You don’t have to limp around after exercising to be assured you had a fruitful workout. Pain does not necessarily equal gain.
As a teenager, I assessed my workouts based on my subsequent level of soreness. I assumed if I was gingerly walking around the day after a tough training session, I was getting bigger and stronger. I was mistaken. From muscleevo.net:
Exercise can cause damage to muscle fibers. But there’s very little evidence to show that muscle damage is a requirement for muscle growth.
Here’s how one group of researchers summarized the results of a study designed to test the theory that detectable damage is a necessary precursor for muscle growth [8]:
One group of participants experienced an initial bout of damaging exercise and the other had no detrimental symptoms of damage. Despite the different initial conditions, both groups experienced the same net increase in muscle size and strength. These results suggest that it is the total work done during training that impacts the final muscle remodeling, apparently independent of an initial triggering event.
So there is no logical reason to seek out that burn. It’s fool’s gold. From CNN:
Studies have shown that soreness itself (using a scale from 0 to 10 to assess the level of soreness) is poorly correlated as an indicator of muscle adaptation and growth. There are many factors that influence how DOMS presents itself in individuals.
“There is great variability, even between people with similar genetics and even among highly-trained lifters [and athletes],” he says. So while comparing notes (and commiserating) is all part of the process, soreness and DOMS isn’t the best gauge of how effective your workout was or who’s in better shape.
Perfect. We can avoid soreness, so why not just do that?
Particularly for beginners, I recommend a substantial ramp up phase to weight training. Start with little weight and very low reps. For example, if the 5×5 is the goal, start with one or two reps and incrementally build each workout from there until you reach 5 sets and 5 reps. You’ll avoid the agony of extreme soreness, which many folks use as a convenient excuse to not workout. “I should let my body recover,” they tell themselves. From popsugar.com:
Being too sore to workout may be a popular excuse, but it’s not always a good one. If you’re too sore from a rigorous hike, spend the next day working on your abs or arms. Or try another aerobic exercise or yoga — cardio and stretching can both help soothe your muscles.
Taking a walk or a swim on days that you’re sore is good behavior, but optimize to not get sore in the first place.
Nowadays, I rarely get sore. The 5×5 builds in ample recovery time, and my body appreciates it by being perpetually ready for the next workout. Unlike in years past, I’m able to separate a productive workout from a “killer” one. We’ve talked about this in past posts, but now seems like a logical time for a reminder. Muscle growth occurs through incrementally adding weight over time, not from getting sore.
Sunflower seeds are the gift of the beautiful sunflower that has rays of petals emanating from its bright yellow, seed-studded center.
Thanks, whfoods.com. I don’t think I would have gotten away with that definition in the dugout, though. Most of us know them better as those salty jobs stuffed into the cheeks of baseball players and fans across the nation.
Yadier Molina spits ’em as he approaches the dish, but frankly, his top seed capacity per cheek is an utter embarrassment. Brother, you’re a beast of a player, but let’s up the count.
I looked forward to my daily consumption of sunflower seeds nearly as much as the game itself. Can I get a half a bag in there? I wore it like a badge of honor along with my uniform. If the inside of my cheeks were sore from the scrapes and the salt after a home stand, I knew I was making progress.
As my career went on and I became a little more aware, it occurred to me that damaging my tongue and cheeks every day might not be ideal. I began soaking my seeds in water to remove the excess salt before packing them in. Even as I became more aware of my health and well-being and started researching what I ate, I kept on with my ingestion of sunflower seeds. Some of my more body-conscious teammates were concerned about their higher than average calorie count, but I explained they shouldn’t worry.
“In fact,” I shared, “for a nervous baseball player like you, the magnesium in seeds may be especially helpful.”
Okay, perhaps that wasn’t the most tactful argument, but it was certainly effective in the game of clubhouse ribbing and ultimately true. From whfoods.com:
Sunflower seeds are a good source of magnesium. Magnesium is also necessary for healthy bones and energy production. …Magnesium counterbalances calcium, thus helping to regulate nerve and muscle tone. In many nerve cells, magnesium serves as Nature’s own calcium channel blocker, preventing calcium from rushing into the nerve cell and activating the nerve. By blocking calcium’s entry, magnesium keeps our nerves (and the blood vessels and muscles they enervate) relaxed. …Insufficient magnesium can thus contribute to high blood pressure, muscle spasms (including spasms of the heart muscle or the spasms of the airways symptomatic of asthma), and migraine headaches, as well as muscle cramps, tension, soreness and fatigue.
Soreness and fatigue reduction sound good to you, Mr. and Ms. Athlete? Me too.
Let’s take a look at our options. In the baseball dugout, there are two popular brands, David’s and Spitz. David’s lists the ingredients of the original flavor as “sunflower seeds, salt.” Spitz contains “sunflower seeds, salt, olive oil.” Cool, approved. This is a solid B plus food.
Now you can buy plenty of flavors beyond just the original. Dill pickle, ranch, BBQ – it’s all available. Let’s take a look at the ingredients on the BBQ flavor.
Sunflower Seeds, Salt, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Less than 2% of: Seasoning Blend (Dextrose, Spices, Tomato Powder, Hydrolyzed Soy Protein, Salt, Torula Yeast, Onion and Garlic Powder, Sugar, Citric Acid, Natural Hickory Smoke Flavor, Extractives of Paprika and Spice).
Eeek. That’s a whole hell of a lot of strange for sunflower seeds. Stay away from the old hydrolyzed nonsense in your food. From gnolls.com:
The process of extracting seed oils from soybeans or corn (a disturbing series of chemical reactions involving hexane, taking place in chemical plants that look a lot like oil refineries) leaves behind dehulled, defatted soy or corn meal. Typically this mush is fed to cattle…but since it’s cheap and produced by the ton due to massive, destructive subsidies for industrial monocrop agriculture, there is great financial incentive to figure out how to feed it to humans.
I’ll take a pass on the flavors. To really jump your sunflower seeds up to an A plus food, step up your game with this brand. If you really want to set the curve, try planting the sunflowers and extracting the seeds. Then get to roasting, seasoning and garnering envy for your huge cheeks.
