#just can’t get her blood sugar under control nor can I measure it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sciencespies · 4 years

Text

What the Rhythm of a Maned Wolf's Heart Reveals

https://sciencespies.com/nature/what-the-rhythm-of-a-maned-wolfs-heart-reveals/

What the Rhythm of a Maned Wolf's Heart Reveals

Smithsonian Voices National Zoo

What the Rhythm of a Maned Wolf’s Heart Reveals

September 8th, 2020, 10:09AM / BY

Ashley Goetz

(Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute)

Spindly legs and thick, red fur have earned them the nickname “foxes on stilts,” but maned wolves are neither fox nor wolf. These charismatic canids are a unique species (the only members of the genus Chrysocyon) and are found solely in South America’s savannas, where Brazilian researcher Rosana Nogueira de Moraes has studied them for nearly 15 years.

In 2015, Moraes came across a study of wild black bears that used heart sensors to reveal what observation couldn’t — that the bears had a hidden stress response to drones flying overhead. She wondered what the same technology might reveal about maned wolves. Two years later, she helped launch the Rhythm of Life Project, a maned wolf heart rate monitoring study at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. Moraes shares the latest on the Rhythm of Life Project and what researchers have learned.

Why is it important to protect maned wolves?

Maned wolves are a “keystone” species because they provide critical ecosystem services. They keep pest populations under control by hunting small rodents, and they help disperse the seeds of native plants. Maned wolf poop can be full of the seeds of a tomato-like wild fruit that they love to eat. The fruit, called the wolf apple, is even named after them. Maned wolves are also great ambassadors for the conservation of the Brazilian Cerrado, one of the most threatened savanna biomes in the world.

What do you hope to learn by monitoring their heart rates?

Maned wolves are very secretive and shy animals, so they are good candidates to help us answer some important questions. How well do animals hide their “emotions?” Is behavior a good indicator of an animal’s internal response? And how does their heart respond to human presence or changes in the environment?

Heart rate is a result of the balance of activity in the autonomic nervous system — the part of the nervous system that automatically controls body functions, like blood flow and digestion. When an animal is excited or stressed, the system increases its heart rate to prepare for a fight-or-flight response. If an animal is calm, its heart beats much slower. So, by tracking heart rate, we can identify if situations have a positive or negative impact.

VIDEO: Maned wolf Hope stops to stretch in her yard, with a relaxed heart rate of 57 beats per minute.

It becomes even more powerful when combined with other tools — like a daily report from animal care staff, a measurement of stress hormones from fecal (poop) samples, or a genetics report on the kind of microorganisms present in a maned wolf’s gut. These tools can inform us about levels of stress, but heart monitors can help us pinpoint the moment when stress occurs and find the cause.

How do you monitor a maned wolf’s heart?

We use heart monitors that were made for humans by Medtronic Inc, who donated the devices used for this project. The monitors weigh only 2.4 grams, and we place them under a maned wolf’s skin, over the heart area. The process is like injecting a dog with a microchip, but because the monitor is larger than a microchip, we need to make a small cut and then close it afterward with stitches. The monitor continuously senses each heartbeat or, more precisely, the electric current that comes from the heart when it beats. It records the average heart rate every 2 minutes and can last up to three years.

The heart rate monitors that we use for our maned wolves are the same monitors used for humans with heart problems. (Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute)

To read the data, we use a special computer and a handheld device that connects with the heart monitor via radio. The monitors are also equipped with a remote transmission system that can send data to a computer whenever a maned wolf rests near one of our “antennas,” which are set up near their dens.

How many maned wolves are you monitoring?

We care for 13 maned wolves at SCBI, and so far, we have monitored six of them — three males and three females. This is the first study of its kind for maned wolves, and we’ve collected more than 2.5 million points of heart rate data! Heart rates increased in response to people, restraint, loud noises (like lawn mowers) and social interactions with other wolves. Often, heart rates spiked in response to a negative experience, like being startled by the presence of a neighboring wolf in the middle of the night. They also increased when an animal was positively excited, like when a couple approached each other during the breeding season.

VIDEO: Maned wolf Caido reacted to a neighboring wolf barking in the middle of the night, and his heart rate spiked to 118 beats per minute.

How can you tell if stress is positive or negative?

A good example in humans would be the body response of two different people riding a roller coaster. While one person could be very excited, the other could be extremely scared, or even sick, during the ride. Both people might have similar spikes in heart rate, but the stress would only be positive for the person with positive emotions. Since maned wolves can’t tell us how they feel, we use their behaviors, hormone measurements, and the magnitude of their heart rate increases to tell us when their stress is positive or negative. Some wolves like the presence of a familiar human and get excited when that person visits. We call that positive stress. Others might show a similar heart rate but a totally different behavior, such as avoiding the visitor, which is negative stress.

Has anything that you have learned so far surprised you?

I was fascinated by the wide range of heart rates, and the extremes that the maned wolf’s heart can reach. The heart rate ranges we found were very different from what was previously known. When maned wolves are asleep or resting, their heart rates can drop below 30 beats per minute. But they can have a 10-fold increase, reaching up to 330 beats per minute, when they are stressed. Those extremes normally last for just a few seconds.

I’m also amazed and genuinely happy to see how technology can help us learn so much about ourselves and about animals. The footage that we capture with our trail cameras at SCBI can be inspiring, enjoyable and even poetic at times. So, it’s fascinating to also capture what is happening inside an animal while they freely move and live their lives.

For example, we have videos of a maned wolf couple fighting across the fence when they were first introduced for the breeding season. In later images, the same pair is very playful and moving around together, as if “in love.” And the best part is that the heart monitors were capturing the changes in heart rate for all those moments!

[embedded content]

VIDEO: Maned wolves Echo and Layla play together in their habitat at SCBI. In this moment, Echo’s heart rate was around 143 beats per minute, and Layla’s was about 136. They were positively excited.

How has heart rate monitoring helped support the care of maned wolves at SCBI?

Maned wolves are solitary animals, so living as a family group (parents and pups) might be stressful depending on the group’s size and how long they are together. Heart rate monitoring helped us identify that one of our male wolves was stressed while living with a female and their four pups — and confirmed that moving him to a new area solved the problem. We can also work with animal care staff to test if maned wolves respond positively to novel forms of enrichment.

VIDEO: Enrichment takes many forms. Sometimes, it’s a simple pile of leaves to pounce in. Maned wolf Fin’s heart rate increased to 158 beats per minute as he played with leaves and a stick in his yard one night.

The core of this project is the heart. As humans, we can understand that heart rate tells us a lot about our emotions and how we feel in each life situation. Since we don’t speak the “language” of animals, we need projects like this to better understand how they perceive their environments, so we can use that information to help them thrive.

How can this data support the conservation of maned wolves in the wild?

Only 3% of the natural habitat available for maned wolves in Brazil is inside protected areas. That means animals are also living in areas where encounters with humans, vehicles and farming machinery are common — and stress levels are higher. When sugar cane fields are harvested, for example, wolves can lose all their vegetation cover and food resources in less than 24 hours.

Having objective measurements of stress levels, and an understanding of where and how wolves move, could help us and land owners think about managing the land in ways that are more beneficial to wildlife. Our main goal is to become experts in the use of this technology, so we can apply it to the conservation of maned wolves and other endangered species in the wild. Studying the animals at SCBI has provided us with the skills we need, as well as the opportunity to overcome any obstacles in a controlled and safe environment.

What’s next for the Rhythm of Life Project?

This project is an excellent example of how much we can accomplish when we work as a team. We are physiologists, ecologists, biologists, veterinarians, animal care staff, students, donors, partners and more, all coming together to make this work possible. After a successful start, we’re expanding our scientific research at SCBI to other species, including eight scimitar-horned oryx. We proved that heart monitors can be safely used in maned wolves, and generated valuable information to compare with wild wolves. In 2021, we plan to start a field study with maned wolves in Brazil.

