Kresser and Wolf Discuss Healthy Fat for Mothers-To-Be

A Smart Baby!

Though I'm a bit behind on my podcasts right now (after a marathon listening routine to catch up with Angelo Coppola's Latest in Paleo podcast), I listened to Robb Wolf's Paleo Solution podcast yesterday and came away from it with a couple of little meat gobbets of info that I found interesting from a PaleoMental type standpoint.

Robb had the Healthy Skeptic, Chris Kresser, on as a guest, talking about Kresser's new product called the Healthy Baby Code, which is an instructional series on the best ways to take care of yourself if you want to conceive (mostly for women, though some would most certainly be applicable to men), if you're currently pregnant, and how to take care of your baby once the happy day arrives.

The two portions of the podcast that I found most interesting from a standpoint of mental development were at 22:30 and 42:42.  The first was where Chris and Robb were discussing proper macronutrient levels for a pregnant mother and Robb pointed out the benefits of ketones for fetal brain development.  Ketones, as you may recall from previous posts, are the energy substances created by the body when carb intake is low and the protein and fat intake are high, forcing the body to generate energy from body fat instead of carbs.

One of the key things to point out here is that we don't want pregnant ladies to fast in any way to increase their ketone production, that's not healthy for them nor the baby.  Instead, the healthy thing to do is to increase the intake of fat and lower carbohydrate intake (particularly fructose intake) to force the creation of ketones that can then be transferred to the baby through the placental wall and help to fuel the baby as it is developing.

Robb Wolf:

"...something that folks don't...is not widely understood is that ketone formation is actually critical for normal fetal brain development.  And these ketone bodies actually end up being structural elements that go into fetal brain development.  So if the individual is so insulin-resistant or so cortisol-laden from, say, if the protein intake is too high, or if generally the individual is in kind of a metabolically-deranged state, it can be very hard to produce ketone bodies. And so it's another individual stressor on the body trying to get these basic substrates that are necessary for normal brain development."

The study listed here indicates that a low-glycemic load diet (as compared to a low-fat diet) in pregnant women resulted in longer gestation period (i.e. fewer premature births) and increased head circumference (larger brain).

Now this is not to say that removing carbs entirely is a good thing in these cases.  As this study shows, a mid-range of carbohydrate intake was best for brain development as compared to no-carb or a standard amount of carbs.

The second point of interest was the discussion of fish intake by pregnant mothers.  Kresser pointed out that the fear of mercury in fish can somewhat be ignored in most fish, as the presence of selenium in fish has a tendency to offset the effects of mercury as the two elements tend to bond together and the resulting substance is not well-absorbed by humans - passing that substance through the digestive system and out in the feces.

Not all fish have high levels of selenium: Pilot Whales (not a cultural norm in the west, naturally), tarpon, marlin, swordfish, and some species of shark do not have high levels of seleniuim, and should be avoided.  But small fish such as sardines, mackerel, and anchovies have low levels of mercury to begin with (as they don't take nearly as long to grow to adult size, and therefore don't have time to take in much mercury) as well as high levels of selenium, and are perfect for pregnancy DHA intake.

Most fish, on the other hand, is very high in long chain Omega-3 fatty acids (DHA), which is very critical in the development of the fetal brain. DHA is found almost exclusively in seafood, though small amounts can be found in ruminant animal fat such as cows and sheep.  And DHA is very important in the early part of pregnancy as brain development is taking place, as well as in the first two years of infancy.  It's crucial in both neuron development and protection of the brain against oxidative damage.  Studies have shown that nutrients in fish can boost a child's IQ by up to ten points.

Kresser recommends eating 12 oz. of fish per week by pregnant women, but most American women eat 5 oz or less, and pregnant women consume less due to the mercury scare.

Kresser's Healthy Baby Code is available now, and Kresser is offering a 90 minute MP3 of QandA about the code for free!

Thoughts on this topic?  What's your experience with fat in the diet during pregnancy? 

