Feel the (Circadian) Rhythm

When considering how our modern lifestyles have departed from those of our ancestors (and the problems that arise from these mismatches) the obvious candidates such as diet and daily activities spring to mind, but another significant change that us modern humans are struggling to deal with is the changes/disruptions to our daily cycle, or circadian rhythm.

What is a Circadian Rhythm?

A circadian rhythm is a cycle in the physiological processes of living beings (also known as the sleep/wake cycle), plants, animals, fungi and even cyanobacteria all have a circadian rhythm. Our rhythm is as old (if not older) than our species and is hard wired into our biological systems and as such we can’t directly control it (although it can be influenced). Circadian rhythms are controlled by hormones, although they are modulated by external cues such as sunlight and temperature. Circadian rhythms are important in determining the sleeping and feeding patterns of all animals and there are clear patterns of brain wave activity, hormone production, cell regeneration and other biological activities that are all linked to this cycle.

What sets the rhythm?

In humans it’s the circadian clock which controls this rhythm and this is located in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus of the brain, one in each hemisphere of the brain. The SCN is a tiny pinhead-sized area, containing approximately 20,000 very small neurons, and it has the responsibility for sending signals to several other parts of the brain to regulate the daily sleep-wake cycle, body temperature, hormone production and other functions. The individual neurons that make up the SCN have been found to exhibit a near-24-hour rhythm of activity, suggesting that the clock mechanism actually works on a sub-cellular level. When dissociated from the SCN, the individual cells follow their own intrinsic 24-hour rhythms, but, when incorporated into the SCN, they all fire in synchrony. In experiments on mice where the SCN is completely removed, the mice (which are normally much more active during the night-time and sleep more during the day) show little or no preference for their active time and sleep time, and their activity is sporadic and apparently random throughout the day and night.

The brain’s circadian clock regulates sleeping and feeding patterns, alertness, core body temperature, brain wave activity, hormone production, regulation of glucose and insulin levels, urine production, cell regeneration, and many other biological activities. The most important hormones affected by the circadian clock are melatonin (which is produced in the pineal gland in the brain, and which chemically causes drowsiness and lowers body temperature) and cortisol (produced in the adrenal gland, and used to form glucose or blood sugar and to enable anti-stress and anti-inflammatory functions in the body).

What influences it?

Circadian rhythms are adjusted to the environment by external cues, known as Zeitgebers, the most important of which is daylight. The brain’s internal circadian clock uses these Zeitgebers to naturally synchronise or reset itself each day to within just a few minutes of the Earth’s 24-hour rotation cycle (think of it like a GPS update for your phones clock!). Exposure to natural daylight stimulates a nerve pathway from special photoreceptive ganglion cells in the retina of the eye, cells that are totally separate from the rods and cones our eyes use to generate our everyday image of the world. These cells contain a unique light-sensitive pigment called melanopsin, and are most sensitive to short wavelength “blue light”. Even many blind people can respond to these light-dark cues, as the photoreceptive cells in their eyes can usually recognise daylight, even through closed eyelids. The light-dark signals are sent via the optic nerve to the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which uses them to reset its own circadian clock each day.

The circadian clock does not actually require light to function, and the circadian cycle continues even when individuals are completely cut off from daylight. The light-dark cycle (in concert with other Zeitgebers like meals, ambient temperature, etc), merely acts as an external cue to re-synchronise or entrain the timing of biological rhythms, and to prevent small timing errors from accumulating. Without this important check however, the circadian system can become seriously unbalanced.

What’s your rhythm

Individual circadian periods vary, ranging between 23.5 and 24.5 hours in humans, dependent on variations in the person’s period gene. In humans they have a mean of around 24.2 hours, just slightly more than the Earth’s rotation. About 25% of people have a circadian period which is slightly less than the 24-hour day, and 75% have a circadian period slightly more than 24 hours.

Humans are diurnal animals, naturally active during the daytime, and our circadian rhythms reflect this. Generally speaking, for sleep to occur in the “right” part of the circadian cycle, the time of minimum core body temperature and maximum melatonin concentration should occur towards the end of the sleep period. As a rough guide, core temperature usually reaches its minimum around 4:30-5:00am in the morning in human adults, and melatonin (normally completely absent during daylight hours) typically begins to be produced around 8:00-9:00pm at night and stops around 7:00-8:00am in the morning. The deepest tendency to sleepiness occurs in the middle of the night, around 2:00-3:00am, along with a shorter and shallower period of sleepiness (often referred to as the “post-lunch dip”) about twelve hours later, around 2:00-3:00pm in the afternoon.

Circadian rhythms may be adjusted by up to two hours or so either way according to an individual’s chronotype. Some people tend to wake up early and are most alert during the first part of the day. Others are most alert in the late evening and prefer to go to bed late. By some estimates, as many as 20% of people fall into one of these two categories. In these people, the timing of their circadian period is shifted completely (an effect that is at least partly encoded in their genes), so that morning people wake at a later stage in their circadian day, and are therefore much more alert on waking; evening people, on the other hand, wake too early in their circadian day, and so are less alert and perform poorly in the morning. Typically, this variation is limited to a couple of hours earlier or later than the average; those with extreme body clocks may have difficulty participating in normal work, school or social activities, and are considered to suffer from circadian rhythm sleep disorder.