The Rhythm of Life Project was made possible with generous support from Medtronic.

Ashley Goetz is a web content writer at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, where she translates animal care research and conservation science into compelling stories. Ashley earned a bachelor’s degree in public communication with a minor in marine biology from American University. When she isn’t at the Zoo, she spends her time traveling, crocheting and watching reruns of “Parks and Recreation” with her two cats.

More From This Author »

#Nature

2 notes · View notes

yourhealthandexercisetips · 4 years

Text

Health and Exercise Tips

You may disagree with these facts, but that's what keeps the myths alive.

And away we go...

1. The healthiest method to gauge your progress is weighing yourself: MYTH

You think I'm about to say that the answer is to get frequent body fat tests, don't you? Nope! The healthiest way to gauge your progress is to make sure your strength levels increase when performing resistance exercise, make sure your endurance improves through cardiovascular exercise and make sure that your clothes fit exactly the way you want them to. When did we stop trusting ourselves to the extent that everything has to be successful by a measurement? Don't we have enough pressure in our lives?

2. Women will get big if they weight train: MYTH

A woman has approximately one-third the testosterone compared to a man, so putting on a ton of muscle is not going to happen. The women you see in the magazines that look big and manly are on steroids, growth hormones, etc. You may look bulky if you're carrying excessive body fat and building muscle. However, if you're reducing body fat, you'll eventually be able to see those lean, defined muscles.

3. You must work out five to six days per week to make progress: MYTH

I see a lot of people in the gym five to six days a week and they'd be better off playing ping pong. Consistency and level of effort is the key. I'd rather see someone work out three days per week with enthusiasm and intensity, than five inconsistent days of lackadaisical effort. In fact, for those clients that have trouble with motivation, I recommend only two days of workouts per week, but they must do it every week.

4. Spot Reducing Is Possible: MYTH

The human body loses fat over the entire body at various rates of speed. It's impossible to spot reduce. If you're focusing on only losing fat that sits on your hips, it won't work. Generally, the first place you gain fat is the last place you lose it.

5. If You Exercise You Can Eat Whatever You Want: MYTH

The big message in the nutrition and personal training world today is that most people need to eat more to stimulate the metabolism. The truth is, you need the correct amount of total calories to lose body fat. Exercising will burn calories, but if you're eating anything you want and you're over maintenance calories, you'll most likely gain fat.

6. Stretching prevents injuries: MYTH

After analyzing the results of six studies, researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could not find any correlation between stretching and injury prevention. According to Dr. Julie Gilchrist, one of the researchers involved with the study, "Stretching increases flexibility, but most injuries occur within the normal range of motion." Dr. Gilchrist goes on to say, "Stretching and warming up have just gone together for decades. It's simply what's done, and it hasn't been approached through rigorous science."

Make no mistake; a stretching program is not without benefits. Seven of nine studies suggest that a regular stretching program does help to strengthen muscles. However, it does not appear to actually prevent injuries. Warming up prior to exercise and increasing blood flow to the muscles is actually more conducive to injury prevention. I'm not suggesting that you eliminate stretching. It is valuable and flexibility is certainly important as we age. However, we may be off base assuming it's an injury-prevention technique.

7. There is a 'Best Workout Routine': MYTH

There is no best and only way to workout. I get a multitude of questions concerning the efficiency of super slow-rep workouts, "the best video tape" workout, "best number of days to workout," etc. In reality, it's good for you if it works for you, but don't stay with any of it for too long. Don't let the body or the mind adapt. The body will adapt to any exercise routine in approximately four to six weeks. Vary volume of sets, time between sets, reps, exercises, cardiovascular exercises, exercise tapes etc. Manipulate your routine every three to four weeks and view change as your key to efficiency and results.

8. One should lose weight before they begin an exercise program: MYTH

There is no physiological reason to lose weight prior to beginning an exercise program. Exercise is the best thing for your health and there is no time like the present to start. There are too many benefits of exercise to list here, but you're doing every system and cell in your body a world of good by exercising. Any amount starting with 5 minutes a day is beneficial.

Fat loss and muscle gain are only two of the many benefits that your body will experience from exercising. Each day will get a little easier as you become more fit. There is no justification for waiting to begin - unless you have orders from your doctor.

Whether you exercise with 20-percent body fat or 30-percent body fat, you'll still be providing your body with the same benefits. Of course with less fat, you can move a little easier and it may be less strenuous on your heart, but you can be more fit and efficient at 30-percent body fat if you are exercising than if you wait to get to 20-percent body fat without exercising. The goal is to gain or preserve muscle and lose fat - not just lose weight (which implies both muscle and fat).

9. When working out with weights, very high reps (over 15) will help me to get defined muscles and very low reps (8-12) will make them bulky: MYTH

You're not going to improve your strength or effect muscle definition if you're choosing a weight that is too light. Muscles respond to overload. It's the only way to get the cosmetic and strength benefit from weight training.

Muscular definition is the result of a calorie reduced diet, overall body fat loss and weight training with challenging poundage's. Add cardiovascular exercise and you have the body you've been dreaming about - over time, of course. The guidelines used for selecting a weight are to choose a resistance that allows you to do between 8 and 12 repetitions. If you can't do 8, it's too heavy. If you can do 12 repetitions, then increase your resistance by 5 percent. Keep in mind that all of your muscle groups are not equally as strong. For example, you may be able to use 7 pounds on a lateral raise, but need 15 pounds to be challenged during a squat.

10. Lifting weights very slowly is the best way to weight train: MYTH

Lifting super slowly produces super long workouts - and that's it. University of Alabama researchers recently studied two groups of lifters doing a 29-minute workout. One group performed exercises using a 5-second up phase and a 10-second down phase, the other a more traditional approach of 1 second up and 1 second down. The faster group burned 71-percent more calories and lifted 250-percent more weight than the super slow lifters.

The real expert says: "The best increases in strength are achieved by doing the up phase as rapidly as possible," says Gary Hunter, Ph.D., C.S.C.S., the lead study author. "Lower the weight more slowly and under control." There's greater potential for growth during the lowering phase, and when you lower with control, there's less chance of injury.

11. Eating a lot less or going on a crash diet will get the results you seek: MYTH

This was a dietary strategy popularized prior to the 1980s. People would go on crash diets like the grapefruit diet and lose weight - meaning muscle and fat. They assumed just eating less would take care of everything. Today, we know total calories important, but so are the amounts of protein, carbohydrates and fats in the diet.

A slight caloric deficit (less than maintenance) must be adhered to as well as eating small meals and snacks every two to three hours. This helps to control blood sugar; and it is a fact that blood-sugar control will help you to lose fat. It may look confusing, but eDiets.com takes all the planning and hassles away by doing it for you. I always recommend some sort of structured nutritional program. Just guessing doesn't work.

12. You must be 100-percent perfect on your nutrition program all the time: MYTH

Sure, this is a great thing to do if you have a strict time frame for fat loss, but it's a disaster waiting to happen for most people.

Haven't we learned that we love food and we need to find a way to build in modest amounts of treats that we enjoy? I trained a client several years ago who asked me to design a nutrition program for her. She was somewhat depressed as she told me she just knew she had to give up eating the four chocolate-chip cookies two to three times per week that she had with her kids. She was overjoyed when I told her she didn't have to give them up. However, I mentioned that I was going to reduce the number to two cookies and it would fit into the overall nutrition solution. Yes, she did lose body fat with this realistic approach, and she also enjoyed her treat. We need to make progress, but a sane approach encourages consistency and avoids that dreaded denial feeling.

