Devil’s Advocates get on your keyboards, 3…2…1…Go!!

Andres’ 5:30 class.  Good to see you Will, Stephanie and Shannon!!

I LOVE CROSSFIT WORKS.  Well, really, this gym is the sum of the people who train in it.  It was so great today to see a bunch of people who have been gone: getting married, being deployed, traveling, and studying.  Welcome home!!  I also received 3 emails from you guys alerting me to interesting articles in the media today.  Once you guys start the debate in the comment section just keep in mind:

1.  These articles are from your fellow crossfitters.  I like them too.

2.  Each and every study is only one little piece of the puzzle.

3.  Of course there are other considerations besides the specifics of the study and it would be great if you all would point them out, but it doesn’t mean the article/study isn’t informative or useful.

4.  Learning, studying and changing your way of life is a long term complex process.  What is perfect for me might need to be a little different for you.  I might need to eat fruit only on holidays in order to keep my health in tact and you might be able to eat a bunch of it every day.

5.  Jerry, I hope you haven’t gone on vacation yet.  Get the party started!

Here is what you all found today:

ON THE TOPIC OF FRUCTOSE…

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38528161/ns/health-cancer/

WASHINGTON — Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.

Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.

They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.

“These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation,” Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.

“They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth.”

ON THE TOPIC OF HDL CHOLESTEROL ON LOW-CARB DIETS…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_med_dueling_diets

Over the long term, a low-carb diet works just as well as a low-fat diet at taking off the pounds — and it might be better for your heart, new research suggests.

Both diets improved cholesterol in a two-year study that included intensive group counseling. But those on the low-carbohydrate diet got a bigger boost in their so-called good cholesterol, nearly twice as much as those on low-fat.

In previous studies, low-carb diets have done better at weight loss at six months, but longer-term results have been mixed. And there’s been a suggestion of better cholesterol from low-carb eating.

The latest test is one of the longest to compare the approaches. At the end of two years, average weight loss was the same for both — about 15 pounds or 7 percent.

The key difference was in HDL, or good cholesterol: a 23 percent increase from low-carb dieting compared to a 12 percent improvement from low-fat, said Gary Foster, director of Temple University’s Center for Obesity Research and Education, who led the federally funded study.

ON THE TOPIC OF EVOLUTIONARY DIETS…

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128849908

Our earliest ancestors ate their food raw — fruit, leaves, maybe some nuts. When they ventured down onto land, they added things like underground tubers, roots and berries.

It wasn’t a very high-calorie diet, so to get the energy you needed, you had to eat a lot and have a big gut to digest it all. But having a big gut has its drawbacks.

“You can’t have a large brain and big guts at the same time,” explains Leslie Aiello, an anthropologist and director of the Wenner-Gren Foundation in New York City, which funds research on evolution. Digestion, she says, was the energy-hog of our primate ancestor’s body. The brain was the poor stepsister who got the leftovers.

As we got more, our guts shrank because we didn’t need a giant vegetable processor any more. Our bodies could spend more energy on other things like building a bigger brain. Sorry, vegetarians, but eating meat apparently made our ancestors smarter — smart enough to make better tools, which in turn led to other changes, says Aiello.

And finally, a HUGE SHOUT OUT to Sam Chavez who took 12min off his previous “Nancy” time.  Fantastic work Sam!