From almanac.com
Harvesting Sunflower Seeds
To harvest seeds, keep an eye out for ripeness. The back of the flower head will turn from green to yellow and the bracts will begin to dry and turn brown; this happens about 30 to 45 days after bloom and seed moisture is about 35%. Generally, when the head turns brown on the back, seeds are usually ready for harvest.
Cut the head off the plant (about 4 inches below the flower head) and remove the seeds with your fingers or a fork.
To protect the seeds from birds, you can cover the flowers with a light fabric such as cheesecloth and a rubber band. Or, you can cut the flower head early and hang the heads upside down until they seeds are dry; hang indoors or in a place that’s safe from birds and mice.
So what do you do with all your leftover packs of BBQ and ranch seeds? Keep them around for flicking contests in the dugout.
Most men will opt for coffee over tea, myself included. That doesn’t mean we have to choose. We can appreciate the many health benefits of tea, and we can pair it with music.
Today, a ballplayer came up to me, accompanied by several teammates, to inquire about tea. He asked very generally, “What are your thoughts on tea?” I fought the urge to talk about black coffee and instead focused on his query. I shared my initial, positive thoughts and promised to write him up something further.
There are four “true teas,” meaning they are derived from the tea plant (Camellia sinensis). Herbal and fruit “teas” are a different story, and we’ll save that for another post. Today, we’ll muse on the white, green, oolong and black varieties. Each conjures up a different image and soundtrack for me.
White tea is a solid choice if relaxing is your aim. I’m envisioning a SoCal summer evening, talking to my grandfather about his old furniture business in New York, 1940s saxophone playing in the background, a mug in each of our hands. From octaviatea.com:
White tea is considered to be the healthiest of all types of tea because it has the highest levels of antioxidants and theanine, a rare amino acid found only in high-quality tea. Antioxidants are believed to maintain health, combat aging and prevent disease. Theanine promotes mental and physical relaxation, improves mood, reduces anxiety, boosts the immune system and increases concentration. White tea also has the lowest caffeine content of all true teas.
Folks generally gravitate towards green tea for its perceived fat burning properties. I’ll set the mood. The world around you is silent. It’s 5:30am. All you see is stars and a stretch of road. Headphones on, you bang Rakim’s “Mahogany” and sync your breathing up with the steady, slow beat. You sip green tea from a paper cup. You hit your sprints. You’re done before the rest of the world begins to wake up. You win. From Penn State:
Clinical studies suggest that green tea extract may boost metabolism and help burn fat. One study found that the combination of green tea and caffeine improved weight loss and maintenance in people who were overweight and moderately obese. Some researchers think that substances in green tea known as catechins are responsible for the herb’s fat-burning effect.
Oolong tea is a bit of a nutritional mutt, a hybrid if you will. I imagine traveling the Mexican coast in a beat up black 1970s CJ7 holding a metal thermos of oolong. Music, Son House, blues. From organicfacts.net:
Health benefits of oolong tea include the reduction of chronic health conditions such as heart disease, inflammatory disorders, and high cholesterol levels, while providing vital antioxidants, promoting superior bone structure, robust skin and good dental health. Oolong tea is fragrant with a fruity flavor and a pleasant aroma. Despite its caffeine content, it can still be extremely relaxing to drink.
Black tea has the richest, deepest flavor of any of the four. Unlike the other varieties, black tea has been fermented, giving it a darker color and bolder flavor. Speaking of bold, an aggressive squat workout and System of a Down follows a hot mug stunningly. From organicfacts.net:
The health benefits of black tea include beneficial impacts for high cholesterol, diarrhea, tooth decay, low-concentration levels, digestive problems, poor blood circulation, high blood pressure, and asthma. Black tea is one of the most popular teas known to man, and is well known for its medicinal qualities and health benefits.
I won’t give up my morning ritual of black coffee, ever. Choosing tea, however, offers a plethora of health benefits. Either choice is the right choice.
If you dare to call yourself bullet proof, expect your Kevlar to be tested.
In this post, we’ll touch on Bulletproof’s base product, Upgraded Coffee, and the techniques they use to spread the word.
A friend hit me up months ago and mentioned that he knew somebody connected to the company. They wanted to send some product for me to try, no strings attached. “You’d really appreciate the coffee,” he told me.
I was never a big name, but I’m no stranger to this sort of interaction. As an MLB player, companies constantly sent gear, gum, magnets, protein, whatever to the clubhouse. There are a myriad of reasons they do this, but the bottom line is, if a celebrity likes the product, they may sell more. Just ask Paris Hilton.
Offer the product for nothing in return initially, and the star is unlikely to say no. I found that no matter how many zeroes their paychecks had, my teammates dug free shit. Personally, I found myself throwing or giving stuff away as I became more discerning about the products I was willing to ingest or cover my skin with. I don’t play golf, and I don’t dig collars. How many polos can I wear?
We often muse at Kaplifestyle on diets, cleanses and products. Most of these cleverly marketed products should be immediately removed from the earth due to lack of substance and merit. Upgraded coffee is not one of those products. In fact, it’s quite tasty, and the company deserves applause for its attempt to educate while it sells. These cats have the selling part down.
When I received the package in the mail from Bulletproof, I was jazzed to find a branded silver coffee thermos, which turned out to be exceptional. I like my coffee to stay hot, and this bad boy was gold (stainless steel, actually). More importantly, the box also contained a sample of their “upgraded” coffee beans. From the company’s website:
Upgraded™ Coffee is the result of an obsessive pursuit to find the absolute highest performance coffee beans on earth. It’s taken me more than 10 years to identify every step of performance-robbing toxin formation in coffee and to find a reliable, perfect source of beans that always make me feel great – even though “normal” coffee gives me a headache and jitters and makes me cranky. This coffee makes you feel noticeably better than anything else you’ll find. You’ll never go back to your corner coffeehouse chain again. These beans are meant for drinking black or best of all, for making Bulletproof® Coffee with grass fed butter.