Development of the Rhythm

Newborn humans (let’s call them babies) spend their first few weeks and months with little concept of night and day. Initially babies do not produce enough melatonin, nor do they produce it consistently at night. This leads to the classic well-known newborn sleep cycle, in which they sleep for very short times and at odd hours. However, babies consistently develop a normal human circadian rhythm (or close to it!) within the first few months of life. Babies begin to develop daily rhythms in temperature, social behaviour, and wakefulness fluctuation early, but sleeping habits are the last to develop. Evening melatonin levels become high enough for the babies to go to sleep at a family bedtime around the 60th day of life. This is also the time when peuple crying and colic usually resolve on their own. Melatonin may be responsible for the end of night-time wailing as well as the beginning of more parent-friendly sleep habits. While babies do not make enough melatonin to go to sleep at night on their own, they have another source, breast milk. Melatonin from the mother is present in her milk. This may help breastfed babies to sleep more soundly. Some doctors and researchers are even suggesting that supplementing melatonin in these early weeks can prevent colic while helping the baby to transition more quickly to a mature circadian rhythm (this is still being researched and I would generally recommend not giving your baby supplements!)

Changes with Age

Changes to the circadian rhythm occur during adolescence and again as we age (>60yrs). Teenagers experience a shift in circadian rhythm that causes them to naturally feel alert later at night, making it difficult for them to fall asleep before 11:00 pm and research suggests this is due to melatonin levels in the blood which naturally rise later at night in teenagers than in most children and adults. The natural shift in a teen's circadian rhythms is called "sleep phase delay." The need to sleep is delayed for about two hours. At first, teens may appear to be suffering from insomnia and hey will have a hard time falling asleep at the usual time. While they begin going to sleep later, they still need an average of nine hours of sleep at night which is often hard as most have to wake up early for school. It is therefore important for them to still go to bed on time as if they go to bed late, they will be unable to get the sleep that they need. This change is a normal part of growing up and with some extra care, teens will quickly adjust to the new sleep schedule of their bodies.

The circadian rhythm also changes later in life, the timing of the circadian rhythm of core body temperature is earlier in both middle-aged and older (>age 60) adults than in young (age 20-30) adults. The circadian phase of melatonin has also been reported to move earlier with age (85-88), as has the timing of the cortisol rhythm. This can lead to awakening earlier in the morning, fewer hours of sleep and less robust body temperature rhythms as we age.

The Circadian rhythm optimises the functioning of an organism by helping to avoid damage to its cells and the accumulation of toxic products but the circadian clock is not resilient to the aging process and its synchronization abilities steadily decline with age. Some researchers have suggested though that it may be possible to resynchronize the circadian clock in an old organism and to reconstitute at least part of the damage-controlling programs and circumvent age-related problems, for example in the brain, which could have huge implications (definitely an area of research to keep an eye on).

What disrupts it?

Your circadian rhythm works best when you have regular sleep habits, like going to bed at night and waking up in the morning around the same times from day to day (including weekends). When things get in the way, like jet lag, small children, daylight savings time, or late night TV, you can easily disrupt your circadian rhythm. 

Traveling is a classic circadian disruptor. Changes in time zones, bedtimes and light cues confuse internal clocks, so travelers often arrive at their destination feeling jetlagged. 

Other disruptors are artificial lights and electronic devices such as computers, phones and tablet. All of which emit blue light, which trick your brain into thinking it’s daytime and delays the release of melatonin. Even dim lights and small LEDs (like the standby lights) can interfere with a person's circadian rhythm and melatonin secretion.

What happens if it’s out of sync?

Studies suggest a link between exposure to light at night, such as working the night shift, to some types of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. That's not proof that night-time light exposure causes these conditions but we do know that exposure to light suppresses the secretion of melatonin, a hormone that influences circadian rhythms, and there's experimental evidence that lower melatonin levels might explain the association with cancer. Studies have also suggested the connection of lower melatonin to diabetes and possibly obesity.

How to honour it

Anyone who’s been camping for anything longer than a weekend will know what I’m talking about, the sense of relaxation that comes from waking up when the sun rises and sitting round the warm glow of a campfire when the sun sets. This is how we lived for hundreds of thousands of years, and it is only recently that this has changed with the advent of gas lamps in the early 1800s and electric light in the late 1800’s. We evolved in a world without artificial lights, governed by the daily cycle of the sun and at a genetic level this is how our bodies still expect to function. Now I’m not suggesting that we should all quit the day job and go and live in a cave but we can make some changes to our daily routines to better honour our genetic ancestry whilst living in today’s world.

1.   Maintain a consistent sleep schedule. Sticking to regular bed and wake-up time every day is paramount, even sleeping in late just one morning can throw off your body clock.

2.   Allow yourself to wake up naturally in the morning, if you are getting dragged out of deep sleep by an alarm every morning chances are you’re not getting a full sleep cycle, so go to bed earlier.

3.   Expose yourself to bright light (natural sunlight is best) when your wake up to help reset your circadian rhythm and deliver an energy boost by raising your body temperature and your cortisol level. Also try to get lots of bright light throughout the day as this will improve your ability to sleep at night, as well as your mood and alertness during daylight.

4.   Avoid eating late at night (regular sleep patterns + regular eating patterns = regular rhythm)

5.   Adopt a wind-down routine before bed, either;

a.   Campfires & Kumbaya or;

b.   Avoid looking at bright screens an hour or two before bed and consider wearing blue-blocking glasses or installing an app that filters the blue/green wavelength at night.

6. Consider switching light bulbs. If blue light does have adverse health effects, then environmental concerns, and the quest for energy-efficient lighting, could be at odds with personal health. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs and LED lights are much more energy-efficient than the old-fashioned incandescent lightbulbs but they also tend to produce more blue light. The physics of fluorescent lights can't be changed, but coatings inside the bulbs can be so they produce a warmer, less blue light.

7.   Use dim red lights for night lights. Red light has the least power to shift circadian rhythm and suppress melatonin.

8.  Ensure good sleep hygiene. Sleep in a dark, cool, well oxygenated room. Think black out blinds, open window (if it’s not too cold!), and eliminate ALL sources of light. A good tip for hiding those pesky little LEDs is to stick little squares of electrical tape over them.

