I hope all my reader’s have had a break over the Festive period and are feeling enthused for a fresh start on 2012, just as I am.  2011 was a tough year for me.  I knew that I would be giving up my full-time job at the end of the year moving to a more mixed role of full-time musician to bring in the money that I need with the aim of a five-day “weekend” from Monday to Friday to take me away from the desk, give me more time to be active and mobile, leave me with time to train, and remove as much stress as possible from my life.

To prepare I spent most of 2011 doing a seven-day working week as I put more effort into my music, setting myself up with a reliable income stream from it before I handed in my notice from the desk job.  Unsurprisingly I finished off 2011 incredibly ill.  There was an unpleasant bug going round the UK and both Chris and I succumbed to it before Christmas without any hesitation, leaving us both bed-bound for a couple of days and without an ability to eat much of anything for over a week.

After a break over the Christmas period I thought I would share some of the things I have planned for 2012.  This is my statement of intent for the year that this blog is going to be spruced up a bit!

Workout plan for 2012

While I would like to report on my training for the end of 2011 I didn’t actually do anything for the last two weeks, since I was far too sick to leave my bed, let alone get into the gym for the week before Christmas and was then away on a six day walking trip after Christmas.  As expected after such a long break (12 December to 3 January plus 6 days of strenuous walking) I’ve knocked back my numbers quite horribly.  The figures below compare my final December workouts to the figures I got in my workouts last week.

• Back squat: 80kg 3×3, 5×2 down to 75kg 1×3, 7×2
• RDL: 95kg 8×3 down to 90kg 8×3
• Partial overhead press: 20kg 8×3 to 25kg 8×2 (so no loss here, but it was a new exercise in December)
• Hip thrust: 145kg 2×3, 4×2 down to 120kg 8×3 (I’m not so surprised about this – when I put the weight up to 145kg I struggled to get full extension so I stopped my warm up when I hit a weight I felt I was working hard with this time – I expect this to increase reasonably quickly).

Farewell ye great and mighty hip thrust

In 2012 I would like to finally get a handle on my bench press.  I’m going to increase to 3 workouts a week but also cut the size of the workouts slightly.  Part of the reason for this is that I have gained an allotment at the start of 2012 and anticipate doing some pretty hard digging a few times each week – I don’t want to burn out.

In a few weeks time this should be taking the following format:

1. Back squat then superset partial overhead press with chins
2. Superset Bench press with a row and then hip thrusts
3. RDLs and Hip thrusts

Until I get my squat back I’ll be doing workouts 1, 3 then 1 again each week.

I’ve no doubt this will change as I progress through the year and get used to not sitting at a desk all week but I really do want to crack the bench press this year and see if I can get to competition shape by Christmas.

Figure improvements in 2012

I let myself go a bit towards the end of 2011.  I’d made a conscious decision not to strictly diet at any point in 2011 as I was aware of an unhealthy relationship with food that developed through my 3 months of really hard dieting at the end of 2010.  I wanted time to heal that ticking psychological time-bomb.  I was also aware that there would be no free meals out with clients in 2012 and this year would be naturally easier to diet (for starters, no endless supplies of cake on the cabinets at work for birthdays and successful target achievement and competitions and… you get the drift).

No more cake lying about on a daily basis to tempt me

• 15 January to 15 February 2012 – I intend doing a 30 day Paleo Challenge at the start of the year.  It’s pretty much underway now, I didn’t really make a note of exactly when it started since there was much rubbish to cut out of my diet anyway, but there might be something inappropriate on Chris’s birthday this week, so it officially starts on 15 January after the partying finishes.  I know the dates above aren’t really 30 days but as 15 February is my birthday, it seems an appropriate date to stop the challenge.
• January – March 2012 – I will also be getting some of the excess fat off my hips and glutes.  This is one of my experiments for this year though.  I’ve done enough cutting diets in the last few years to know that the only way I could previously get results was an incredibly strict and repetitive food regime, fewer than 950 calories each day, and various cardio strategies over the years.  Despite looking “almost awesome” in December 2010 at the end of my last dieting phase I could never get rid of the handles of fat on the tops of my hips.  They got smaller but never went.  Through monitoring and measuring this year I want to see if the following appear to be true:
  • The fact that stress hinders fat loss is documented in several books on our shelves, hopefully I will find that I finally can shift those lumps of fat that sit at the top of each hip.
  • Reading any bodybuilding article or book by the old school bodybuilders, there is very little “cardio” mentioned.  However, they don’t sit around doing nothing either.  I’m going to see if I can lose weight without a complete starvation diet simply through the fact that I am more mobile each day and therefore using more calories.
  • Being based at home most days should also enable me to try something else too – eating when hungry.  I will always have foods that are appropriate to hand and so I intend eating food when I feel hungry and, where possible, stopping when full.  I will also eat something that appeals and not count the calories of it.  Again, this should hopefully have a positive affect on my figure and it will be interesting to see if I am able to lose weight this way without the psychological issues that come from a regimented calorie-restricted diet.  It will also be interesting to see how much I end up ingesting each day, what foods I tend to favour and what the macronutrient ratio looks like.

The shampoo experiment

I’ve always had trouble with my hair.  It’s thin, limp and hangs in rat-tails unless it’s within half a week since I visited the hairdresser.  It also gets greasy incredibly fast – I’ve never been able to contemplate leaving it unwashed even for one day as I wake up each morning with greasy-looking hair, even if it was washed the evening before.

This first month away from work without clients and internal meetings and a strict “business-acceptable” dress code finally gives me the opportunity I’ve been waiting for to try the shampoo-free experiment.  I can wear headscarves as much as I want and nobody needs to know what my hair looks like.  Everyone’s blog-posts I’ve read about trying this has agreed that it starts to look good after the first month, so I started this experiment on 27 December, when we left for the walking trip.  I’ll be blogging about my progress with photo evidence.

Technical research

Those of you who have been reading my blog for some time will have noticed that the quantity and quality of my technical research posts went sharply downhill towards the end of last year as I had less and less time to read up on topics.

Back to a bit of technical research

This year there are no excuses and areas I want to learn about include:

• Endometriosis – several of my friends have struggled with this and I think it is surprisingly common.  I’d like to understand more about it, both what it is like as someone with endometriosis and also what the known and suspected causes and potential solutions (if any) may be.
• Palaeolithic female figures – this is a much longer term project that could take more than just this year, but I’d like to see what I can learn about the figures of early females through skeletal structure and imagery.  It’s going to be delving back into my degree as an archaeologist.
• Women and bench press – for obvious reasons I’d like to learn more about whether it really is true that women struggle more with the upper body than the lower body when it comes to strength and, if so, why.
• Ketogenic diets – I promised someone at the end of 2010 that I would look into this and I never did.  This year I’m going to learn more about them.
• Metabolic Type diet – again, this has been mentioned to me and I am very skeptical but I shouldn’t be skeptical when I know almost nothing about them, so I’m going to at least read a couple of books and understand it better.

