I used that title for a bit of fun - which I'll get to in a minute.
But this thread is really to make a book recommendation. I'm now part-way through a book that I think many people here might enjoy for the insight it gives into biological life, human and non-human. Specifically, the book explains how that life is related to cycles of light and dark and the seasons of the year - IOW, ultimately to the movement of the planet.
The book is Lights out: sleep sugar and survival:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lights-out-TS-WILEY/dp/0671038680/
Anyway, now for my bit of fun. As anyone who's awake knows, what makes you fat is excessive consumption of carbohydrates. The women's magazines - and the government - will tell you its eating fat. But it's not. Do these nicompoops never even stop to think why the stomach on overweight men is called a beer-belly? And the failure of low-fat diets - and the health problems they cause - are glaringly obvious enough by now and ought to be a national scandal. Now, I think many people here will have some reading in the ethnographic material and will know that people living by the chase ate up to 80% of their calories as fat. And you can live better on that than on what passes for a "healthy" diet among ourselves. The anthropologist and explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson proved this personally back in the 1950s when the low-fat nonsense first surfaced:
http://www.zerocarbage.com/library/FOTL.pdf
He'd eaten like this for years when living with the Eskimo:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Eskimo-New-Vilhjalmur-Stefansson/dp/1594626510/
And the Eskimo, of course, had been eating like it for aeons. They enjoyed superb health on it. But they, poor people, are now prey to all the diseases of modern civilization since they began eating as we do. And no-one ever saw a fat Eskimo - or a fat Maasai for the matter of that.
Anyway, some people will be aware of low-carbohydrate diets - and that they work. But one of the interesting aspects of this book is how it puts that in context.
Sugar is effectively crystallized sunshine. Fruit ripens through the long summer days and is there in late summer and early autumn. And, in nature, it's only available seasonally. So what does every bird, every vole, almost every damn creature out there do? They eat as many berries and whatnot as they can at that time in order to put on fat for the winter. That gives you a fat-pad to insulate you against the cold, and fat stores to draw on for energy. that's what they all do: they eat carbohydrates to get fat. So who are you going to believe? The government or the whole of nature. Of course, if you keep stuffing carbohydrates year-round (not just fruit, but, in human society, bread and booze) then you never get to the winter state. And, if you keep on, keep on doing it, then eventually you get insulin-resistant (c.f. Type 2 diabetes), you stop putting on fat, and your bloodstream starts filling up with glucose. And there's a biological reason for that: animals that become insulin resistant are then able to hibernate and damn near freeze without their cells sustaining damage. The sugar acts as an antifreeze - rather as ethylene glycol does in a car's cooling system. It also holds in water, so they have their own endogenous water while they hibernate. But, of course, humans never do hibernate ...
We're living in a permanently summer-state, where electric light prolongs the daylight hours (which, in itself, increases people's appetite for carbohydrates), and where sugary foods are available 24/7.
Anyway, there's much more in the book. The authors say that the only animals apart from Man that get cancer are domestic pets. Why? Because they live with us, they don't get enough sleep and what sleep they do get is rendered less effective by light-pollution. It seems that when you sleep your body releases melatonin, and that down-regulates other hormones. If it's not dark enough, that can't happen. And woe-betide you if your hormones get out of balance. Researchers have found out that shining a low-intensity light-source behind a subject's knee, is enough to stop him producing and secreting melatonin. Also, as many people will know, your gut hold about 4 pounds of bacteria that help you digest food and act as your immune system. Now it seems that harmful organisms among these can proliferate, but when you sleep these get thinned out. If you don't sleep enough, your immune system gets badly compromised.
In fine, sleep is very important - certainly far more so than people have realized. It should also be in total darkness. Not so long ago - just about within living memory - people got nine to ten hours sleep a night in winter (when you should get more in accordance with the natural cycle of the Earth.) Now, thanks to Mr. Eddison's invention, we can sit up past bedtime in a never-ending summer. And, when we do go to bed, we don't get the effects we should be getting because the council's got a streetlamp outside the window that leaks around the curtains. We pay the price in our health.
Anyway, the book is a hugely enlightening and important one that could literally save lives. It's also a fascinating glimpse into how life has evolved in sync with the movement of the planet.