The Takeaway

The circadian clock synchronizes the metabolism and physiology of an organism to enhance fitness and to optimize energy expenditure, so ignore it at your peril! Apply your evolutionary lens and try to better align your modern lifestyle with your ancestral daily cycle. Wake up when the sun comes up, get some exposure to natural sunlight when you wake up, eat and exercise during the day and limit your exposure to blue light in the evening.

The Calorie Conundrum

Introduction

So I've tackled salt, time now to try some more de-bunking. This post will take a look at a keystone of the diet industry, the calorie, and more specifically counting them...

Now I get it, in the past like a lot of people I've tracked my exercise and worked out the calorific value of meals in an attempt to ensure I'm eating the correct amount of energy for my needs. I also understand the first (and 2nd, 3rd & 4th if you're being picky!) law of thermodynamics (which states states that you can’t create or destroy energy, you can only change it), and I get the analogy that the human 'engine' burns fuel in the form of calories, if it burns more fuel than is being put in the tank that's a net loss, which will result in weight loss.

Whilst there is nothing wrong with the first law of thermodynamics. Its wrong to assume that it explains everything that's going on with the human machine. As I will try and explain, the Calorie In Calorie Out (CICO) argument is an overly simplified description of the human 'machine', and as a weight loss (or muscle gain) strategy it is fundamentally flawed as it fails to account for the following:

• How Calories Are Calculated
• Your Body’s Hormone Response
• The Quality of The Calories
• Your Body Fat Setpoint
• Addiction and Dependency
• The Macronutrient Breakdown

What is a Calorie?

So lets start with a quick science lesson recap....there are two types of calorie: A small calorie (cal) is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 gram (g) of water by 1º Celsius (º C). A large calorie (kcal) is the amount of energy required to raise 1 kilogram (kg) of water by 1º C. 

To determine calorie counts, scientists burn food in a water-enclosed chamber called a bomb calorimeter; the number of degrees by which the burning food raises the water’s temperature equals the number of calories in the food.

What this test doesn't tell you is what nutrients are available for our bodies. For example if you put a chunk of wood in calorimeter it will tell you the wood had a great deal of energy in it. However, since all that energy is in the form of cellulose (humans can’t digest cellulose), the actual nutritional caloric content of wood is zero and this therefore is one of the main problems with using calories as a dietary metric (but there are a few more as well..)

CICO history

The Calorie is a relatively recent phenomenon and the idea of counting calories for health purposes is even newer. Between 1819 and 1824 French physicist and chemist Nicholas Clément introduced the term calories in lectures on heat engines to his Parisian students and by 1845, the word appeared in Bescherelle’s Dictionnaire National. By the 1860s the term had entered the English language which defined a Calorie as the heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water from 0 to 1°C. By the 1880s, the term was first introduced to the American public by Edward Atkinson. Professor Wilbur O. Atwater came next when he published on the calorie in 1887 in Century Magazine and again in the 1890s in Farmer’s Bulletin. From the 1890s, Atwater and his team at Wesleyan undertook a study into the caloric content of over 500 foods with the intent of producing a scientific and healthy way of maintaining one’s weight. By the early 1900s, Atwater was one of the leading authorities on dietary intake and his advice was simple. Cut out excess and ensure a balance between foods. 

In 1918, American physician, author and philanthropist, Lulu Hunt Peters changed the face of dieting for the next century. Peters latched onto the idea that calorie counting was an effective means of enacting healthy weight loss and published Diet & Health: With Key to the Calories, this was her first and only book on calorie counting. Diet & Health became one of the first ‘modern’ dieting book to become a bestseller, and it remained in the top ten non-fiction bestselling books from 1922 to 1926.

The labels are wrong

Ignoring whether or not the CICO theory is sound or not for a minute, to actually count calories (and restrict them) you need to know the calorific content of the food you are eating. Guess what, even today that ain't easy! Although almost every packaged food today features calorie counts in its label most of these counts are inaccurate because they are based on a system of averages that ignores the complexity of digestion.

So we've done our experiments and now know that fats provide approximately nine calories per gram, whereas carbohydrates and proteins deliver just four. Fiber offers just two calories because enzymes in the human digestive tract have great difficulty chopping it up into smaller molecules. Every calorie count on every food label you have ever seen is based on these estimates or on modest derivations thereof. Yet these approximations assume that the 19th-century laboratory experiments on which they are based accurately reflect how much energy different people with different bodies derive from many different kinds of food. New research has revealed that this assumption is, at best, far too simplistic. To accurately calculate the total calories that someone gets out of a given food, you would have to take into account a dizzying array of factors, including whether that food has evolved to survive digestion; how boiling, baking, microwaving or flambéing a food changes its structure and chemistry; how much energy the body expends to break down different kinds of food; and the extent to which the billions of bacteria in the gut aid human digestion and, conversely, steal some calories for themselves.

Nutrition scientists are beginning to learn enough to hypothetically improve calorie labels, but digestion turns out to be such a fantastically complex and messy affair that we will probably never derive a formula for an infallible calorie count, and the reality is that even if you're extremely diligent in your measuring and recording efforts you can expect an error of approximately 350 calories per day!

Hormones

Farmers have known that there's more to growing an animal than simply providing sufficient calories. In fact they've known for over 30 years that when they give their livestock certain hormones (which can include natural and synthetic versions of estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone) the animals weight increases far quicker than without. I.e. if they had two cows in the same field, which were both fed the same quantities of feed every day, but one was given extra hormones, the hormone supplementing cow would weigh significantly more than his buddy. Just think about that for a minute, they've both eaten exactly the same amount of calories, done the same amount of exercise, but have grown at significantly different rates. This fact alone shows how wrong the CICO model is and why controlling hormones is the key to controlling weight and body composition.

