Hormones & Methylation

Hormone CPC #1: DHEA

This blog post was created for my members who just heard my webinar on bioidentical and synthetic hormone replacement. It is specifically designed to further our discussions in that talk. DHEA has been an enigma to the public and to most physicians. I never once heard about this hormone in four years of medical school, seven years of residency or in any endocrinology lecture from my training. The general public did not learn about DHEA until 1996, when its benefits were mentioned in the media and several popular books that showed up on daytime TV shows. Most in mainstream medicine continued to ignore the science these books contained because they were not found in the usual ways via journals and continuing education classes. You actually had to be on the lookout for this information. With a busy medical practice, this is no easy task. DHEA became credible to the medical establishment when the New York Academy of Sciences published a book called DHEA and Aging. That book provided scientific validation for the many life-extending effects of DHEA.

Brain Gut 2: Viral Marketing

READERS SUMMARY: 1. To discover the unknown we must use the known to guide our thoughts to see the future. 2. How should we think about evolution and health now? Counterintuitive is an axiomatic cognitive ability required for neurosurgical residency training and that is why I chose to tackle this problem in this fashion. 3. [...]

By Jack Kruse|June 22nd, 2012|ADD / ADHD, Cancer, Cold Thermogenesis, Colon Cancer, Diabetes, Epi Paleo, Epigenetics, Hormones & Methylation, Leaky Gut / Grain Brain, Optimal Pillar 2, Optimal Pillar 3, Optimal Pillar 4, Optimal Pillar 5, Series: Brain Gut, The Leptin Prescription, The Optimal Paleo Diet|132 Comments

Brain Gut 1: Who Are We, Really?

READERS SUMMARY: 1. WHY CAN'T FOSSILS, BIOCHEMISTRY, TEETH, GEOLOGY, PALEOANTHROPOLOGY TELL US WHERE WE CAME FROM? 2. ARE WE REALLY PILOCENE OR PALEOLITHIC BEINGS? 3. DO WE STRADDLE THE FENCE OF BOTH ERA'S OR IS ONE MORE IMPORTANT? 4. HOW MIGHT NEUROSURGERY GIVE A NEW PERSPECTIVE TO THESE MYSTERIES? 5. IS HOMO HERE BECAUSE OF [...]

By Jack Kruse|June 16th, 2012|Adrenals, Epi Paleo, Epigenetics, Hormones & Methylation, Leaky Gut / Grain Brain, Optimal Pillar 2, Optimal Pillar 4, Optimal Pillar 5, Series: Brain Gut, The Optimal Paleo Diet|Comments Off

Cold Thermogenesis 13: The FAQ’s

The readers of my forum asked for a FAQ's on CT and I decided it would be a good idea to make a short blog about this. They picked their top 25 questions and I decided to answer them for this blog. If you have any others, just ask in the comments section. I answer them all when I have time.

By Jack Kruse|June 2nd, 2012|Cold Thermogenesis, HCG, Hormones & Methylation, Inflammation, Longevity Principles, Menopause / Andropause, Mitochondria, Nutrients and Supplements, Optimal Pillar 2, Optimal Pillar 4, Series: Cold Thermogenesis, Series: How To, The Importance of Sleep, The Leptin Prescription|82 Comments

BOOK REVIEW 1: Make Shift Happen & Sweet Potato Power

READERS SUMMARY: 1. WHAT BOOKS AM I READING NOW AND WHY? 2. WHY AM I WRITING BOOK REVIEWS IN A BLOG? 3. I THINK SOME PEOPLE HAVE IDEAS WE ALL NEED TO SHARE WITH THE WORLD? 4. I RARELY DO BOOK REVIEWS UNLESS THE BOOKS ARE WORTH IT, THESE TWO ARE. It's time to [...]