As I learn about these I will write about them on the blog.  However, I’m keen to research areas that other people would also like to learn more about, so please do leave a comment or send me an email through the contact form if you have other topics you would be interested to learn more about from me.

I hope you have all got similarly ambitious plans and intentions for 2012, whether in your personal life, in the gym or at work.  Please do let me know if you miss anything from the articles I used to write or if there is something you’d like me to be writing about but which you aren’t seeing.

Best of luck to you all for a happy and fulfilled year!

Related posts:

1. Why do women start weight training?
2. Setting New Year resolutions
3. Iron Lady: interview with Laura Trimble (part 1)

As with all games of word association, this game of links association is perhaps a bit tenuous in places with some dubious segues to get us from link to link but I was genuinely interested and surprised by some of the bits I’ve been putting aside and hope you will too.

We're even going to manage to find some links about sleep in here... is that how Jake stays lean?

• I’ve been intrigued by this review of Read my Hips by Kim Brittingham.  I think body image is a real issue for many women and it looks like this could be a fascinating look into someone’s battles with their self-image.
• Despite that comment on self-image I’m having a brief diet period.  My hips and thighs have got a bit out of control with the work lunches and dinners I’ve had recently and I feel uncomfortable in my clothes and skin now.  I don’t want to have to buy new clothes for only a couple of months in the office.  I know – it’s perhaps a bit hypocritical after a link to self-image.  Anyway, part of my “diet” involves plenty of sleep.  Especially now that I’ve seen reference to a study suggesting that those dieting and getting less sleep lose more of their weight as muscle loss and experience more hunger.
• Sleep is not just crucial for losing weight of the right type.  I was also interested to read that reduced sleep (four hours or less) can reduce insulin sensitivity.  Reduced insulin sensitivity is likely to impact on your weight management and your overall health.  By implication constantly missing sleep could lead to type 2 diabetes and other related conditions.  Though there’s a great suggestion in this article – intermittent fasting has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity so perhaps fast after a bad night of sleep (though personally I find I’m always ravenously hungry after a bad night).
• So picking up on the intermittent fasting theme in the previous link, the same site (Naturally Engineered) also had an article comparing calorie restriction and intermittent fasting, providing some nice simple explanations to squash the myth that the two are the same thing.  They might be – I certainly find that intermittent fasting can sometimes help with a highly calorie restricted diet since my one meal of the day feels like a sensible size – but it doesn’t have to be.
• Even if you don’t practice intermittent fasting on a regular basis like I do, Jamie Scott brought my attention to a study highlighted in Science Daily that suggests links between routine periodic fasting and improved general health (including heart health).  So even if you don’t need to fast to improve insulin sensitivity perhaps you might consider doing a fast every now and again anyway.
• Dietary fat has also been flagged by many people as providing some excellent health benefits so perhaps some fat in those meals would help?  Don at Primal Wisdom did a bit of a high-level meta-analysis of four studies looking at the effect of fat content on meal satiety.  After all, if you’re fasting you want to feel satiated before you start your fast.  I would have expected the overall conclusion to be that fat was much more satiating than carbohydrates so I was really surprised to see Don concluding that carbohydrates would be more satiating and that to replace carbs with fat and remain equally satiated would most likely involve a much higher calorie intake.  Not so good for weight loss!
• So we’re now thinking that perhaps we should eat more carbohydrate rather than fat when dieting to keep the calorie level down.  But are the carbohydrates good for our health?  Let’s turn to a study highlighted by Healthy Diets and Science, which I haven’t looked at in detail but the summary results seem to suggest that of the Italian women studied, those with the highest carbohydrate intake also had twice the risk of coronary heart disease.
• But wait!  Brian St Pierre spent two articles explaining why pointing the finger at carb misses the point.  In part two he uses the classic example of the Kitavans to show that there are populations who don’t have horrible health problems as a result of eating plenty of carbs in their diet.  To quote the article: “Dr. Lindeberg found that heart disease and stroke are absent or exceedingly rare in this population. They are completely unfamiliar with the signs and symptoms of heart attack and stroke, and the lack of these diseases was confirmed with their excellent ECG’s.”  So the lesson from this is perhaps that we should be careful of extrapolating one study on a specific population to all other populations.

So we started out at body image and dieting for our figures and ended up at the everlasting debate about whether carbohydrates are good or bad for us.  I wouldn’t have seen that one coming – certainly not taking the route I took on the way.

I’d love to know if you’ve enjoyed this game of links association and found some of the resulting links useful.  If you have I might do another one later this year on a different theme.

Related posts:

1. Blog-watch: diet and other health-related blogs
2. Blog-watch: paleo diet links
3. Blog-watch: pregnancy diet and exercise

Type 2 diabetes can be very easily and effectively managed with slight changes to lifestyle, diet or whatever the source is proposing and it can also, in most circumstances, be resolved permanently.  In fact, it seems that almost anything that takes you away from our modern junk-food, immobile and stressed lifestyle can contribute to improving type 2 diabetes.

Below is some information about the most compelling ways I’ve read about to improve and possibly even cure type 2 diabetes.

What is type 2 diabetes?

To kick off take a quick reminder read of my diabetes introductory post.  Diabetes is caused when the body can’t take control of elevated glucose levels and handle the glucose correctly, storing it appropriately for use as energy later on.

Unlike type 1 diabetes, where the body is unable to produce insulin that triggers the storage process for glucose, type 2 diabetics produce insulin but their bodies are unable to use the insulin correctly – they are insulin resistant.  As a result of this they still don’t process and store the glucose and the glucose is allowed to build up and flood the system.  Essentially, the insulin isn’t triggering those GLUT4 molecules in the cells, telling them to latch onto glucose and both turn it into a storable form and take it to the correct storage facilities (the liver and muscles).

If you didn’t read the introductory post that I wrote on diabetes and which I linked to in the first paragraph of this section then you might want to go and read it now to find out what happens to people when they get a long-term build-up of glucose in their blood.

Cause of type 2 diabetes

Knowing what causes type 2 diabetes is difficult to put your finger on.  While Wikipedia lists all sorts of causes of type 2 diabetes I disagree with the spirit of the list.  For me the reality is that it could most simply be summarised as “living the Western life”.  If you eat a western diet (plenty of grains, wheat, sugar and so on) and live the western lifestyle (stress, inactivity etc) then you are quite possibly storing up the possibility of becoming insulin resistant.

Grain-based foods like pasta - are they to blame?

Why is that?

The short answer is that your body will become insulin resistant when it is made to handle massively elevated glucose levels day-in, day-out, for weeks, months and years and the system is therefore flooded with insulin all the time.  It stops knowing how to respond to the insulin – it can’t be on high alert all the time.

