 |
| (Left) Twisting with "flat" strands vs. (Right) twisting with "coiled" strands. |
... by BlackOnyx77: tutorial.
... by BlackBeautyTips: tutorial.
Rabu, 17 November 2010
Twists Series: Method II
... by BlackOnyx77: tutorial.
... by BlackBeautyTips: tutorial.
Henna CONDITIONER Recipes
DISCLAIMER: If you are new to using henna, please do your research before trying it. This is particularly true if your hair is color/chemically-treated OR whether you desire a color change (e.g., red henna) vs. conditioning alone (e.g., neutral henna).
As some of you may know, henna may be used to strengthen and 'thicken' the hair (amongst other benefits). Unlike most conditioners that rinse out with the next wash, henna is long lasting. Below are some conditioner recipes you can make at home:
FIA'S HENNA GLOSS - for minimal color change and deep conditioning
- henna powder
- lemon/lime juice
- conditioner or plain, unsweetened yogurt
Recipe and instructions
MIXOLOGIST'S DREAM
- henna powder
- curd
- egg
- lemon juice
- (optional) olive oil or coconut oil
Recipe and instructions
 |
| 4th henna treatment. Performed with henna melt from TheHairSheBang. |
As some of you may know, henna may be used to strengthen and 'thicken' the hair (amongst other benefits). Unlike most conditioners that rinse out with the next wash, henna is long lasting. Below are some conditioner recipes you can make at home:
YOGURT HENNA CONDITIONER
- henna
- yogurt
Recipe and instructionsFIA'S HENNA GLOSS - for minimal color change and deep conditioning
- henna powder
- lemon/lime juice
- conditioner or plain, unsweetened yogurt
Recipe and instructions
MIXOLOGIST'S DREAM
- henna powder
- curd
- egg
- lemon juice
- (optional) olive oil or coconut oil
Recipe and instructions
Selasa, 16 November 2010
Impressions from the Wise Traditions Conference
I spent last weekend at the Weston A. Price Foundation Wise Traditions conference in King of Prussia, PA. Here are some highlights:
Spending time with several people in the diet-health community who I’ve been wanting to meet in person, including Chris Masterjohn, Melissa McEwen and John Durant. John and Melissa are the public face of the New York city paleo movement. The four of us spent most of the weekend together tossing around ideas and making merry. I’ve been corresponding with Chris quite a bit lately and we’ve been thinking through some important diet-health questions together. He is brimming with good ideas. I also got to meet Sally Fallon Morell, the founder and president of the WAPF.
Attending talks. The highlight was Chris Masterjohn’s talk “Heart Disease and Molecular Degeneration: the New Paradigm”, in which he described his compelling theory on oxidative damage and cardiovascular disease, among other things. You can read some of his earlier ideas on the subject here. Another talk I really enjoyed was by Anore Jones, who lived with an isolated Inuit group in Alaska for 23 years and ate a mostly traditional hunter-gatherer diet. The food and preparation techniques they used were really interesting, including various techniques for extracting fats and preserving meats, berries and greens by fermentation. Jones has published books on the subject that I suspect would be very interesting, including Nauriat Niginaqtuat, Plants that We Eat, and Iqaluich Niginaqtuat, Fish that We Eat. The latter is freely available on the web here.
I attended a speech by Joel Salatin, the prolific Virginia farmer, writer and agricultural innovator, which was fun. I enjoyed Sally Fallon Morell’s talk on US school lunches and the politics surrounding them. I also attended a talk on food politics by Judith McGeary, a farmer, attorney and and activist, in which she described the reasons to oppose or modify senate bill 510. The gist is that it will be disproportionately hard on small farmers who are already disfavored by current regulations, making high quality food more difficult to obtain, more expensive or even illegal. It’s designed to improve food safety by targeting sources of food-borne pathogens, but how much are we going to have to cripple national food quality and farmer livelihood to achieve this, and will it even be effective? I don’t remember which speaker said this quote, and I’m paraphrasing, but it stuck with me: “I just want to be able to eat the same food my grandmother ate.” In 2010, that’s already difficult to achieve. Will it be impossible in 2030?