Like a cow, the human body is not a calculator and its functions are controlled by hormones which respond differently to different foods. Fat, carbs, and protein (macronutrients) all influence hormones in different ways. For example, non-fiber carbohydrates trigger the release of insulin where fat does not. Insulin is a hormone that pushes nutrients into cells, stabilizes blood sugar, and stores fat. It’s a vital hormone that has a unique side effect. It also has the ability to become disordered, resulting in insulin resistance and type II diabetes.

Another important hormone is Cortisol. This is a hormone released in response to stress and it’s job is to decrease and control inflammation. But, as with all other hormones, there are side effects. Balance is key. If stress is chronic and cortisol is constantly elevated, issues occur, these include insulin resistance, fat storage, and disease over the long term.

So when hormones are out of balance, the body holds on to excess fat, weight gain becomes easier, and stored nutrients can’t be utilized. When some hormones become disordered they can disorder others as well, causing additional issues. The human body is a holistic, biological system that responds to different foods with varying hormonal responses. This has a direct influence on your metabolism and it’s one of the main reasons why counting calories is pointless.

Your Body Fat Setpoint

Everyone has a body fat setpoint that tightly regulates weight loss and gain, it’s one of our many programmed defense mechanisms (drastic reduction or gain in fat mass is not considered desirable by your Hypothalamus). This is why some people who never count a single calorie maintain the same weight, their setpoint is being tightly regulated by a functional metabolism.

The setpoint is a chosen weight the hypothalamus attempts to maintain through the regulation of satiety and energy expenditure. If you eat too much, you’re subconsciously influenced to increase activity and decrease consumption at subsequent meals. The key here is that the setpoint is a moving goalpost. As you gain weight over the long term (by eating foods your body wasn’t designed to adequately deal with) the setpoint jumps from one maintenance range to a higher one (due in part to leptin resistance). Those higher levels of weight become the new normal that the body will try hard to defend, creating a vicious cycle.

Nutritional Content

One of the big issues with calorie counting is that it doesn’t include the quality of the food you are eating. It does not distinguish between an unprocessed natural food, and what composition and type of fat, protein, carbohydrate, vitamin, minerals, anti-oxidants and phyto-compounds it contains. Additionally calorie counting can encourage the avoidance of naturally high calorie foods such as nuts, seeds and avocados and these foods contain important fatty acids and fat soluble vitamins that support a healthy metabolism and a healthy weight. If you’re cutting calories and you’re deficient in micronutrients, your body will still signal constant hunger because your cells are starving for real food, therefore to maintain optimum health you should be striving to eat nutrient dense foods as opposed to the correct number of calories. 

But wait, doesn't calorie restriction work?

Well yes it can, and I'm not denying that you can lose weight by counting and restricting calories, after all the first law of thermodynamics is still a law, and companies like weight watchers make gazillions of dollars marketing the idea. But hopefully I've managed to convince you that it is not a particularly effective or sustainable way to live your life. Furthermore, whilst you may be able to lose a bit of weight by restricting calories, by ignoring far more important factors such as hormone control and nutrient density you may not be improving your health. 

In a classic series of studies dating to the 1980s, investigators at Rockefeller University in New York underfed volunteers to make them lose 10 to 20 percent of their weight, and then studied their metabolism during lengthy admissions to the research unit. Regardless of whether the participants had normal or high body weight at the beginning of the study, they experienced a large drop in metabolic rate ,  far more than could be attributed to weight change alone. And of course, underfeeding made the participants hungrier. These findings explain an experience all too familiar to anyone who has been on a diet. When you eat fewer calories, the body becomes more efficient and burns fewer calories, even as your desire for extra calories heightens. This combination of rising hunger and slowing metabolism is a recipe for failure. After a few weeks of calorie deprivation ,  long before your weight loss target is within sight , you become tired and tempted to quit your exercise routine, and collapse on the couch with a pint of ice cream. Even if you  stick to the diet, and stay active, your metabolic rate will continue to fall, so you’ll need to cut calories even more drastically to kept losing weight. Not a sustainable lifestyle, and when you start eating normally again after a restrictive diet, chances are you'll gain more weight because your metabolism is broken and can't do its job.

So whats the take away..

The reality is that the foods we eat affect our bodies in different ways and go through different metabolic pathways.The way a human body processes food depends on many factors such as how much the food was cooked, the gut health of the individual, how the body digests the food, etc. Not only that, but the foods we eat and when we eat them can directly affect the hormones that regulate when and how much we eat, and whether or not we store the energy we eat. Therefore, the types of foods we base our diet around and our lifestyle are far more important than the amount of calories we are eating.

The key to long-term weight loss isn’t counting calories; it’s eating in a way that lowers insulin levels, calms chronic inflammation and, by so doing, readjusts the body weight set-point to a lower level. A successful and sustainable diet should promote optimum health, and when your body is functioning properly it will maintain optimum weight effortlessly, achieving your ideal body weight should be a by-product of a truly healthful diet & lifestyle rather than the priority.

If you're trying to push your body outside of its status quo in terms of %fat & muscle (accepting that this may not be a good strategy for longevity) then you may need to pay some attention to your calorie intake. If  your target is all round health and longevity then ignore the calories and instead focus on nutrient density and hormonal response. See my page on basic food rules for a starter and more detail will follow in future blog posts.

Pork Scratchings

A quick post on one of my favorite snacks to make and eat. Minimal preparation is required and with a macro nutrient composition of approximately 70% Fat/30% Protein these little beauties are a great  option if you're going low-carb/Keto.

It's definitely worth making your own, its not complicated, and store bought scratchings often contain a lot of unnecessary rubbish ingredients (i.e preservatives, flour, sugar, etc).