The term “Upgraded” immediately makes me nervous. I can’t help but think about a bean being altered from its natural state. What if a company told you their chicken was upgraded? My mind leaps to genetically modified, but my review of the product title is less important than the product itself. Here’s how they define upgraded:
Upgraded™ Coffee beans are mechanically processed right after picking using only clean cold water. This more expensive process is safer because it dramatically reduces harmful molds or bacteria from impacting your health.
There is a pretty substantial debate happening about these “harmful molds.” Evidencebasedfitness.net says:
Aflatoxin is indeed a toxin. It’s produced by a mold called Aspergillus flavus. Aspergillis is a mold that grows naturally in soil and cereal and plant crops. It’s everywhere. You’ve been living with it practically all of your life, just not in disease-causing quantities.
Aspergillis can cause disease in humans–it’s called aspergillosis. Aspergillosis usually affects people who are immunocompromised and can cause what is called embolic disease (the Bulletproof folks link it to heart attacks and aortic infarctions). However, aspergillosis is caused by an overgrowth of the Aspergillis mold, not the toxin. If your coffee is causing aspergillosis, you have a totally different set of problems and no amount of coffee, bulletproof or not, is going to help that.
So that appears to be a lot of marketing nonsense. Let’s get to the important stuff and the reason why I agreed to try the beans in the first place – the flavor and experience.
The makers claim “this coffee makes you feel noticeably better than anything else you’ll find.” This declaration was unequivocally untrue for me. Upgraded coffee made me feel the same way my organic, black, sensibly sourced coffee does. I noticed no tangible difference. It just wasn’t unique or terribly memorable. It was, however, tasty, and I was incredibly thankful for the gift. I reached out to the contact at bulletproof to display gratitude. Happy to have now experienced the brand, I moved on.
Later I the day, I received this response via email:
Great! Would you be interested in our ambassador program? (Product stipend/discount in exchange for spreading the BP word)
Now we come to the crux of their pitch. Put simply, if I tell you how great the product is, I get money and free stuff. Now it makes sense. Frankly, it’s a solid product with a ridiculously powerful buzz. Couple that with strong marketing and hustling employees and you can see why there’s so much discussion about it.
What they don’t know about is my relationship with you, my readers. I’ve promised to deliver authentic content. Translated – I’m not going to accept compensation in exchange for offering up a favorable review of a product. When I receive product samples to try, I will disclose that to you. Everything you read is going to be my unbiased opinion.
Hustle, to me, is to be celebrated, not demeaned. Bulletproof has done a nice job delivering and selling a solid, if not spectacular, product. I’d drink it again, but I won’t tell you that you should.
Stay tuned for a discussion on their other major “innovation” – adding butter to your coffee.
Now, instead of having free coffee delivered to me, I’m headed out with my credit card to grab some beans. Damn.
Remember when there were no immunization shots and folks prevented disease with whole foods and exercise? Me neither. There has never been a moment in our lives when that statement was totally true.
Yesterday, we touched on colds. Today, we’ll take a look at some of the more serious diseases out there. This post will take a deep dive into the world of vaccinations and their necessity. At our close, you can decide if you should sprint over to CVS to get poked.
I was prepared to write a tongue in cheek post on this topic and sent a few photos over to Kaplifestyle’s editor extraordinaire, Stephanie. Apparently, she didn’t think riffing carelessly about the topic was responsible. She hit me back with a note:
Wading into a minefield, huh?
Translation: “What are you, an imbecile? You don’t want to mess around with a topic folks feel so passionately about. “ Plus, and I should have known this would be the case, Steph knows a thing or two about the topic.
Slightly more accurate translation: I’m okay with diving into controversial topics, but I think it should be done knowingly. More importantly, I think whenever there’s a topic that has potential life-threatening implications, we should treat it seriously.
Flu shots, shingles, mumps, measles, whatever. Are we protecting ourselves or causing harm? The Mayo Clinic weighs in:
“Vaccines for adults are recommended based on your age, prior vaccinations, health, lifestyle, occupation and where you travel.
The schedule is updated every year, and changes range from the addition of a new vaccine to tweaks of current recommendations. To determine exactly which vaccines you need now and which vaccines are coming up, check the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website.”
I must be living in the dark because I’m not on any vaccine schedule and I’ll be 40 in July.
Luckily for you, that vaccine schedule isn’t quite as intense as it sounds. The CDC recommends, for a 40 year old male, a flu vaccine once per year, a tetanus/diphtheria/pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine or tetanus booster once every 10 years, a measles/mumps/rubella vaccine (once, if you weren’t vaccinated as a child), and possibly a vaccine for varicella (shingles), if you’ve never had chicken pox.
If you took all of them, that’s 2- 4 vaccines right now, then one per year after.
I think, in order to properly evaluate vaccines, we should first do a quick overview.
We often speak of the immune system on Kaplifestyle, discussing ways to boost the body’s natural defenses. It’s beyond clear that eating healthy, whole foods will promote a more robust immune system and enhance your ability to fight off diseases and illnesses.
I thought we’d never get here, Steph. This was my intended plan all along. We can help folks lean on natural….wait a second, I feel a “but” coming.
However (see, not a “but”), the body relies on being able to successfully identify pathogens in order to spur the immune system to deal with them. To put it (possibly overly) simply, if your body doesn’t know what it’s fighting, it can’t bring effective weapons quickly enough, and you get sick. Vaccines, in essence, “teach” your body about what it may encounter. They’re the messenger telling the army how to prepare.
I understand the desire to live and eat clean, relying on natural sources heavily. That shouldn’t relieve us of our obligation to be informed consumers, researching and discovering how we can maximize our health and well-being. Sometimes, that involves taking a hard look at the science. Vaccines are some of the most heavily studied developments in modern medicine, in part because they are so critical to health across the globe. These vaccines aren’t doing anything “unnatural” to your body; they’re stimulating your own immune system.
Pushback time. The act of poking oneself with a sharp needle and injecting a manmade substance carrying a virus or bacteria is unequivocally unnatural. Proceed.