By Jack Kruse|May 4th, 2012|Epi Paleo, Epigenetics, Heart Disease, Hormones & Methylation, Inflammation, Longevity Principles, Optimal Pillar 4, Recipes & Cooking, Series: Miscellaneous, The Optimal Paleo Diet|Comments Off

Cold Thermogenesis 9: Theory Meets Practice

Many of you may not know this, but I was asked to do to a speech in Nashville in March of 2012. I have to say with about 6 days to prepare it was rushed, but it was a lot of fun. I want to publicly say thank you to Misty Williams and Michael Hart for making this happen. In my talk, I told 1,200 people live on stage about the three thought experiments I came up with after reading, “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari”. I actually conceptualized the Ancient Pathway soon after the reading was done but where the thought experiments came to me, was at the foot of Michelangelo's David in Florence, when I was looking at him from behind. I realized that the major difference between him and I, was the world we both were living had radically changed in 500 years. From this insight I realized that circadian biology was the the major difference in David’s perfection and my obesity. From this spark of wisdom, I realized that obesity was an inflammatory brain condition. Because it was so, I could then reconstruct a signaling sequence to confuse my hypothalamus using signals from my vagus nerve and from the foods I ate using timing. Learning how the brain rewired in neural deafness using a cochlea implant made this easy game for me as a neurosurgeon.

By Jack Kruse|April 9th, 2012|Circadian Cycle, Cold Thermogenesis, Diabetes, Epi Paleo, Heart Disease, Hormones & Methylation, Leaky Gut / Grain Brain, MS - Multiple Sclerosis, Optimal Pillar 2, Optimal Pillar 4, Series: Cold Thermogenesis, The Leptin Prescription|Comments Off

Cold Thermogenesis 7: ENVIRONMENT TRUMPS NUCLEAR GENOME

CT-7 is about how we are shaped by our environment by the evolutionary erosion of time that our ancestors faced. All life on this planet is shaped by two major variables in our environment: the sun and the seasonal changes. No matter the place present on earth, there are always alterations in these two factors that are cyclic, and always accounted for by all living organisms at some fashion. In some mammals, like man, it is accounted for centrally in the brain and peripherally in our organ ultradian clocks. This is why we have different patterns of aging in certain organs. From an evolutionary perspective, this makes a tremendous amount of sense because life is using the “knowns” of its environment to construct a reality that will ensure its survival. This is the basis of epigenetic signaling that we now know to be the major genetic modifier of the genome of all animals. The major signal transducer in Epigenetics is found in the cellular signaling in our cell membranes that interact with the environment and our inner hormones that signal our epigenetic switches sitting on our genes inside the nucleus. Since it is clear that our cold adapted pathways use sensory afferents to signal to open the Ancient Pathway, I think it is time we just have a blog in the CT series that discusses what a normal 24 hour day is like in a human circadian biology.

By Jack Kruse|March 21st, 2012|Circadian Cycle, Cold Thermogenesis, Diabetes, Epi Paleo, Epigenetics, Heart Disease, Hormones & Methylation, Inflammation, Leaky Gut / Grain Brain, Menopause / Andropause, Optimal Pillar 1, Optimal Pillar 2, Optimal Pillar 3, Optimal Pillar 4, Optimal Pillar 5, Series: Cold Thermogenesis, The Importance of Sleep, The Leptin Prescription, The Optimal Paleo Diet, Thyroid|Comments Off