13. Performing countless abdominal crunches thinking it will get rid of the 'pooch' area on the lower tummy/abdominal area: MYTH

I see this comment or get a question related to this issue approximately 20 times per week. It is not possible to spot reduce any area of the body.

The real solution is to reduce overall body fat through a slight caloric deficit, add resistance exercise (weight training) to stimulate the metabolism; and, cardiovascular exercise to burn additional calories. That's the way to fat loss. Performing crunches will never reduce the abdominal area because it only serves to strengthen muscle, not flatten a specific area. Just as 200 bicep curls will not make the arm smaller, nor will 200 abdominal crunches make the waist smaller. You cannot spot reduce any part of the body. It's just not physiologically possible.

14. Performing a lot of cardio is the best way to lose fat: MYTH

Some people go up to 90 minutes and longer on a cardio machine. The problem with this strategy is it's completely ineffective. It's a poor method to lose body fat and a real time waster.

You can workout for long sessions with moderate intensity or use shorter sessions with higher intensity (based on your fitness level). You can't do both! The shorter, more-intense session will burn more overall calories and preserve muscle, which will make you look tight and lean when you get to your scale weight goal. In addition, the shorter/intense sessions will have a more profound effect on the calories you continue to burn 24 hours after completing the session. Want to lose fat efficiently through cardio? Pick up your pace a bit and try to get a more intense and efficient 30 to 45 minutes. You don't need to be huffing and puffing for dear life, just increase the intensity a bit and keep it sustained at a higher level within your target heart-rate range.

15. Calories are the only thing that counts when trying to lose fat or gain muscle: MYTH

Ratios of protein, carbohydrate and fats are also important. The key to losing fat and gaining muscle is controlling and manipulating insulin levels. In simple terms, when we consume excessive calories or excessive amounts of high glycemic carbohydrates at one meal, the body's blood sugar rises. When this happens, the pancreas secretes insulin to lower blood sugar levels.

2 notes · View notes

imsvg · 5 years

Text

firsts

Fandom: Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia Pairing: MomoJirou (Momo Yaoyorozu/Kyouka Jirou) Words: 2182 Summary: In which Kyouka and Momo share a late-night conversation, leading to something much...greater. Fantasy AU Links: FF is here! AO3 is here!

even though she might never read this bc she doesn't know i write fanfic, s/o to my beautiful gf who helped me through my first year of college and the countless late-night talks we had that inspired me to write this.

"Do you miss home?"

The question is unexpected. Kyouka turns and sees Momo cuddled in her fur blanket, wrapping it around her as tightly as she can to protect herself from the bitter bite of the winter wind. Her nose is red from the cold, its color slowly spreading to her cheeks. As she exhales, her breath materializes momentarily, before it disappears as quickly as it appeared. Her eyes, those warm, brown eyes, shimmer in the silver moonlight, like pools of honey, as she stares straight up into the night sky, fixated.

Kyouka averts her gaze and stares down at the oversized cloak she wrapped around her body. She buries her chin and mouth in its thick fur, curling herself into a smaller ball, bringing her knees closer up to her chest.

"Yeah," she finally says, "I do."

"…How often?"

Kyouka takes time to think. It's strange how her feelings suddenly dissipate once someone asks about them. "I—mm—it's hard to say, really. Sometimes I miss home a lot, other times I don't—up to the point where I don't even think about it."

She hears a soft hum. Kyouka turns her head again, and finds Momo in that exact position. "Do you miss home?" she asks.

Momo moves. She does what Kyouka did, tucking her chin and mouth in her blanket, bringing her knees up against her chest. The bard can hear the faint clink, clink of the knight's armor.

"I do," Momo begins, "but I find it kind of…stupid."

Kyouka raises an eyebrow in slight surprise and interest. "Why do you think that?"

The bard watches as Momo's eyes become unreadable—Kyouka catches hints of somberness and cynicism, but nothing…concrete.

"Because, you know, I don't come from a far place." She laughs. It sounds…degrading, and it sends shivers down Kyouka's spine. "I only live in the neighboring district. I don't come from across the continent like you, or Izuku. Even Iida and Shouto live farther away compared to me, and they only live in the next towns over. I think, if we were to be honest, I don't think I really have a right to be homesick."

The bard is at a loss for words. She sits there, letting the information simmer inside, digesting it slowly. It feels like forever until she finally says, "I…I don't think it's really about who deserves to feel that way or not. I mean, if someone died one way, and someone else died another, in the end, both of them died. Things like this is—mm—is something I think can't be measured by who does and doesn't deserve something. Y-you know?" She turns her head and sees Momo staring at her blanket. The knight seems far away and distant, clearly lost in thought.

Kyouka's body begins to heat up from anxiety. "U-uh, I don't think what I said made sense but—"

"It did." Momo raises her head and gives Kyouka a soft, warm smile. Tension leaves the bard's body, melting away like ice. "It did, don't worry."

"…Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"What do you miss about home?"

"What do I miss…?" Momo repeats the question, but in a way that sounds pensive rather than asking for clarification. A moment passes and she breaks out into laughter. It sounds so rich, so full of life, so unlike her previous one. This one sounds more like Momo, Kyouka thinks to herself.

"My definition of home isn't…orthodox, I guess you can say. I don't think about the place I live in now. I think about the place I used to live in."

"Did you move estates?"

"No, I didn't. I've been living in the same house ever since I was born. But it was different back then. Mother was alive, Father was always there and smiling. The staff laughed with joy whenever they served us. The hearth was always alive as the sun set, keeping the cold at bay. I would sit in between Mother and Father, sharing in their warmth as we watched the flames dance in front of us. They wouldn't wear their armor. They looked like…regular people. They weren't renowned heroes of Yuuei's army, nor were they folk heroes. No titles, no family name to uphold—we were just…people. Like the ones who walk in the market every day."

The nostalgic smile on Momo's face melts away. Something heavy settles in the air, and Kyouka suddenly feels colder.

"It's not the same as it used to be," Momo says softly, "but I wish it was."

Silence settles between them.

It's suffocating. The bard's throat feels like it tied itself into a knot. She struggles to find air and words, no thought coming to mind. Slowly, she turns away, feeling as if she had asked a question she shouldn't have.

"Sorry," is all she says.

Kyouka hears a sigh. "It's fine," Momo says, "it's not your fault."

"Still, I probably shouldn't have asked in the first place."

A weight rests on Kyouka's shoulder. Strands of wild, black hair tickle the side of her cheek. Something rich and vibrant, like perfume, hits Kyouka's sense of smell, filling up her lungs and chest with something…warm, sweet, like caramelized sugar.

"I think talking about it made me feel a little bit better about it," Momo says, her voice carrying soft vibrations that run down Kyouka's arm.

Subconscious tension leaves the bard's body. She relaxes, and gingerly, places her face on top of Momo's head. They stay like that, wrapped up in their blankets and cloaks, sharing what little warmth they can with one another. They stare at the sky together, in silence, watching the stars wink at them from their place in the heavens. Kyouka recalls the vague shapes she memorized diligently when she was a child, sitting underneath the night sky with her parents as her mother sang songs of myths and legends and her father plucked his lute.

"—ka? —ouka? Kyouka?"

"H-huh? Wh-wha?" She blinks, and notices Momo lifted her head to stare at her quizzically.

"Are you okay?" the knight asks.

"Y-yeah. I was just…lost in my thoughts, sorry."

Momo nods understandingly, the look of concern melting off of her face. "I'm guessing you didn't hear what I said, then," she says with a playful smile.

Kyouka feels her cheeks burn with embarrassment. "N-no. S-sorry."

"It's fine, don't worry." Momo readjusts herself and places her head back on Kyouka's shoulder. "I asked what you missed about home."

"The food," she says without hesitation. "I mean, I know that the food here is, comparatively, way better, but the food from back home has something else that…this place doesn't have for me, yet. And—and I think it's the fact it's missing warmth. N-not like literal warmth; you know, more like the emotional kind. And I think it's because of this lack of warmth that I miss my parents' stories."

