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Among the many defining and practical tenets of the Primal Blueprint is the good old 80/20 Principle, the guideline that suggests we neednt be 100% perfect 100% of the time to achieve great Primal health. Its the sensible caveat, a functional motivator, the saving grace for many of us. It means we dont guilt ourselves (or hand down punishing cardio sentences) when we indulge on a special occasion or get caught in circumstances that dont allow for fully Primal conditions. It means shedding the traditional view of a diet and exercise program as a select list of actions we either ace or bomb. As Ive said many a time, the PB doesnt make the perfect the enemy of the good. Finally, the 80/20 Principle encourages us to wholly own every choice and respect the impact of our total lifestyle within our personal Primal commitments. An immensely empowering but sometimes challenging feature of the Primal Blueprint is its subjectivity. Although it offers plenty of solid guidelines, tips, lists and recipes (not to mention an incredible community of fellow adherents!), the day-in-day-out isnt regimented into a set of check-off boxes. Bringing your honest intentions and Primal lens to each choice is usually enough to stay on track. While your Primal perspective each day is an earnest 100%, the practical execution trends toward 80% for most people, especially those new to the PB. But what happens when focus temporarily wanes or life circumstances become well more imperfectly real? How do you push back on the tendency of 80/20 to creep toward lesser ratios?

How It Happens

Life has a funny way of shifting the routine just when we get secure and comfortable. A new baby, a new job, a move, an illness, an injury, maybe just a month when the schedule picks up can throw a serious wrench in your finely tuned Primal practice. These transitions, whether they overhaul life or just make for some bumps in the road, shift everyday routines enough that suddenly the old schedule and habits dont apply.

What used to be a fallback 20% gradually, insidiously gravitates toward 30%, even 40%. Instead of a margin of error, the concept of 20% takes on a new life of its own. Practical contingency gives way to self-justification. And so the cycle continues. Primal focus and/or motivation wane, practical planning apparatus isnt maintained, and daily habits begin to shift.

Maybe you used to make more elaborate Primal meals for lunch or dinner, but now cant find the time. Perhaps you gave up your gym membership to save some hard earned money each month and now you struggle to get motivated enough for full workouts at home. You might have done a CSA last season, but chose not to participate this year and now feel wholly uninspired by the produce at the grocery store. A new job might include enough travel that youre facing new challenges to keep up on your Primal eating, workouts and sleep. Maybe you moved to be closer to family, but now host so much that your meals mirror their tastes more than your Primal interests. Maybe you just feel like youre in an overall slump and have been reverting lately to old pre-Primal habits.

How to Spot It

You might not realize youre backsliding until youve been going that direction for a while. For some folks, the scale (or your trouser button) is the first to offer the suggestion. For others, its a delayed return to the gym only to find a downgrade on the lifting ability or new found post-workout soreness. Theres a million ways to take your Primal temperature, and Id venture to say that most of us do it in some form consciously or unconsciously. Maybe just forgetting to do exactly that or avoiding it is indicator #1 that youre indeed backsliding.

Do you find yourself more tired in the afternoon? Are you craving carbs suddenly? Whats your workout schedule these days? If you made a food journal, would you be afraid to read it? Do you ultimately feel like youve been investing in yourself lately? Where have things fallen short? Where have they stayed strong? Finally, whats behind the change? Sometimes all it takes is some honest questioning. You just have to be willing to face the music.

How to Rein It In

So, how can 30 or 40 become 20 again? If youve been there before, trust that it will be easier to make it back than you think. The hard part will be shifting course. Once you start steering in the right direction and rebuild momentum, youre good to go. Your Primal template might not look the same when youre done (a good thing), but youll re-experience the advantages and wonder why you ever backslid in the first place.

The crux of the solution here is realizing what exactly needs to change. Life circumstances shift, and our routines need to transform with them. The Blueprint can be easily refitted to do exactly that. Whether the 30-40 lapse is related to a temporary disruption or a longer-term shift, its time for a healthy and, Id argue, periodically necessary Primal renovation, so to speak. Choose your own metaphor: makeover, revolution, reconstruction, molting, what have you.

Examine your routine and see what still works what fits your lifestyle and maintains your motivation. Then look at what needs a substitution, and lay out a plan for yourself. If its your schedule thats got you struggling, consider the Primal for Busy People approach food, weight loss, workout, sleep and stress management, and socialization.