Let me be explicit here – vaccines work. Smallpox killed between 300-500 million people in the 20th century. It was a nasty disease. The last person to be infected naturally was in 1977, because vaccines wiped it out. Vaccines are the reason why we don’t hear about polio anymore, although due to low vaccination rates in some countries (Syria, for instance), it’s not completely eradicated.
Now, it’s easy to understand how important the vaccines for smallpox and polio were. Those diseases are known for having high mortality rates and crippling impacts for the survivors. Measles and influenza don’t quite have the same deadly fear. They probably should. Measles kills .3% of the people it infects in the US, but can have a 25-30% fatality rate outside the US or for immunocompromised people. Influenza (the flu) kills millions, particularly children, the elderly, or other at-risk populations.
Of course, you’re not in those positions. Most folks reading this blog are healthy adults, with a strong immune system after eating berries, living with easy access to first rate medical care. You may be thinking to roll the dice, and if you do get the flu, it’s not such a big deal – a miserable few days and you’ll be back to normal. It’s not that simple.
Bigger picture injection (ooooh): Everyone should be obligated by law to build healthier immune systems. Widespread flu-shots may wipe out the flu but there will be another disease that follows. Immunizations may be huge, effective band-aids, but I wonder if they are another shortcut. I’m still listening.
By getting vaccinated, you protect other people, and particularly those people who are most vulnerable. Not everyone can be vaccinated – allergies, a compromised immune system, some people with cancer or organ transplant recipients, all of these may mean someone can’t receive standard immunizations. However, we don’t rely on every single individual being vaccinated to prevent the spread of disease. Most diseases have a threshold – the number of people who need to be vaccinated to prevent most transmission. If 85% of a population is inoculated against smallpox, it can’t survive in that population.
Just as we should be skeptical of marketing claims from mega-corporations, so too should we be skeptical of people claiming the “natural” and “holistic” position. Religious objections aside, the modern anti-vaccine movement was driven in large part by one individual, Andrew Wakefield. He claimed, in 1998, to have a study of 12 children who developed autism after receiving the MMR vaccine. Not only was he funded by people suing vaccine manufacturers (a clear, and undisclosed, conflict of interest), it later was discovered that he had falsified data and manipulated his results. He was stripped of his license for fraud.
Unfortunately, the impacts of his fraud have been huge. The US had actually come very close to eradicating measles, mumps, and whooping cough. Measles was thought to be entirely eradicated in 2000, in fact. However, due in large part to declining childhood vaccination rates, we’ve seen outbreaks of all three. This isn’t an abstract problem – the child whose parents decided not to vaccinate may not even get sick, but their classmate who just finished chemotherapy for leukemia may die.CBSNews:
So far this year, 159 cases of measles were reported in 16 states, with three outbreaks accounting for most of cases: outbreaks in New York City (58 cases), North Carolina (23 cases) and Texas (21 cases). That’s on track for the most cases since measles was considered eliminated.
Fortunately, said Schuchat, nobody has died.
Eighty-two percent of cases were in unvaccinated persons, and 9 percent were in people who weren’t sure if they’d been vaccinated. Seventy-nine percent of those the unvaccinated cited philosophical differences with the measles mumps and rubella (MMR) shot.
In 2012, at least 18 people died from whooping cough in the largest outbreak of the disease in the last 50 years.
This isn’t simply just a personal choice. This decision, in a very fundamental way, affects the lives of others.
We’ve got our work cut out, my friends. Y’all know that I don’t aim to make decisions for you. I always encourage freedom and flexibility of thought. Despite Stephanie’s breakdown, I’m not on my way to the doctor to get vaccinated. I am, however, ready to take a look at my previously uneducated paradigm and have an internal conversation.
Remember when there were no immunization shots and folks prevented disease with whole foods and exercise? Me neither. There has never been a moment in our lives when that statement was totally true.
Yesterday, we touched on colds. Today, we’ll take a look at some of the more serious diseases out there. This post will take a deep dive into the world of vaccinations and their necessity. At our close, you can decide if you should sprint over to CVS to get poked.
I was prepared to write a tongue in cheek post on this topic and sent a few photos over to Kaplifestyle’s editor extraordinaire, Stephanie. Apparently, she didn’t think riffing carelessly about the topic was responsible. She hit me back with a note:
Wading into a minefield, huh?
Translation: “What are you, an imbecile? You don’t want to mess around with a topic folks feel so passionately about. “ Plus, and I should have known this would be the case, Steph knows a thing or two about the topic.
Slightly more accurate translation: I’m okay with diving into controversial topics, but I think it should be done knowingly. More importantly, I think whenever there’s a topic that has potential life-threatening implications, we should treat it seriously.
Flu shots, shingles, mumps, measles, whatever. Are we protecting ourselves or causing harm? The Mayo Clinic weighs in:
“Vaccines for adults are recommended based on your age, prior vaccinations, health, lifestyle, occupation and where you travel.
The schedule is updated every year, and changes range from the addition of a new vaccine to tweaks of current recommendations. To determine exactly which vaccines you need now and which vaccines are coming up, check the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website.”
I must be living in the dark because I’m not on any vaccine schedule and I’ll be 40 in July.
Luckily for you, that vaccine schedule isn’t quite as intense as it sounds. The CDC recommends, for a 40 year old male, a flu vaccine once per year, a tetanus/diphtheria/pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine or tetanus booster once every 10 years, a measles/mumps/rubella vaccine (once, if you weren’t vaccinated as a child), and possibly a vaccine for varicella (shingles), if you’ve never had chicken pox.
If you took all of them, that’s 2- 4 vaccines right now, then one per year after.
I think, in order to properly evaluate vaccines, we should first do a quick overview.
We often speak of the immune system on Kaplifestyle, discussing ways to boost the body’s natural defenses. It’s beyond clear that eating healthy, whole foods will promote a more robust immune system and enhance your ability to fight off diseases and illnesses.
I thought we’d never get here, Steph. This was my intended plan all along. We can help folks lean on natural….wait a second, I feel a “but” coming.