Some western living conditions, such as stress, which are known to contribute to metabolic derangement, can cause the body to go into this state faster, but really we need to look at what is causing the body to be permanently flooding with insulin and the answer is found in the typical western diet which consists of not only the obvious culprit, sugar, but also contains plenty of wheat.

Excessive wheat consumption causes spikes in glucose and, correspondingly, spikes in insulin every time you consume it.  It has been shown to produce a “belly” on people (there’s your obesity cause of type 2 diabetes) and it has also been linked to metabolic syndrome and problems with testosterone levels, all of which are listed on Wikipedia as potential causes of type 2 diabetes.  In fact, wheat consumption is starting to be linked with a huge number of western diseases, many of which are in turn linked with diabetes.

So is there any actual evidence to directly link wheat consumption with diabetes?  Well, it might be circumstantial evidence, but Robert Paterson took some time to look at the percentage of the US population with diabetes and the pattern of wheat consumption over the years.  The results are very compelling and strongly implicate wheat consumption as one of the main causes of diabetes.

Of course you could decide to believe all the many other studies suggesting that foods like red meat cause type 2 diabetes, but these are generally observational studies where other dietary factors are poorly controlled or recorded.  To take that on the other side, you could similarly argue that Robert Paterson’s connection is purely assumption or coincidence and that something else is at work here.

You may also be from the camp that believes that high fat diets cause diabetes, but Robb Wolf  and Denise Minger very squarely put to bed any belief that the latest study showing this is reliable.  Not only did carbohydrate levels also increase notably in the experiment’s “high-fat diet” but Robb also brings the reader’s attention to a separate study with a high-fat ketogenic diet (low, cyclical carb intake) that showed benefits related to type 2 diabetes complications.

Curing type 2 diabetes

Based on the belief that the principle cause of type 2 diabetes is over-exposure to high glucose-creating carbohydrates such as sugar, grains and, more specifically, wheat, the basic cure should be removal of those foods from the diet.  At first this may only be a controlling measure and it may take years of keeping these out of the diet before a person’s body stops being flooded by insulin and learns to respond correctly to insulin when it does get the odd burst.  Over time the individual may completely recover so that they are no longer insulin resistant.

To support this it is worth considering the experience of Jeff O’Connell (author of Sugar Nation).  Jeff believes that while he had a genetic propensity for type 2 diabetes he was also the classic skinny-fat build, carrying more body fat than was immediately visible.  Jeff managed to get control over his diabetes by cutting out the refined carbohydrates in his diet and moving to a low carbohydrate diet.

Peter at Hyperlipid is also in agreement with this as a solution to type 2 diabetes.  In fact, it sounds very much like a low carbohydrate and/or a paleo diet could be the solution for many type 2 diabetics if you wanted to put a name on the diet.  Unsurprisingly, there’s even a study (D Klonoff: The Beneficial Effects of a Paleolithic Diet on Type 2 diabetes and other risk factors for cardiovascular disease.  J Diabetes Sci Technol. 2009; 3(6):1229-1232) supporting the paleo diet as a solution.

Oh, and we’re not the first to think of this either.  In The Starvation Treatment of Diabetes, some doctors record how they were very effectively treating and controlling diabetes with a low carbohydrate diet before 1916!

The problem with the medical practice – a brief rant

I get thoroughly frustrated by the modern medical establishment’s proposed diet for diabetics.  They generally prescribe regular intake of “healthy grains” such as oats, at a level that seems to be much higher than the successful levels documented in The Starvation Treatment of Diabetes, although on the plus side they do tell people to remove sugar from their diet.  The logic seems to be to keep the glucose levels in the blood level constant and avoid spikes of blood sugar that can’t be controlled.

This is not a cure, it’s a way to maintain the current diabetic status without it getting worse.  Unfortunately there is a general belief that humans must have carbohydrates to provide essential energy to live on a daily basis and so this diet for diabetics is finding a way to provide this carbohydrate intake without excessively fluctuating blood glucose levels and creating corresponding insulin spikes.

I’ve written before that this belief in carbohydrate being essential for day-to-day living is inaccurate.  Human’s need glucose as essential energy only to run the brain and for significant muscular efforts.  It’s not actually that big a requirement.  All other energy can come from fat and I therefore think it is really important for any type 2 diabetic to learn to effectively utilise fat as a fuel source so that they can remove their dependency on carbohydrates.

Other ways to improve type 2 diabetes

There are plenty of other ways to help improve type 2 diabetes, in particular through improving insulin sensitivity.  I’ve pulled together a couple of particularly well-recognised ideas below.

Exercise

Most people who practice resistance training (lifting weights) know that it is particularly good for increasing insulin sensitivity.  The reason for this is that the exercise uses up glycogen stores in the muscles and the body is subsequently attuned to want to process glycogen correctly and refill those stores straight after exercise.  Note that this is not “exercise” as a stroll around the block or a 5 minute jog on the treadmill, this is “exercise” as a serious muscle-fatiguing activity.

Shift some big weights to improve insulin resistance

Some really good reading on this subject comes from Charles Poliquin who explains in part one of a series on insulin resistance and body composition that large volume and high intensity work will be the most effective at improving insulin sensitivity.

Coincidentally, Charles also flags up in the same article a study linking decreased testosterone levels in men with increased incidence of type 2 diabetes.  Since heavy resistance training can increase testosterone levels (as can reducing wheat consumption, by the way) this puts a double-tick in the resistance training box.

Supplementation

Vitamin D is a bit of a wonder-vitamin.  It has been shown to improve all sorts of things, however Dr Briffa did a great article recently showcasing a systematic review of 8 different studies (Mitri J, et al. Vitamin D and type 2 diabetes: a systematic review. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2011 Jul 6. doi: 10.1038/ejcn.2011.118).  As Dr Briffa points out while the evidence from a single study of vitamin D (such as a study done by PR von Hurst and published in the British Journal of Nutrition in 2011) would be interesting there is always a risk that something other than the vitamin has caused the changes.  Once you bring together evidence from 8 studies then the link between high vitamin D levels and improved insulin sensitivity.

Vitamin D - all hail the great vitamin!

*****

I hope this is helpful to you all.  Hopefully it at least gives you some ideas of some potential avenues to try out if you are a type 2 diabetic or know someone who is.  In particular I really do strongly recommend reading the first part of The Starvation Treatment of Diabetes for anyone who tries to claim that they absolutely must follow the guidelines and eat numerous small meals with plenty of “healthy grains” each day.  Doctors were successfully treating diabetes through several days of starvation before slow increases in various foods except fat where the intake level makes up most of the caloric intake.

Related posts:

1. Type 1 diabetes
2. Type 1 diabetes: a possible cure
3. Diabetes: an introduction

• Stephan supports the hypothesis that obesity is caused by the palatability of food – if I’ve understood it correctly people eat more food if it is more palatable and therefore they become obese which in today’s age, when a huge number of foods are carefully processed and chemically enhanced to be appealing to people’s tastes, is why we have such a problem with obesity.
• Gary believes that the problem lies with carbohydrates and our consumption of certain types of carbohydrates in particular.