Pork Scratchings are simply cooked up pigs skin, you can either deep fry or roast. Me,  I always roast, this produces a really crunchy scratching and gives you the opportunity to render some lard to use for future meals.

How to

1. Get yourself some pig skin
2. Cut it into strips, about 10mm wide
3. Lightly salt
4. Lay out on a wire rack

5. Place in an oven, pre-heated to 180 deg C with a large drip tray underneath (to catch dripping fat)
6. Roast for 20 minutes
7. Remove drip tray (now full of lard) and turn up oven to 220 deg
8. Roast for a further 10 minutes or so, until they are nice and crispy.

9. Remove and allow to cool

10. The rendered lard can be poured through a metal sieve, into a suitable container to filter out any bits, cooled, and then kept in the fridge for cooking with at a later date.

You can do all the roasting at 220 deg C but if you want to collect the lard for later use you're better off keeping the temperature below the smoke point of Lard (182 deg) to avoid oxidation.

You can also add whatever seasoning you fancy before roasting (pepper, chilli, paprika, etc) but if you're collecting the lard for later use don't go crazy with the seasoning!

These days I'm lucky if I get a look in when I make a batch of Pork Scratchings, the mini cave people  soon sniff out the familiar smell of roasting pig skin and are ready to devour them as soon as they have cooled down enough to be picked up!

Skipping, not just for girls!

Introduction

A skipping rope or jump rope is probably something you played with as a kid but like most adults, (except for boxers) you've probably not picked one up in a while. This a shame, because jumping rope offers a combination of benefits to bone, balance and muscles that most types of exercise can’t match, and I'll explain why I think you should incorporate a regular jump rope workout into your routine.

A jump rope has got to be one of the cheapest pieces of sports equipment out there and a variety of workouts can be performed with a single rope. Slow-paced rope jumping is a great warm-up exercise whereas rapid jumping or double-unders will leave you panting after just a minute or two. Jumping higher results in slower skipping, but it is great for muscle toning. whereas low and fast skipping is great for high intensity and endurance training.

History

The exact origins of skipping are long lost but humans have certainly been jumping rope for a long time, probably as long as we have had access to rope! Rope was used for skipping in Phoenicia, and ancient Egypt. The Greeks jumped a pole in the early days of the Western civilization, and several painters in the Golden Ages painted children playing with a rope. Rope Skipping (or Jump Rope) as we know it originated in the Netherlands, and made its way across the Atlantic in the 1600s. Check out the International Rope Skipping Federation website for a good summary of the history of jumping rope.

The Benefits

Coordination - The whole-body synchronization required to successfully jump rope is another major selling point. Most of the runners and other athletes jump rope for training and Boxers do it because of the precise timing it requires between the feet and hands helps connect the upper and lower body with the brain. It improves footwork, balance, coordination, and agility. 

Muscle Tone -  Skipping is a body weight exercise, it engages and improves the hip-flexor muscles, improves the muscle tone in the legs and lower body and also in the upper body as your shoulders and arms work the rope. You also engage your abdominal muscles to stabilize your core when skipping. So a full body workout, recruiting all the major muscle groups.

Bone Density - The act of landing after jumping does put stress on your knees, ankles and hips, but like barefoot running, jumping rope is mostly done on your toes and the balls of your feet, so is less likely to cause  knee and hip injuries. Instead this weight-bearing action helps promote healthy bone density.

Lymphatic System - Lymphatic congestion is a major factor leading to inflammation and disease. If the lymph is not flowing well, the cells are poisoned from their own waste and the lymph fluid becomes toxic, resulting in fatigue, swelling, infection, inflammation and disease. The motion of skipping benefits the lymph system by stimulating the millions of one-way valves in the system and increasing flow of Lymph. Better flow means better cell health.

High Intensity - Skipping is one of the best cardio and HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training) workouts. I'm not into counting calories but as a measure of effectiveness (compared to other excercise options) jumping rope is known to burn around 1300 calories/hour and skipping can be done at anywhere, inside or out. 

How to do it

In case it has been too many years since you last picked up a jump rope here's some instructions for the most common jump rope exercises. I would suggest going barefoot to maximize the training effect and encourage correct  posture & muscular function.

Double Jump

The most common style of skipping exercise is double jumps ("double" as in both feet, not "double-under" which is a bit more challenging!). This technique is often practiced in high speed and burns most calories. The intensity of double-jumps can be varied according to the speed and how high you jump; whether you take your feet completely off the ground or just enough to pass the rope. 

Steps

1. Hold the rope stretched upwards and taut, with one handle in each hand at your sides, with your elbows bent and forearms parallel to the ground.
2. Keep your shoulders rotated back, chest pushed out, elbows close at your sides, abdominal muscles tight and your weight on the balls of your feet.
3. Bring the rope forward by rotating your wrists.
4. Jump with both the feet 2-3 inches off the ground to let the rope pass under your feet.
5. Repeat the motion and vary the speed according to your fitness level.
6. The next skipping exercise is even more fun and relaxing. Take a look.

Cross Jump

Cross jumps are the least intensive of the skipping styles. The style is often incorporated in high-intensity workouts when one needs a break from high-aerobic exercise. It is better to continue less-taxing cross-jumps instead of stopping altogether.

Steps

1. The posture for the cross-jump would be the same as that for the double-jump.
2. The difference between the two styles of skipping is that double-jump involves jumping with both the feet simultaneously and the cross-jump involves skipping with one foot after another.
3. Bring the rope forward by rotating your wrists. The movement comes from your wrists and forearms, and not by rotating shoulders or whole arms.
4. First, skip the rope with one foot followed by the other.
5. Repeat the motion as fast as you can without tripping over the rope or spraining your foot.
6. Now, this next rope jumping exercise is a little tougher in the sense that you must have great balance and endurance. But, with our simple explanation and steps, you will perform this exercise with ease and fun.