However (see, not a “but”), the body relies on being able to successfully identify pathogens in order to spur the immune system to deal with them. To put it (possibly overly) simply, if your body doesn’t know what it’s fighting, it can’t bring effective weapons quickly enough, and you get sick. Vaccines, in essence, “teach” your body about what it may encounter. They’re the messenger telling the army how to prepare.
I understand the desire to live and eat clean, relying on natural sources heavily. That shouldn’t relieve us of our obligation to be informed consumers, researching and discovering how we can maximize our health and well-being. Sometimes, that involves taking a hard look at the science. Vaccines are some of the most heavily studied developments in modern medicine, in part because they are so critical to health across the globe. These vaccines aren’t doing anything “unnatural” to your body; they’re stimulating your own immune system.
Pushback time. The act of poking oneself with a sharp needle and injecting a manmade substance carrying a virus or bacteria is unequivocally unnatural. Proceed.
Let me be explicit here – vaccines work. Smallpox killed between 300-500 million people in the 20th century. It was a nasty disease. The last person to be infected naturally was in 1977, because vaccines wiped it out. Vaccines are the reason why we don’t hear about polio anymore, although due to low vaccination rates in some countries (Syria, for instance), it’s not completely eradicated.
Now, it’s easy to understand how important the vaccines for smallpox and polio were. Those diseases are known for having high mortality rates and crippling impacts for the survivors. Measles and influenza don’t quite have the same deadly fear. They probably should. Measles kills .3% of the people it infects in the US, but can have a 25-30% fatality rate outside the US or for immunocompromised people. Influenza (the flu) kills millions, particularly children, the elderly, or other at-risk populations.
Of course, you’re not in those positions. Most folks reading this blog are healthy adults, with a strong immune system after eating berries, living with easy access to first rate medical care. You may be thinking to roll the dice, and if you do get the flu, it’s not such a big deal – a miserable few days and you’ll be back to normal. It’s not that simple.
Bigger picture injection (ooooh): Everyone should be obligated by law to build healthier immune systems. Widespread flu-shots may wipe out the flu but there will be another disease that follows. Immunizations may be huge, effective band-aids, but I wonder if they are another shortcut. I’m still listening.
By getting vaccinated, you protect other people, and particularly those people who are most vulnerable. Not everyone can be vaccinated – allergies, a compromised immune system, some people with cancer or organ transplant recipients, all of these may mean someone can’t receive standard immunizations. However, we don’t rely on every single individual being vaccinated to prevent the spread of disease. Most diseases have a threshold – the number of people who need to be vaccinated to prevent most transmission. If 85% of a population is inoculated against smallpox, it can’t survive in that population.
Just as we should be skeptical of marketing claims from mega-corporations, so too should we be skeptical of people claiming the “natural” and “holistic” position. Religious objections aside, the modern anti-vaccine movement was driven in large part by one individual, Andrew Wakefield. He claimed, in 1998, to have a study of 12 children who developed autism after receiving the MMR vaccine. Not only was he funded by people suing vaccine manufacturers (a clear, and undisclosed, conflict of interest), it later was discovered that he had falsified data and manipulated his results. He was stripped of his license for fraud.
Unfortunately, the impacts of his fraud have been huge. The US had actually come very close to eradicating measles, mumps, and whooping cough. Measles was thought to be entirely eradicated in 2000, in fact. However, due in large part to declining childhood vaccination rates, we’ve seen outbreaks of all three. This isn’t an abstract problem – the child whose parents decided not to vaccinate may not even get sick, but their classmate who just finished chemotherapy for leukemia may die.CBSNews:
So far this year, 159 cases of measles were reported in 16 states, with three outbreaks accounting for most of cases: outbreaks in New York City (58 cases), North Carolina (23 cases) and Texas (21 cases). That’s on track for the most cases since measles was considered eliminated.
Fortunately, said Schuchat, nobody has died.
Eighty-two percent of cases were in unvaccinated persons, and 9 percent were in people who weren’t sure if they’d been vaccinated. Seventy-nine percent of those the unvaccinated cited philosophical differences with the measles mumps and rubella (MMR) shot.
In 2012, at least 18 people died from whooping cough in the largest outbreak of the disease in the last 50 years.
This isn’t simply just a personal choice. This decision, in a very fundamental way, affects the lives of others.
We’ve got our work cut out, my friends. Y’all know that I don’t aim to make decisions for you. I always encourage freedom and flexibility of thought. Despite Stephanie’s breakdown, I’m not on my way to the doctor to get vaccinated. I am, however, ready to take a look at my previously uneducated paradigm and have an internal conversation.
If you dare to call yourself bullet proof, expect your Kevlar to be tested.
In this post, we’ll touch on Bulletproof’s base product, Upgraded Coffee, and the techniques they use to spread the word.
A friend hit me up months ago and mentioned that he knew somebody connected to the company. They wanted to send some product for me to try, no strings attached. “You’d really appreciate the coffee,” he told me.
I was never a big name, but I’m no stranger to this sort of interaction. As an MLB player, companies constantly sent gear, gum, magnets, protein, whatever to the clubhouse. There are a myriad of reasons they do this, but the bottom line is, if a celebrity likes the product, they may sell more. Just ask Paris Hilton.
Offer the product for nothing in return initially, and the star is unlikely to say no. I found that no matter how many zeroes their paychecks had, my teammates dug free shit. Personally, I found myself throwing or giving stuff away as I became more discerning about the products I was willing to ingest or cover my skin with. I don’t play golf, and I don’t dig collars. How many polos can I wear?
We often muse at Kaplifestyle on diets, cleanses and products. Most of these cleverly marketed products should be immediately removed from the earth due to lack of substance and merit. Upgraded coffee is not one of those products. In fact, it’s quite tasty, and the company deserves applause for its attempt to educate while it sells. These cats have the selling part down.
