be back and down
• The feet should be arched
• The head should be upright with the chin down and neck straight

My one reservation about the Gokhale Method is glide walking.  I do not feel that glide walking is the optimal way to walk, but on the other hand I am not exactly sure where it goes wrong.  I have had trouble glide walking in snow or slick places and I feel that the ideal method of walking should work in all circumstances.

Shut Your Mouth and Save Your Life

A Painting of George Catlin

One of George Catlin's paintings of Native Americans

Shut Your Mouth And Save Your Life (1870)

George Catlin was an American Painter who lived around the time of the American Civil War (born 1796, died 1872). I had not heard of him before reading this book, but when I mentioned him to my mother she recognized him as a famous painter. Catlin began his life amongst modern (for that time) Americans but moved out west living amongst the American Indians after the Civil War. By the time he wrote this book, he claims to have more experience with Native Americans than any living person at that time. One of the things which struck him most about the natives was their freedom from the ailments of modern society. He wrote this book to teach modern people how they could become healthier.

George Catlin was a very feeble man during his younger years. He probably considered himself average amongst those living and felt lucky to be alive (not dead). He worked as a lawyer and then at the age of 34 in 1830 began his travels in the Western United States. Living out of doors was a shock for his body. A mouth breather, he often woke up with inflamed and bleeding lungs and his sleep was miserable. He managed to make himself a nose breather and dramatically turned his health around. When he wrote this book he was at the healthiest and strongest of his life and had no aches and pains. The purpose of this book was to convince Americans back home how to make the same changes he did and to inform them that many of the hard parts of life are not necessary.

At the time Catlin wrote, half of all children born in major American and European cities died before the age of 5. Half of those who survived died before the age of 25. Those who lived to adulthood often had deformities (approximately one half percent of the population had the problems of being a hunch back, an idiot, or deaf). I don't know what the rates of these diseases are now, but we place most of our young boys on Ritalin and our special education classes are overflowing. Those who lived to adulthood in those days usually had bad teeth. I think we are far better at treating the symptoms of our illnesses today, but the same underlying problems still exist.

When Catlin met the Indians he was struck by their fine physical features. At the time most whites thought the American Indians were sick and disease ridden, but Catlin says only the Natives living in close contact with Whites were sickly and diseased. He refers to several major plagues which swept across America but stopped when they hit the Native Americans who had not yet started drinking whiskey. The Natives did not loose any children to sickness or childbirth. When Catlin inquired about childhood deaths, Chiefs would relate a couple instances of children drowning or getting bitten by a rattlesnake. That was all. Caitlin does say that the Indians living in close contact with whites were sickly. He is not sure why this is but he seems to attribute it to whiskey consumption.

In the book Catlin explains his theory about why nose breathing is healthier than mouth breathing. The nose is especially designed to filter and warm air before it his the lungs. The mouth is not designed to filter air so the cold dirty air flows directly into the lunges without an safety mechanisms in place. The mouth is supposed to be an aqueous environment, but breathing through the mouth causes it to dry out making the teeth less healthy. Catlin had noticed that animals die quickly if they are forced to breath through their mouths and hypothesized that people do as well. Catlin also marveled at the fine ordering and lack of decay in the Indians teeth. He attributed this to the Indians habit of keeping their mouths closed at all times. The one time an Indian opened his mouth was to speak and that did not happen often.

The last part of the book is devoted to convincing people to take up nasal breathing and teaching to them how to do this. Catlin advocates making the switch through conscious thought. He recommends keeping your mouth closed at all times while awake and thinking about keeping your mouth closed as you fall asleep at night. He motivates people of all ages by reminding them of their friends who have died and urging them to consider the effects it will have on their future health, marriage prospects, and career.

The Vitamin Code by Massoud Arvanaghi and Mike Yorkey

The VITAMIN CODE The Breakthrough Discovery That Will Change The Way You Take Vitamins Forever

The Vitamin Code tells the story behind the Jordan Rubin's Garden of Life raw vitamins. The book is written in three sections giving the reader an understanding of why vitamins are needed, the story behind the development of these vitamins, and an analysis of the vitamins on the market today. Jordan Rubin has been endorsed in the past by the Weston Price Foundation, so I am inclined to believe that he is selling a legitimate product. I do not take nutritional supplements myself: I have other areas of my diet to work on first. However, I learned a lot about nutritional supplementation from this book. In any case, I like Garden of Life's method of trying to sell their product by educating the consumer.

