Lots of Links

Lucky men – chocolate reduces the risk of stroke.

Men who ate the most chocolate, a weekly average of 63 grams, had a 17% lower risk of stroke compared with men who ate none. The correlation did not seem to differ depending on different types of stroke.

Meanwhile – creatine supplementation for women increases the effectiveness of antidepressents

the creatine supplementers responded earlier and better than the antidepressant alone group using a couple different scales (HAM-D and MADRS).  The creatine group had higher response and remittance rate and no higher incidence of side effects.

A look at the Gluten Sensitivity – What is it? Is it more common? Why do so many people (including me) feel better giving up wheat when they aren’t celiac?

Testing for gluten sensitivity is tough because there’s no real standard yet. You’ll notice that the recent study didn’t determine gluten sensitivity solely by running patients’ labs and looking for a certain figure; they had to painstakingly and laboriously eliminate confounding variables (like celiac) through extensive lab testing, and then run a double blind wheat challenge to see if symptoms still arose. That grand, single overarching lab test doesn’t exist, not yet anyway.

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It’s conceivable that gluten could be doing damage and causing constant, low-grade inflammation without you even knowing it. This is why folks who go Primal and give up wheat and other gluten-containing grains become more “sensitive” to wheat upon reintroduction. It’s not that going Primal has suddenly made them intolerant of gluten; it’s likelier that going Primal has made them more sensitiveto their gluten sensitivity. It was probably always there, but they never knew what they were feeling until they removed it and then tried to reintroduce it.

Dr Cordain outlines the risk of legumes – damn, why must they be so tasty? Here’s hoping I can continue to enjoy them as a sometime food

Most people will probably experience few adverse health effects if these foods are occasionally consumed.  Nevertheless, some people may have immediate gastric and GI tract distress after eating legumes; others may experience transient joint pain and sinus congestion.  All legumes contain a cocktail of anti-nutrients (in addition to lectins) which potentially produce adverse health/nutritional effects.  The most common of these are saponins and phytate.  Pseudograins also are also loaded with a variety of antinutrients whose effects are dose dependent — meaning that the more you ingest, the worse are the health effects.

There is no evidence that yo-yo dieting has any lasting effect on your metabolism.

Although severe weight cyclers were, on average, nearly 20 pounds heavier than non-cyclers at the start of the study, at the end of the study the researchers found no significant differences between those who yo-yo dieted and those who didn’t with regard to the ability to successfully participate in diet and/or exercise programs. The cyclers also did not differ from the non-cyclers with regard to the impact of diet or diet-plus-exercise on weight loss, percentage of body fat and lean muscle mass gained or lost. Other physiological factors such as blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, and blood concentrations of hormones such as leptin (which helps make one feel full) and adiponectin (which helps regulate glucose levels) also did not differ significantly among those whose weight fluctuated and those whose did not.