Check out our past tips, and our good readers comments. If travel has you grappling for Primal ideas, brainstorm your plan of attack next time you have to head out into the wild blue yonder with some help for how to forage in less desirable territory, and get a Primal worthy workout in the modest space of that beloved Microtel.

If the 20% drifted into higher territory because of motivation issues, its time to shake up your Primal life and get out of the box its narrowed to. Skip the gym and head out into the world. Go for broke with new recipes. Get out and play! Make your goal this: have some fun. Design a weekends Primal adventure whether its in the kitchen, the mountains or your backyard. Go whole hog, and see how it makes you feel.

Finally, sometimes a brief lapse or longer slump suggests the need for reflection. Have patience and invest in that process.

Recommit to the Primal basics and do some thinking about what you want your lifestyle and overall health to look like. Examine whats missing. Imagine what you want to take on. Re-envision. Recreate. Recommit and Grok on.

Share your thoughts on facing and turning around a Primal backslide. Have you found yourself delving into fuzzy Primal math? How did you get back to the golden 80/20, and what does it mean for your Primal practice?

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Related posts:

1. 80/20 Principle
2. Fasting May Stave Off Jet Lag

ACT NOW TO CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES TO STOP THIS
TAKE ACTION

Natural Health News has been covering CODEX now for more than a decade. For KEY information on this issue check our posts here from 2005 and the main resources on this concern, Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) and IAHF

Related article: Lovaza Shuffle
Similar issues surround the biologically active form of pyridoxine (vitamin B6 or P5P) and B9 (folic acid). Make sure you are connecting the dots.

Congressman Waxman Slips Obscure Anti-Supplement Measure into Wall St. Reform Bill Passed by the House; Please Take Action to Prevent Same Thing Happening in the Senate!

Posted By ANH-USA On April 27, 2010 @ 6:34 pm In Attacks on Integrative Medicine, Food Safety, The Dietary Supplement Health & Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA)

[1]The American public is becoming fed up with sneak provisions tacked onto largely unrelated bills that are likely to pass. A glaring recent example was tacking onto the Healthcare bill a complete change to student loans. Often the sneak provision is so buried that hardly anyone is aware of it.

The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173), recently passed in the House of Representatives, includes language going far beyond finance inserted by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA). This language could be used for an end run around the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), the legislation that governs dietary supplement regulation by the FDA.

The Senate is expected to vote on its finance reform bill as early as this weekend. We need your help to ensure that it is not amended to include a similar provision going far beyond finance that could be used against supplements. Please take action now.

Congressman Waxman is well known as an opponent of the dietary supplement industry. This is somewhat ironic: his district includes Hollywood and presumably many of his closest supporters are health store shoppers and supplement users. Most of these people simply dont know what Waxman is doing in this area.

This powerful Congressman, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee (which includes health as a subcommittee), would appear to want supplements regulated like drugs, a step that would effectively eliminate them. He is determined and has stated: One enduring truth about Washington is that no issue is ever settled for good.

ANH-USA has been on alert to see how Waxman would use his committee chairmanship to strike at DSHEA. He is very clever and we knew a covert attack was a possibility.

A direct attack on supplements would take the form of an amendment to DSHEA, since that legislation governs FDA regulation of supplements. In this case, Waxman has left DSHEA alone, and has instead inserted language in the Wall St. reform bill that gives the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) important new powers that could be used to circumvent key supplement protections in DSHEA.

To see how this would work, lets see how the FTC operates today. Its chief mission is to combat commercial fraud. It has full authority to pursue companies making fraudulent claims. But the FTC cant go beyond that, cant set other regulatory requirements, without advance approval of Congress. The FTC once had this regulatory rule-making authority. It lost it in the 1980s because Congress thought the Agency was abusing it.

At the present time, if the FTC moves against a dietary supplement company for false or misleading advertising, the FTC typically requires the company, as part of a consent decree agreed to by both parties, to back up its claims by undertaking at least two random controlled human trials. This is done on a case-by-case basis and is legal because the targeted company has agreed to it.

If the FTC had general rulemaking authority, which Waxmans language reinstates, the Agency would be expected to create a new legal requirement for all supplement companies. Such companies would have to perform at least two of these human studies before making any claims for their products.