I am absolutely not going to get onto this bandwagon of debate.  Debate is what drives scientific and non-scientific discovery.  If we didn’t have people disagreeing with hypotheses and developing their own hypothesis before then carrying out research to see if their hypothesis is correct we would never progress and increase our understanding of how things really work.

In this case I think there is merit to both hypotheses and I suppose for me the issue is really one of where the obesity problem originates – which of these two issues is the initial driver of obesity?  However, it is a fascinating debate so I’ve pulled together this blog-watch of the debate so far for those who would like to follow it.

The hypotheses

For those who don’t know Gary’s theory here are three videos together making up an interview with Gary in which he explains his hypothesis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR3FVvEJ-Nk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myyOD1W1DPg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HxLeGvFVsM

For those who don’t know Stephan’s viewpoint you could do worse than start with his eight part series on Food Reward which you can find at the following links: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.  The last article contains links to plenty of further reading on this hypothesis of food reward and palatability.

The debate

Here’s a video of the debate between Gary Taubes and Stephan Guyenet at the end of Stephan’s presentation during the Ancestral Health Symposium:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hzoFgwFeMQ

So here are some posts and articles about the debate kicked off during that Q&A at Stephan’s presentation at the Ancestral Health Symposium.

• I’m going to start with Stephan writing about the debate at the Ancestral Health Symposium.
• Following that debate at the Q&A session, Stephan seemed to decide that the best approach was to do a critical examination of the carbohydrate theory of obesity.  This is Gary’s hypothesis.
• To compare with this so that it can be balanced by Gary’s view of the food palatability and overeating hypothesis, having checked out Gary’s blog it looks like he was thinking about food reward and overeating long before this debate.  A post written in December 2010 addressed his view of overeating and why he felt it was a nonsensical explanation for why we get fat.
• Moving on from each of their considerations of the hypothesis supported by the other person, Stephan then did an interesting article about food palatability and how this links in with the concept of the body having a set point for its weight.  Soon after this he did an article outlining his understanding of the factors promoting obesity in humans.  As you can imagine, there isn’t just one.
• Gary Taubes has decided to do a series addressing the debate.  The first post in the series was long and it seems that even then he was anticipating not getting onto Stephan’s hypothesis until part three!  Initially Stephan did a response to this post and it caused a huge amount of hot air in the blog-world, but he has since decided to withdraw his response and wait until Gary has completed his series before responding.
• A challenge had been put out to Stephan to test the theory of food palatability.  Off the back of this challenge Stephan did design a food reward study and starting asking for volunteers before being challenged about it by the University of Washington where I understand he works.  As a result of this Stephan has decided to cancel the study.
• Of course, while all of this is going on (and we’ll be a while yet before this is over) a few other people have weighed in with their views.  In particular, Peter at Hyperlipid has done a very technical article looking at the debate.  You’ll need your technical thinking caps on to work through his article though!

I can see this going on for some time so for those who are interested in this I recommend that you bookmark both Stephan’s blog, Whole Health Source, and Gary’s blog and watch as the debate continues.

Related posts:

1. Raw food
2. 15 Ways to Survive a Desk Job – Part 1 (food and drink)
3. Real experiences compared to hypotheses about the menstrual cycle

What is type 1 diabetes?

Type 1 diabetes is defined by the John Hopkins Medical Institutions website as “an inflammatory autoimmune disease of the pancreas, resulting in a lack of insulin” (1).  Without sufficient insulin, the body can’t store the free glucose in the blood, and blood glucose levels can rise unchecked.

Last week, while explaining the process of how our bodies deal with elevated blood glucose levels and what happens when this goes wrong, I made passing mention to beta cells.  These are cells found in the pancreas and are the cells which produce insulin.  In the case of a type 1 diabetic the body does not produce sufficient insulin because it has attacked and killed off most of the beta cells. 

In fact, the John Hopkins site notes that more than 90% of the beta cells will have been destroyed before the clinical symptoms of diabetes develop (1).  In effect, that tells us that by the time someone realises they have diabetes, they have already been developing diabetes for a long time.

How is type 1 diabetes diagnosed?

Classically diagnosis initially comes through a series of glucose tests, establishing how the body responds to the glucose (1).  These tests come in two forms:

• Fasting plasma glucose test, where the glucose levels are measured after 12 hours of fasting.
• Oral glucose tolerance test, where the person is given a glucose fluid test and the glucose levels in the blood are measured at regular intervals to see how well the body does in taking control of the glucose.

There are also various blood tests that medical practitioners are advised to carry out (2). 

Type 1 diabetes can develop quickly (3), although I do question whether this is that the final destruction of the remaining 10% of beta cells happens quickly and that the actually build up of the disease from a fully functioning 100% beta cell position happens over a much longer period of time.

Treatments for type 1 diabetes

Insulin replacement therapy

The standard treatment for type 1 diabetes is insulin replacement therapy.  Insulin has been available since 1921 and this is delivered to the body through either subcutaneous injection or insulin pump.  The aim is to monitor blood glucose levels and use insulin when this gets too high so that blood glucose levels are kept within the 2010 American Diabetes Association Clinical Guidelines of 80-140mg/dl (2).

Self-injecting insulin becomes a daily occurence for most type 1 diabetics (image courtesy of Jill A. Brown)

The risk of this treatment is that it can be easy enough to mismatch the insulin with the food, and physical activity going on at the time so that blood glucose is taken too low and hypoglycaemia occurs.  The list of possible signs and symptoms of hypoglycaemia are too numerous to list here and are frequently contradictory (both feeling hot and feeling cold are on the list as well as rage, irritability, depression and crying).

In the early days of insulin replacement therapy the insulin was extracted from cattle or pigs.  However, extraction of insulin was difficult, erratic and expensive in the early 1920s and until the process was improved there were, for a brief 2 years, attempts to extract insulin from fish instead, which was technically easier though apparently logistically more difficult (4).  Fortunately things have moved on significantly and insulin that is used to treat type 1 diabetics is now produced synthetically.

While the majority of type 1 diabetics use injections as the method to deliver insulin into the system, insulin pumps became available in the 1970s.  According to the ever-helpful Wikipedia, the pump provides continuous infusion of insulin and therefore removes the need for multiple injections throughout the day making it appropriate for intensive insulin therapy.  If you are interested in pumps you can learn more from Diabetes.co.uk.

Other possible treatments

There are a couple of other treatments which are, at the moment, still considered to be experimental.  These include pancreas transplant and islet cell transplant.  Most success with these transplant methods has come with islet cell transplant. 

The islet cells are the beta cells in the pancreas which produce the insulin.  These can either be transplanted from another source or can be “built” using the patient’s stem cells – use of the patient’s own stem cells is more successful as the new cells are less likely to be rejected by the body.  These cells are injected into the liver which takes on the role of the pancreas in the release of insulin.  As far as I can see from the things I’ve read, this use of the liver is partly because the liver is more accessible!

