Jake Di Vita

Not as much as you probably think. It's a big factor, but not the defining factor.

It's not that I love winning, it's that I really...really...hate losing.

Remember that Type II Diabetes is the ultimate expression of insulin resistance. It's on the far end of the scale. In the vast majority of cases (I would say all, but I'm sure I'd be flogged for it) genetics alone won't be enough to get you there. That suggests doing this without recourse to medicine or medical care and in fact frames it as something that is strictly under the patient's voluntary control..... I think you may have read that incorrectly. Another way of putting it is that if you don't experience any of the symptoms related to Type II Diabetes, and it is predictably stabilized without outside aid, you are effectively cured - in that it doesn't really effect your day to day quality of life. I never suggested blindly stumbling into this without devoted research and preparation or notifying your physician. Sorry for not being more clear.

I never said anything should be done without recourse to medicine or insulin, Eric. Of course, inform your physician and do this under their supervision and take all necessary precautions. While we obviously don't agree on what this is capable of doing, I think all of us can agree that a paleo approach would not exacerbate things. And yes, I realize my analogies are not 100% accurate. They aren't meant to be. They are meant to give a very basic insight into one of insulin's many functions in a way that everyone can understand. bdo You're confusing correlation with causation. Sure there are definitely people whom are more predisposed to it than others...but this condition is only a problem when you create the environment for it to be a problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLN2k0b3g70&feature=player_embedded

In my case the majority of it is a financial issue. The issue being last time I didn't have the capability of doing what I needed to do for that last 5% I needed to be competitive nationally. Next time, I want to be fully prepared to ride it until the wheels fall off.

Can you tell me where you got those figures? Because 400,000 active shooters sounds a wee bit on the high side to me. Also consider even IF that is an accurate number - the vast majority of people do it as a hobby with no desire to become GM. Shooting is not an incredibly physically driven sport, especially when compared to baseball, football, etc. The vast majority of actual shooting ability is skill - in other words it is controlled by your central nervous system. Trying to compare men against women is not really an accurate comparison. I believe the reason there aren't female GMs has a lot to do with overall strength and the fact that not nearly as many women shoot as men. Although determination is ultimately the biggest factor. In regards to this: I believe that is one of the most bleak and inaccurate claims I've seen in a long time. I'll use me as an example. I have very little genetic talent. When I decided I wanted to become a GM, I accomplished that by spending over 40 hours a week with a gun in my hands. I can't tell you how many times I've had people tell me they want to be a GM but they are stuck in a rut. When I ask them how an average day goes for them, few are over an hour of dry fire with most being 15 minutes or less (usually on a 3 times a week schedule - although sometimes they miss it because American Idol is on). Duh! Of course your stuck. 40 hours a week comes out to just under 6 hours a day on average. In other words, outside of work and a very small amount of sleep, my life was shooting. So until I have people coming to me saying "Jake, I spent 6 hours a day every day - rain, sun, sleet, hurricane, apocalypse - practicing and still have not become a GM" I will say that is all bunk. I've dry fired until my hands have bled on several occasions. I doubt many other people can say that. (Which is probably a good thing, because I'm crazy and I know it lol) So yes, it is all about determination. If you want it bad enough - make it happen and be unreasonable.

So what we have here is a control study comparing a mediterranean diet approach vs. a paleo approach. At the end of the study, the people on the highly vaunted Mediterranean diet had little to no change in their insulin sensitivity while the paleo control group were technically not diabetic anymore. They had normal fasting blood glucose levels as well as normal insulin response to glucose. It is very clear that the whole lectin issue with these neolithic foods (grains, legumes, dairy) has some substantial impact on insulin dis regulation. So we're seeing it isn't only carbohydrate intake, but the type of carbohydrates that has an effect on this. Also in regards to the paleo control group - They were not particularly low carb, and ate to satiety. Mostly with yams, sweet potatoes, lean meats, so on and so forth. I also suspect they would have had even more potent results had they restricted carbohydrate intake to under 75g a day. Not only were they metabolically deranged from some autoimmune issue that is being caused the lectins in the neolithic foods they were consuming, but the best way to reset insulin sensitivity is by dropping basal insulin levels overall. I stand by my earlier assertion that Type II Diabetes is an environmental disease, and when you eliminate whatever is causing the problem in the environment, you tend to see improvement.