"Their…stories? Like, the stories they told during their travels?"

"Yeah. They'd recite epics and poems and songs and myths and legends from memory when I was a kid. They would sing and dance, and I would learn their craft. And while I learned how to play lute, they would recount tales of when they sailed across the sea and traveled throughout the continent in troupes and adventuring groups, performing in streets and pubs. It was all so normal and so mundane compared to the other stories they would tell me, but I always thought their stories were the most fantastical of all."

Momo laughs again, this one soft and delicate like an aria. "They sound like amazing people," she says quietly.

Kyouka feels her face flush. It's not in the usual, embarrassed way, however; this is something full of pride, full of honor. For the first time ever since she came to Yuuei, Kyouka finds herself taking pride in her roots. For once, there is no shame about her lack of training, money, nor luxury. For once, she doesn't feel the need to hide herself, her stories, and her talent.

For once, she actually feels proud to be who she is.

"Yeah," she says with a small smile, "they are."

The weight on Kyouka's shoulder is lifted, and the bard turns to see the knight staring at her. Kyouka takes in the way the moon shines down on Momo, silver moonlight gleaming off of her plate armor, causing those brilliant brown eyes to shimmer like gems. The knight's wild black hair sways in the soft wind, individual strands dancing as she continues to stare at the bard, and Kyouka swears she's looking at a goddess, like the ones her parents would sing of. There's something about Momo that makes her seem…ethereal, other-wordly, as if she was plucked from the heavens and planted gently on this mortal realm.

Kyouka's lungs ache because she forgets how to breathe. She releases the breath she's been holding for so long, exhaling softly, but it hitches in her throat when she feels something cold kissing her warm cheek. She reaches up and grabs onto Momo's hand, wrapping her fingers around the cold knight's.

"And you," Momo begins quietly, "you're just as amazing."

"No," Kyouka says with a breathless laugh, "you are."

Momo returns the same laugh, and it's only then does Kyouka realize how close they are to one another. She can feel the knight's warmth, her scent, her forehead pressing against hers…with every passing moment, they get closer and closer, their noses brushing against one another, lips sharing the same breath—

Kyouka feels her heart beating in her skull, her chest. It's erratic, pumping blood and adrenaline throughout her body, warming her face and ears, coloring her cheeks, pushing her closer and closer and closer and closer—

Their lips touch, and suddenly Kyouka doesn't know how to function. She feels entranced, as if she's under a spell, as if she lost control of everything. Her heart beats faster than ever, rattling inside of her ribcage, its beat reverberating throughout her body. Her lungs forget how to breathe again, but she doesn't care, not when she's kissing—oh gods, she's kissing Momo, she's actually kissing Momo, and her lips are chapped, but so, so soft, and they're moving against hers, and Momo moves her hand to pull her just a little bit closer, and—

They break away. Kyouka sucks in a breath through her nose, the cold air doing nothing to cool her down. Her heart is rampaging in her chest, and she swears she might pass out at any moment, because by the gods she just kissed Momo—

"Are you okay?" Momo asks, her warm breath buffeting Kyouka's lips as she pulls back her hand.

The bard blinks, remembering where she is, before saying, "Y-yeah. I just—wow." She pulls back a little more and runs a hand through her hair, laughing breathlessly. "Wow."

"Is…that a bad 'wow?'"

"N-no! I'm just—wow—I'm just—that's…I've never done something like that before. I'm just kind of—blown away, is all. I-in a good way, of course." Kyouka clears her throat, embarrassed at her blunders. "A-are you okay?"

Momo smiles, and tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "More than okay. If I'm being honest I've, mm"—she turns away, her cheeks turning as red as Ejirou's hair—"been wanting to do that for a while."

Kyouka feels her face heating up. "Y-you have?"

"I—I know it's strange I just—couldn't help feeling that way. You just…make me feel safe. I don't know how else to describe it. There's just something about you—I don't know if it's your songs or your voice or just your mere presence—but I just feel so…so safe every time I'm with you. Like nothing could go wrong. Like…like you're home." The knight looks up, almost sheepishly, and quietly asks, "Does that make sense?"

A crooked smile tugs on Kyouka's lips. "It does. Because I feel the same way whenever I'm with you, too."

"Do you?" Momo's eyes widen with surprise.

"I do," is all the bard says before she twines their fingers together.

"…So what now?"

"What do you mean?"

"What do we do now? Are we…you know…."

The suggestion makes the tips of Kyouka's ears burn. "H-honestly, I don't know. But what I do know," she continues, squeezing Momo's hand in hers, "is that I want to stay by your side. And I don't want to lose you."

The knight smiles, then nods. "I want that, too."

Nothing else is said between them after. They continue sitting there, just as they had been throughout the night, but Kyouka notices differences. They're closer together, their hands are locked together, and there is something burning in Kyouka's chest, like an ember, sitting underneath her heart.

The bard doesn't know what love feels like. But as she sits next to the knight, holding her close, Kyouka wonders if this is the beginning of something similar.

The thought makes her smile.

it's been a hot second since i last wrote anything, so i'm really sorry if i'm rusty. i guess you can say that this is a continuation of the first MomoJirou fic I wrote a while back, but I wrote them kind of independently from one another. I remember mentioning a whole fantasy AU I was writing for BNHA, and while my motivation for that has kind of wavered, im on summer break from college now. so maybe i'll be able to put smth up for that? im just not sure what course i want to take for that story. it sux.

but anyways, i hope you enjoyed this oneshot. if you want more of these two in this particular universe, please let me know! i'd love to flesh out the whole fantasy au with just these two to give me some sort of foundation for the bigger project.

thank you for reading! i love you!

#i write #momojirou #jiroumomo #momo yaoyorozu #jirou kyouka #bnha #bnha fanfic #wlw

25 notes · View notes

jesseneufeld · 6 years

Text

Why “Is It Keto?” Is the Wrong Question

Hey, folks! Today’s post is written by Dr. Lindsay Taylor. Lindsay is my co-author on The Keto Reset Instant Pot Cookbook and The Keto Reset Diet Cookbook. She also heads up our Keto Reset and Primal Endurance Facebook communities, and you might have heard her on the Primal Blueprint and Primal Endurance Podcasts. I’ve asked Lindsay if she would pop over to Mark’s Daily Apple from time to time to give us some insights from the front lines of the world of keto in addition to a few other topics. Enjoy!

Hi, everyone, thanks for having me here! Today I want to sort out one of the more common questions we get over in the Keto Reset Facebook community: “Is ____ keto?”

Fill in the blank with any type of food—beets, carrots, tomatoes, soy milk, cassava flour, you name it. It really doesn’t matter what food you insert into that blank because the answer I’m going to give is always the same: There is no such thing as keto and non-keto food.

Now let me explain what I mean there….

Remember, ketosis is a metabolic state defined by having measurable levels of beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) in the blood (or acetone in the breath if that’s how you’re measuring). A ketogenic diet is any way of eating that allows you to be in ketosis. And guess what? There are no foods that automatically kick you out of ketosis—i.e., that are guaranteed to bring your level of measurable ketones to zero upon ingestion. Even pure white sugar won’t knock you out of ketosis if you eat a small enough amount, hence the saying, “Any food is keto if you slice it thinly enough.”

Of course I understand that when someone asks, “Is ____ keto?” they’re really asking, “If I eat a reasonably sized serving of this food, will I be knocked out of ketosis?” And my answer is: I don’t know.

Embracing the Keto Context

I’m not trying to be difficult here, but the answer depends entirely on the context. Among the many variables that factor in are the given individual’s carbohydrate tolerance and insulin sensitivity, how active they are and whether they have recently exercised, and how much of that particular food they intend to eat and their individual response to that food (which itself probably depends on genetics and a whole host of other variables).