Cold Thermogenesis 6: The Ancient Pathway

The best way to describe this pathway to the lay public is to explain this is how evolution allows for ideal form to meet function in a tough environment. This environment is likely the primordial environment for life on our planet. This makes astrophysicists excited, because life might also be evolving in places like Titan. After all 5 extinction events on this planet geologist have told us they were followed by an extended cold climate. In cold mammals live longer. You will find out more about why this happens in Energy and Epigenetics 4 and 5 blog posts. The pathway uses very little energy from ATP and gives a whole lot to the organism who uses it. Fat burning is required and it is tied to a biochemical pathway that paleo forgot to speak about. But it requires cold temperature to be present and used commonly. In the pathway, the less effort you give, the faster and more powerful you will be when this pathway is active. People who live in this pathway can run a marathon with no training. They can lift unreal amounts of weight with little training. Their reserve and recovery are just incredible. You have to see it to believe it. Many will say cold thermogenesis a hormetic process, when in reality it is created using a coherent energy source due to something called the Hall effect. When we have had extinction events on Earth before, the events usually affect the evaporation of water in some fashion from the surface of lakes and oceans. It also affects the transpiration from the forest trees, plants, and flowers and this change cools the air. You must understand how climatology works here; liquid water needs to absorb a lot of latent heat to in order to evaporate, so it sucks energy from the atmosphere to make this energy transfer. This loss of energy from the atmosphere directly cools the planet and this preserves the charge on life's inner mitochondrial membrane and in the nanotubes present in our cells that contain water. This is how life lives long in the cold. Those people don't realize this because they do not live in this pathway for the majority of their life, and few studies have been done to say otherwise. The link above is recently added to this blog post. It seems science is now proving me correct in my theories of extinction events.

Cold Thermogenesis 4: The Holy Trinity

I just want to thank Sean Croxton for asking me to present at Paleo Summit today. The ideas discussed began with a podcast I did with Jimmy Moore, #474. Before I begin here today, I strongly suggest you listen to the Jimmy Moore podcast I did in May of 2011 as a primer for this blog post. It’s going to be a long one, so open a glass of wine as the sun sets tonight. However, I think you need to hear it all tonight since I have your attention from the Paleo Summit. I have planned for this day for some time. I am humbled to share this with you all. It was hard for me to write. If any of you remember when I first gave my initial thoughts on leptin publicly, it was on a podcast I did with Jimmy Moore in May 2011. I discussed the things that transformed my thinking back then. Most of the time I spent with Jimmy, we talked about leptin. In the beginning of the podcast, I mentioned a person who saw me injure myself as I stood up to give a lecture, and told me she knew precisely why I hurt my knee. At the time, I thought I had a good handle on these modern medicine principles she mentioned so I was a skeptical of her thoughts. She told me when I got home she was going to send me a few papers and a book to read. The book was called “The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari.” She was emphatic that I read the book before the papers. Then, she told me to read six specific papers in the order they were numbered and then reflect on what I had just read.

Rewiring The Leptin Rx Reset

Evolutionary strategy is based upon finding an environmental niche and exploiting it. Evolution is based upon change and the natural adaptations to it. Today, we are going to explore how some environmental triggers might open a “biochemical trap door” that will allow me to add a new recommendation for you to consider adding to the Leptin Rx reset protocol for those who are LR. I am beginning a series on circadian biology to show you how this all ties in together. Today, I will give you a very cursory review of why circadian biology, leptin, and environment are critical to using the Quilt to obtain your Optimal life. Why is circadian biology critical to humans? For evolution to work Optimally, a cell first must adapt to its environment. The first situation any living cell would be subjected to in an earth day is a period of day and night. Over time it would also be subject to the seasons in our environment because of the earth’s revolution, tilt, and angulations of the sun. As time continued on, further life would have been subjected to solar variations and would have had to account for it. It also has to find food to make energy (ATP) to survive, and it also has to control its own cellular division. The epic battle for the cell is to have the regularly expected circadian cycles found in our environment and ”yoke” those signals to its metabolic cycle and to its growth cycle. Most people know that the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the brain is where the circadian pacemaker lies in humans. It monitors this dance between darkness and light, and the seasonal cold and hot temperatures in our environment to help control and monitor our own growth and development. Evolution apparently agreed to use these signals in all living things because this is what it uses for all life on earth today. What most people do not know is how leptin plays a massive role in regulating it. Many people and physicians think it plays a small role. Recent research has revealed that leptin can induce expression of a neuropeptide called vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) through the VIP cytokine response element. This is an epigenetic modification from our environment directly signaling the master hormone in our body. So what does VIP actually do?