Single leg jump

Single-leg jumps are an advanced level of skipping style, which require good balance and put more weight on one leg. It should be attempted after one can do double-jumps and cross-jumps fairly well. To prepare yourself for single-leg jumps, you can begin with balancing exercises like standing for an extended period on a single leg or doing yoga poses like Natarajasana and Garudasana that require balance.

Steps

1. Hold the handles of the rope, one in each hand; shoulders rolled back, chest out, abs tight and the belly button sucked in.
2. Now, lift one leg bending it at the knee.
3. Start jumping the rope on the single leg that is on the floor while keeping the lifted leg in the air.
4. Do your set of repetitions and then do the other leg.
5. Single-leg jumps should be attempted slowly and with practice. Very fast jumps can result in leg injuries or falls.

In Conclusion

There you go then, one of the cheapest, most accessible forms of exercise I know of. Jumping rope is a fun, full body workout, great for muscle tone, coordination, and cardio vascular health so go get a rope!

Skipping is definitely not just for girls! If its good enough for Rocky its good enough for everyone and if you’re in decent shape and not carrying a lot of extra weight I would strongly recommend adding a short jump rope workout maybe five minutes to your usual workout routine. 

Health Warning

Be warned. Though it may look easy, it can be a tough workout, depending on how intensely you’re doing it. If you’re  overweight and haven’t been exercising don't start with skipping!

Salt

This may be a bit of a controversial topic but I've enjoyed researching and writing this one, Im pretty pleased with it, and think it's definitely worth sharing. Another case of years of misinformation/miseducation I'm afraid and something that is definitely worth understanding better.......

Introduction

For over 40yrs we have been taught that salt increases blood pressure and ideally we should all be eating a low salt diet, guess what, there was never any scientific evidence to support these guidelines! There was a basic hypothesis proposed that said when we eat salt we get thirsty, when we get thirsty we drink more water, and when we drink more water the excess salt causes our bodies to hold onto the water, increasing the total volume of blood and hence increasing blood pressure. There was some circumstantial evidence to support this initially but a lot of the data conflicted, and whilst scientists continued to debate governments had already taken their stance (sounds familiar right!). From this moment on salt has been demonised, but does this really make any sense, I (and many far knowledgeable people) would argue not.

The Evolutionary Case

The first living creatures on the planet evolved in seawater, when they first crawled onto land they brought salt from the ocean with them and millions of years later the human body still mimics the make-up of the ocean. Salt has always been needed to maintain optimum blood levels, to pump blood, for digestion, for cellular communication, bone formation & reproduction.

It is likely that early humans would have eaten aquatic plants, fish, and other seafood which would have contained a significant amount of salt. Even living away from the sea, by eating nuts, insects & animal skin/organs/blood its reasonable to assume that the early human diet would have been relatively high in salt.

And its not just humans, the need for salt can be seen across the animal kingdom. Farmers have long understood the importance of salt as Sodium deficiency reduces successful mating, milk production, birth weights & litter size. The same can be seen in humans where a low salt diet appears to act like a natural contraceptive, causing reduced sex drive, reduced fertility and reduced birth weight.

The Science

So 40 years on here's what medical evidence actually suggests...Demonisation of salt is not only unsupported by scientific evidence its counter productive. The majority of people do not experience the blood pressure raising effects of salt at all, and instead of focusing just on blood pressure we should also consider the numerous health risks caused by low salt intake, such as:

• Increased heart rate
• Compromised kidney function
• Adrenal insufficiency
• Hypothyroidism
• Elevated triglycerides
• Insulin resistance
• Obesity
• Type 2 diabeties

Restricting Sodium essentially causes the body to panic, the body responds by increasing insulin levels to help the kidneys retain sodium, these high insulin levels also help store energy in fat cells. With the majority of fat being stored the only macro-nutrient that can be utilised for energy is carbohydrate, leading to carbohydrate dependency and all its associated problems.

What is salt and what does it do?

Salt (NaCl) is a natural mineral made up of white cube-shaped crystals composed of two elements, sodium and chlorine. It is translucent, colourless, odourless and has a distinctive and characteristic taste. Salt occurs naturally in many parts of the world in mineral form, when ingested  it gets broken down into its two chemical components in the body, chloride becomes a part of the acids in your digestive tract. These absorb nutrients from your food. Sodium, the other component of salt, manages how hydrated we are by controlling the movement of water in and out of our cells. It also helps to manage shock (Burns, traumas, haemorages, etc) where we experience a loss of fluid and salt is required to control the fluid levels and the bodies ability to circulate blood.

Salt & Addiction

Here's another interesting little fact with far reaching implications. When low in salt, your body makes your brains reward system hypersensitive, essentially allowing it to receive more pleasure from eating salt, i.e. giving you salt cravings. This is a critical survival mechanism that has developed over 100 million years of evolution and has ensured the survival of almost every species since then. The downside to this mechanism is that the brains reward system is up-regulated for all substances that trigger the reward system. In a world where we are surrounded by such substances this can cause serious issues with addiction (think sugar, alcohol, nicotine, heroin, etc).

How Much is Right

Based on current studies a daily intake of between 3 to 6g of Sodium (1.33 - 2.66 tspn of Salt) is the optimum range. Daily salt intakes of less than 2.3g or more than 6g are associated with an increased risk of cardio vascular events. It is important to note that these risks are far higher with a low salt intake than a high salt intake.When there is an increase of Sodium in the blood the kidneys reabsorb less and the excess Sodium is excreted in urine. Our kidneys filter between 1.4 and 1.6 Kg of salt per day, this is about 150 times the amount that we ingest!