Why should we care whether supplement companies are required to perform two random controlled human trials for each product? Because such trials take a long time and would be beyond the financial means of most supplement companies. Even if the companies could find the money, the FTC could require more and more costly versions of these studies, or more of these studies. At each stage, fewer supplements would be available, and those available would cost more and more, until they became as costly as drugs.

Supplements are not drugs. In most cases, drugs are non-natural and therefore patentable substances. Why patentable? Because no company will spend a billion dollars on studies and FDA approval trials without the monopoly provided by the patent. To insist that supplements be treated like drugs is really to sound the death knell for the supplement industry, something that drug companies would be delighted to see, because they know that supplements are their chief potential competition, are often more effective than drugs, are often less toxic, and are always much less expensive.

Supplements are already regulated by the FDA under DSHEA. If the Waxman provision is included in the final Wall St reform bill, the FTC will gain the power to override the limited protections for supplements that already exist under DSHEA. The FDA would still have to respect DSHEA, but the FTC would not be so constrained.

Five unelected FTC commissioners would issue binding regulations in a wide range of areas, including the regulation of dietary supplements. And companies that did not comply with the new FTC rules could effectively be put out of business.

According to renowned constitutional attorney Jonathan Emord, The provision removing the ban on FTC rulemaking without Congressional preapproval contained in H.R. 4173 invites the very same irresponsible over-regulation of the commercial marketplace that led Congress to enact the ban in the 1980s. FTC has no shortage of power to regulate deceptive advertising; this bill gives it far more discretionary power than it needs, inviting greater abuse and mischief from an agency that suffers virtually no check on its discretion.

The bottom line is that FTC would be given power to regulate areas they dont understand, and their first order of business would likely be to regulate supplements, an area far outside their area of expertise.

The Senate Wall St reform bill, the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010 (S. 3217), doesnt contain the Waxman provision yet. But we know that Senator Rockefeller (D-WV) may offer an amendment including Waxmans language. Please help us stop this. Please take action now to help us maintain access to low cost, high quality supplements. Tell your senators not to support any amendments that give FTC unchecked power to over-regulate areas they dont understand, including dietary supplements.

URL: http://www.anh-usa.org/congressman-waxman-slips-obscure-anti-supplement-measure-into-wall-st-%e2%80%9creform%e2%80%9d-bill-passed-by-the-house-please-take-action-to-prevent-same-thing-happening-in-the-senate/

Copyright 2010 Alliance for Natural Health – US. All rights reserved.

And now from Orthomolecular Medicine -Multivitamins Dangerous?
Latest News from the World Headquarters Of Pharmaceutical Politicians, Educators and Reporters
(OMNS, Apr 29, 2010) The following purports to be a transcript of a recent meeting at the World Headquarters Of Pharmaceutical Politicians, Educators and Reporters [WHOPPER]:

“All right, all right! Please come to order, ladies and gentlemen. We know how excited you all are over the recent flood of anti-vitamin news coverage. But please have a seat! Thank you.

“First of all, congratulations on a job well done. We now have the public totally flummoxed about vitamins. We have persuaded the media that high doses of supplements are dangerous, and that low doses are also dangerous. We have scared the people away from taking any nutrients at all. Why, we have even sold the idea to the press that a once-daily multivitamin is dangerous. Nice work, everyone!

“Funny thing about multivitamin supplements: if you look at each individual nutrient in a multivitamin, it is of course good for you. Thousands upon thousands of research studies confirm the body’s absolute need for each and every vitamin. So, we urge people to eat a “balanced diet” to get all their various vitamins from food . . . while simultaneously convincing them that a balanced multivitamin supplement is bad! Essential vitamins from foods are good; essential vitamins from pills are not. Then, truly a stroke of marketing genius, we push processed foods devoid of vitamins, advertising day and night.

“We hardly have to spell it out, now do we? The fewer nutrients people consume, the more sick they will become. The more illness, the more drugs the public will have to take. After all, if vitamin therapy is “dangerous,” what’s left? Us, that’s who. Our pharmaceutical plants running 24/7 can produce millions of pills a day, for pennies apiece, to retail at ten dollars per tablet. Ching-ching!