When I received the package in the mail from Bulletproof, I was jazzed to find a branded silver coffee thermos, which turned out to be exceptional. I like my coffee to stay hot, and this bad boy was gold (stainless steel, actually). More importantly, the box also contained a sample of their “upgraded” coffee beans. From the company’s website:
Upgraded™ Coffee is the result of an obsessive pursuit to find the absolute highest performance coffee beans on earth. It’s taken me more than 10 years to identify every step of performance-robbing toxin formation in coffee and to find a reliable, perfect source of beans that always make me feel great – even though “normal” coffee gives me a headache and jitters and makes me cranky. This coffee makes you feel noticeably better than anything else you’ll find. You’ll never go back to your corner coffeehouse chain again. These beans are meant for drinking black or best of all, for making Bulletproof® Coffee with grass fed butter.
The term “Upgraded” immediately makes me nervous. I can’t help but think about a bean being altered from its natural state. What if a company told you their chicken was upgraded? My mind leaps to genetically modified, but my review of the product title is less important than the product itself. Here’s how they define upgraded:
Upgraded™ Coffee beans are mechanically processed right after picking using only clean cold water. This more expensive process is safer because it dramatically reduces harmful molds or bacteria from impacting your health.
There is a pretty substantial debate happening about these “harmful molds.” Evidencebasedfitness.net says:
Aflatoxin is indeed a toxin. It’s produced by a mold called Aspergillus flavus. Aspergillis is a mold that grows naturally in soil and cereal and plant crops. It’s everywhere. You’ve been living with it practically all of your life, just not in disease-causing quantities.
Aspergillis can cause disease in humans–it’s called aspergillosis. Aspergillosis usually affects people who are immunocompromised and can cause what is called embolic disease (the Bulletproof folks link it to heart attacks and aortic infarctions). However, aspergillosis is caused by an overgrowth of the Aspergillis mold, not the toxin. If your coffee is causing aspergillosis, you have a totally different set of problems and no amount of coffee, bulletproof or not, is going to help that.
So that appears to be a lot of marketing nonsense. Let’s get to the important stuff and the reason why I agreed to try the beans in the first place – the flavor and experience.
The makers claim “this coffee makes you feel noticeably better than anything else you’ll find.” This declaration was unequivocally untrue for me. Upgraded coffee made me feel the same way my organic, black, sensibly sourced coffee does. I noticed no tangible difference. It just wasn’t unique or terribly memorable. It was, however, tasty, and I was incredibly thankful for the gift. I reached out to the contact at bulletproof to display gratitude. Happy to have now experienced the brand, I moved on.
Later I the day, I received this response via email:
Great! Would you be interested in our ambassador program? (Product stipend/discount in exchange for spreading the BP word)
Now we come to the crux of their pitch. Put simply, if I tell you how great the product is, I get money and free stuff. Now it makes sense. Frankly, it’s a solid product with a ridiculously powerful buzz. Couple that with strong marketing and hustling employees and you can see why there’s so much discussion about it.
What they don’t know about is my relationship with you, my readers. I’ve promised to deliver authentic content. Translated – I’m not going to accept compensation in exchange for offering up a favorable review of a product. When I receive product samples to try, I will disclose that to you. Everything you read is going to be my unbiased opinion.
Hustle, to me, is to be celebrated, not demeaned. Bulletproof has done a nice job delivering and selling a solid, if not spectacular, product. I’d drink it again, but I won’t tell you that you should.
Stay tuned for a discussion on their other major “innovation” – adding butter to your coffee.
Now, instead of having free coffee delivered to me, I’m headed out with my credit card to grab some beans. Damn.
If you dare to call yourself bullet proof, expect your Kevlar to be tested.
In this post, we’ll touch on Bulletproof’s base product, Upgraded Coffee, and the techniques they use to spread the word.
A friend hit me up months ago and mentioned that he knew somebody connected to the company. They wanted to send some product for me to try, no strings attached. “You’d really appreciate the coffee,” he told me.
I was never a big name, but I’m no stranger to this sort of interaction. As an MLB player, companies constantly sent gear, gum, magnets, protein, whatever to the clubhouse. There are a myriad of reasons they do this, but the bottom line is, if a celebrity likes the product, they may sell more. Just ask Paris Hilton.
Offer the product for nothing in return initially, and the star is unlikely to say no. I found that no matter how many zeroes their paychecks had, my teammates dug free shit. Personally, I found myself throwing or giving stuff away as I became more discerning about the products I was willing to ingest or cover my skin with. I don’t play golf, and I don’t dig collars. How many polos can I wear?
We often muse at Kaplifestyle on diets, cleanses and products. Most of these cleverly marketed products should be immediately removed from the earth due to lack of substance and merit. Upgraded coffee is not one of those products. In fact, it’s quite tasty, and the company deserves applause for its attempt to educate while it sells. These cats have the selling part down.
When I received the package in the mail from Bulletproof, I was jazzed to find a branded silver coffee thermos, which turned out to be exceptional. I like my coffee to stay hot, and this bad boy was gold (stainless steel, actually). More importantly, the box also contained a sample of their “upgraded” coffee beans. From the company’s website:
Upgraded™ Coffee is the result of an obsessive pursuit to find the absolute highest performance coffee beans on earth. It’s taken me more than 10 years to identify every step of performance-robbing toxin formation in coffee and to find a reliable, perfect source of beans that always make me feel great – even though “normal” coffee gives me a headache and jitters and makes me cranky. This coffee makes you feel noticeably better than anything else you’ll find. You’ll never go back to your corner coffeehouse chain again. These beans are meant for drinking black or best of all, for making Bulletproof® Coffee with grass fed butter.
The term “Upgraded” immediately makes me nervous. I can’t help but think about a bean being altered from its natural state. What if a company told you their chicken was upgraded? My mind leaps to genetically modified, but my review of the product title is less important than the product itself. Here’s how they define upgraded:
Upgraded™ Coffee beans are mechanically processed right after picking using only clean cold water. This more expensive process is safer because it dramatically reduces harmful molds or bacteria from impacting your health.
There is a pretty substantial debate happening about these “harmful molds.” Evidencebasedfitness.net says:
Aflatoxin is indeed a toxin. It’s produced by a mold called Aspergillus flavus. Aspergillis is a mold that grows naturally in soil and cereal and plant crops. It’s everywhere. You’ve been living with it practically all of your life, just not in disease-causing quantities.