If you let it, your body naturally drives you to eat 8-10g of salt (3-4g of sodium) per day, an intake that places the least stress on our bodies.

Additional Sodium (over and above the 3-6g recommendation) may be required if any of the following apply to you as they all can cause Sodium depletion:

• You over consume sugar
• You take certain medications such as diuretics, anti-depressants, anti-psychotics & some diabetes drugs.
• You drink caffeinated drinks (Butter coffee anyone?)
• You engage in intense exercise
• You (like me) follow a low-carb diet
• You (like me) practise intermitant fasting
• You suffer from certain chronic diseases

Salt and Excercise

On average you can expect to lose 1.4g of Sodium per hour of excercise in moderate climates, and this can increase to 2.9g per hour in hot climates. Your sweat contains between 7-80 times the amount of Sodium than tap water so it is important to re-hydrate accordingly.

Salt dosing before, during and after excercise is an effective way to combat dehydration. The following doses can be used as a guide:

Temperature (deg C)		Salt dosage
Less than 26		1/2 tspn prior to exercise and every hour after
Between 26 and 31		1 tspn prior to exercise and every hour after
32 and above		2 tspn prior to exercise and every hour after

Hydration
Correctly dosing sodium is important for hydration, both in general and especially during exercise. You may well have experienced making the common mistake whilst exercising of continually drinking, requiring multiple bathroom breaks, and yet still feeling thirsty?! Guess what, even if you're pee is clear you can still suffer from hypo-hydration. The solution is to put a pinch of salt in your water bottle, this will help your body absorb the water into your tissues. Drinking pure water is fine with food (when you can salt your food) but when you're just guzzling water add a pinch of salt. But wait, isn't saltwater poisonous, we've all been told never to drink seawater right? Well it's all a matter of dosage, a pinch of salt in your drinking water will help your body hydrate, seawater on the other hand is very salty (approximately 3%), and due to the osmosis process, the kidneys can only generate urine which is less salty than the water we drink. Consequently, if you drank seawater your body would tend to urinate more to be able to eliminate the excess of salt, but instead of elimination, the result is the formation of more salt as the urine obtained is always less salty than the original. The body would have to ex-pulse more liquid than the amount drunk, which is impossible, and that’s why the effect of drinking water from the sea is dehydration.

So DO add a pinch of salt to your drinking water to aid hydration, but DON'T dink seawater!


Babies & Children
Now an internet search for recommended salt intake for babies and children will deliver a massive amount of low salt propaganda with most sources saying that our children are eating too much salt, there's no need to to add salt to a child's diet, etc, etc. The reality is though babies and children are no different to adults when it comes to basic physiology, and just like adults their kidneys help regulate sodium in and out of the blood and urine, so if your baby/child has healthy kidneys and is eating real food (no processed junk please) then there’s no need to worry about sodium content in homemade foods. Breast milk (and formula) contains sufficient Sodium for a babies needs, a breast feeding baby will receive approximately 164mg a day from breast milk alone, and that's as nature intended. When they start eating solids they, just like adults, should start  including a proportionate amount of salt in their diet.

What sort of Salt
There's a number of different types of salt available, a few are detailed below:

• Table salt. This is harvested from salt deposits found underground. It’s highly refined and finely ground, with impurities and trace minerals removed in the process. It’s also treated with an anti-caking agent to keep from clumping. Most table salt is iodized, meaning iodine has been added to prevent iodine deficiency.
• Sea Salt. Harvested from evaporated sea water, sea salt is usually unrefined and coarser-grained than table salt. It also contains some of the minerals from where it was harvested such as zinc, potassium and iron among them.
• Himalayan salt is the purest form of salt in the world and is harvested by hand from Khewra Salt Mine in the Himalayan Mountains of Pakistan. Its color ranges from off-white to deep pink. Rich in minerals it contains the 84 natural minerals and elements found in the human body. Himalayan salt is used in spa treatments, as well as the kitchen.
• Celtic sea salt is harvested from the bottom of tidal ponds off the coast of France. The salt crystals are raked out after sinking; this, plus the mineral-rich seawater its extracted from, gives Celtic salt its moist, chunky grains, grey hue and briny taste.
• Fluer de Sel is a sea salt hand-harvested from tidal pools off the coast of Brittany, France. Paper-thin salt crystals are delicately drawn from the water’s surface, much like cream is taken from milk. This can only be done on sunny, dry days with a slight breeze, and only with traditional wooden rakes. Because of its scarcity and labor-intensive harvesting, fleur de sel is the most expensive salt.
• Kala namak (“black salt” in Nepalese) is Himalayan salt that’s been packed in a jar with charcoal, herbs, seeds and bark, then fired in a furnace for a full 24 hours before it’s cooled, stored and aged.
• Flake Salt. Harvested from salt water through evaporation, boiling or other means, flake salt is thin and irregularly shaped with a bright, salty taste and very low mineral content.
• Black Hawaiian Salt is a sea salt harvested from the volcanic islands of Hawaii. It gets its deep, black colour from the addition of activated charcoal.
• Red Hawaiian salt gets its name and colour from the reddish, iron-rich volcanic clay alaea. Used for centuries in ceremonial ways for cleansing, purification and the blessing of tools, red Hawaiian salt is also great in the kitchen.
• Smoked Salt. Slow-smoked up to two weeks over a wood fire (usually hickory, mesquite, apple, oak or alder wood), smoked salt adds an intense and, yes, smoky flavor. 

When it comes to what you eat I will always be the first to recommend unrefined, unprocessed natural food and in general I would suggest the same when it comes to salt. Certainly I would recommend avoiding table salt (which is heavily refined and devoid of any additional minerals) and going for one of the other varieties with a higher mineral content, but I would recommend including some iodised salt in your diet....