Islet cell transplant is still in the experimental stages but a study carried out in 2005 showed that a year after the transplant 80% of the patients were insulin independent (didn’t need to rely on insulin replacement therapy) (5).  Of course, other things have to be done as well to stop the body just attacking and killing these new, transplanted, cells.

Exercise issues for type 1 diabetes sufferers

When a person exercises, their muscles utilise the glycogen stored within the muscles as energy for those muscles.  As these stores become depleted the liver is triggered to release glucose from its big glucose store into the blood stream.  This elevated free glucose in the blood triggers the insulin to be released by the pancreas and ultimately this free glucose is taken to the muscles to continue providing an energy store and to replenish them for your next muscular challenge.

For a type 1 diabetic the challenge is that the insulin isn’t produced to deal with this and they can rapidly become hyperglycaemic as a result of their workouts.  How significant this increase in blood glucose is will depend on how experienced they are at training and the intensity of their training. 

The following gives an idea of what blood glucose response comes from different exercise levels (6):

• Untrained individuals, high and low intensity: marked increase in blood glucose levels.
• Trained individuals, low/moderate intensity: minimal increase in blood glucose levels.
• Trained individuals, high intensity training: marked increase in blood glucose levels which is even higher once reaching anaerobic levels.

Measurement of personal responses is advisable, but Robb Wolf has taken this information and developed some initial recommendations on how type 1 diabetics should moderate their training approach.  It’s an article well-worth reading.

*****

That’s all I’ve got space for this week so I’m going to save up the piece about a possible cure for diabetes for next week. 

The crux of the problem is that diabetes is believed by most to be neither preventable (7) nor curable, yet there is a growing body of anecdotal evidence and a few tangential studies which together imply that it is being successfully cured in people through nutrition changes.  My belief is that if a disease can be cured then it should be possible, with those same interventions, to prevent it occurring in the first place. 

Bibliography

1. Cihakova D: Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus.  John Hopkins Medical Institutions website.
2. American Diabetes Association: Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes – 2010.  Diabetes Care 2010, 33:Supp.1:S11-61 (Executive Summary.  Diabetes Care 2010; 33:Supp.1:S4-10)
3. Cooke D and Plotnick L: Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus in Pediatrics.  Pediatr. Rev. 2008; 29:374-385.
4. Wright J R: From ugly fish to conquer death: J J R Macleod’s fish insulin research, 1922–24.  The Lancet 2002; 359:1238-1242.
5. Bertuzzi F, Marzorati S, Secchi A: Islet Cell Transplantation.  Current Molecular Medicine 2006; 6:369-374.
6. Brooks G, Fahey T, Baldwin K: Exercise Physiology: Human Bioenergetics and its Applications (edition 4).  Macmillan Publishing Company 2004; 193-194
7. World Health Organisation: Diabetes Fact Sheet.  WHO 2011; Fact Sheet 312.

Related posts:

1. Type 2 diabetes
2. Type 1 diabetes: a possible cure
3. Diabetes: an introduction

What is diabetes?

The commonly-known diabetes is in fact short for diabetes mellitus.  A surprise to me was that there are actually other diseases with “diabetes” in their name which don’t have anything to do with the group of diabetes diseases that most people think of when you say “diabetes” – the group which we’re looking at here.

Diabetes mellitus is made up of a group of metabolic diseases which are all characterised by high blood sugar.  For the purpose of this series I am focussing on types 1 and 2, but it is worth being aware that diabetes is not restricted to these.

Frequent insulin injections can become a way of life for type 1 diabetics (image courtesy of Jill A. Brown)

Different types of diabetes

Here is a quick run-down of some of the types (thanks to Wikipedia):

• Type 1 (formerly known as insulin-dependent or juvenile diabetes):  the body fails to produce insulin.  It is recognised as an auto-immune disease.  I’ll explain a lot more about type 1 next week.
• Type 2 (formerly known as non-insulin-dependent or adult-onset diabetes):  whil the pancreas produces insulin, the cells don’t use the insulin properly.  Again, there will be plenty more on this in a couple of weeks.
• Gestational diabetes:  some pregnant women have high blood glucose levels during pregnancy when they haven’t previously had diabetes.  It could be a precursor to type 2 diabetes, but most often resolves after delivery.
• Congenital diabetes:  genetic defects to the insulin secretion.
• Steroid diabetes:  induced by high doses of glucocorticoids – these are not the same steroids as the anabolic steroids used by bodybuilders.
• Monogenic diabetes:  hereditary forms of diabetes caused by mutations in an autosomal dominant gene.
• Cystic fibrosis-related diabetes.

That’s just a taster so, as you can see, almost any disease that is characterised by elevated blood sugar levels is “diabetes mellitus”.

Symptoms of diabetes

The classic symptoms of diabetes are:

• Polyuria – frequent urination (in children this is noticeable if bedwetting recommences),
• Polydipsia – increased thirst,
• Polyphagia – increased hunger,
• Weight loss (most common with undiagnosed type 1 diabetics) (1)

Another symptom which is often how diabetes is spotted in older people is significant changes in eye strength.  Someone I knew was tested and found to have type 2 diabetes after a routine eye examination revealed an unusually profound improvement in short sightedness.  I suppose older individuals may not report other classic symptoms to their doctor, believing that they are simply caused by aging.

If those symptoms are missed then diabetes can lead to more serious conditions or symptoms such as diabetic ketoacidosis (not the same as ketosis) which is often characterised by nausea, vomiting, dehydration and lethargy (1).  If left untreated there is also the risk of things like nonketotic hyperosmolar coma (sometimes known as diabetic coma), cardiovascular disease, chronic renal failure and retinal damage.

How insulin works – why we don’t all have high blood glucose

When we consume carbohydrates these are broken down by the initial digestive processes into free glucose which is absorbed into the blood stream.  When the pancreas senses the elevated levels of glucose in the blood, it responds by releasing the hormone insulin from the pancreas’s beta cells where it is created.

Insulin is a powerful hormone which is best known for its regulation of blood sugar but is, in fact, a general nutrient-storage hormone.  It is involved in the storage processes for other nutrients and the pancreas responds in a similar way to other triggers, such as elevated amino acid levels (2, pp.51-52). 

The insulin indicates to the body where nutrients should be stored, therefore regulating our body’s maintenance and repair at the cellular level.  In the case of elevated blood glucose, the insulin activates blood glucose transport molecules known as GLUT4 which are found in cell membranes and the GLUT4 facilitates the absorption of glucose by the liver (2, pp.63-64).  A recap of glucose storage can be found in my article about different carbohydrate sources.

What happens if a person has diabetes?

