Monday, March 19, 2012

Speaking at AHS12

I'll be giving a 40 minute presentation at the Ancestral Health Symposium this summer titled "Digestive Health, Inflammation and the Metabolic Syndrome".  Here's the abstract:
The “metabolic syndrome” is a cluster of health problems including abdominal obesity, insulin resistance, low-grade inflammation, high blood pressure and blood lipid abnormalities that currently affects one third of American adults.  It is the quintessential modern metabolic disorder and a major risk factor for diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.  This talk will explore emerging links between diet, gut flora, digestive health and the development of the metabolic syndrome.  The audience will learn about factors that may help maintain digestive and metabolic health for themselves and the next generation.
Excessive fat mass is an important contributor to the metabolic syndrome, but at the same level of body fatness, some people are metabolically normal while others are extremely impaired.  Even among obese people, most of whom have the metabolic syndrome, about 20 percent are metabolically normal, with normal fasting insulin and insulin sensitivity, normal blood pressure, normal circulating inflammatory markers, and normal blood lipids.

What determines this?  Emerging research suggests that one factor is digestive health, including the bacterial ecosystem inside each person's digestive tract, and the integrity of the gut barrier.  I'll review some of this research in my talk, and leave the audience with actionable information for maintaining gastrointestinal and metabolic health.  Most of this information will not have been covered on this blog.

The Ancestral Health Symposium will be from August 9-12 at Harvard Law School in Boston, presented in conjunction with the Harvard Food Law society.  Tickets are currently available-- get them before they sell out!  Last year, they went fast.

See you there!

10 comments:

  1. Aw shucks, we gotta wait til August?!

    Toss us some scooby snacks on some of this gut barrier stuff in the meantime, pretty please...

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  2. @GG: Scooby snacks contain too much refined carbohydrates & omega-6 fats and they also have excessive food reward! ;-p

    Stephan, please toss us some paleo snacks on some of this gut barrier stuff in the meantime, pretty please...

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  3. Right said Nige, what was I thinking???

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  4. Read the GAPS book from Dr. Campbell-McBride as a starter.

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  5. I first read about gut flora and "leaky gut syndrome" in Elizabeth Lipski's book Digestive Wellness, 2nd edition published in 2000. She attributed many disorders to dysbiosis caused by diet, though I do not recall if she included metabolic syndrome. Anyway, it will be interesting to hear what the new research says, since her original book must have been published about two decades ago.

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  6. There's a lot out there if you look for it. Off the top of my head, Dr. Ayres has written some about this http://coolinginflammation.blogspot.com/search/label/anti-inflammatory%20diet

    As well as Lucas Tafur http://www.lucastafur.com/

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  7. Good information , It is really helpful,I like your work .

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  8. For those of us who cannot travel to Boston, do you know if audio or video recordings of presentations will be available for sale?

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  9. I'd like to see the slides, if they are available.

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