In order to be able to classify foods as keto and non-keto, a given food would have to reliably affect most people the same way (i.e., no difference between individuals), and it would have to affect the same person the same way in different contexts (i.e., no difference between situations). That simply isn’t how it works.

Let me give you an example. I recently went to a birthday party at a friend’s house… a friend who just happens to make the best chocolate cake in the world. I don’t even really like cake, except hers is amazing. I reined in my desire to go face-first into the cake and ate a moderate slice. Though I patted myself on the back for my admirable self-control, I expected be out of ketosis the next morning. Guess what? At 10 a.m. the following day: 3.2 mmol/L on my blood ketone meter (anything above 0.5 mmol/L is considered “in ketosis,” and 3.2 is pretty high, especially for me).

So, does that mean that chocolate cake is a keto food? “Yes” because it didn’t knock me out of ketosis? Or still “no” because it’s chocolate cake and everyone knows chocolate cake isn’t keto no matter what my ketone meter said? But if “no,” how did I get one of the highest blood ketone readings I’ve ever registered without extended fasting? Is this the start of the new hottest diet, choco cake-o keto??

The high ketone reading was probably due to the fact that I had done a long training run the morning before and had been somewhat calorie restricted in the days prior. I would not expect the same outcome if I ate the same amount of chocolate cake on a rest day, or if I ate three times as much cake (like I wanted to) even on a heavy training day. Nor do I expect that anyone training for a marathon can eat chocolate cake after runs and remain in ketosis. I might have to do some follow-up cake testing to find out, though. Purely for science, of course….

I think that we can all agree that chocolate cake is not a food that someone should eat regularly, if at all, particularly if being in ketosis is very important to them (or likewise if they care to adhere to Primal principles). Nevertheless, this helps illustrate why “Does it kick me out of ketosis?” isn’t the right metric to use for deciding whether to include a food in your regular keto repertoire.

Ketosis can be a finnicky state. Trying to micromanage it by fretting about whether certain foods are keto seems like a waste of time, especially since most of the foods that people stress over aren’t things like chocolate cake (a “no duh” food) but are otherwise nutritious items like beets, tomatoes, carrots, leeks, and so on. And, anyway, unless you’re following a ketogenic diet to address a serious medical issue like epilepsy, staying in ketosis 100% of the time isn’t required. Mark has written before on the question of whether constant ketosis is even desirable, let alone necessary to meet our health, fitness, and longevity goals.

Fielding Expert Guidance: e.g. “But so-and-so said I’m not allowed to eat ______ because it’s not keto!”

I know if you’ve spent any time researching a ketogenic diet online, you’ve undoubtedly found list after list of “keto foods” and “non-keto foods”… and many times those lists contradict each other. What gives?

Keto being such a hot dietary strategy right now, there are approximately a bazillion keto coaches, keto Facebook groups, YouTube channels, Instagram pages, and blogs all devoted to telling you how to go keto the “correct” way. One “expert” will say absolutely that dairy is not keto, then the next Instagram model will proudly display a bowl of cream cheese with the hashtag #ketobreakfast. One Facebook group will insist that you eat nothing that grows below the ground, while the next lets you eat any vegetables except nightshades, and this one over here only allows members to eat spinach and cabbage. No wonder keto newbies get so overwhelmed!

It’s important to understand that when someone says that certain foods aren’t keto, they really mean that those foods aren’t allowed (a word I strongly dislike) on their version of a keto diet. However, as I said above, any way of eating that results in a state of ketosis—either through carbohydrate restriction, fasting, or a combination of the two—falls under the keto umbrella. There are many, many versions of the keto diet, and just because some “expert” says that certain foods aren’t keto doesn’t mean you can’t achieve your goals while eating those foods. It simply means that this person has decided that their particular version of keto is best, perhaps because it worked well for them, or perhaps because they based it on ethical beliefs or their good-faith interpretation of the available science or, frankly, sometimes because they don’t understand keto very well. And that’s fine–their audience, their rules. That doesn’t make their rules right for everyone, though.

Asking Better Questions

Lest it seem like I’m maligning anyone who sets any kind of parameters on a keto diet, let me be very clear: there are foods that we would and would not encourage members of our Keto Reset community to consume. However, we encourage our community to decide whether or not to eat something not by asking, Is it keto? but by asking, Do I believe this food is healthy?

Of course, because we are a community rooted in Primal sensibilities, we assert that some foods are more likely to promote optimal health—i.e., those in the Primal Blueprint Food Pyramid. And yes, if you decide to go keto, which restricts carbohydrate intake to less than 50 grams per day for most people, it will be harder to accommodate foods like sweet potatoes and seasonal fruit into your daily repertoire even though they fit the Primal mold. However, this is a matter of math, not an indictment of certain foods as “not keto.”

In the Primal version of keto, food quality and nutrient density reign supreme.

We also recognize that there is a lot of individual variability in terms of what constitutes an optimal diet, keto or otherwise. Whether any particular food belongs in your diet depends on how you feel and perform when you eat it, and whether it does or does not move you closer to achieving your goals. That’s highly personal.

Let’s take the example of beets, because this one comes up a lot. Beets are a highly nutritious food that are considered “approved” by Primal standards. They’re also relatively higher in carbs (8 grams per ½ cup) than other veggies, and they grow below the ground, which can feel like a no-no on a ketogenic diet.

Rather than ask:

Are beets keto?

Can I eat these beets?

Am I allowed to eat these beets? (Let me be clear: you are allowed to eat whatever you want, even on a ketogenic diet. Your body, your choice. That doesn’t mean you should.)

Ask this instead:

Do I want to eat these beets?

How will I feel physically and mentally if I eat these beets?

Do I consider these beets to be a healthy choice? (Note that this is about your values, not somebody else’s.)

If these beets were to knock me out of ketosis, would I be ok with that?

For example, your answer to #4 might be, “No. I have only been dedicated to the Keto Reset Diet for a few weeks, and I choose to be conservative in my carb consumption still in order to optimize the adaptation process. This serving of beets has more carbs than I want to add to this meal.” Cool, that’s totally valid—skip the beets. Or it might be, “Yes, I’ve been craving beets, beets are super healthy, and I don’t really care if I’m in ketosis later or not.” Cool, also valid—eat the beets. (For what it’s worth, I have no problem eating beets and staying in ketosis, but YMMV.)

Remember, too, If you really want to know if a certain food affects your level of ketosis, you can get a blood or breath meter and test it systematically. In my opinion, this isn’t necessary for the average ketogenic dieter, but some people prefer a data-driven approach. Robb Wolf also provides an excellent protocol for testing how certain foods affect your blood glucose response in his book Wired to Eat.

Perfection Isn’t the Goal—Health Is.

When it comes to deciding what to eat, we’ll never be able to know exactly what the perfect diet looks like—keto or not. While I certainly applaud people for thinking deeply about the quality of their diets, I also hate to see someone fret because the restaurant served shredded carrots on their salad when they heard that carrots aren’t allowed (there’s that word again) on a ketogenic diet. I have to believe that the stress of worrying about the carrot is more detrimental than the 2.6 grams of carbs in ¼ cup of shredded carrots would ever be.

If you are using the Primal Blueprint as your guiding template, it’s really hard to go wrong. Sure, you might find that your first stab at the keto diet needs tweaking to make it work for you. Maybe you feel better satiated with more fat, or maybe you need more protein. Maybe you prefer to eat breakfast instead of fasting in the morning. Maybe you do better with less saturated and more monounsaturated fat.

You can experiment and adjust these things. You don’t have to be perfect from day one. If you try something and decide you don’t like the outcome, you can move forward with new and better information. This isn’t making a mistake—it’s learning. It’s what we should all be doing to keep moving forward on our personal paths toward optimal health.