Caffeine and Cortisol, Update #1

[caption id="attachment_190" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Fight the dark side!"][/caption]

As you know from my previous post about Caffeine and Cortisol, I started a 30-Day Coffee fast last Thursday.  And so far, so good. I've been coffee-free since then and I'm feeling pretty good.

I was experiencing some minor withdrawal headaches on Thursday and Friday (slightly worse on Friday), but that was nothing to worry about - I didn't even take aspirin for it on Friday, just gutted it out.

I had one slip-up when I had a small iced-tea on Sunday, I'm hoping that that was small enough that the effects were negligible.  I wasn't even thinking about it at that point, though, so the withdrawal problems that some were telling me about were limited to the small headaches. I'll take it.

At the beginning of this experiment, I was jut a hair under a 34 waist on my pants.  And my sleep, while okay, wasn't super-great.  So there could be some cortisol issues from lack of sleep.  This actually might go up a bit as I caught a little bit of a cold over the weekend.  Luckily, I've been less susceptible to such things since going Paleo - colds that have flattened people around me have been minor irritants to me - and this cold is no exception.  But it has affected my sleep simply via poor breathing at night.

Still, in looking at my waist, I am seeing what might be improvement.  In the mornings, when I wake up, my midsection looks great.  Not a six-pack, but slim and without too much excess "love-handle" flab on the sides.  But normally by the end of the day there's a little more there.  Now, it doesn't seem as pronounced.  I'm optimistic about the changes thus far.

And how about the mental aspects?  After all, this is PaleoMENTAL.  Well, it's hard to tell due to the aforementioned cold.  But for having a cold, it seems pretty good.  I've been a bit tired but not out of it by any means.  I think we'll wait till later to make that judgement, to get this cold out of my system and see what the week brings.

Thanks for all the well-wishes from everyone in last post's comments, and I'll keep you all posted.

Caffeine and Cortisol - a 30-Day Experiment

No Caffeine for Me!

Today, I began upon a 30-day experiment to reduce my cortisol levels by removing coffee from my diet. The goal is to see how it might be affecting my cognitive function and my belly fat.

Cortisol is a hormone that is related to stress.  At a very basic level, cortisol is created as a response to stressors in our environment.  Back when we were still chucking spears at deer and chasing down antelope, cortisol was helping to preserve our lives by giving us quick energy by signalling to our livers that it was time to engage in a process known as gluconeogenesis. This process is basically the breakdown of amino acids, the building blocks of protein, into glucose - one of the two monosaccharides (the healthy one) that our bodies use for fuel.

Picture this - you're walking across the street, enjoying the day, when suddenly some inattentive driver tries to turn and doesn't see you.  Your heart rate speeds up, and you get a little burst of speed to quickly sprint out of the way of that hazard to your bodily health.  That was the release of cortisol (and a host of other hormones, but we're focusing on cortisol for now), spurring the creation of glucose and the quick energy needed to make that sprint.  It's similar to what might have happened in the wild if your paleolithic ancestor came upon a wolf or bear while foraging and hunting.  And it's a great bodily response for a very specific cause.

The problem arises in this modern age, where we have lots less specific stressors like that, but a virtual plethora of general stressors.  Traffic.  Bad sleep.  Job worries.  A constant barrage of bad news from the media.  The list goes on and on.  And that constant barrage has the effect of keeping cortisol hanging around in our bodies instead of just releasing it when we really need it.

The negative effects of this constant presence of cortisol are many. One of them is decreased cognitive performance.  One of the effects of the constant presence of cortisol and other stress hormones is to injure or even kill hippocampus cells.  The hippocampus is the section of the brain that contains learning and memory centers. Another is the creation of more abdominal fat.  Among its effects, Cortisol causes excess fat to be stored at a higher rate than normal, mostly in the abdomen.  Abdominal fat can take the form of both subcutaneous fat, which is the fat you can see around your midsection, and visceral fat, a much more serious condition where the fat is located surrounding abdominal organs and can lead to insulin resistance (which is the cause of a number of effects in the human body such as heart disease, some cancers, and more).

