Interesting links 3

It’s another links post. Let’s go.

Athletes who eat three meals per day have stronger tendons. Interesting paper. Compared the tendon health of athletes who ate either three, four, or five meals per day. Three meals a day made for the strongest tendons. Observational, not experimental, so we don’t know if it’s causal or not, but I have some ideas. A meal is an immune event. It can be “inflammatory.” It’s an intrusion of the outside environment into the inner one. Your tissues need recovery time to digest and incorporate the nutrients you’ve just consumed. I wonder what you’d see at 2 meals per day. Three might actually be the sweet spot.

Long chained omega-3s almost eliminate muscle and strength loss during heavy dieting. Recent study put subjects on serious calorie restriction, then gave them either krill oil or control oil. Both groups lost about the same amount of wight, but the krill group lost mostly fat and retained almost all lean mass and strength. Maybe relevant: krill oil contains a lot of phospholipids, which is a more bioavailable or “concentrated” form of omega-3s.

Marathoners aren’t happy. New article claims that 1 in 4 marathoners suffer from anxiety or depression. I believe it. I’ve seen it. In my opinion, it’s a bit of vicious cycle. A lot of people are drawn to endurance training to escape something in their lives (or even to replace an addiction of some sort). In other words, they are predisposed to mental health issues and it’s conceivable that endurance training is helping stave off some seriously bad choices. But endurance training can make the problem worse if you fail to recover, as many fail to do. Running a permanent energy deficit is hell on your psyche.

Cognitive behavioral therapy works better with creatine. Very interesting controlled trial. Two groups of patients each underwent CBT, with one group also taking creatine and the other receiving a placebo. Both groups improved with therapy, but the creatine group had significantly better results. Creatine helped the therapy “take” better.

The Druids were onto something. Soil samples taken from Boho, a site of “blessed clay” in Northern Ireland whose sacred provenance stretches back to the times of the Celtic Druids, turns out to have potent antibacterial activity against otherwise medication-resistant superbugs like MRSA. Our ancestors weren’t just making stuff up.

Vegetarians who eat fake meat have more depression. Another observational study, but the vegetarians who avoided the fake meat had better mental and heart health (lower blood pressure). Fake meat eaters had a lower risk of IBS, though. Might be all the insoluble fiber on a typical vegetarian diet.

Speaking of depression. I suspect it’s almost impossible to become depressed if you walk all the time. Not that constant walking is possible or even desirable in 2025. But I bet it prevents depression. Maybe treats it too.

IV infusions of gelatin solutions during WW1. Doctors were sometimes infusing battlefield patients with gelatin solutions when other supplies were low, and it really seemed to work.

Exposure works. Peanut allergies were rising for decades, with the standard recommendation being to avoid peanuts for all kids under 2 years. But more recently the guidance changed to promote peanut exposure in the early years. Now, peanut allergies are plummeting in kids. What else could this apply to?

AI is making cover letters useless. What’s the point?

Interesting claim. Are Papuans direct descendants of the Denisovans? Makes me wonder just how diverse the ancient hominid landscape was with multiple human-like species roaming around.

What we worry about dying from versus what we actually die from. What leaps out is that the things that are actually a danger to us are modifiable and preventable with diet and lifestyle changes.

The 19th century battle between purveyors of artificial ice and natural ice. The author of the blog uses this to criticize critics of lab grown meat, which is an entirely different situation than freezing ice. Still, funny.

That’s it for today.