Part I: The learning curve

The medical community has consistently denigrated nutritional supplements but is slowly being forced to change. Today even the Journal of the American Medical Association recommends taking nutritional supplements. The history of vitamins begins in 1747 with James Lind discovering a cure for scurvy and continues with Eijkman discovering a cure for Beriberi in 1886. Both cures involved nutritional supplementation although not using synthetic vitamins. Vitamins were finally officially discovered by Funk in 1912 and synthetic Vitamin C was first produced by Szent-Gyorgyi in 1931.

There are two categories of vitamins: fat soluble and water soluble. Fat soluble vitamins include A, D, E, and K. Excess levels of these vitamins can be stored in fat for future use, and these vitamin levels will be depleted by a low fat diet. The B series of vitamins are the primary water soluble vitamins. The body flushes out excess levels so they cannot be stored and must be replenished regularly.

Part II: Cracking the code

The second part of the book tells the story of Endre Szalay who started the Grow Company which produces the vitamins sold by Garden of Life. Szalay is a Hungarian pharmacist who avoided serving in the Second World War because he is part deaf. His freedom spared, he managed to survive the warfare and rampaging armies which rampaged back and forth across his country during the war. He became a successful pharmacist after the war but was worried about being denounced to the communists, so he escaped to the United States.

Once in the US, Szalay's genius demonstrated itself. He began at the very bottom level of the pharmacy profession and but he rose up the ladder to become the Vice President of three different pharmaceutical companies. Giving up the lucrative positions, he retired and invested his own money to follow his passion and create the Grow Company which grows vitamins inside of living organisms--yeasts. These vitamins contain all the necessary factors for the body to use them because they are constructed by a living organism. The Grow Company does not sell directly to customers it only sells to other companies, so Jordan Rubin approached Szalay to begin making nutritional supplements. The rest is history.

Part III: What the vitamin code means

There are five different levels of vitamins according to the authors of this book. From worst to best they are

1. Isolated Vitamins and Minerals: These are the cheapest and most common form. They often contain lots of sweeteners and the body has a difficult time absorbing them.
   
2. Isolated Vitamins and Minerals with Food Powder: These are the same synthetic vitamins as before but they contain some food powders which make them slightly easier for the body to assimilate.
   
3. Food Concentrates: These are vitamins extracted from healthy foods such as grasses. They were popular during the 1930s but were driven from the market by the cheaper isolated vitamins and minerals.
   
4. Fermented Vitamins and Minerals: To create these vitamins a food concentrate is mixed with a pro-biotic such as friendly yeasts. The fermentation makes the food concentrates easier to absorb.
5. Raw Food Created Vitamins: These vitamins are grown inside of yeast using the Grow Company's process which is described in more detail in the second part of the book. They are kept at low temperature to avoid denaturing from heat.
   

The World of Hair by John Gray

The World of Hair Colour (Hairdressing and Beauty Industry Authority)

online version

Hair is an indicator of health, a large part of a woman’s identity, and has played a large part in many famous stories (Samson, Rapunzel ...). Knowing the importance of hair is only a small part of the puzzle. It is important to know how hair works, what the signs of healthy hair are, how to care for your hair, and what dangers to avoid.

While researching hair I came across a good resource: an e-book called The World of Hair by Dr. John Gray. This book represents conventional science, so it must be read with a grain of salt. Its intended audience seems to be hair stylists, so it covers both the theory behind hair and how to care for it. I will summarize what I feel are the most important points of this book.

Hair Structure:
The two parts of a hair are the follicle which is below the surface of the skin where hair grows and the shaft which is outside of the skin. New cells are created in the follicle and pushed outwards to become the shaft. Hair pigment is created in the follicle. The shaft is composed of dead cells and lubricated by sebum which is secreted from the follicle. The center of the shaft is called the cortex and gives hair its curl and elasticity. It is made up of keratin and contains the in hairpigments. The outside of the shaft is called the cuticle is composed of between six and ten layers of cells and takes the form of a layer of scales covering the cortex. The cuticle gives hair its shine.

Hair Statistics:
People generally have between 100,000 and 150,000 hairs on their head. The number of hairs generally peaks around the age of 16 years old while the density of hair decreases throughout life. A baby will have around 1,100 hairs/cm2; a 25 year old, 600 hair/cm2, and someone 40 or older 300 hair/cm2. Hair usually grows at the rate of 1cm/month. Consequently shoulder length hair has usually been growing for 3 years and waist length hair for 7 years.