Giving my own talk. I thought it went well, although attendance was not as high as I had hoped. The talk was titled “Kakana Dina: Diet and Health in the Pacific Islands”, and in it I examined the relationship between diet and health in Pacific island cultures with different diets and at various stages of modernization. I’ve covered some of this material on my blog, in my posts on Kitava, Tokelau and sweet potato eating cultures in New Guinea, but other material was new and I went into greater detail on food habits and preparation methods. I also dug up a number of historical photos dating back as far as the 1870s.
The food. All the meat was pasture-raised, organic and locally sourced if possible. There was raw pasture-raised cheese, milk and butter. There was wild-caught fish. There were many fermented foods, including sauerkraut, kombucha and sourdough bread. I was really impressed that they were able to put this together for an entire conference.
The vendors. There was an assortment of wholesome and traditional foods, particularly fermented foods, quality dairy and pastured meats. There was an entire farmer’s market on-site on Saturday, with a number of Mennonite vendors selling traditional foods. I bought a bottle of beet kvass, a traditional Russian drink used for flavor and medicine, which was much better than the beet kvass I’ve made myself in the past. Beets are a remarkable food, in part due to their high nitrate content—beet juice has been shown to reduce high blood pressure substantially, possibly by increasing the important signaling molecule nitric oxide. I got to meet Sandeep Agarwal and his family, owners of the company Pure Indian Foods, which domestically produces top-quality pasture-fed ghee (Indian-style clarified butter). They now make tasty spiced ghee in addition to the plain flavor. Sandeep and family donated ghee for the big dinner on Saturday, which was used to cook delicious wild-caught salmon steaks donated by Vital Choice.
There were some elements of the conference that were not to my taste. But overall I’m glad I was able to go, meet some interesting people, give my talk and learn a thing or two.
Jumat, 12 November 2010
Winterize Your Washes!
1. Wash less often
Rather than washing 2x a week, try washing 1x a week. Rather than washing weekly, try washing biweekly. Opt for a dry shampoo in between washes.
2. Add oils to your shampoo
Some have minimized the drying effects of shampoo by adding a little oil. Recommended oils: olive, jojoba, grapeseed, safflower, or castor oil.
3. Pre-poo with oils and/or conditioner
Before washing your hair, pre-poo (i.e., pretreat) with a concoction of oils and/or your favorite conditioner. Allow the mix to sit on your hair for at least 20 minutes. Then proceed to wash as usual. Recommended oils: olive, coconut, castor, or soybean oil.
4. Focus on the roots and scalp rather than the strands
While cleansing the hair, apply shampoo to your roots only. Massage your roots and scalp then rinse. Allow the water (mixed with shampoo) to run through your strands.
5. And, of course, follow up with a good conditioner
A "good" conditioner is one that helps to retain the moisture in your hair. (Optional: a "good" conditioner will also strengthen the hair.)
6. Speaking of winter - Dry hair completely before ...
Going outside. Freezing cold weather + wet hair = not a good outcome. Let your hair dry completely before opening the door.
Other tips: dilute your shampoo, perform your final rinse with cold water, use a shampoo created for dry hair
Selasa, 09 November 2010
The Twinkie Diet for Fat Loss
The Experiment
I've received several e-mails from readers about a recent experiment by nutrition professor Mark Haub at Kansas State university (thanks to Josh and others). He ate a calorie-restricted diet in which 2/3 of his calories came from junk food: Twinkies, Hostess and Little Debbie cakes, Dorito corn chips and sweetened cereals (1). On this calorie-restricted junk food diet (800 calorie/day deficit), he lost 27 pounds in two months.
Therefore, junk food doesn't cause fat gain and the only thing that determines body fatness is how much you eat and exercise. Right?
Discussion
Let's start with a few things most people can agree on. If you don't eat any food at all, you will lose fat mass. If you voluntarily force-feed yourself with a large excess of food, you will gain fat mass, whether the excess comes from carbohydrate or fat (2). So calories obviously have something to do with fat mass.
But of course, the situation is much more subtle in real life. Since a pound of body fat contains roughly 3,500 calories, eating an excess of 80 calories per day (1 piece of toast) should lead to a weight gain of 8 lbs of fat per year. Conversely, if you're distracted and forget to eat your toast, you should lose 8 lbs of fat per year, which would eventually be dangerous for a lean person. That's why we all record every crumb of food we eat, determine its exact calorie content, and match that intake precisely with our energy expenditure to maintain a stable weight.
