Posted by Dr. Cate, April 2017
Category: Nutrition
Can Diet Really Increase Your IQ?
Written by Dr. Cate on April 2nd, 2017
In his mid 20’s, Silicon Valley wiz-kid and entrepenur Dave Asprey had accomplished everything he’d set out to achieve, but his success had cost him his health.
When the scale hit 300, he realized it time to take better care of himself. Ditching mainstream diet advice that had gotten him nowhere, he adapted a healthy, low-carb, natural-fat diet and lost 100 pounds. To his surprise, he discovered he’d also gained some serious brain power–initially somewhere around 15 IQ points.
IQ is rated on a standard, bell-shaped curve. The average IQ score is set at 100, meaning if your IQ is 100 you’re smarter than 50% of adults, and the other 50% are smarter than you. 15 points is equal to a standard deviation. That means gaining 15 points and going from 100-115 moves you from smarter than 50% of the population to smarter than 84%. Of course, just by taking IQ tests again and again, you can get better at IQ tests and can falsely raise your IQ. But a gain of 20 to 30 points is extraordinary and unlikely to be just due to practice.
For the complete post, click here.
We should include a fourth macronutrient: time between meals
By Dr. Cate Shanahan, Author of Deep Nutrition
There’s a lot of important discussion around macronutrients in the nutrition world regarding what percentage of our daily calories should ideally come from protein versus carb versus fat. In all this discussion, what’s often overlooked is the fact that simply overeating puts a stress on the system. I think we should include a fourth macronutrient: time between meals. The longer you can go without a meal or a snack or a beverage other than water, the healthier your mitochondria will be.
For complete aritcle, click here
Fuel The Athlete with Ben Greenfield
Athletes seek to maximize their performance, often at the expense of their long-term health and longevity. Ben, a former bodybuilder, is an ironman triathlete, speaker, and author who understands how to nourish 
the body for both peak results and optimal health. He has a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Idaho in sports science and exercise physiology. Ben coaches and trains individuals for general health, longevity, weight loss, lean muscle gain, holistic wellness, and sports performance–using a real food protocol.
Says Ben, “I love getting fit, feeling good about the way my body looks, and fulfilling my deep-seeded drive to live life to the fullest by achieving difficult feats of physical performance. But I was fed up with feeling like crap from all the extreme exercising, strange foods, feeling of constant stress and soreness, and worry about the toll my hectic lifestyle was taking on my body. So I have found a way of training, eating and living that is perfectly healthy and natural, but still allows me to look, feel and perform at my peak capabilities.”
As a consultant to many athletes, Ben has noticed a trend of acne, digestive issues, and adrenal issues that plague those who fuel their bodies with what Ben calls “franken fuels.” In today’s episode, he contrasts popular sports drinks, gels, and bars with the real fuel the athlete needs to turbocharge their performance without sacrificing gut health. He gets into the science of how various proteins, fats, and carbs work in our bodies. He talks about his own sweet spot of carb/protein/fat percentages and what foods he recommends for everyone to include in their diet. You will be fascinated by what he has to say and will want to apply it to your own diet, training, and lifestyle.
Read more, click here or podcast link
Fat Adapted Athletes Perform Better w/ Cate Shanahan, MD
We cover the following topics
- Minute 0-15
Benefits of fat burning over sugar burning for aerobic exercise AKA cardio
Ketosis versus fat burning
The short term effect of exercise on fat burning
Simple hack to optimize your fat burning on any given day - Minute 15-30
How I built on the work of Weston Price
The real reason we’ve blamed saturated fat for heart attacks since the 1960s
Why the diet doctors recommend is the fad, not an ancestral diet
Why I believe that the best source of nutritional info are old-fashioned cookbooks
The Four Pillars of an Optimal Human Diet (boiled down from old-fashioned cookbooks and travel-foodie shows) - Minute 30-45
Meal timing and hormonal hacks to simplify curing a sweet tooth
What a healthy breakfast should look like
The biggest dietary change in human history is our dramatic increase in vegetable oil intake
Why vegetable oils are toxic to the reproductive process (men and women) - Minutes 45+
A ratio called phi is nature’s formula for ensuring that our skeletal growth is optimally functional and beautiful
The best first step to optimizing your health should be one that gives you immediate positive feedback
For additional information, click here
Fluoride: A Performance Suppressant
David Augenstein
Over the last couple weeks, I was looking through our interview archives and found this short interview on the subject of fluoride and performance with David Augenstein of the Journal of Natural Food and Health. The truths mentioned in this interview are timeless and just as applicable as four years ago.
For the complete interview, visit here.
Lastly, if you are looking for more information, here are a few resources
- David Augenstein’s Journal of Natural Food and Health
- Fluoride: Poison on Tap Documentary
- The McCarthy Project research, click here, here, here
- Water and Brain Performance by Stephen McCarthy
My Untold Story on Raw Milk
David Augenstein
About four years ago, I started my quest to find a source of raw milk for the purpose of improving my performance as a human being, my family, and athletes looking for an edge.
On top of that, I found this unpublished interview with David Augenstein of the Journal of Natural Food and Health on the subject of raw milk and its value to the human being.
For the complete interview, visit here.
Lastly, if you are looking for more information, here are a few resources
- David Augenstein’s Journal of Natural Food and Health and
- Book: The Untold Story of Milk by Ron Schmid
- Weston A. Price Foundation
- The McCarthy Project Past Research, click here, here
- Rawmilk.org And advocacy resource for
natural, raw milk & non-pasteurized dairy - Harvard Research on raw milk