Hair Life Cycle:
Hair has three stages to its lifecycle. Anagen is the first phase in which the hair grows; this stage usually lasts between three and seven years. Catagen is the second phase lasting two to four weeks. During this phase hair stops growing and becomes ready for shedding. Telogen is the third phase; here a new hair starts to grow and the old hair falls out. This final stage lasts three to four months.

Hair Types:
Asian is the first of the hair categories based upon genetics. Asian hair is black and very straight. The straightness is due to the straightness of the keratin bundles. The shaft of the hair is round and thick. Its diameter can be more than 120 microns.

Caucasoid is the second type of hair. It is possessed by Europeans and Indians. It can be wavy or straight and has a wide range of colors. A mix of straight and wavy keratin bundles is found in the hair. The shaft is usually between 57 and 90 microns in diameter and oval in cross section.

The third type of hair is African. African hair is black and very curly. It is flatter in shape and the cuticle has many kinks in it.

In healthy hair the cortex or central part of the hair shaft is undamaged and the cuticle or covering sheath of the shaft is intact. Keeping hair in this state is easier said than done because once hair leaves the scalp it cannot be repaired. Hair needs to maintain its pristine conditions for a long time: 3 years for shoulder length, 5 years for waist length, and 12 years for hair long enough to sit on.

Since not everyone owns a high power microscope to examine their hair for damage, it is important to be able to tell hair’s healthiness through observation with the naked eyeball. Here the useful correlation between health and beauty aids us because we can recognize healthy hair instinctively. This explains why men are attracted to hair even though most men know almost nothing about hair. Properties of healthy and beautiful hair include glossiness, cleanness, amount, and volume.

The glossier hair is the more light it reflects. This is the most obvious property of healthy hair. Dark hair is generally glossier than light hair (this does not mean dark hair is better) because of the contrast between the shine and the natural hair color. Hair’s glossiness depends on the state of the cuticle. If the cuticle is mostly gone or highly damaged, hair will not reflect much light.

Clean hair is free of debris and has a proper level of natural oils. Hair naturally produces oil and should have some; however, it should not be excessively oily. There should not be debris or caked hairspray in the hair. Dirty hair is not as glossy as clean hair.

The amount of hair depends on the diameter of the hair shaft and number of hairs. The diameter of a pony tail can vary by more than 100% based upon the diameter and number of hairs. Both number of hairs and diameter of hair shaft are related to genetics and healthiness of lifestyle. Even though modern science says that both of these are fully genetic, it admits that in the case of starvation or high stress hair is lost and changes color. The amount of hair varies with length as well, but most of the time people do not grow their hair to its limiting length.

Volume is amount of space hair takes up. It is dependent on “thickness” as described in the previous paragraph but not entirely so. Hair properties such as stiffness, curvature, cohesion, and friction play a large role in determining hair’s volume. These cause hair to flow and hold itself in ways that hold more air inside and make it look bigger. While the amount of hair depends on ones long term health (of yourself and your ancestor), volume can be vary from day to day based upon treatment and weather conditions.

Next I will discuss general Dr. Gray's ideas about hair care and not specific techniques. First I will discuss styling and then cleaning. Hair styling is temporarily or permanently altering the shape of hair. Temporarily changing the shape of hair involves setting and changes weak bonds between hair while permanent altering either “perming” or “relaxing” chemically changes the shape of hair. Cleaning hair involves both the method of cleaning hair as well as the materials used.

Setting or temporary styling involves drying hair into place. This needs to be done every time hair is wetted. This is the safest way to style hair and everyone does it without thinking. Having a good haircut can make this easier. Avoid is back combing. This can increase the friction of hair leading to more volume, but it pushes up scales on the cuticle damaging the hair. Be careful about blow drying hair. Everyone agrees that air drying is optimal, but this takes a long time. Heat damages hair, and if there is a lot of water remaining in hair when it is blow dried, the water on the hair can boil seriously damaging the hair. For this reason towel dry and air dry as much as possible before blow drying. Hair can also be temporarily colored; this colors the hair with pigments which will eventually wash out. I would guess that this is not healthy [but more healthy than permanent coloring] because the pigments will also be absorbed into the scalp.