I will cover the mechanics of how this insulin-based process breaks down for diabetics in the next couple of weeks, as the different problems with the process define the different forms of diabetes.  However, a question that struck me was why does it matter if we have elevated blood glucose levels?

To answer this I strongly recommend that you read Robb Wolf’s Paleo Solution, pages 63 to 71, for the step-by-step walk through of the complete destruction which occurs but I’ll try to summarise it in simple terms here.

Protein is a fundamental building block for the body, it is what our cells (and therefore our tissues) are made of.  The problem is that protein reacts with free glucose, oxidising the protein and creating a toxic substance known as “advanced glycation end products” (AGEs).  To protect against this our bodies also produce enzymes to undo the AGEs, so usually everything should be fine. 

Usually the insulin would keep our blood glucose levels in check by indicating to, and enabling, the body to store the sugar.  If, for whatever reason, this system breaks down and the body doesn’t put the glucose into storage, the level of free glucose circulating in the blood will rise unchecked.  Unfortunately there is only so much good work the AGE-defeating enzymes can do, so if the system is constantly flooded with free glucose and as a result also floods with AGEs the AGEs will accumulate.  

Why does it matter if our bodies become flooded with (toxic) AGEs?  Well, AGEs can damage proteins (essential building blocks for the body), enzymes (essential to run the body), DNA (telling cells what they do) and hormone receptor sites on the surface of cells.  Since these are the things that ultimately drive the symptoms of aging we get “older” a lot faster and earlier.  Not only that, but AGEs can also kill the beta cells which produce the insulin and the GLUT4 molecules – the essential equipment to stop this happening in the first place – so it ends up making everything much more permanent (2, p70).

So how widespread is diabetes?

A global study of diabetes carried out for the World Health Organisation (3) suggested that in 2000 2.8% of the global population had diabetes and the number of people with diabetes was expected to double by 2030 (partly due to the increase in the population aged over 65 years).  However, when you read the study there is a good chance that these numbers are wrong. 

The percentage was worked out by using data from a limited number of countries and extrapolating to cover the global population.  For example, the data for the Netherlands was extrapolated to cover 13 European countries, including Germany.  There was no data available for developing countries so they assumed that the same relative risks applied and extrapolated existing data to cover the developing countries.  I believe that many developing countries, where diets and lifestyles differ significantly to the Westernised world, may not have diabetes to the same extent and the widely acknowledged risk factors may not be correct.

Despite the implication that this percentage may be overstated, a response to the study and return response by the original authors (4) concluded that this percentage could actually be significantly understated, at least for the Westernised countries.

Either way, this is a significant number of people and a good reason to understand diabetes!

 *****

Bibliography

1. Cooke D and Plotnick L: Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus in Pediatrics.  Pediatr. Rev. 2008; 29:374-385
2. Wolf, R: The Paleo Solution: the original human diet.  Victory Belt Publishing 2010
3. Wild S, Roglic G, Green A, Sicree R, King H: Global prevalence of diabetes – estimates for the year 2000 and projections for 2030.  Diabetes Care 2004; 27:1047-1053
4. Rathman W, Giani G: Response to Global prevalence of diabetes: estimates for the year 200 and projections for 2030.  Diabetes Care 2004; 27:2568-2569

Related posts:

1. Type 1 diabetes
2. Type 2 diabetes
3. Type 1 diabetes: a possible cure

In the few years after that I expanded my repertoire to cabbages, swiss chard, sweetcorn (which never grew properly), potatoes, brussel sprouts and learning to be patient.  By year three I had just about learned to leave the carrots in the ground until they reached a sensible size, rather than excitedly pulling them up when they reached finger-length at which point (to the child’s eye) they were clearly ready to eat!

When I was eleven we moved and I never really got back to vegetable gardening, other than a brief flirtation with it when I lived in London in my first house.  However, I have often hankered to return to growing my own vegetables and I’m currently trying to get an allotment plot.  Apart from everything else there is something therapeutic and relaxing about vegetable gardening.  I’m also well aware that in these cash-strapped times many other people are turning to growing their own vegetables for the first time and I’ve noticed a particular surge in posts about growing herbs and vegetables on the various Paleo blogs which I follow where the current trend is knowing where your food has come from.

The vegetable garden at Ham House (creative commons image from Geograph)

I’ve decided to pull together a few of the posts I’ve seen, plus a few other useful articles which have “cropped up” (excuse the pun) on other self-sufficiency and grower’s sites which I frequent.  There’s not too much explanation of each article, since they are mostly self-explanatory in title.

• Before getting into the nitty-gritty I thought it might be inspiring to read an article about the joys of vegetable gardening from someone recalling their first steps in home-grown vegetables.
• An excellent summary starting point in How to Grow Your First Garden from Jane Sanders.
• There’s also some summary advice on setting up a new vegetable garden from the BBC, thanks to the Gardener’s World team.  The index on the right gives additional links to this “productive garden” section of the site.
• If you want to start with a simple herb garden then you can always learn from other people’s first attempts.  One of Mark Sisson’s Worker Bees had a go at planting up a container-based herb garden and, if you are new to it, the article and the comments afterwards should give you some good tips.
• As well as containers, you may be thinking about having raised beds.  It’s certainly something I considered putting into our garden at home where the soil is particularly poor quality and nothing will grow.  The Vegetable Patch site has done a complete guide on things to consider when building raised beds.
• If you are starting your own produce garden to save some money then you might want to consider these money-saving tips for vegetable gardening.
• Robb Wolf’s blog is running a new series called The Liberty Garden.  It has so far got articles covering subjects as diverse as how to set about composting and how to grow sweet potatoes.  Definitely a page worth keeping an eye on.
• The Cottage Smallholder is a lovely self-sufficiency blog which I follow.  I find it particularly useful for me since the author is based in the UK, so the timing of articles is relevant to me.  There is a whole section of posts about vegetable and herb growing, although there are some specific posts I’d like to draw attention to: Egyptian Walking Onions (a brilliant onion to consider growing), how to prepare your own tomato seeds (rather than buying them) and a bit more advice on growing tomatoes.

That is just a taste of a few sites to get you started.  It is always worth deciding what sorts of vegetables and herbs you would like to grow and search specifically online for “how to grow [insert preferred plant here]” since that will get you some advice relevant to that particular plant.  However, in getting to that stage there is plenty to do in deciding on your site, what sort of garden you’ll have (beds, raised beds or containers) and preparing the soil.  Hopefully there is advice above to help everyone who is in those really early days of vegetable gardening.

Happy planting and best of luck!  If you know of other useful sites for the beginner produce gardener, please feel free to share them in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Paleo recipes: summer roasted vegetables
2. Blog-watch: the impact of stress
3. Blog-watch: saturated fat

Contraceptive pill - friend or foe?

First though, here’s some revision on the conclusions I reached, though if you want to rely on them I strongly recommend you read the longer articles which they come from.

