Guy Lowers His Cortisol To The Lower Limit Of Normal And Doubles His T By Hiking 10hrs A Day

[NathanK]

So that was just another reminder to me to be very careful in interpreting what Ray says. He has a different way of communicating which you have to be careful with.
Ok, off to hike!

Great point

You can drink all the superfood aspirin milk thyroid ice cream milk shakes you like.

If you insist

Looks like a kind of supercompensating phenomenon, like the mythical Bulgarian weightlifting programs.

To what are you referring to? I dont see any coorelation, tbh

 

[mattyb]

I do a bit of personal training on the side, and this is how I work things for anyone interested in endurance training or weight loss (hell, I usually try to push everyone, regardless of goals, into some form of low-intensity cardio).

All my trainees do at least 1 hour 2-3x per week of low intensity cardio where their HR is 110-140bpm. The justification is that this is when most of the metabolic benefits are reaped, and it's so low intensity for most people that they stay fresh for their regular training and daily life.

At around ~130 bpm, for an extended period of time, you get eccentric hypertrophy of the heart. This means the normal blood volume of the left ventricle chamber is increased gradually, rather than the left ventricle wall being thickened (which happens over time with weightlifting and high-intensity anaerobic exercise). You also get more capillary growth in the target muscles, improving blood flow and nutrient delivery to tissues.

I really do think that much of the old research from before the 1970s was done on primarily active people. Most people back in the day worked in manual labor, did their own house/car repairs, gardened, etc. People back then were busier than now. So when I read old research I always keep that in mind. For example, Broda Barnes' research on temperature, hypothyroidism and heart rate was done on active and productive people in the early 20th century. I can't imagine it applies to most of the sedentary population from today.

 

[mujuro]

To what are you referring to? I dont see any coorelation, tbh

Some of their coaches were renowned for their brutal programs of high intensity, low volume, near-max lifts 3x per day. I can't recall how many times per week. Probably every day. At first the workload is impossibly exhausting, but within days the body adapts and numbers start going up. The downside was that if you took even a single day off, you lost the adaptation.

 

[Luann]

This study that this thread is talking about, is totally believable, it would seem. Hiking for ten hours a day is unlike any other form of excersize for ten hours in a day. As long as the hiker guy was not going too much faster than his body could sustain him, and he was getting some good amounts of food and calories, it sounds really relaxing in fact. I love to move, it's no stress at all, until it is frantic moving or excersizing just to excersize. But in the right context, as in, outdoors with birds singing, ten hours of hiking sounds like living a dream almost.

 

[nerfherder]

I'm a year late but this thread is an interesting find. The comments here seem to be mostly about HR changes but the dude doubled his T and upped his crossover threshold by 15 points in a month. The whole point is that extended training at low-ish heart rates (like Maffetone) makes the body adapt by burning more fat at a given heart rate and by being more efficient at a given heart rate with a more flexible heart as @mattyb says.

I'm thinking all the critics of endurance exercise would be more precise if they mentioned heart rates. Doing a couple of hours on the bike at 120bpm is not the same stress as doing 20 minutes at 170.

I did a lot of Maffetone style training a decade ago (hiking and cycling) and it was hilarious. I could hike up mountains at 115 and my 'fit' friends would have a pulse 25 points higher and need to slow down. Their fitness was fit for a different environment. I'm doing it again now since I am running/cycling with my teenage kids and I want to make sure they don't run too high HR and get that thick heart wall and its associated health problems.

The article does answer a difficult question. If you do long slow distance how on earth do you find the time? Combine it with vaca and go on a through hike.

Thanks to @brigadierbarty too for the article and comments.

 

[Collden]

I got a little into Maffetone-style aerobic training this year, doing slow runs with HR between 130-150. Lost quite a bit of weight and improved my caffeine tolerance. Stopped doing it now the last couple of months but still slowly losing weight without any effort or deprivation, I feel like the beneficial adaptations persist for some time, especially with regard to metabolic flexibility.

I think you recover from and can progress much faster with Maffetone-style exercise, I still felt the thyroid-depleting effects during recovery from a workout, but think this is an inevitable and temporary aspect of getting fit, any time your body is in a state of adaptive strengthening it will use up thyroid hormones. Peat apparently said once that simply walking at a moderate pace is enough to make a person temporarily hypothyroid, would anyone seriously argue this means that walking is bad for you?

 

[nerfherder]

The thing that is the most weird here is the drop in the guy's cortisol. You'd think with all that fat burning he'd be a cortisol mess. We know he has adapted to performing higher rates of work at the same heart rate - that's what Maffetone training is all about. He also burns more % fat at the same heart rate - at 110 bpm he has dropped from 34% carbs to 9% carbs.

Maybe part of this adaptation is to lower his cortisol needs? Or maybe a reduction in total fat causes a reduction in resting cortisol? I do not know what happened but it seems a good thing.

 

[Rafe]

My Dad’s a Maffetone guy & he sent me a couple of his books. I think he’s good if you keep in mind that his views about conditioning are from the perspective that got steam in the ‘60s & ‘70s that was a reaction to increased office-work in urbanizing culture (& the diet-heart hypothesis, ugh) where “aerobic” meant “if you breath more you’ll oxygenate better.” It’s not until, what, the ‘80s or ‘90s that endurance sports became some brutal test of bad-a%#ed-ness & met-enkephalins became the hero molecule of adrenaline culture (“my energy is through the roof”).

I came of age when the Maffetone style of “lsd running” was still a thing. “Long, slow distance” as @nerfherder mentioned (“start slow & then ease up”). I think the best of this is when combined with RP’s view of metabolizing all the way down to co2. And to not confuse the exercise-associated meaning of “aerobic” with RP’s, though there is some overlap & reproduction of the term for different things (he points this out).

Once you are storing glycogen (sleeping longer) then lsd walking outdoors seems ideal. That sun. I was surprised how much I could do this way once I’d been doing Peaty for 3 yrs. You get off the adrenaline train & store glycogen but you’d want to move it & use it, too. I’m glad Ray Peat chose to sit for long hours in the library & read & write. It depends what you want to do with your life.

I’m hiking 2 - 3 hrs a couple of times a week this summer. It’s great. But, yeah, it takes planning and big chunks of time.

 

[nerfherder]

I think lsd (as in distance running) is making a comeback. There's a breakdown of energy systems now with aerobic, lactic and alactic and you get sports like football or rugby (my son plays rugby) that have no lactic component since nothing is more than a few seconds of max effort. In these sports you need the lsd to build the great aerobic capacity to help the alactic system recover between max efforts.

I heard of Maffetone from an article on Mark Allen the champion triathlete back in the 90s. He had no books at the time, if I recall correctly, but to my delight I find he has a few now. I'm reading one but I'm wary about the high fat diet advice. The good thing is Ray Peat encourages trying stuff out. I'm also working on running form because I want running to be something easy and light rather than something that feels like a workout. I'm 200+lbs so good form helps a lot. My feet/legs feel great.