All in all, not a good situation in which to find yourself.

So what does caffeine have to do with all this?  As a stimulant, caffeine increases stress in the body - creating conditions via its very nature that emulate the effects of sudden stress, and causing the release of more cortisol.

I don't have a huge problem with belly fat, but I have more than I'd like - I'd like to see a little more improvement in the visibility of my abs (what's the point of doing all these planks if you can't see the improvement?) in the all-important looking-good-naked category.  And as the link from Harvard said above, there are other concerns there as well.

So it's time to drop the caffeine from my diet, I think.  Being a father of two young kids, my sleep's not likely to get any better, as hard as I try.  But caffeine is something I can control a little more.  Either I take it in, or I don't.  So I won't, for 30 days, and I'll report back to you on how I'm feeling and looking.

Questions?  Comments?  What has your experience been with caffeine and these issues?  Post below!

Guest-post on LiveCaveman!

Just a short note for now - I did a guest post over at Tony Federico's LiveCaveman - Fitness in an Evolutionary Direction blog, and I hope you'll all go check it out.

Tony does a great job of presenting fitness and nutrition in an accessible way and making it fun! He has great passion for the Paleo lifestyle and I hope everyone will check out more of his fine work, and take advantage of his coaching!

Autism and the Brain-Gut Health Connection

Ever since Rachel of PaleoFreedom announced her success with a Paleo diet in treating her daughter Scarlett's autism, it seems like stories about autism and Paleo are coming out of the woodwork.  But one of the most interesting and coincidental articles came to me from Lisa Jo Rudy, the Autism Guide at About.com.

Though Ms. Rudy does not mention the Paleo lifestyle or diet per se in her articles for this particular newsletter, it's interesting to note that the entire newsletter is dedicated to the connection between brain function and proper gut health.  Rudy points out a study from McMaster University where researchers looked at the effects of gut bacteria on the behavior of mice, noting that those with lower levels of probiotic bacteria had both behavior changes and reduced levels of a key behavioral-based marker in the brain (as noted in the Newswise article that Rudy used as a reference):

Working with healthy adult mice, the researchers showed that disrupting the normal bacterial content of the gut with antibiotics produced changes in behaviour; the mice became less cautious or anxious. This change was accompanied by an increase in brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which has been linked, to depression and anxiety.

And anxiety, as those familiar with autism know, is a key trait for those on the ASD spectrum.

But here's the really interesting part of this:

To confirm that bacteria can influence behaviour, the researchers colonized germ-free mice with bacteria taken from mice with a different behavioural pattern. They found that when germ-free mice with a genetic background associated with passive behaviour were colonized with bacteria from mice with higher exploratory behaviour, they became more active and daring. Similarly, normally active mice became more passive after receiving bacteria from mice whose genetic background is associated with passive behaviour.

This would seem to indicate that even those individuals (mice, in this case) who had a lower level of probiotics in their intestines by nature could have behavioral issues reduced or removed by the introduction of proper bacteria into their guts.  And this is where successes like Scarlett's, above, seem to take over.

As those who follow a Paleo diet know, removing grains, legumes, and dairy from the diet promotes gut health.  Chris Kresser addresses this and the connection to brain health in his podcast (The Healthy Skeptic Podcast – Episode 9).

It's great to see all the evidence pointing to yet another positive effect of the Paleo lifestyle, and the amount keeps growing every day.  As Emily Deans pointed out in an article about Autism for Psychology Today, too many high-level researchers and groups are denying a connection between diet and autism, despite stories like Scarlett's and all the evidence for the success of diet-based treatments such as DAN and the common gluten-free/casein-free diet.

Hopefully researchers will begin to address this more closely as the evidence mounts to support the need for the research!