Revision – menstrual cycle without hormone contraceptives

Days 1-4: menstrual phase

• Low energy intake requirements.
• Should be the best time for resistance training as you should feel at your strongest.

Days 5-13: proliferative phase

• Fat oxidisation should be good during this phase but protein catabolism isn’t effective.  Glucose uptake won’t be much good until near the end of this cycle.
• Care needs to be taken, especially early on in the phase, with too many carbohydrates, since they are more likely to be stored as fat rather than uptake being into the muscles.  High percentage protein diets with minimal carbs would force your body to burn body fat for fuel in this phase.

Days 13-16: ovulatory phase

• This is the time to load up on the carbohydrates and fill up the glycogen stores.
• Endurance performance is at a peak.
• Resistance exercise is also likely to be good due to the better uptake of glucose to the muscles but both pre and post-workout carbohydrates may be beneficial.
• Recovery from exercise should be good due to the oestrogen-improved blood flow to the muscles. 

Days 16-22: early luteal phase

• Those chasing physique goals may benefit from a diet with minimal carbs and perhaps 50:50 protein and fat.  Protein catabolism is at its best but fat oxidisation is also reasonably good. 
• Towards the end of this phase endurance training sees the best improvements to long-term performance.

Days 22-28: late luteal phase

• Women naturally tend towards a much higher energy intake (across all macronutrients) so be on guard if you’re on a low-carb calorie deficit diet.
• A good time to load up on the carbohydrates to fill up the glycogen stores. 
• Resistance exercise should be good due to the better uptake of glucose to the muscles.  This may also explain the excellent performance some strength athletes see in the last few days before menstruation.
• Recovery from exercise should be good due to the oestrogen-improved blood flow to the muscles.
• The improved endurance training from the mid luteal phase should continue throughout this phase.

Revision – menstrual cycle with hormone contraceptives

For weeks 1-3, when taking the contraceptives, it looks like a diet with a high protein percentage should work well.  Keeping carbohydrates really low except for immediately post workout when glycogen stores are depleted and signalling in the body for replenishing those stores is high.  The body is also likely to cope really well with endurance sports and in the weights room total body workouts could well be the best bet.

Hitting week 4, when undergoing hormone withdrawal, the body can probably handle carbohydrates and fat better so consider replacing some of the protein with fat and allow a little more flexibility with carbohydrates as long as there is plenty of activity going on to keep depleting glycogen stores.  Endurance performance may drop off a little and heavy low rep resistance training should probably be avoided in the first few days (or at least taken carefully to avoid injury).  However, resistance performance may improve in the second half of the week and this could be a good week to do some bodybuilder-style hypertrophy work.

Reader experiences

So that’s what I think should happen, and here’s a table showing what people have experienced – names have been removed for anonymity purposes but you might recognise yourself if you are one of the people who responded to an email I sent you.  The information about diet isn’t really relevant to this article but I thought I would leave it in for information.  Where it says “N/A” I didn’t have any information in that area.

From this the only real consistent point on training seems to be that women on hormone-based contraceptives all seem to feel weaker (or at least not feel at their strongest) at the start of the bleeding.  This definitely holds up with my previous conclusions.  Women who are not on hormone-based contraceptives seem upsettingly inconsistent.  One feels stronger, consistent with the research, one seems to have a similar pattern to the hormone-taking group (does she have a particularly heavy period which acts as a greater stressor, perhaps), and one finds intense exercise more challenging during her period.

It’s a thoroughly unhelpful set of results, but I thought they were worth sharing so that you all know that we’re not alone.  My overriding memory from biology lessons is that real experiments with live test subjects are never consistent…

Hopefully the posts I’ve done around this topic will be helpful in providing a starting point, but as the table above shows, nothing is certain!

Related posts:

1. Menstrual cycle on the contraceptive pill
2. Blog-watch: interaction of diet and exercise with the menstrual cycle – part two
3. Blog-watch: interaction of diet and exercise with the menstrual cycle – part one

This week I’m going to pull together some conclusions about what that might mean for our diet and training.  Hold onto your hats for a rollercoaster article, ladies!

Some brief revision of the hormone cycle and the hormones

I’m not going to go into too much detail repeating previous material so a quick read of my posts about the menstrual cycle hormones and what the hormones do may help.  However, I’m going to kick off with a quick refresher of the main characteristics of the female sex hormones.

Progesterone

• Promotes protein catabolism (you can get more energy from protein than usual)
• Inhibits uptake of glycogen to the muscles
• Research suggests that performance in endurance sports is best when the oestrogen:progesterone ratio is high, though this seems to potentially be irrespective of which of them is elevated.

Oestrogen

• Promotes glucose availability and uptake into the muscles.
• Improves ability to burn fat for fuel.
• Suppresses protein catabolism.
• Oestrogen deficiency can cause impaired regional blood flow when exercising, but I wonder if this is actually oestrogen deficiency in relation to progesterone?

Hormone-based contraceptives

• Results in elevated progesterone hormone for three weeks in every four.
• Potentially high progesterone to oestrogen ratio for those three weeks.
• The fourth week (when no contraceptive pill is taken) the body undergoes hormone withdrawal – I’m unclear exactly what happens but the implication is that both hormone levels drop off – most noticeably progesterone which has been unusually high.

Fitting this into our contraceptive-skewed menstrual cycle

To say that I have been dismayed by the conclusions I reached would be an understatement.  My conclusions suggest that even our contraceptives are perpetuating the myth that women are only good at endurance work.  Although this may also be an explanation for why it is that so many women seem to excel at endurance activities. 

For this analysis I’m working off a typical 3-weeks-on-1-week-off cycle that you would see with the combination pill.  For those with a longer-term hormone intake, you probably want to take my conclusions for weeks 1-3 and extend them to “all the time”.

Weeks 1-3 (while taking the contraceptives)

• Elevated progesterone: oestrogen ratio means that endurance sport performance should be excellent.
• Protein catabolism should be excellent due to the high levels of progesterone.  This could well explain why I can subsist quite happily on a diet with macronutrient ratios of 70:5:25 (P:C:F) when Chris would just fall over trying to base so much of his diet on protein.
• Uptake of glycogen to the muscles is inhibited.  This is bad on two scores:  first, any carbs you take in won’t be processed effectively and are quite likely to end up in fat reserves unless your muscles are crying out for glycogen (eg. you just finished a really heavy resistance session and the muscles are really badly depleted); and second, recovery post-workout may be less good if you’ve done a resistance training session since your body may not be effectively replenishing glycogen stores.

I’m assuming that the oestrogen included in the combination pill ensures that those of us taking it don’t suffer from the poor regional blood flow which is characteristic of oestrogen deficiency.  However this may be something to consider when taking a contraceptive which is solely progesterone-based, such as the progesterone-only contraceptive pill.  Poor regional blood flow could impair recovery during and post workout. 