Unless (like early humans) you're regularly dining on sea vegetables and other Iodine rich foods its likely that you could be at risk of iodine deficiency, iodised salt is a great way to maintain your iodine levels.

Personally when it comes to salt I tend to favour Himalayan salt and iodised sea salt and will generally fill a grinder with a 50/50 mix of the two. This should include a good range of minerals, from relatively natural salts, along with the essential iodine.

Warning

It would be remis of me not to mention the following. A small proportion of the population should be concerned about consuming/retaining too much Sodium, specifically people who suffer from any of the following:

• Hyperaldosteronism
• Cushings disease
• Liddle syndrome

These people should monitor and possible limit salt intake. the rest of have a number of strong defense mechanisms to maintain the required Sodium levels.

Main References
The Salt Fix by Dr James DiNicolantonio
Ready to Run by Kelly Starret

Fat rice

I tend to eat a relatively low carbohydrate diet these days and probably cycle in and out of ketosis (although I don't measure this), however I do include a certain amount of starch. For this reason, and as low carbohydrate eating strategy does not suit everyone in the family, I tend to cook a fair amount of rice. Rice is a good clean starch and is great with a wide range of meals but it’s easy to overindulge on, and too much rice too often is no good. Your body converts white rice to glucose quickly, which is why too much of it, like too much of any carbohydrate, can trigger insulin resistance, fatigue, weight gain, and a host of other issues. In this post I'm going to tell you about a strategy I've adopted to maximise the health benefits of this versatile food by creating "Fat rice".

By changing how the rice is cooked it's possible to increase the amount of resistant starch (and reduce the amount of digestible starch), decrease the glycemic index of the rice, and increase its health benefits by providing a potent energy source to the "good bacteria" in your gut.

Method

Firstly I would always recommend white rice over brown rice as turning brown rice into white rice removes phytate, an anti-nutrient that stops us from absorbing minerals, and leaves a clean source of starch.  It also reduces arsenic (brown rice  can have up to 80 times more arsenic than white rice).

Secondly, I would always suggest that you soak your rice for a few hours and rinse it thoroughly. Although white rice contains lower levels of arsenic than brown rice you can reduce these levels further by soaking & rinsing.

Next add a teaspoon of coconut oil to boiling water, then add half a cup of rice. Simmer for 40 minutes or boil for 20 to 25 minutes. The cooked rice should then go into the refrigerator for 12 hours, so plan ahead!

You don’t need to eat your rice cold to maintain its positive benefits as reheating the rice at a later time doesn't alter the rice's chemical composition.

The Science

Cooked rice is made up of both digestible and resistant types of starch. Humans do not have the enzyme to digest resistant starch, which means the body is unable to convert some of that starch to sugar and absorb it into the bloodstream however resistant starch does feed the “good” bacteria in your gut.

Research suggests that this method causes the oil to enter in starch granules while it cooks and adds a protective layer, which changes the structure of the rice granules so they become resistant to the digestive enzyme.

The cooking process is only part of the chemistry. During the extended cooling process, as the rice starts to "gel," the amylose (starchy part of the rice) leaves the granules. The 12-hour cooling period also leads to the formation of hydrogen bonds between the amylose and molecules outside the rice grains. This converts it into the starch the body is unable to digest.

So there you have it, help yourself and your gut bugs by getting some Fat Rice in your diet.

Butter in my Coffee

Introduced to the world by Dave Asprey (aka Bulletproof coffee) . This has been something I incorporated into my Routines about 3 years ago, and it is how I start my day every day except Sundays (which is Bacon and Egg day!). Whilst I don't tend to use Bulletproof ingredients in my coffee now I must credit Dave with introducing me and the rest of the world to this drink I recommend you check out the Bulletproof blog and book. 

Why?

Grass-fed butter and coconut/MCT Oil provides a great mix of healthy fats to provide some satiety in the morning, while allowing your body to continue its overnight fast (insulin levels remain low enough to allow fat burning to continue). Additionally it is believed that butter slows the uptake of caffeine to deliver prolonged energy throughout the day. 

Not only is it a great tasting drink to kick start your day, its also an easy way to incorporate intermittent fasting into your lifestyle. With a butter coffee to start the day I find I can easily continue my overnight fast until lunchtime. Meaning that I'm effectively in a fasted state for 16-17 hours per day.

A Drink Steeped in History

Putting butter in a hot beverage is nothing new. Himalayan populations from the Sherpas in Nepal to Kashmirs in northern India have been sipping similar brews for centuries. In addition, the Gurage people of Ethiopia traditionally prepare coffee with butter, honey and salt. In Vietnam, chon coffee beans are sautéed with butter, salt and sugar, then lightly roasted. And in Singapore, it's common to sauté coffee beans with butter and spices before grinding. One of the most studied blends is traditional Tibetan butter tea, called po cha. The drink is made by churning fermented black tea with salty yak butter. With Ayurvedic origins, each butter tea ingredient serves a purpose. T

How to make it

Ingredients list is simple:

- Coffee

- Coconut Oil

- Butter

- Spices such as Turmeric, Cinnamon, Cayenne (Optional)

Aim for quality ingredients. Coffee is a personal choice so I'll leave that up to you but try for organic cold pressed coconut oil and grass fed butter, Kerrygold is great.

1. Brew a black coffee (long black, Americano) your usual way. I normally do a filter coffee or Expresso.

2. Add approximately 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of coconut oil into your handblender and throw in any spices you want to try.

3.  Add the coffee, blend it up, and that's it, a beautiful creamy coffee to start your day (and keep you going until lunch).

4. Drink it before it gets cold (its not so good then!)