Permanent styling of hair changes the structure of hair through chemical processes. Usually a chemical is applied to the scalp which alters the structure of the hair chemically and a physical force is used to reshape the hair either curling (perm) or straitening (relaxing). After a period of time a neutralizing agent is applied counteracts the original chemical and locks the hair into its new form. Hair may be permanently colored as well. Here the pigments in the hair are neutralized and permanent dyes are used to change the color of the hair. Conducting these chemical causes permanent damage to hair and the author repeatedly emphasizes the need to determine what treatments hair has already received before applying new treatments so that hair is not too heavily damaged. There are many pictures in the book captioned by a statement along the lines of “this extremely beautiful hair has never been touched by any chemical treatment.”

A shampoo and possibly a conditioner is used to clean and care for hair on a regular basis. It is important to know your hair type in order to pick the correct shampoo. A shampoo removes grease and dirt from hair while a conditioner prevents tangling and protects the cuticle. Dr. Gray says that hair is washed much more often now than it had been in the past because shampoos are not as harsh as they used to be. I infer that you do not need to wash your hair nearly as much as we do.

Let your hair hang naturally and not pile it on top of your head while washing. Piling the hair will causing tangling and other problems. Do not scrub the hair too vigorously either. Shampoo should be applied mainly to the scalp while conditioner needs to be spread evenly throughout the hair

The Modern Diet Review by John Barban

The Modern Diet Review

I downloaded The Modern Diet Review by John Barban from The Fitness Black Book. The free download source is also located on The Fitness Black Book's website. The author, John Barban, maintains a blog where you can read more of his work. In his summary of the book Rusty Moore of TFBB says that Barban has worked successfully for some time in the fitness industry, a strike against him in my mind.

Barban breaks modern diets down into seven types: four of which can work, two of which are bad, and one is not yet evaluated. First, I will discuss John Barban's conclusion and then critique his description of each diet.

Barban says that all diets boil down to calories in minus calories out. He says that less processed foods can provide the most satisfaction [read nutrition?] per calorie, but this is a minor factor in comparison to your calorie deficit.

There are no such thing as ‘good’ foods and ‘bad’ foods. There is just food and how much of it you choose to eat.
Finding a diet style that helps you eat less total food without going insane is the key to lasting weight loss.

I completely disagree with this. I believe food quality and nutrition is the number one factor in health and consequently weight loss. The volume of food/calories is of secondary importance and the amount needed depends on food quality. While I agree with many of the things Barban says in this report, I cannot agree with his conclusion. I would encourage you to read this report, but take it with a grain of salt.

Diet categories

• Low fat (potentially good)
• Low carbohydrate (potentially good)
• Intermittent fasting (potentially good)
• Balanced nutrient ratios (potentially good)
• Cleansing/Detox (bad)
• Blood type (bad)
• Paleo (unknown)

Based upon Barban's findings low carbohydrate and low carbohydrate diets work but very poorly. They work by lowering the caloric intake and neither of them show significant weight loss after a year; however, low carb diets do show weight loss after three months and so are an improvement over low fat diets. I think both of these diets are starvation diets which only work as long as you are short of food through willpower or scarcity. Barban follows the standard party line that most fats are bad (saturated and trans) and that only unsaturated fats are good. I think this is incorrect based upon the lessons I have learned from the Weston A. Price Foundation and Eat Fat and Grow Slim. Animal fats are an essential part of your diet (although olive and coconut oil can replace them to a certain extent) and very healthy. You cannot eat too many of these healthy animal fats.

The intermittent fasting diet has been shown to work over the course of a year. I follow a combination of the Warrior Diet (a version of intermittent fasting) and Weston Price Foundation guidelines, so this is where I have the most experience. Barban approves of this method saying that intermittent fasting has been shown to maintain weight loss over the course of a year proving its effectiveness. He attributes this to calorie cutting because people will often skip another meal or day of food when they notice they are gaining weight. I disagree with him about intermittent fasting only working because of calorie deprivation. Ori Hofmekler has shown that metabolism increases with intermittent fasting so that you will lose weight even if your caloric intake remains constant.

John Barban's favorite is the balanced nutrient type diet because it trains you to eat a balanced diet (read: count calories/read nutrition labels) and prevents the need to eliminate any dietary group from your diet. Low fat and low carb diets fail because a dieter cannot give up eating foods he loves. This diet allows a reduction in calories without eliminating any foods. If you believe diets boil down to a calories in versus calories out equation, this is the best diet for you. I think this diet has potential but I would not favor it over intermittent fasting.