Of course it could be that the poor regional blood flow comes from particularly elevated progesterone over oestrogen, rather than simple oestrogen deficiency.  If that is the case then it could explain why women perform better on full body workouts.  No single body part is taxed for too long, so that there is a reduced need for instant recovery (from the blood flow) and instead plenty of time for recovery (until the next workout when you use that muscle group again).

Week 4 (withdrawal week)

• Protein catabolism drops off a little so that high protein diet may need tweaking for the week to keep you feel satiated.
• Endurance performance might drop off as progesterone levels decrease, so this may not be the week to run a marathon and aim for a personal best time.
• Glycogen uptake to the muscles will improve, so you’ll probably find yourself more able to handle carbohydrates without it going straight to your waistline.  That is provided you are being active.  Warning though that this is a few more, not carte blanche to stuff yourself with cake, and if you are sitting at your desk all day you’re not really depleting your glycogen stores so this point is null and void.  They need some depletion to have space for the glycogen you then ingest (via the carbs).  This benefit may also make this a better week for resistance training, especially higher rep bodybuilding-style work where you want to exhaust the muscles and then ingest higher carbs to spike insulin and build muscle size.
• If we assume that oestrogen slowly starts to rise during this week off (with the body coping with withdrawal by starting a normal menstrual cycle again) then the body might be better at burning fat for fuel in this week so some extra fat in the diet (to replace some of the protein) might work well.
• The body is going through withdrawal.  As such it is likely to be under stress, especially at the very start of the week when the withdrawal first hits.  This is followed immediately by a bleed which is another stressor.  Overall we’re looking at a spike in stress hormones which could cause a period of muscular weakness and tiredness.  On top of that, Berardi has referred to a paper which highlighted the inverse relationship between cortisol and testosterone, so in the early part of the withdrawal bleed testosterone levels are probably low and really heavy lifting is likely to be tough.

In summary

For weeks 1-3, when taking the contraceptives, it looks like a diet with a high protein percentage should work well.  Keeping carbohydrates really low except for immediately post workout when glycogen stores are depleted and signalling in the body for replenishing those stores is high.  The body is also likely to cope really well with endurance sports and in the weights room total body workouts could well be the best bet.

Hitting week 4, when undergoing hormone withdrawal, the body can probably handle carbohydrates and fat better so consider replacing some of the protein with fat and allow a little more flexibility with carbohydrates as long as there is plenty of activity going on to keep depleting glycogen stores.  Endurance performance may drop off a little and heavy low rep resistance training should probably be avoided in the first few days (or at least taken carefully to avoid injury).  However, resistance performance may improve in the second half of the week and this could be a good week to do some bodybuilder-style hypertrophy work.

***** 

Unfortunately I’ve run out of space this week to look at the last part of this story.  Look out next week for a final part where I see how my conclusions stack up against information which some of my readers gave me a few months ago.  In the meantime, let me know what you think of these conclusions.

Related posts:

1. Menstrual cycle on the contraceptive pill
2. Blog-watch: impact of the contraceptive pill on performance
3. Blog-watch: interaction of diet and exercise with the menstrual cycle – part two

There seem to be lots of pregnancies among my friends at the moment – probably something to do with my age.  We’re all at that age where our thoughts turn to mothering.  I’ve even caught myself feeling motherly towards a few youngsters recently (although my definition of youngster here expands up as far as 18 years old).  Despite not wanting children of my own I am quite happy enjoying everyone else’s and want every child to get the best possible start in life (and all my friends to feel as good as possible while they are going through the process).  I feel the best I can do to help with this is doing my bit of research and news-sharing.

Human foetus at 20 weeks (with thanks to Cehwiedel, Creative Commons)

• I’m always pleased when there is some sensible information in the media about pregnancy-related subjects, rather than the usual scare-story or media hype about a new recommendation (with no idea of what has caused the change in official guidelines).  The New York Times did a lovely article about some new research looking at the impact of exercise during pregnancy on the foetus and newborn.  As you might expect, they found that exercising improved the cardiac system of the foetus (well, with all that blood pumping around at high speed I’m not entirely surprised).  Not only that, but the heart was still healthier than those of babies born to mothers who didn’t exercise during pregnancy an entire month after birth.  So now we can add “healthier heart” to the list of reasons why it is good to exercise during pregnancy (such as having a baby who sleeps more soundly).
• If you ever listen to Robb Wolf’s podcasts, The Paleo Solution, you are guaranteed to hear about reducing stress to improve cortisol levels and improve overall health, both digestive and elsewhere.  It makes logical sense to strive to improve these things when you are pregnant or even when you are trying to get pregnant since it is likely to give your body the best chance.  However I had never considered the issue of stress post-pregnancy.  That bit where you’ve got broken nights and, if you’re a new mother, all the attendant worries of whether you are doing the right things.  Fortunately, Cassandra Forsythe (who is definitely far more qualified than either me or Robb Wolf to comment on such a topic) responded to a reader question on this.  I definitely recommend taking the time to read it whether you are pregnancy, recently gave birth or even if you just know someone in that situation and would like to be of help to them.
• This link is a bit of a break from the more technical considerations of pregnancy.  Just an article detailing someone’s experience of getting back onto the training regime after being pregnant and then increasing in responsibilities at work.  As Julia says. She was “working out for the last 18 months, but not training.  And yes, there is a difference.”  I know exactly what she means about there being a difference.  One of them you are just doing a bit of training for the sake of it with no real commitment to each exercise or workout.  It becomes really easy to miss part of a workout or play about with something else for a few weeks with no sense of disappointment in yourself for not progressing or improving.  How she got herself out of that was to sign herself up for a meet.  Suddenly she really needed to train.  Why’ve I included this link here?  I guess it’s just a reminder for any new mothers that if you are struggling to motivate yourself to start training properly again, the best way to do it is sign up for something which means you become accountable to your goals again.
• If you are trying to get pregnant at the moment don’t get your hopes up too much if you feel tired one day.  However, based on the studies, if you still feel fatigued 14 days later then you may want to think about taking a test.
• Mistress Krista posted up a great post-pregnancy workouts article by Lieke Lekkas who explained what she’s been doing to workout since she gave birth.  It’s pretty inspirational stuff and a reminder that, once baby arrives, your life doesn’t have to go on hold.
• Finally, the last link goes to That Paleo Guy, Jamie, who has found some studies looking at the nutrients required to improve reproductive potential in women and the best sources for these.  Jamie concludes that the best source in both cases would be meat.  So the advice is: if you want to get pregnant, eat plenty of meat and veg!

That’s the lot for now.  Best of luck to anyone out there who is pregnant, who has a pregnant partner or is trying to get pregnant at the moment.  Congratulations to any new mothers – and fathers – (whether it was your first or you are an old hand by now).  Hopefully there’s something for all of you in the links today.

Related posts:

1. Blog-watch: pregnancy diet and exercise
2. Blog-watch: pregnancy and workouts
3. Blog-watch: pregnancy updates