As recent Research has pointed out , present men’s testosterone levels have dropped significantly, up to 1 percent a year, when compared to men of the same age in past decades. That means a 30 year old man in 1990 could expect to have up to a 22% higher level of testosterone than a 30 year old man in 2012. Testosterone is responsible for more than just men and muscle, as is perpetuated constantly by the media, specifically important processes related to energy levels, focus and motivation, disease processes and health, muscle function and muscle mass, bone mass, and libido. And not just in men, testosterone plays a role and contributes to these key processes in women. Fitness and Health experts Brad Pilon of Eat Stop Eat and Rusty Moore of Visual Impact created a great piece on the relationship between fasting, dieting, and testosterone, and they raised a very important question (s) which this post is based on: Does fasting and dieting dictate a choice between fat loss and muscle? Or is fasting without losing muscle a possible pathway? Long term calorie deficits and higher levels of body fat both contribute to lower testosterone levels, among other negative health effects. This is one reason intermittent [...]
Diet, Hydration, and Nutrition
Intermittent Fasting and Weight Loss Related to Brain Health?
Once unknowns in nutritional science are becoming known as Baltimore Researchers out of the National Institute on Ageing announced there could be links between intermittent fasting and improvements in brain health. Researchers noted that there could be a growth of neurons in the brain during fasting. Dr. Mattson of the John Hopkins University of Medicine at Baltimore noted that there was an increase in two chemical messengers within the brain, and that the cells of the brain being put under mild stress was largely contributory to the increase in cognition. Isn’t it great that our biology naturally opens up the opportunity to perform better under periods of high-stress? One of the most interesting parts of the discussion on the research was the evolutionary explanation by Dr. Mattson for why an intermittent fasting diet for weight loss could be linked to improvements brain health: “When resources became scarce, our ancestors would have had to scrounge for food”. “Those whose brains responded best – who remembered where promising sources could be found or recalled how to avoid predators — would have been the ones who got the food. Thus a mechanism linking periods of starvation to neural growth would have evolved.” [Source] Makes sense, we [...]
Government Recommended Diet Goes Wrong
What happens when the Government Recommended Diet clashes with another Government dietary recommendation? Statism you say? The Center for Disease Control recently released a report headlining with the statistic, “90% of Americans eat more sodium than is recommended for a healthy diet” [Source]. From the summary at the CDC website, the report highlights the growing problem of sodium in the American diet, and explains how some of the most common and unexpected foods can have large amounts of sodium. Excessive levels of sodium in the diet have been shown to correlate with increased blood pressure and increased levels of risk for heart disease. What’s interesting in the report is something that Mike Stobbe, an AP Medical writer, highlights HERE, that grains are the number one source of salt in the American diet. The officials were surprised at the short list of foods that contributed to the massive amounts of sodium that we consume and probably the presence grain and carbohydrate-dominated foods had on the list. It gets even more interesting when you realize that because of this report, the USDA and related organizations are heightening their advisory of lowering daily sodium levels, but not advising lowering amounts of grain consumed. The United States Department [...]