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading, everyone. Comment below, or find me in the Keto Reset Facebook group if you have any questions. And as always, #liveawesome!

(function($) { $("#df61pru").load("https://www.marksdailyapple.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=dfads_ajax_load_ads&groups=960&limit=1&orderby=random&order=ASC&container_id=&container_html=none&container_class=&ad_html=div&ad_class=&callback_function=&return_javascript=0&_block_id=df61pru" ); })( jQuery );

ga('send', { hitType: 'event', eventCategory: 'Ad Impression', eventAction: '74563' });

The post Why “Is It Keto?” Is the Wrong Question appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Why “Is It Keto?” Is the Wrong Question published first on https://drugaddictionsrehab.tumblr.com/

0 notes

milenasanchezmk · 6 years

Text

Why “Is It Keto?” Is the Wrong Question

Hi, everyone, thanks for having me here! Today I want to sort out one of the more common questions we get over in the [Keto Reset Facebook community]: “Is ____ keto?”

Now let me explain what I mean there….

Embracing the Keto Context

I’m not trying to be difficult here, but the answer depends entirely on the context. Among the many variables that factor in are the given individual’s [carbohydrate tolerance] and [insulin sensitivity], how active they are and whether they have recently exercised, and how much of that particular food they intend to eat and their individual response to that food (which itself probably depends on genetics and a whole host of other variables).

Fielding Expert Guidance: e.g. “But so-and-so said I’m not allowed to eat ______ because it’s not keto!”

Asking Better Questions

In the Primal version of keto, food quality and nutrient density reign supreme.

Rather than ask:

Are beets keto?

Can I eat these beets?

Am I allowed to eat these beets? (Let me be clear: you are allowed to eat whatever you want, even on a ketogenic diet. Your body, your choice. That doesn’t mean you should.)

Ask this instead:

Do I want to eat these beets?

How will I feel physically and mentally if I eat these beets?

Do I consider these beets to be a healthy choice? (Note that this is about your values, not somebody else’s.)

If these beets were to knock me out of ketosis, would I be ok with that?

Perfection Isn’t the Goal—Health Is.

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading, everyone. Comment below, or find me in the Keto Reset Facebook group if you have any questions. And as always, #liveawesome!

The post Why “Is It Keto?” Is the Wrong Question appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

0 notes

cristinajourdanqp · 6 years

Text

Why “Is It Keto?” Is the Wrong Question

Hi, everyone, thanks for having me here! Today I want to sort out one of the more common questions we get over in the [Keto Reset Facebook community]: “Is ____ keto?”

Now let me explain what I mean there….

Embracing the Keto Context

Fielding Expert Guidance: e.g. “But so-and-so said I’m not allowed to eat ______ because it’s not keto!”

Asking Better Questions

In the Primal version of keto, food quality and nutrient density reign supreme.

Rather than ask:

Are beets keto?

Can I eat these beets?

Am I allowed to eat these beets? (Let me be clear: you are allowed to eat whatever you want, even on a ketogenic diet. Your body, your choice. That doesn’t mean you should.)

Ask this instead:

Do I want to eat these beets?

How will I feel physically and mentally if I eat these beets?

Do I consider these beets to be a healthy choice? (Note that this is about your values, not somebody else’s.)

If these beets were to knock me out of ketosis, would I be ok with that?

Perfection Isn’t the Goal—Health Is.

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading, everyone. Comment below, or find me in the Keto Reset Facebook group if you have any questions. And as always, #liveawesome!

The post Why “Is It Keto?” Is the Wrong Question appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

0 notes

fishermariawo · 6 years

Text

Why “Is It Keto?” Is the Wrong Question

Hi, everyone, thanks for having me here! Today I want to sort out one of the more common questions we get over in the [Keto Reset Facebook community]: “Is ____ keto?”

Now let me explain what I mean there….

Embracing the Keto Context

Fielding Expert Guidance: e.g. “But so-and-so said I’m not allowed to eat ______ because it’s not keto!”

Asking Better Questions

In the Primal version of keto, food quality and nutrient density reign supreme.

Rather than ask:

Are beets keto?

Can I eat these beets?

Am I allowed to eat these beets? (Let me be clear: you are allowed to eat whatever you want, even on a ketogenic diet. Your body, your choice. That doesn’t mean you should.)

Ask this instead:

Do I want to eat these beets?

How will I feel physically and mentally if I eat these beets?

Do I consider these beets to be a healthy choice? (Note that this is about your values, not somebody else’s.)

If these beets were to knock me out of ketosis, would I be ok with that?

Perfection Isn’t the Goal—Health Is.

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading, everyone. Comment below, or find me in the Keto Reset Facebook group if you have any questions. And as always, #liveawesome!

The post Why “Is It Keto?” Is the Wrong Question appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

0 notes

watsonrodriquezie · 6 years

Text

Why “Is It Keto?” Is the Wrong Question

Hi, everyone, thanks for having me here! Today I want to sort out one of the more common questions we get over in the [Keto Reset Facebook community]: “Is ____ keto?”

Now let me explain what I mean there….

Embracing the Keto Context

Fielding Expert Guidance: e.g. “But so-and-so said I’m not allowed to eat ______ because it’s not keto!”

Asking Better Questions

In the Primal version of keto, food quality and nutrient density reign supreme.

Rather than ask:

Are beets keto?

Can I eat these beets?

Am I allowed to eat these beets? (Let me be clear: you are allowed to eat whatever you want, even on a ketogenic diet. Your body, your choice. That doesn’t mean you should.)

Ask this instead:

Do I want to eat these beets?

How will I feel physically and mentally if I eat these beets?

Do I consider these beets to be a healthy choice? (Note that this is about your values, not somebody else’s.)

If these beets were to knock me out of ketosis, would I be ok with that?

Perfection Isn’t the Goal—Health Is.

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading, everyone. Comment below, or find me in the Keto Reset Facebook group if you have any questions. And as always, #liveawesome!

The post Why “Is It Keto?” Is the Wrong Question appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

0 notes

thegloober · 6 years

Text

Why “Is It Keto?” Is the Wrong Question

Hi, everyone, thanks for having me here! Today I want to sort out one of the more common questions we get over in the [Keto Reset Facebook community]: “Is ____ keto?”

Now let me explain what I mean there….

Embracing the Keto Context

Fielding Expert Guidance: e.g. “But so-and-so said I’m not allowed to eat ______ because it’s not keto!”

Asking Better Questions

In the Primal version of keto, food quality and nutrient density reign supreme.

Rather than ask:

Are beets keto?

Can I eat these beets?

Am I allowed to eat these beets? (Let me be clear: you are allowed to eat whatever you want, even on a ketogenic diet. Your body, your choice. That doesn’t mean you should.)

Ask this instead:

Do I want to eat these beets?

How will I feel physically and mentally if I eat these beets?

Do I consider these beets to be a healthy choice? (Note that this is about your values, not somebody else’s.)

If these beets were to knock me out of ketosis, would I be ok with that?

Perfection Isn’t the Goal—Health Is.

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading, everyone. Comment below, or find me in the Keto Reset Facebook group if you have any questions. And as always, #liveawesome!

Post navigation

If you’d like to add an avatar to all of your comments click here!

Source: https://bloghyped.com/why-is-it-keto-is-the-wrong-question/

0 notes

cynthiamwashington · 6 years

Text

Why “Is It Keto?” Is the Wrong Question

Hi, everyone, thanks for having me here! Today I want to sort out one of the more common questions we get over in the [Keto Reset Facebook community]: “Is ____ keto?”

Now let me explain what I mean there….

Embracing the Keto Context

Fielding Expert Guidance: e.g. “But so-and-so said I’m not allowed to eat ______ because it’s not keto!”