Let's be real here. Being a GM in practical shooting is not 1/10th as difficult as becoming a pro baseball player. Sure, genetics plays a role in things. You'll have a hard time convincing me that only genetically superior people can become GMs in USPSA.

Posting this from my phone...more thoughts later. http://www.staffanlindeberg.com/DiabetesStudy.html

Nik, The methods that I preach are not found in the classical clinical setting as you may be used to. These methods, however, are used every day on real people with very real results. So is the fact that you don't agree with it supposed to convince me otherwise in face of countless testimonials? That of course doesn't even take into consideration your total lack of acknowledgement of evolutionary biology. I've suddenly lost interest. How about you give your information, I'll give mine, and we'll leave it to the reader to make their own decision - as it should be.

My best advice is be the hardest working person you know. If you want to step in and run with the best in this sport, when others are eating, sleeping, spending time with family, etc - you better be working. Do some cross training as well. Don't focus everything on strictly shooting (this isn't a bad thing, but you will have gaping holes in your game when you hit M or low GM). Shoot as many matches as you possibly can. If you skip a match because it's cold, rainy, and crappy outside - you've already lost. In other words, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Don't neglect your body. Spending hundreds of hours refining your shooting technique is all well and good, but carrying an extra 30 pounds around isn't going to help your match performance. Also get stronger. This will improve your control over the gun and your acceleration from point to point. Note: by exercise I don't mean curls and crunches. In short - commit - and let nothing stand in your way.

Whether pure research has proven it or not is largely irrelevant to me and is no surprise - considering where funding for medical research often comes from. I understand where you are coming from, but I refuse to believe that a disease (which literally is not found in hunter-gatherer societies) is genetic and incurable. I also find it hard to believe that insulin resistance is a purely genetic trait just from a basic physiology stand-point - there has been a lot of evidence to the contrary. The best experiment would be to get your insulin sensitivity measured right now, go on a very low carb paleo diet for a month or two (I'm talking 50-75g of carbohydrate a day for a full size male human), and then re-measure your insulin levels. (Note: these must be fasting insulin levels). Notice, I'm strictly talking type II here. There are some strong connections between type 1 diabetes and gluten intolerance (among other things), but I haven't done enough research into that to form an educated opinion yet. I suppose for the time being we will have to agree to disagree until better information is out there.

This will likely be a long post because I'd like to define everything to make sure we are on the same page. Insulin is a hormone made in the pancreas and released into the blood under a number of circumstances. Insulin is the major nutrient-storage hormone. It does a lot, but it's primary minute to minute job is to regulate blood sugar from going too high. Whenever blood sugar rises, the pancreas pumps insulin into the blood to drive the sugar into cells and reduce the amount in the blood - lowering blood sugar. It does this by binding to and activating insulin receptors located throughout the body - mainly on muscle cells. These insulin receptors are proteins. When insulin binds to them it activates them, causing them to move sugar from the blood into muscle cells for storage. Think of them as tiny pumps. Without insulin to activate them, they don't work and sugar accumulates in the blood. Insulin resistance is a condition in which the insulin receptors require more than the normal amount of insulin to activate them. When you eat, food travels from your mouth, through your stomach, and into your small intestine. Your digestive system then breaks the food down into it's various components. Protein turns into amino acids, fats turn into smaller fatty acids, and carbs turn into glucose (sugar) - in order for them to be absorbed into the body. Your body can't absorb complex carbs as they are, they must first be reduced to their basic subunits, which are sugar molecules. In other words, 100 grams of carbohydrate becomes 100 grams of sugar (over half a cup). This sugar them passes through the walls of your small intestine and into your blood. Adding a half cup of sugar to your blood will obviously make your blood sugar rise. Your body reacts to this and the elevated sugar levels induces the pancreas to pump insulin. That insulin travels through the blood over the receptors on the surfaces of cells and binds to them and pumps the sugar into the cells as we've already established. Where this becomes a problem is when you eat a carb source, your digestive tract breaks it down into sugar and moves it through the blood. Your blood sugar rises as normal and sends a signal to your pancreas. Your pancreas pumps the insulin into the blood and still everything is working properly. Then the insulin washes over the receptions but isn't able to activate them. If the receptors aren't activated they won't pump the sugar out of the blood and into the cells, which means your blood sugar stays high. This in turn continues to nag at your pancreas for more insulin. Your pancreas succumbs to the bludgeoning and produces more insulin until it finally produces enough to activate your stubborn insulin receptors. At this point the sugar in your blood begins to fall slowly as the receptors pump it into the cells. Eventually your system is back in balance, but at the expense of a ton of insulin to get you there. Insulin receptors aren't fixed things on the surfaces of cells. They're made inside the cells in response to their need for insulin action. In other words, when there isn't much insulin in the blood, sensors in the cells up-regulate the production of "docking stations" for insulin. On the other hand, when there's lots of insulin in the blood, the cells don't need to make as many "docking stations" (down-regulation). Another example of this is when you walk into a room and the guy in there has an excessive amount of cologne on. Given time you don't notice the smell as much. If you walk back out of the room for a minute and in again, you're hit with the smell again. The scent didn't change, just your perception of it did. In other words when insulin receptors are bombarded with excess insulin the receptors down-regulate requiring more insulin to activate them, which further down-regulates them and so on. If this cycle continues, there will ultimately be a point at which the amount of insulin required to activate the receptors will be more than the pancreas can possibly produce. At that point, diabetes ensues. It is the ultimate expression of insulin resistance. Excess insulin...largely the consequence of eating a diet that contains much more sugar and starch than a stone-aged metabolism (which is unfit to the task) can handle. Given the current state of affairs that most people survive largely on cookies, candy, cake, ice cream, pie, bread, pasta, pizza, cereal, potatoes, etc...it's no surprise that the incidence of diabetes has risen 10 times in the last 30 years. It's simply a matter of biochemistry. If excess insulin is causing the problem, reduce the insulin levels, and lo and behold, people get better.