Aspergillis can cause disease in humans–it’s called aspergillosis. Aspergillosis usually affects people who are immunocompromised and can cause what is called embolic disease (the Bulletproof folks link it to heart attacks and aortic infarctions). However, aspergillosis is caused by an overgrowth of the Aspergillis mold, not the toxin. If your coffee is causing aspergillosis, you have a totally different set of problems and no amount of coffee, bulletproof or not, is going to help that.
So that appears to be a lot of marketing nonsense. Let’s get to the important stuff and the reason why I agreed to try the beans in the first place – the flavor and experience.
The makers claim “this coffee makes you feel noticeably better than anything else you’ll find.” This declaration was unequivocally untrue for me. Upgraded coffee made me feel the same way my organic, black, sensibly sourced coffee does. I noticed no tangible difference. It just wasn’t unique or terribly memorable. It was, however, tasty, and I was incredibly thankful for the gift. I reached out to the contact at bulletproof to display gratitude. Happy to have now experienced the brand, I moved on.
Later I the day, I received this response via email:
Great! Would you be interested in our ambassador program? (Product stipend/discount in exchange for spreading the BP word)
Now we come to the crux of their pitch. Put simply, if I tell you how great the product is, I get money and free stuff. Now it makes sense. Frankly, it’s a solid product with a ridiculously powerful buzz. Couple that with strong marketing and hustling employees and you can see why there’s so much discussion about it.
What they don’t know about is my relationship with you, my readers. I’ve promised to deliver authentic content. Translated – I’m not going to accept compensation in exchange for offering up a favorable review of a product. When I receive product samples to try, I will disclose that to you. Everything you read is going to be my unbiased opinion.
Hustle, to me, is to be celebrated, not demeaned. Bulletproof has done a nice job delivering and selling a solid, if not spectacular, product. I’d drink it again, but I won’t tell you that you should.
Stay tuned for a discussion on their other major “innovation” – adding butter to your coffee.
Now, instead of having free coffee delivered to me, I’m headed out with my credit card to grab some beans. Damn.
Remember when there were no immunization shots and folks prevented disease with whole foods and exercise? Me neither. There has never been a moment in our lives when that statement was totally true.
Yesterday, we touched on colds. Today, we’ll take a look at some of the more serious diseases out there. This post will take a deep dive into the world of vaccinations and their necessity. At our close, you can decide if you should sprint over to CVS to get poked.
I was prepared to write a tongue in cheek post on this topic and sent a few photos over to Kaplifestyle’s editor extraordinaire, Stephanie. Apparently, she didn’t think riffing carelessly about the topic was responsible. She hit me back with a note:
Wading into a minefield, huh?
Translation: “What are you, an imbecile? You don’t want to mess around with a topic folks feel so passionately about. “ Plus, and I should have known this would be the case, Steph knows a thing or two about the topic.
Slightly more accurate translation: I’m okay with diving into controversial topics, but I think it should be done knowingly. More importantly, I think whenever there’s a topic that has potential life-threatening implications, we should treat it seriously.
Flu shots, shingles, mumps, measles, whatever. Are we protecting ourselves or causing harm? The Mayo Clinic weighs in:
“Vaccines for adults are recommended based on your age, prior vaccinations, health, lifestyle, occupation and where you travel.
The schedule is updated every year, and changes range from the addition of a new vaccine to tweaks of current recommendations. To determine exactly which vaccines you need now and which vaccines are coming up, check the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website.”
I must be living in the dark because I’m not on any vaccine schedule and I’ll be 40 in July.
Luckily for you, that vaccine schedule isn’t quite as intense as it sounds. The CDC recommends, for a 40 year old male, a flu vaccine once per year, a tetanus/diphtheria/pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine or tetanus booster once every 10 years, a measles/mumps/rubella vaccine (once, if you weren’t vaccinated as a child), and possibly a vaccine for varicella (shingles), if you’ve never had chicken pox.
If you took all of them, that’s 2- 4 vaccines right now, then one per year after.
I think, in order to properly evaluate vaccines, we should first do a quick overview.
We often speak of the immune system on Kaplifestyle, discussing ways to boost the body’s natural defenses. It’s beyond clear that eating healthy, whole foods will promote a more robust immune system and enhance your ability to fight off diseases and illnesses.
I thought we’d never get here, Steph. This was my intended plan all along. We can help folks lean on natural….wait a second, I feel a “but” coming.
However (see, not a “but”), the body relies on being able to successfully identify pathogens in order to spur the immune system to deal with them. To put it (possibly overly) simply, if your body doesn’t know what it’s fighting, it can’t bring effective weapons quickly enough, and you get sick. Vaccines, in essence, “teach” your body about what it may encounter. They’re the messenger telling the army how to prepare.
I understand the desire to live and eat clean, relying on natural sources heavily. That shouldn’t relieve us of our obligation to be informed consumers, researching and discovering how we can maximize our health and well-being. Sometimes, that involves taking a hard look at the science. Vaccines are some of the most heavily studied developments in modern medicine, in part because they are so critical to health across the globe. These vaccines aren’t doing anything “unnatural” to your body; they’re stimulating your own immune system.
Pushback time. The act of poking oneself with a sharp needle and injecting a manmade substance carrying a virus or bacteria is unequivocally unnatural. Proceed.
Let me be explicit here – vaccines work. Smallpox killed between 300-500 million people in the 20th century. It was a nasty disease. The last person to be infected naturally was in 1977, because vaccines wiped it out. Vaccines are the reason why we don’t hear about polio anymore, although due to low vaccination rates in some countries (Syria, for instance), it’s not completely eradicated.
Now, it’s easy to understand how important the vaccines for smallpox and polio were. Those diseases are known for having high mortality rates and crippling impacts for the survivors. Measles and influenza don’t quite have the same deadly fear. They probably should. Measles kills .3% of the people it infects in the US, but can have a 25-30% fatality rate outside the US or for immunocompromised people. Influenza (the flu) kills millions, particularly children, the elderly, or other at-risk populations.