Cleansing and detox diets differ in that the former attempts to clean your intestinal tract while the latter tries to clean toxins from your body. Barban says that both of these lack scientific evidence and do not make sense logically. The intestinal tract can be viewed in videos and apparently most people do not have any intestinal buildup. I have not looked into this matter, so I will not comment on it. John then says that the concept of toxins is vaguely defined and that your body detoxes itself naturally and there is nothing you can do to aid the process. While I have not investigated detox diets, I disagree with Barban's conclusions. The liver and kidneys can obviously detoxify faster if they are healthy. They are filters and might need to get cleaned and rested from time to time. I don't know what a "toxin" is either but we get plenty of toxic substances that build up in our body like mercury in a Great Lakes fish. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that foods and drinks such as beet kvass can speed the rate of detoxification, but I am unsure if any scientific studies have investigated this.

John Barban calls the blood type diet an interesting idea with no basis in fact. People all over the world have different blood types and different diets and are healthy. Barban is probably correct about blood types, but I would guess that there is a genetic component to what makes a diet successful. On the whole, I would agree with Barban that the blood type diet does not work although I have not studied the matter thoroughly.

No studies have been conducted on the paleo diet, so Barban does not give a recommendation on this diet. He does say that the paleo diet seems to be a combination of the intermittent fasting and balanced nutrient diets.

Sugar Blues by William Dufty

Sugar Blues

I agree with the main premise of Sugar Blues--that Sugar is the most harmful food in our diet today--but I think the book is a little bit over the top. Several threads run through this book. William Dufty traces the history of sugar from the ancient India to the modern day. He tells his personal story of sugar addiction, explains the health problems caused by sugar, and describes how corporate interests keep the dangers of sugar hidden.

Dufty's history is where I had the most disagreements. He does not cite many sources and makes strong allegations. I know some of the points that he made such as those about witch burning are incorrect, but my history is not strong enough to critique his overall accuracy. My guess is that his general historical narrative is correct but many of the minor points are wrong. Throughout history sugar has migrated throughout the world causing health problems and weakening civilizations; however, it is addictive so everyone uses it anyway. When a strong people or army discovers sugar, they instantly take it up and become lazy and weak leading to their downfall.

The history historical narrative ties into the problem of corporate interests. It may seem odd for me, an anarcho-capitalist, to decry big corporations, but this book illustrates the libertarian critique of corporatism. Big food companies have always wanted to use sugar because it allowed them to make their products less expensively unfortunately the sugar also greatly reduced quality. Consumers have generally revolted against being forced to eat these sugar laced products, so corporations have called upon the government to "regulate" them. One example of this occurred in England. Brewers discovered how to use sugar to brew beer less expensively, but this cheap beer had an inferior taste. Anyone who sold people beer made using sugar would be run out of town when people learned of the fraud. Eventually the government created an agency to monitor beer production and prevent the beer brewers using sugar during fermentation. Shortly after the founding of this agency, the agency changed its opinion and allowed beer manufacturers to use sugar. The consumers were helpless against the power of the government. This type of tale has repeated itself over and over during sugar's history.

Dufty discusses many dangers from sugar which I had not thought about before reading the book. I have written about these issues in more depth on my Complete Body blog. First, he describes how the health problems from smoking cigarettes may largely stem from drying the tobacco leaves too quickly causing sugar to form. A second anecdote is that many driving accidents may be caused by sugar. We all know that you get drowsy after a sugar high. Sugary products are sold along the highway everywhere. A driver will eat some sugary food, experience a sugar high, and then following low--at this point he is more vulnerable to getting in an accident. One crash will lead to another. Third, sugar makes you taste better to mosquitoes and increases your chance of getting bitten.

I would recommend reading Sugar Blues, but read it with a grain of salt. I think Dufty goes overboard in many sections of this polemic, but his central point is true. If you get a little too scared of sugar, it will not do you any harm.

Eat Fat and Grow Slim

Eat Fat and Grow Slim by Richard Mackarness, M.B.,B.S.

In the past I had always thought that the low carb craze just stemmed from some poor graduate student who needed to finish his dissertation or from a poorly designed dietary study that got researchers started off on the wrong track. I guessed that as time went on "Science" would come around to what tradition had been saying all along that animal fat was the basis for a healthy diet. When I read Eat Fat and Grow Slim I realized that this will not be the case.

This book was published in 1958 and 50 years later the medical establishment is still barking up the wrong tree. Now that I think about it, Weston Price's work was published in the 1930s and is still being ignored. As described in the first chapter William Harvey and William Banting who advocated a the high fat diet in the 1850s and were run out of town by the medical establishment. Although the benefits of high fat diets have long been known, mankind remains willfully ignorant.