Oh wait, we don't do that? Then how do so many people maintain a stable weight over years and decades? And how do wild animals maintain a stable body fat percentage (except when preparing for hibernation) even in the face of food surpluses? How do lab rats and mice fed a whole food diet maintain a stable body fat percentage in the face of literally unlimited food, when they're in a small cage with practically nothing to do but eat?
The answer is that the body isn't stupid. Over hundreds of millions of years, we've evolved sophisticated systems that maintain "energy homeostasis". In other words, these systems act to regulate fat mass and keep it within the optimal range. The evolutionary pressures operating here are obvious: too little fat mass, and an organism will be susceptible to starvation; too much, and an organism will be less agile and less efficient at locomotion and reproduction. Energy homeostasis is such a basic part of survival that even the simplest organisms regulate it.
Not only is it clear that we have an energy homeostasis system, we even know a thing or two about how it works. Early studies showed that lesioning a part of the brain called the ventromedial hypothalamus causes massive obesity (3; this is also true in humans, when a disruption results from cancer). Investigators also discovered several genetic mutations in rats and mice that result in massive obesity*. Decades-long research eventually demonstrated that these models have something in common: they all interfere with an energy homeostasis circuit that passes information about fat mass to the hypothalamus via the hormone leptin.
The leptin system is a classic negative feedback loop: the more fat mass accumulates, the more leptin is produced. The more leptin is produced, the more the hypothalamus activates programs to reduce hunger and increase energy expenditure, which continues until fat mass is back in the optimal range. Conversely, low fat mass and low leptin lead to increased hunger and energy conservation by this same pathway**.
So if genetic mutants can become massively obese, I guess that argues against the idea that voluntary food intake and energy expenditure are the only determinants of fat mass. But a skeptic might point out that these are extreme cases, and such mutations are so rare in humans that the analogy is irrelevant.
Let's dig deeper. There are many studies in which rodents are made obese using industrial high-fat diets made from refined ingredients. The rats eat more calories (at least in the beginning), and gain fat rapidly. No big surprise there. But what may come as a surprise to the calorie counters is that rodents on these diets gain body fat even if their calorie intake is matched precisely to lean rodents eating a whole food diet (4, 5, 6). In fact, they sometimes gain almost as much fat as rodents who are allowed to eat all the industrial food they want. This has been demonstrated repeatedly.
How is this possible? The answer is that the calorie-matched rats reduce their energy expenditure to a greater degree than those that are allowed free access to food. The most logical explanation for this behavior is that the "set point" of the energy homeostasis system has changed. The industrial diet causes the rodents' bodies to "want" to accumulate more fat, therefore they will accomplish that by any means necessary, whether it means eating more, or if that's not possible, expending less energy. This shows that a poor diet can, in principle, dysregulate the system that controls energy homeostasis.
Well, then why did Dr. Haub's diet allow him to lose weight? The body can only maintain body composition in the face of a calorie deficit up to a certain point. After that, it has no choice but to lower fat mass. It will do so reluctantly, at the same time increasing hunger, and reducing lean mass***, muscular strength and energy dedicated to tissue repair and immune function. However, I hope everyone can agree that a sufficient calorie deficit can lead to fat loss regardless of what kind of food is eaten. Dr. Haub's 800 calorie deficit qualifies. I think only a very small percentage of people are capable of maintaining that kind of calorie deficit for more than a few months, because it is mentally and physically difficult to fight against what the hypothalamus has decided is in your best interest.
My hypothesis is that, in many people, industrial food and an unnatural lifestyle lead to gradual fat gain by dysregulating the energy homeostasis system. This "breaks" the system that's designed to automatically keep our fat mass in the optimal range by regulating energy intake, energy expenditure and the relative partitioning of energy resources between lean and fat tissue. This system is not under our conscious control, and it has nothing to do with willpower.
I suspect that if you put a group of children on this junk food diet for many years, and compared them to a group of children on a healthy diet, the junk food group would end up fatter as adults. This would be true if neither group paid any attention to calories, and perhaps even if calorie intake were identical in the two groups (as in the rodent example). The result of Dr. Haub's experiment does not contradict that hypothesis.
