toddbecker

Wim Hof can raise or lower his body temperature at will, overriding his autonomic nervous system. He is able to sit in a box of ice for almost two hours. He can swim 50 meters under arctic ice. Wearing only shorts and going barefoot, he has run a marathon in Lapland and climbed through snow to the summits of Mt. Everest and Mt. Kilamanjaro. In carrying out these feats, he is able to avoid hypothermia, the normal human response to extreme cold. Monitoring by physiologists show that he keeps... Read Full Story

There is a powerful way to re-program your brain that has been largely overlooked.  A way to change your relationship with eating, sleep, sex and basic emotions like fear, love and aggression.  While cognitive therapies can modify behavior, they are of questionable help in altering these basic drives. Our drives are largely governed by two small primitive brain structures, the hypothalamus and the amygdala –  shown in red in the drawing at right.  Remarkably, these two tiny structures are... Read Full Story

[NOTE: A rough draft of this post went out earlier today - my apologies.  What follows is the final, cleaned up version] Where does obesity begin?   What  drives  you to eat too much or expend too little energy, and why has there been such a dramatic increase in obesity since 1980? Some recently popular explanations are the carbohydrate / insulin hypothesis (CIH), singling out the prevalence of carbohydrates in the diet, and the food reward hypothesis (FRH), putting the primary blame on the... Read Full Story

When does stress help you and when does it hurt you? There is no doubt that stresses of the wrong sort can lead to anxiety, emotional turmoil — and eventually depression and diseases like atherosclerosis and cancer.  Yet a central theme of this blog is that certain stresses are “hormetic”: at the right dose and frequency, stress can actually make you stronger and more resilient.  The many posts on this blog illustrate how stress can be channelled to build muscle, retrain appetite, improve... Read Full Story

Are we getting fatter because there is just a lot more irresistibly delicious food around us?  Does that explain the obesity crisis? That theory has been around the block but it is in fashion again.   In 2009, David Kessler’s book, “ The End of Overeating ” put forward the thesis that food in contemporary American food has been deliberately engineered–by adding fat, sugar and salt–to exploit our neurochemistry and hijack our free will. More recently, one of the luminaries of the Paleo... Read Full Story

How much weight lifting or other exercise is optimal for fitness?  What is the right amount of carbohydrate restriction or fasting for sustained weight loss and health? What level of exposure to allergens will reduce allergies? How many hours of sun tanning is healthy? How frequently should plus lenses be worn to reduce myopia?  Do I need to take cold showers every day to get their benefit? How much stress is enough — and how much is too much? Many of the questions I get on this website and... Read Full Story

Do you have trouble getting to sleep at night or staying asleep?   About 30% of the adult population reports difficulties initiating sleep, sustaining sleep, or experiencing restful sleep. To deal with these problems, many people resort to medications or some form of supplement. But it now appears that there is an effective way to banish insomnia without the use of chemicals, by simply applying the principles of hormesis. The remedy I want to discuss here is called Sleep Restriction... Read Full Story

One of the primary topics covered on this blog is intermittent fasting (IF).  Many approach IF as a diet or weight loss method.  I know from research, personal experience and conversations with others that IF can indeed be an effective way to drop unwanted pounds.  However, viewing IF as merely a new way to diet entirely misses what I believe is the most important reason to pursue it:  the activation of hormetic processes that foster improved health, keep degenerative diseases at bay, and... Read Full Story

Those of you who live in the San Francisco Bay Area may be interested in attending a talk I’ve been invited to give on May 18 in Palo Alto.  The topic is “Intermittent fasting for health and longevity”, and I plan to summarize both the recent science and the best practices for successful fasting. The venue for the talk is Palo Alto’s cutting-edge combination fitness studio and heath food cafe, The 3rd Door . Beyond providing a friendly environment to get fit and meet friends after workouts... Read Full Story

Antioxidant supplements are probably ineffective.  They may even be hazardous to your health. Many people take daily supplements that include antioxidants such as Vitamins A, C, and E; beta carotene, coenzyme Q10, and alpha lipoic acid. I used to be one of them, convinced of the theory that supplementation with antioxidants is an effective way to neutralize harmful free radicals.  These free radicals, also called ROS or “reactive oxygen species”, can cause oxidative damage to cells and... Read Full Story