But this thread is really to make a book recommendation. I'm now part-way through a book that I think many people here might enjoy for the insight it gives into biological life, human and non-human. Specifically, the book explains how that life is related to cycles of light and dark and the seasons of the year - IOW, ultimately to the movement of the planet.
The book is Lights out: sleep sugar and survival:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lights-out-TS-WILEY/dp/0671038680/
Anyway, now for my bit of fun. As anyone who's awake knows, what makes you fat is excessive consumption of carbohydrates. The women's magazines - and the government - will tell you its eating fat. But it's not. Do these nicompoops never even stop to think why the stomach on overweight men is called a beer-belly? And the failure of low-fat diets - and the health problems they cause - are glaringly obvious enough by now and ought to be a national scandal. Now, I think many people here will have some reading in the ethnographic material and will know that people living by the chase ate up to 80% of their calories as fat. And you can live better on that than on what passes for a "healthy" diet among ourselves. The anthropologist and explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson proved this personally back in the 1950s when the low-fat nonsense first surfaced:
http://www.zerocarbage.com/library/FOTL.pdf
He'd eaten like this for years when living with the Eskimo:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Eskimo-New-Vilhjalmur-Stefansson/dp/1594626510/
And the Eskimo, of course, had been eating like it for aeons. They enjoyed superb health on it. But they, poor people, are now prey to all the diseases of modern civilization since they began eating as we do. And no-one ever saw a fat Eskimo - or a fat Maasai for the matter of that.
Anyway, some people will be aware of low-carbohydrate diets - and that they work. But one of the interesting aspects of this book is how it puts that in context.
Sugar is effectively crystallized sunshine. Fruit ripens through the long summer days and is there in late summer and early autumn. And, in nature, it's only available seasonally. So what does every bird, every vole, almost every damn creature out there do? They eat as many berries and whatnot as they can at that time in order to put on fat for the winter. That gives you a fat-pad to insulate you against the cold, and fat stores to draw on for energy. that's what they all do: they eat carbohydrates to get fat. So who are you going to believe? The government or the whole of nature. Of course, if you keep stuffing carbohydrates year-round (not just fruit, but, in human society, bread and booze) then you never get to the winter state. And, if you keep on, keep on doing it, then eventually you get insulin-resistant (c.f. Type 2 diabetes), you stop putting on fat, and your bloodstream starts filling up with glucose. And there's a biological reason for that: animals that become insulin resistant are then able to hibernate and damn near freeze without their cells sustaining damage. The sugar acts as an antifreeze - rather as ethylene glycol does in a car's cooling system. It also holds in water, so they have their own endogenous water while they hibernate. But, of course, humans never do hibernate ...
We're living in a permanently summer-state, where electric light prolongs the daylight hours (which, in itself, increases people's appetite for carbohydrates), and where sugary foods are available 24/7.
Anyway, there's much more in the book. The authors say that the only animals apart from Man that get cancer are domestic pets. Why? Because they live with us, they don't get enough sleep and what sleep they do get is rendered less effective by light-pollution. It seems that when you sleep your body releases melatonin, and that down-regulates other hormones. If it's not dark enough, that can't happen. And woe-betide you if your hormones get out of balance. Researchers have found out that shining a low-intensity light-source behind a subject's knee, is enough to stop him producing and secreting melatonin. Also, as many people will know, your gut hold about 4 pounds of bacteria that help you digest food and act as your immune system. Now it seems that harmful organisms among these can proliferate, but when you sleep these get thinned out. If you don't sleep enough, your immune system gets badly compromised.
In fine, sleep is very important - certainly far more so than people have realized. It should also be in total darkness. Not so long ago - just about within living memory - people got nine to ten hours sleep a night in winter (when you should get more in accordance with the natural cycle of the Earth.) Now, thanks to Mr. Eddison's invention, we can sit up past bedtime in a never-ending summer. And, when we do go to bed, we don't get the effects we should be getting because the council's got a streetlamp outside the window that leaks around the curtains. We pay the price in our health.
Anyway, the book is a hugely enlightening and important one that could literally save lives. It's also a fascinating glimpse into how life has evolved in sync with the movement of the planet.
.........I'm also a gluten intolerant vegan, so that argument won't hold.