Asking Better Questions

In the Primal version of keto, food quality and nutrient density reign supreme.

Rather than ask:

Are beets keto?

Can I eat these beets?

Am I allowed to eat these beets? (Let me be clear: you are allowed to eat whatever you want, even on a ketogenic diet. Your body, your choice. That doesn’t mean you should.)

Ask this instead:

Do I want to eat these beets?

How will I feel physically and mentally if I eat these beets?

Do I consider these beets to be a healthy choice? (Note that this is about your values, not somebody else’s.)

If these beets were to knock me out of ketosis, would I be ok with that?

Perfection Isn’t the Goal—Health Is.

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading, everyone. Comment below, or find me in the Keto Reset Facebook group if you have any questions. And as always, #liveawesome!

(function($) { $("#dfig2QL").load("https://www.marksdailyapple.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=dfads_ajax_load_ads&groups=960&limit=1&orderby=random&order=ASC&container_id=&container_html=none&container_class=&ad_html=div&ad_class=&callback_function=&return_javascript=0&_block_id=dfig2QL" ); })( jQuery );

ga('send', { hitType: 'event', eventCategory: 'Ad Impression', eventAction: '66049' });

The post Why “Is It Keto?” Is the Wrong Question appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Article source here:Marks’s Daily Apple

0 notes

nancygduarteus · 7 years

Text

How People Came to Believe Blueberries Are the Healthiest Fruit

Jim,

I don’t like blueberries. Sometimes when I tell people that, they say, “but they have antioxidants!”

If I never eat blueberries, will my life be shorter, or more oxidized than a blueberry lover?

Asking for a friend,

Jaime

Jaime,

I was expecting that my answer would be a simple no, don’t worry about it. And it still is, but the reason is a lot more interesting than I imagined.

In looking at the research, I was surprised that there’s a serious and bizarre amount of interesting evidence in support of eating a lot of blueberries. From things like improving memory to reducing depression to preventing diabetes—I’m not talking about a few studies. There are actually nutrition scientists who have devoted their careers to studying blueberries.

The research includes findings like: Rats who ate blueberries for two months showed improvements in working memory and did better than their peers at remembering how to navigate a water maze. They became better at balancing on a narrow rod and walking on a rotating rod. And lest these findings be dismissed as a coincidence, researchers even cut open the heads of the rats and saw blueberry pigments in their brains. The blue anthocyanins—among the plant chemicals widely attributed with health benefits due to antioxidant properties—scattered throughout the cerebellum, cortex, hippocampus, and striatum of berry-fed rats.

Not everyone is a rat, so in addition to all this rodent research, there are many humans studies. Blueberries have been reported to lower blood pressure after eight weeks of daily ingestion. Kids have been found to do better on cognitive tests after eating blueberries. In small trials, people who drank blueberry juice reported reduced depressive symptoms and were found to have improved-blood sugar levels and improvements in recalling words. Older adults who ate two daily cups of blueberries reportedly saw improvements in mobility.

Is this all real? How did all this research come to be? Aren’t there serious diseases that are chronically under-funded in terms of research? Why are we so heavily invested in blueberries?

On a bleak December day in New Hampshire in 2015, Diane McKay took the stage to explain some of this. She’s a scientists in the Antioxidants Research Laboratory at the Tufts University USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging—which is, it turns out, the origin and epicenter of much of the blueberry work. That day she was addressing industry leaders at the New England Vegetable and Fruit Conference. Her talk was called “Superfruit! Understanding the Health Benefits of Blueberries.”

“The term ‘superfruit’ means different things to different people,” she began. “In marketing, it’s used to advertise a product that has a high level of antioxidant activity. In scientific research, the term is virtually meaningless.”

She explained that claims to superfruit status do often involve antioxidants, the compounds that are believed to minimize the effects of oxidative stress on the body. That is, they negate the negative byproducts of metabolism. The berries aren’t just okay, they’re heroic. They fight evil.

But the measurements are easily manipulated. Various antioxidants can be measured in various ways, and invariably some test will land a given fruit near the top of a rank list. This has led to something like the epidemic of participation trophies among child athletics: Everyone’s a superfruit! McKay advised that the term superfruit “should be used with caution, as it may send the wrong message to consumers, implying they should eat less of all other fruits.”

But if any fruit is deserving of superfruit status, she concluded, it actually may be the blueberry—at least according to the amount of research supporting their intake. Is it really that blueberries are especially super, or that there's just a lot of research on them?  

When I reached out to McKay, she directed me to someone who knows even more about blueberries: her colleague, Barbara Shukitt-Hale. Twenty years ago, Shukitt-Hale was drawn into the blueberry game by chance. An experimental psychologist by training, her Boston lab happened to be next door to that of James Joseph, the Tufts scientist credited with popularizing the idea that variously colored fruits have various health benefits.

“They had a machine where they assayed different foods and looked at their abilities to be antioxidants—their ability to quench oxidative stress,” she explained to me. “They looked at a bunch of fruits and vegetables, and by and large the ones with the darker colors were better antioxidants because the colors are mostly anthocyanins, which are a polyphenol, an antioxidant.”

This was in 1996. Joseph used a new test known as ORAC, or oxygen radical absorbance capacity, to identify the top fruit in terms of antioxidants. It was, you guessed it, blueberries. The fruit scored higher on the test than pomegranate or acai. (The top vegetable was spinach.)

Since then, Shukitt-Hale has been studying the effects of blueberries on the nervous system. “We found they’re doing a lot besides anti-oxidation,” she told me. “They’re also anti-inflammatory. They also have direct effects on the brain, including plasticity and neuronal communication and neurogenesis; they’re involved in the formation of new neurons. They have far-reaching effects.”

This was becoming clear. Her work builds on her late lab-neighbor Joseph’s, who first reported that blueberries can improve memory in aging animals: “Does [our research] guarantee that blueberries will have the same effect in humans?” he wrote in 2003’s The Color Code: A Revolutionary Eating Plan For Optimum Health. “Of course not. But I’m not waiting for the evidence to come in. I’m eating blueberries now. They taste good. And compared to some widely touted ‘anti-aging remedies�� like growth hormone injections, they are considerably safer.”

Earlier this year, Shukitt-Hale and other researchers from Tufts and University of New Mexico, reported in the European Journal of Nutrition that, indeed, “Dietary blueberry improves cognition among older adults.” Again it was a small study. And the effects were only seen when people were fatigued.

Still, she has come to see blueberries as a sort of medicine. She talks about “dietary blueberry” and people being “on blueberry.” Much like a drug trial, the cognitive-function study was a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled study. I asked her how one does a study where a control group doesn’t know they’re eating blueberries. She said they actually eat a blue powder of finely-ground, freeze-dried berries. (The other group gets a similar blue powder that isn’t blueberries.)

But this isn’t optimal, and it raises an important distinction. At some point between blueberry and multivitamin, apparently, people start losing benefits, which suggests that these reported health effects aren’t really all about antioxidants.

“I’m a proponent of eating whole foods,” Shukitt-Hale said. “There’s something about the food matrix in the whole blueberry that I can’t really explain, but it seems like all of it is important. Some compounds in foods that seemed extraneous actually help carry other compounds other places, and once you start isolating them, the sum of the parts is just less than the whole.”

This could explain why anti-oxidant supplements haven’t been found to live up to the benefits of eating a lot of high-antioxidant foods. To that end, Shukitt-Hale recounts a study where her team treated cells with different compounds found in walnuts, another high-antioxidant food. These components had metabolic effects, but at some point the doses became toxic to the cells. When the researchers put actual walnut oil on the cells, though, things were different. Even at levels at which the individual components were toxic, the walnut oil wasn’t.

She takes this sort of finding to mean there’s “something about the whole food that's special.”

But what is special about blueberries?