So do calories matter? Yes, but in a healthy person, all the math is done automatically by the hypothalamus and energy balance requires no conscious effort. In 2010, many people have already accumulated excess fat mass. How that may be sustainably lost is another question entirely, and a more challenging one in my opinion. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. There are many possible strategies, with varying degrees of efficacy that depend highly on individual differences, but I think overall the question is still open. I discussed some of my thoughts in a recent series on body fat regulation (7, 8, 9, 10, 11).
* ob/ob and db/db mice. Zucker and Koletsky rats. Equivalent mutations in humans also result in obesity.
** Via an increase in muscular efficiency and perhaps a decrease in basal metabolism. Thyroid hormone activity drops.
*** Loss of muscle, bone and connective tissue can be compensated for by strength training during calorie restriction. Presumed loss of other non-adipose tissues (liver, kidney, brain, etc.) is probably not affected by strength training.
I've received several e-mails from readers about a recent experiment by nutrition professor Mark Haub at Kansas State university (thanks to Josh and others). He ate a calorie-restricted diet in which 2/3 of his calories came from junk food: Twinkies, Hostess and Little Debbie cakes, Dorito corn chips and sweetened cereals (1). On this calorie-restricted junk food diet (800 calorie/day deficit), he lost 27 pounds in two months.
Therefore, junk food doesn't cause fat gain and the only thing that determines body fatness is how much you eat and exercise. Right?
Discussion
Let's start with a few things most people can agree on. If you don't eat any food at all, you will lose fat mass. If you voluntarily force-feed yourself with a large excess of food, you will gain fat mass, whether the excess comes from carbohydrate or fat (2). So calories obviously have something to do with fat mass.
But of course, the situation is much more subtle in real life. Since a pound of body fat contains roughly 3,500 calories, eating an excess of 80 calories per day (1 piece of toast) should lead to a weight gain of 8 lbs of fat per year. Conversely, if you're distracted and forget to eat your toast, you should lose 8 lbs of fat per year, which would eventually be dangerous for a lean person. That's why we all record every crumb of food we eat, determine its exact calorie content, and match that intake precisely with our energy expenditure to maintain a stable weight.
Oh wait, we don't do that? Then how do so many people maintain a stable weight over years and decades? And how do wild animals maintain a stable body fat percentage (except when preparing for hibernation) even in the face of food surpluses? How do lab rats and mice fed a whole food diet maintain a stable body fat percentage in the face of literally unlimited food, when they're in a small cage with practically nothing to do but eat?
The answer is that the body isn't stupid. Over hundreds of millions of years, we've evolved sophisticated systems that maintain "energy homeostasis". In other words, these systems act to regulate fat mass and keep it within the optimal range. The evolutionary pressures operating here are obvious: too little fat mass, and an organism will be susceptible to starvation; too much, and an organism will be less agile and less efficient at locomotion and reproduction. Energy homeostasis is such a basic part of survival that even the simplest organisms regulate it.
Not only is it clear that we have an energy homeostasis system, we even know a thing or two about how it works. Early studies showed that lesioning a part of the brain called the ventromedial hypothalamus causes massive obesity (3; this is also true in humans, when a disruption results from cancer). Investigators also discovered several genetic mutations in rats and mice that result in massive obesity*. Decades-long research eventually demonstrated that these models have something in common: they all interfere with an energy homeostasis circuit that passes information about fat mass to the hypothalamus via the hormone leptin.
The leptin system is a classic negative feedback loop: the more fat mass accumulates, the more leptin is produced. The more leptin is produced, the more the hypothalamus activates programs to reduce hunger and increase energy expenditure, which continues until fat mass is back in the optimal range. Conversely, low fat mass and low leptin lead to increased hunger and energy conservation by this same pathway**.
So if genetic mutants can become massively obese, I guess that argues against the idea that voluntary food intake and energy expenditure are the only determinants of fat mass. But a skeptic might point out that these are extreme cases, and such mutations are so rare in humans that the analogy is irrelevant.