Mackarness addresses some objections to a high fat diet in the third chapter which sound very familiar:

1. High-fat diets are nauseating and make you bilious. No one could stick to such a diet for long enough to lose weight.
2. High-fat diets cause ketosis and make you ill.
3. High-fat diets may be all right in cold weather but they are too heating in hot weather.
4. High-fat diets are unbalanced and cause deficiency diseases.
5. High-fat diets cause heart disease.

One of the most interesting points in the book came during the third section of this chapter where he describes the Eskimos and how they lived. Eskimos were not slightly fat to keep themselves warm; they were actually very thin and only their fur clothes gave them the impression of being portly. An Eskimo actually had very little need to generate body heat: their warm clothing kept them warmer than a New Yorker would be during the middle of winter and their houses varied between 60 and 90 degrees depending on how close to the ceiling you were.

The book goes on to give sample diets, recommend foods, and address further concerns that a person might have about a high fat diet. I agree with most of these points although the book does not stress the importance of =organ meats. This is most likely due to the fact that organ meats were eaten more commonly at this time and that the book seems to be based on the first hand experience of western medical doctors who had discovered their textbooks were incorrect instead of a survey of indigenous cultures.

The Warrior Diet

The Warrior Diet: Switch on Your Biological Powerhouse For High Energy, Explosive Strength, and a Leaner, Harder Body

The warrior diet is based upon an analysis of several of my interests. In the process of recommending a proper diet and lifestyle Ori Hofmekler looks at ancient cultures mostly the Romans and Greeks but also the Mongols. He discusses when to eat as well as what to eat. He also gives recommendations for how to workout.

The main feature I took away from the book was the concept of cycling times of over-eating and under-eating throughout the day. Hofmekler recommends eating a big meal in the evening and not eating much throughout the rest of the day. Before dinner you can have light foods such as vegetables and water, but you are supposed to avoid carbohydrates and meats. The one exception is a recovery meal after a workout. I have adopted this eating style and have been very pleased with it. I do not hold to it perfectly, but Hofmekler does not say one needs to be puritanical about it. I have found that I have more energy if I skip lunch and get a lot more accomplished during the afternoon.

The warrior diet is one of freedom where you don't need to count calories. It is more based upon feeling and enjoying the diet and doesn't require tracking your diet with a spreadsheet. In the book, Hofmekler says that you can go off the diet for special occasions because you will want to return to it afterward. I have found this to be true. Whenever I visit my family I switch to eating three normal meals a day and have no trouble going back to one meal a day when I return to school.

Hofmekler disagrees with the Weston A. Price Foundation about several points including animal fats, lean meats, and cod liver oil. I side with the WAPF on these topics, but I see these disagreements as being separate from the main message of the warrior diet. I recommend following the Warrior Diet concepts, but choosing your foods based upon the Weston Price recommendations

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price is probably the most important book on nutrition published in the last century. I will first summarize the content of the book and then summarize a couple of my favorite anecdotes...

The first section of the book discusses specific indigenous cultures that Dr. Price studied. The cultures are:
1) Swiss
2) Gaelics
3) Eskimo
4) North American Indians
5) Melanesians
6) Polynesians
7) African Tribes
8) Australian Aborigines
9) Torres Straight Islanders
10) New Zealand Maori
11) Ancient Peruvians
12) Isolated Modern Peruvians

In the second part of the book Dr. Price analyzes the traditional peoples and their diets and describes studies which he carried out. He also writes about modern society and the reasons for its poor state of health.

I found the book fascinating. It took me a while to read (it is 500 pages of small print), but it was definitely worth the time spent. My favorite part was the first section where Dr. Price discusses his interactions with primitive cultures. Many of the anecdotes were hard to believe. I learned about

1) an Eskimo woman who had 16 children with no complications,
2) a miner lost in Alaska whose life was saved by the nutritional wisdom of some Eskimos who found him,
3) the Masai tribe in Africa who were tremendous physical specimens (many of their women were close to 7 feet tall),
4) a pacific islander who swam in the ocean for something like 30 hours straight while helping rescue people from a sinking ship

If you know about the diet that Dr. Weston Price advocates, this book will explain why Dr. Price broke so sharply with modern scientific thought. It will also allow you to open your mind and challenge many strongly held beliefs you may have about nutrition.

I have barely scratched the surface of the wisdom contained in this book. For further information about Dr. Weston Price’s ideas look at the Weston A Price Foundation.