Shukitt-Hale was surprisingly unconvinced that much is. “I think they’re one of the healthiest fruits,” she said. “But eating a wide range of fruits and vegetables, that’s your best bet.”

So why do some people believe that blueberries are healthy? What about all these studies?

“It may be just because blueberries are one of the more well-studied fruits,” she said. “I don't know if you studied, say, peaches, if it would be the same.”

The fact is that peaches haven’t been studied as intensely as blueberries. Nor have bananas or apples or mangoes. All of that despite the fact that blueberries are among the most recently domesticated crops. Cultivation only really became possible after USDA botanist Frederick Coville’s 1911 discovery that the bushes took to acidic soil, and even still, for decades after, the berries struggled to transcend their something-you-find-in-a-muffin status.

What probably tipped blueberries into the realm of ubiquitous, self-substantiating fruit, Shukitt-Hale told me, was the popular belief in health benefits. And the reason they came together lies in one man: a grey-haired marketing guru named John Sauve.

“He saw the antioxidant studies and wondered if he could use it as a marketing tool,” said Shukitt-Hale. “So he got researchers together to talk about different things they were looking at, and we've been meeting now for 20 years. It was his vision.”

It turns out that Sauve, more than any of the researchers, is responsible for the popular belief in the health benefits of blueberries. From 1993 to 2004, he worked as executive director of the Wild Blueberry Association of North America. He is now with a marketing firm the Food and Wellness Group, where his professional bio explains that he “led the breakthrough health-defining arenas of colorful phytochemical and antioxidants … and first introduced to the marketplace leading to industry changing health-driven awareness and demand for blueberries.”

Sauve is not a scientist, but he has had a long career in food marketing. When he heard about the 1996 antioxidant study, he immediately went to Boston and talked to Joseph and Shukitt-Hale.

“For the most part I didn't understand anything they were talking about,” he told me. Antioxidants was not a household phrase at the time, and the idea that they were integral components of healthy foods was not yet mainstream. But Sauve saw an opening. “I understood that they had found that blueberries produce the highest numbers on the chart. As a marketer, if your product happens to come out first in something, you might want to look into it.”

“It was really at that point when I said we can probably do something with this,” he said.

In the late 1990s, he and the blueberry industry began funding research—through Tufts and elsewhere—that would highlight the health effects of blueberries.

“We took a shot and we invested in it and ended up creating a story with the positioning of blueberries and antioxidants,” he said. In this way he ended up spending very little on advertising, but by 1999 he had gotten global coverage of the studies on blueberries and antioxidants. “We hit this story right. We built it right, we communicated it right, and we got remarkable PR coverage out of it. We ended up with our doctors talking to Oprah and Dr. Oz.”

The first big breakthrough was in Japan, where the wild blueberry industry had been selling around 2 million pounds per year in 1996. By 1999, they sold 30 million pounds, he said. “And it was the health story that changed the perception of the product. The product didn't change at all. People just started adding the perception of health, and this new thing called antioxidants.”

It required a little more work in the U.S., where focus groups told Sauve that people didn’t know what antioxidants were. He remembers one person saying in 1997, “How can anything that’s against oxygen be good for you?”

He shifted the campaign to include not just telling the public that blueberries contained a lot of antioxidants, but that antioxidants were healthy. The centrality of this latter notion to much modern health dogma traces to Sauve’s blueberry information campaign.

“We were the first into the story of the colorful assets of phytochemicals,” he told me, referring to the fact that other fruits and vegetables have adopted the same strategy. “It didn't exist, and so we created it. Of course, we were lucky because we had the word blue right there in our name.”

The investment in research paid off. He sees it as the primary reason that over the last 20 years, the North American blueberry supply has increased from 300 million pounds annually to around one and a half billion.

“There are so many wonderful players involved in this story,” he said. “All the researchers got published. Researchers love to be published, and we helped them do that. We promoted them, and they continued to do all their great work.”

If you have health-related questions, for a friend, please send them to [email protected].

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/11/blueberries/545840/?utm_source=feed

0 notes

ionecoffman · 7 years

Text

How People Came to Believe Blueberries Are the Healthiest Fruit

Jim,

I don’t like blueberries. Sometimes when I tell people that, they say, “but they have antioxidants!”

If I never eat blueberries, will my life be shorter, or more oxidized than a blueberry lover?

Asking for a friend,

Jaime

Jaime,

I was expecting that my answer would be a simple no, don’t worry about it. And it still is, but the reason is a lot more interesting than I imagined.

Is this all real? How did all this research come to be? Aren’t there serious diseases that are chronically under-funded in terms of research? Why are we so heavily invested in blueberries?

This was becoming clear. Her work builds on her late lab-neighbor Joseph’s, who first reported that blueberries can improve memory in aging animals: “Does [our research] guarantee that blueberries will have the same effect in humans?” he wrote in 2003’s The Color Code: A Revolutionary Eating Plan For Optimum Health. “Of course not. But I’m not waiting for the evidence to come in. I’m eating blueberries now. They taste good. And compared to some widely touted ‘anti-aging remedies’ like growth hormone injections, they are considerably safer.”

She takes this sort of finding to mean there’s “something about the whole food that's special.”

But what is special about blueberries?

Shukitt-Hale was surprisingly unconvinced that much is. “I think they’re one of the healthiest fruits,” she said. “But eating a wide range of fruits and vegetables, that’s your best bet.”

So why do some people believe that blueberries are healthy? What about all these studies?

“It may be just because blueberries are one of the more well-studied fruits,” she said. “I don't know if you studied, say, peaches, if it would be the same.”

Sauve is not a scientist, but he has had a long career in food marketing. When he heard about the 1996 antioxidant study, he immediately went to Boston and talked to Joseph and Shukitt-Hale.

“It was really at that point when I said we can probably do something with this,” he said.

In the late 1990s, he and the blueberry industry began funding research—through Tufts and elsewhere—that would highlight the health effects of blueberries.

If you have health-related questions, for a friend, please send them to [email protected].

Article source here:The Atlantic

0 notes

jesseneufeld · 6 years

Text

Why “Is It Keto?” Is the Wrong Question

Hi, everyone, thanks for having me here! Today I want to sort out one of the more common questions we get over in the [Keto Reset Facebook community]: “Is ____ keto?”

Now let me explain what I mean there….

Embracing the Keto Context

Fielding Expert Guidance: e.g. “But so-and-so said I’m not allowed to eat ______ because it’s not keto!”

Asking Better Questions

In the Primal version of keto, food quality and nutrient density reign supreme.

Rather than ask:

Are beets keto?

Can I eat these beets?

Am I allowed to eat these beets? (Let me be clear: you are allowed to eat whatever you want, even on a ketogenic diet. Your body, your choice. That doesn’t mean you should.)

Ask this instead:

Do I want to eat these beets?

How will I feel physically and mentally if I eat these beets?

Do I consider these beets to be a healthy choice? (Note that this is about your values, not somebody else’s.)

If these beets were to knock me out of ketosis, would I be ok with that?

Perfection Isn’t the Goal—Health Is.

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading, everyone. Comment below, or find me in the Keto Reset Facebook group if you have any questions. And as always, #liveawesome!

(function($) { $("#dfnArHw").load("https://www.marksdailyapple.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=dfads_ajax_load_ads&groups=960&limit=1&orderby=random&order=ASC&container_id=&container_html=none&container_class=&ad_html=div&ad_class=&callback_function=&return_javascript=0&_block_id=dfnArHw" ); })( jQuery );

ga('send', { hitType: 'event', eventCategory: 'Ad Impression', eventAction: '74563' });

The post Why “Is It Keto?” Is the Wrong Question appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Why “Is It Keto?” Is the Wrong Question published first on https://drugaddictionsrehab.tumblr.com/

0 notes