Eating and exercise cycles compared to Paleo cycles

Tracy · Eating and exercise cycles compared to Paleo cycles

Found on Matt Metzgar's blog:

Here are two great papers, cycles1(pdf) and cycles2(pdf), that show where my thinking has been headed lately. Both papers are coauthored by Frank Booth, and they attempt to connect eating and exercising to Paleolithic cycles and conditions.

Here's a quote from the first paper: "Consequently what is called the mechanisms of skeletal muscle hypertrophy from sedentary levels today would probably be the maintenance of muscle mass in the Late Palaeolithic era." This puts a different spin on resistance training. Instead of it being something that people should do, or could do to build muscle, it is more what we are meant to do - lift heavy loads on a regular basis.

Here's another great quote: "Pre-diabetic conditions occur within 5–10 days of reducing physical activity levels in healthy humans. Thus, reduced physical activity is associated with a rapid development of insulin resistance." Again, the shows that regular physical activity is natural and "expected" by the body, and that sedentary living quickly becomes dangerous in terms of health.

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I haven't read them yet but plan to and would love to hear comments!

Dean

Tracy, thanks.

Yah, they used to say being sedentary was like smoking a pack a day. I believe that.

I totally agree that we NEED exercise. It is not an option. When you are sedentary, you develop problems. Just as we are meant to eat animals and avoid carbs, we are meant to move and do muscle resistance.

Thanks for posting this! Cool

Heather L

Of course, I liked these, since I am all for incresing muscle hypertrophy.
Thanks for posting these.

I liked this section since it deals with strength vs. endurance:
Intriguingly, the type of
exercise stimuli governs the intricate balance of which
signalling pathways are turned on or off, thereby providing
for a regulation of phenotypic outcomes. For example,
aerobic exercise involving predominantly endurance type
of work does not phosphorylate p70S6K (Sherwood et al.
1999), whereas high-resistance loading type of exercise
does (Bodine et al. 2001b). Further, Nadar & Esser (2001)
also found that treadmill running did not have any effect
on the phosphorylation status p70S6K. This suggests a
differential regulation of signalling by the type of exercise
and the possibility of different phenotypic outcomes.

I also liked this statement: "A sedentary lifestyle in such an environment probably meant elimination of that individual organism." So true. If you couldn't move fast enough,or maybe climb, you would be likely to fall to predators.

Dean