“Even better, the government will pay for it all. “National health care,” as you already know is really “national pharmaceutical insurance.” The Feds will pay all right. After all, we sold them on the flu vaccine, didn’t we? Even when it was shown that the vaccine was worthless at best? (1)

“You can see other ways that the Feds listen to us. We have set it up so that Food Stamps cannot be used to buy vitamins. (2) A bag of cookies or a box of donuts, yes. But not vitamins. The ban includes supplemental vitamin D, which is widely known to prevent bone diseases in children and the elderly, and to prevent lung cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and a dozen other cancers. (3)

“Is it just me, or have you noticed how hot it is in here? Well, at any rate, you have all done one Hell of a nice job. Our Boss is proud of you.”

This information is provided by Creating Health Institute
through our Health Matters(c) project.

Natural Health News has about nine articles that include cayenne. You’ll find more here on our original domain, on line since 1991.

To me it is interesting that news of the well known – for a very long time – benefits of cayenne as a pain remedy reports as if no one has ever heard of this benefit.

But in case you’ve been in the dark on this wonderful substance for pain, here’s the newest –

Studying chilli peppers is helping scientists create a new type of painkiller which could stop pain at its source.

And if you’d like to get some of our great cayenne ointment, just send us an email for more information and ordering.

This information is provided by Creating Health Institute
through our Health Matters(c) project.

Just a couple quick updates before I publish the regularly scheduled article for the day…

Live Blogging Updates from PrimalCon

1. We are less than 24 hours from the inaugural PrimalCon – the ultimate Primal Blueprint experience! I wish the entire Mark’s Daily Apple community could make it out, but for those that can’t you’ll be able to get a taste of PrimalCon through MDA. The Worker Bees and I will be live blogging the entire weekend so check back tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday for text, photo and (maybe) video updates straight from the conference.

If you aren’t coming to PrimalCon 2010 start making plans from PrimalCon 2011 now. We’ll be announcing details later this year!

New Primal Blueprint Cookbook Pre-Order Offer

2. The Primal Blueprint Cookbook 72-hour special offer has come to a close, but I’ve put together an on-going special pre-order offer.

Pre-order a copy of The Primal Blueprint Cookbook and get a free Primal Blueprint Poster and free domestic S&H (international S&H is now $9.95).

An enormous thanks to everyone that has pre-ordered a book. Self-publishing is no easy task, but the support from this community makes it much easier. Grok on!

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Related posts:

1. Top Ten Reasons to Pre-Order The Primal Blueprint Cookbook
2. Live Blogging from PrimalCon 2010 Day 3
3. Announcement: The Primal Blueprint Poster

More good news about the benefits from vitamin D.

Vitamin D improves elderly mobility

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., April 27 (UPI) — Elderly study participants with the highest levels of vitamin D had better physical function and mobility than others, U.S. researchers found.

Dr. Denise Houston of the Sticht Center on Aging at Wake Forest University and colleagues studied vitamin D status and physical function in a group of relatively healthy seniors, mean age 75, in Memphis and Pittsburgh.

The study tracked 2,788 seniors for four years and assessed vitamin D status by analyzing each person’s blood for 25-hydroxyvitamin D — a precursor activated vitamin D.

The researchers looked at how quickly each participant could walk a short distance about, six yards, and rise from a chair five times, as well as balance tests.

The study found physical function declined during the study period, but it remained significantly higher among those with the highest vitamin D levels at the beginning of the study.

However, Houston said it is possible those with better physical function had higher vitamin D because they were able to go outside more often and get the vitamin through exposure to sunshine.

The findings were presented at the American Society for Nutrition at the Experimental Biology meeting in Anaheim, Calif.

And it is certainly better for osteoporosis, that also can impact physical function and mobility -

Causes of osteoporosis include a decrease in osteoblast function, a change in parathyroid activity as a compensatory factor for decreased calcium absorption, and usually a combination of either less sun exposure and/or a decreased ability to synthesize Vitamin D, or insufficient dietary intake of Vitamin D.

Additional causes include sedentary lifestyles, which play a significant part, there are genetic factors, which are less-common, while insufficient sex hormones and body weight (anorexia), various stimulants and drugs (caffeine, alcohol, glucocorticoids [cortisone, prednisone, dexamethasone] , Lupron [GnRHagonist to lower hormones], Depo-Provera [a form of progesterone]…), hyperthyroidism, and kidney
disease are also contributing factors.

This information is provided by Creating Health Institute
through our Health Matters(c) project.