Ok Nik, First let us establish what causes Type II Diabetes?

I am most definitely not confusing the two Nik. If it can be controlled without insulin and without medication, and you don't have any of the effects of it - how is that not (for all intents and purposes) cured? Replace the words "insulin sensitivity" with "sunburn." If you get a sunburn, how do you get rid of it? Stay out of the damn sun! If you are insulin resistant, how do you get rid of it? Increase your insulin sensitivity by changes in your life style. When one has to choose a life of diabetes vs. a life of exercise and nutrition - I would hope the majority of people would say the exercise and nutrition is worth it....

Type 2 diabetes is also reversible quite frequently when the problem that caused it is addressed directly. Too much insulin all the time = very bad things.

That would only be the case if both arms were extended fully. Since we often have our support arm extended more to accommodate the support hand being further forward on the gun, I don't think it much matters at all. Although I definitely do agree that being cross dominant is a non issue for people willing to put a little work in.

In general, your left arm will be straighter and higher than your right arm. The wrist pain is fairly common. It's been my experience that it goes away with work. If it gets worse, use common sense and stop and figure out why it is getting worse. When looking where your grip from behind the gun, you should not be able to see any space between the heel of both your hands.

Those photos from other angles would really help in an analysis of the problem. Based off of this one I would recommend to you that you try and get the heel of your hand a little bit higher on the gun by camming your wrist forward (think trying to touch the target with your left thumb). Yes, that is nitpicking, but I've always believed in teaching people the right way from the start. I'm also wondering if you have this problem with a full size gun?

Well that's not how you worded it in the original post - that sounds better. Coolaid, That's all well and good, but I'd still like to see a photo of your grip. Preferably from the left, right, back (where the hands meet), and a good overall picture of stance and arm position. You may say it's exactly like Brian's, but his hands don't come off the gun, which is pretty compelling evidence that your grip isn't exactly like his (even though it could appear to be). Gloves really aren't a great option for many reasons; as you will soon find out when you try them.

Aren't there a whole lot of extremely successful shooters that grip the bejesus out of the gun?

One or more of the following: Pro Grip Improve grip strength Get a more aggressive stippling where your support hand contacts the gun I'd also like to see a picture of your grip to make sure everything is solid there.

Looked at your blog and didn't see any more information on the nature of your back problems. Shoot me a PM with the details and I might be able to offer you some insight as mitigating these types of problems is something I am faced with on a nearly daily basis with clients of mine.

I would look into the reason why the glove helps you and see if you can't recreate that in some other way.