Of course, you’re not in those positions. Most folks reading this blog are healthy adults, with a strong immune system after eating berries, living with easy access to first rate medical care. You may be thinking to roll the dice, and if you do get the flu, it’s not such a big deal – a miserable few days and you’ll be back to normal. It’s not that simple.
Bigger picture injection (ooooh): Everyone should be obligated by law to build healthier immune systems. Widespread flu-shots may wipe out the flu but there will be another disease that follows. Immunizations may be huge, effective band-aids, but I wonder if they are another shortcut. I’m still listening.
By getting vaccinated, you protect other people, and particularly those people who are most vulnerable. Not everyone can be vaccinated – allergies, a compromised immune system, some people with cancer or organ transplant recipients, all of these may mean someone can’t receive standard immunizations. However, we don’t rely on every single individual being vaccinated to prevent the spread of disease. Most diseases have a threshold – the number of people who need to be vaccinated to prevent most transmission. If 85% of a population is inoculated against smallpox, it can’t survive in that population.
Just as we should be skeptical of marketing claims from mega-corporations, so too should we be skeptical of people claiming the “natural” and “holistic” position. Religious objections aside, the modern anti-vaccine movement was driven in large part by one individual, Andrew Wakefield. He claimed, in 1998, to have a study of 12 children who developed autism after receiving the MMR vaccine. Not only was he funded by people suing vaccine manufacturers (a clear, and undisclosed, conflict of interest), it later was discovered that he had falsified data and manipulated his results. He was stripped of his license for fraud.
Unfortunately, the impacts of his fraud have been huge. The US had actually come very close to eradicating measles, mumps, and whooping cough. Measles was thought to be entirely eradicated in 2000, in fact. However, due in large part to declining childhood vaccination rates, we’ve seen outbreaks of all three. This isn’t an abstract problem – the child whose parents decided not to vaccinate may not even get sick, but their classmate who just finished chemotherapy for leukemia may die.CBSNews:
So far this year, 159 cases of measles were reported in 16 states, with three outbreaks accounting for most of cases: outbreaks in New York City (58 cases), North Carolina (23 cases) and Texas (21 cases). That’s on track for the most cases since measles was considered eliminated.
Fortunately, said Schuchat, nobody has died.
Eighty-two percent of cases were in unvaccinated persons, and 9 percent were in people who weren’t sure if they’d been vaccinated. Seventy-nine percent of those the unvaccinated cited philosophical differences with the measles mumps and rubella (MMR) shot.
In 2012, at least 18 people died from whooping cough in the largest outbreak of the disease in the last 50 years.
This isn’t simply just a personal choice. This decision, in a very fundamental way, affects the lives of others.
We’ve got our work cut out, my friends. Y’all know that I don’t aim to make decisions for you. I always encourage freedom and flexibility of thought. Despite Stephanie’s breakdown, I’m not on my way to the doctor to get vaccinated. I am, however, ready to take a look at my previously uneducated paradigm and have an internal conversation.
I recently visited Idaho Falls for work, and rather than rest my head at the local corporate hotel, I slept in a yurt in the local mountains. I had no shower and no bathroom, but it was among the most powerful travel experiences I’ve had. I was surrounded by some of the most jaw dropping scenery I’ve experienced on US soil.
The research suggests that I was more productive during my work time because of my environs.
“Nature can provide cognitive benefits in much shorter timeframes, and in smaller amounts than previously demonstrated,” the authors concluded.
For anybody who toils all day at task after task in an office building, it’s hard to miss the implications. “Modern work drains attention throughout the day, so providing boosted ‘green micro-breaks’ may provide mental top-ups to offset declining attention,” said lead study author Kate Lee of the University of Melbourne
While the natural beauty surrounding me positively impacted my work, the quality of my trip was significantly enhanced by the care and dedication of my host. While I certainly would have left feeling strongly about the trip simply based on the surroundings, the breakfasts provided each morning elevated my trip to sublime. Humans can dramatically alter the moods of those they touch, particularly if they set out to do so. From Psychology Today:
For centuries, researchers have studied the tendency for people to unconsciously and automatically mimic the emotional expressions of others, and in many cases actually feel the same feelings simply by exposure to emotions in social interactions. Studies have found that the mimicry of a frown or a smile or other kinds of emotional expression trigger reactions in our brains that cause us to interpret those expressions as our own feelings. Simply put, as a species, we are innately vulnerable to “catching” other people’s emotions.
The scientific part of me laughs at the adage that “food made with love tastes better.” This experience forced me to question my own assumptions. Was it Cami’s skill, ingredients and creativity which were responsible for the execution of 3 of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had, or did the care she provided materially alter the experience? From the Daily Mail:
Researchers looking into human experience found…that patients in hospital felt less pain during procedures when they were carried out by a sweet-natured nurse.Professor Kurt Gray said: ‘The way we read another person’s intentions changes our physical experience of the world.
‘The results confirm that good intentions – even misguided ones – can soothe pain, increase pleasure and make things taste better.
So how does one inject love into the preparation of a meal?
Before my arrival, Cami and I discussed the timing for breakfasts. Each morning, they arrived promptly at 8 am, just as we agreed, presented in a picnic basket packed with obvious energy devoted to presentation. The ingredients were hand written and labeled, allowing me to feel confident in my choices every morning.
These breakfasts were huge, more than I could possibly eat. Better yet, even without direct interaction, my host took notice of my habits and altered accordingly. Day 1, she provided orange juice, which I didn’t drink. On day 2, apple juice appeared, with a label noting that it was “unsweetened pressed apple juice.” I used a small amount in my (9 grain) cereal but left the rest. Day 3 saw no juice in the basket.
These efforts, which require uncommon dedication and feel, left me with the strongest experience I’ve had in quite some time. Perhaps it was merely the merging of creativity, talent and presentation with the ambiance that was responsible for my mind-blowing food experience. Perhaps the energetic mysticism or whatever you want to label that thing was responsible. I walked away from Idaho Falls rejuvenated, restored and satiated.
So that appears to be a lot of marketing nonsense. Let’s get to the important stuff and the reason why I agreed to try the beans in the first place – the flavor and experience.