Let's dig deeper. There are many studies in which rodents are made obese using industrial high-fat diets made from refined ingredients. The rats eat more calories (at least in the beginning), and gain fat rapidly. No big surprise there. But what may come as a surprise to the calorie counters is that rodents on these diets gain body fat even if their calorie intake is matched precisely to lean rodents eating a whole food diet (4, 5, 6). In fact, they sometimes gain almost as much fat as rodents who are allowed to eat all the industrial food they want. This has been demonstrated repeatedly.
How is this possible? The answer is that the calorie-matched rats reduce their energy expenditure to a greater degree than those that are allowed free access to food. The most logical explanation for this behavior is that the "set point" of the energy homeostasis system has changed. The industrial diet causes the rodents' bodies to "want" to accumulate more fat, therefore they will accomplish that by any means necessary, whether it means eating more, or if that's not possible, expending less energy. This shows that a poor diet can, in principle, dysregulate the system that controls energy homeostasis.
Well, then why did Dr. Haub's diet allow him to lose weight? The body can only maintain body composition in the face of a calorie deficit up to a certain point. After that, it has no choice but to lower fat mass. It will do so reluctantly, at the same time increasing hunger, and reducing lean mass***, muscular strength and energy dedicated to tissue repair and immune function. However, I hope everyone can agree that a sufficient calorie deficit can lead to fat loss regardless of what kind of food is eaten. Dr. Haub's 800 calorie deficit qualifies. I think only a very small percentage of people are capable of maintaining that kind of calorie deficit for more than a few months, because it is mentally and physically difficult to fight against what the hypothalamus has decided is in your best interest.
My hypothesis is that, in many people, industrial food and an unnatural lifestyle lead to gradual fat gain by dysregulating the energy homeostasis system. This "breaks" the system that's designed to automatically keep our fat mass in the optimal range by regulating energy intake, energy expenditure and the relative partitioning of energy resources between lean and fat tissue. This system is not under our conscious control, and it has nothing to do with willpower.
I suspect that if you put a group of children on this junk food diet for many years, and compared them to a group of children on a healthy diet, the junk food group would end up fatter as adults. This would be true if neither group paid any attention to calories, and perhaps even if calorie intake were identical in the two groups (as in the rodent example). The result of Dr. Haub's experiment does not contradict that hypothesis.
So do calories matter? Yes, but in a healthy person, all the math is done automatically by the hypothalamus and energy balance requires no conscious effort. In 2010, many people have already accumulated excess fat mass. How that may be sustainably lost is another question entirely, and a more challenging one in my opinion. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. There are many possible strategies, with varying degrees of efficacy that depend highly on individual differences, but I think overall the question is still open. I discussed some of my thoughts in a recent series on body fat regulation (7, 8, 9, 10, 11).
* ob/ob and db/db mice. Zucker and Koletsky rats. Equivalent mutations in humans also result in obesity.
** Via an increase in muscular efficiency and perhaps a decrease in basal metabolism. Thyroid hormone activity drops.
*** Loss of muscle, bone and connective tissue can be compensated for by strength training during calorie restriction. Presumed loss of other non-adipose tissues (liver, kidney, brain, etc.) is probably not affected by strength training.
Jumat, 05 November 2010
Twist Series: Frizz and Knots
- Do you have alot of shorter strands of hair that contribute to the frizzy look? I noticed that I have alot at the top and middle of my head and was wondering if that is natural or if something is wrong since to me it seems to be increasing in number!
On the other hand, if the short strands are prevalent or increasing in number, then that is not a good sign and may be the result of breakage or other issues. Try manipulating the hair less and handling it gentler.
- Second, does having alot of single strand knots at the ends of my hair mean its definitely time for a trim?
- Since you mostly keep your hair in twists, are single strand knots a big issue for you?
Someone once asked why I don't dip my ends in water to make them re-curl after twisting. SSKs is why. I find that if the ends of my hair shrink up, SSKs are more likely to form.
Label of the Day: Skin Care!
Here are some posts on "Skin Care" in case you've missed them:
 |
| {image source} |
2. Fall & Dry Skin ... Rescue Me, Shea
3. Nail Health 101
4. Natural Blemish Lighteners
5. Household Makeup Removers
6. Sugar, Acne, and Skin Care Recap!
7. Hyperpigmentation in Black Skin
8. Kojic Acid: Natural Alternative against Hyperpigmentation
9. Building a Skin Care Regimen
10. Natural Skin Care ... On a Budget
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