Waist-to-weight ratio vs. body max index

The optimal waist / weight ratio (WWR) theory () is one of the most compatible with evidence regarding the lowest mortality body mass index (BMI).

But why do we need the WWR when we already have the BMI? This was a question that a reader asked me in connection with a post on the John Stone transformation ().

The montage below shows photos of the John Stone transformation with the respective WWR and BMI measures.

Well, which one is the most useful measure, WWR or BMI?

Doing crossfit and looking like a bodybuilder?

Top crossfit athletes like Annie Thorisdottir and Rich Froning Jr. (pictured below; photos from Crossfitthestables.com and List09.com) look like bodybuilders even though their training practices are markedly different from those of most top natural bodybuilders. It is instructive, from a human physiology perspective, to try to understand why.

First of all we should make it clear that what makes Annie Thorisdottir and Rich Froning Jr. look the way they do is not only crossfit training. Genetics plays a key role here. Some people don’t accept this argument at all. Can you imagine someone arguing that top basketball players are generally tall because the stretching and reaching moves inherent in playing basketball make them tall? Top basketball players are not tall because they play basketball; the causality is stronger in the opposite direction: they play basketball because they are tall. The situation is not all that different with top crossfit competitors.

Often people will point at before and after photos as evidence that anyone can achieve the level of muscularity of a champion natural bodybuilder, if they do the right things. The problem with these before and after photos is that one can “go down” in terms of muscularity and definition quite a lot, but there is a clear ceiling in terms of “going up”. For example, if one goes from competitive marathon running to competitive bodybuilding, after a few years the difference will be dramatic if the person has the genetics necessary to gain a lot of muscle.

In other words, those who have the genetics to become very muscular can lose muscle and/or gain body fat to the point that they would look like they don’t have much genetic potential for muscle gain. Someone who doesn’t have the required genetics, on the other hand, will also be very effective at losing muscle and/or gaining body fat, but will be much more limited at the upper end of the scale.

The table below is from a widely cited and classic study by Fryburg and colleagues on the effects of growth hormone, insulin, and amino acid infusion on muscle accretion of protein. The article is available online as a PDF file (). The measurements shown on the table were taken basally (BAS) and at 3 h and 6 h after the start of the infusions, one of which was of a balanced amino acid mixture that raised arterial phenylalanine concentration to about twice what it was before the infusion. Phenylalanine is one of the essential amino acids present in muscle ().

There were four experimental conditions, two with only amino acid infusion, one with insulin and amino acid infusions, and one with insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) and amino acid infusions. Protein synthesis and breakdown numbers are based on phenylalanine kinetics inferences. The balance number is based on the synthesis and breakdown numbers; the former minus the latter. Note that at BAS the balance is always negative; this implies a net amino acid loss from muscle. At BAS the measurements were taken after a 12 h fast.

All infusions – of insulin, IGF-1, and amino acids – were continuously applied during the 6 h period. There was no exercise involved in this infusion study, and the amino acid mixture was balanced; as opposed to focused on certain amino acids, such as BCAAs.

The numbers in the table suggest that insulin infusion brings the balance to positive territory at the 3-h mark, with the effect wearing down at 6 h. IGF-1 infusion brings the balance to positive territory at 3 h, with the effect increasing and almost doubling at 6 h. Amino acid infusion alone brings the balance to positive territory a bit at 3 h and 6 h, and much less than when it is combined with insulin or IGF-1 infusions.

The effects of these infusions were due to both reductions in breakdown (amino acid loss) and increases in synthesis. We see that insulin exerts its effect on the balance primarily by suppressing breakdown. IGF-1 exerts its effect on the balance primarily by increasing synthesis. The effect of IGF-1 on the balance is significantly stronger than those of insulin and amino acid infusions, even when these latter two are taken together.

While this is an infusion study, one can derive conclusions about what would happen in response to different types of exercise and nutrients. Under real life conditions, insulin will increase in response to ingestion of carbohydrates and/or protein. IGF-1 will increase in response to growth hormone (GH) elevation, of which a major trigger is intense exercise.

The type of exercise that leads to the highest elevation of GH levels is intense exercise that raises heart rate significantly and rapidly. Examples are sprints, large-muscle resistance exercise, and resistance exercise involving multiple muscles at the same time. At the very high end of GH secretion are exercises that use large upper and lower body muscles at the same time, such as the deadlift. At the low end of GH secretion are localized small-muscle exercises, such as calf raises and isolated curls.

Anecdotally it seems that, at least for beginners, those exercises that lead to the highest GH secretion are the least “comfortable” for them. That is, those are the exercises that cause the most “huffing and puffing”. So next time you do an exercise like that, use this as a motivator: these are the exercises with the biggest return on investment; whether you are looking for health improvement, muscle gain, or both.

Competitive crossfit practitioners tend to favor variations of high-intensity interval training (HIIT), with an emphasis on a blend of endurance and strength exercises. Endurance and strength are both needed in crossfit competition. Competitive bodybuilders tend to focus more on strength, often exercising with more resistance or weight than competitive crossfit practitioners.

Extrapolating from the infusion study, one could argue that high GH secretion exercises are critical for amino acid accretion in muscle. Both groups mentioned above – competitive crossfit practitioners and competitive bodybuilders – exercise in ways that lead to high GH secretion. Surprising as this may sound (to some), if you do chin-ups, you’ll probably have better results in terms of biceps hypertrophy than if you do isolated bicep curls. This will happen even though the overall load on the bicep muscles will be lower with the chin-ups. The reason is that the GH secretion will be significantly higher with the chin-ups, because more muscles are involved at the same time, including large ones (e.g. the lats).

It is interesting to see competitive crossfit practitioners talking about needing to lose some weight but not being able to (). The reason is that they do not have much body fat to lose, and the types of exercise that they do create such a powerful stimulus toward positive nitrogen balance () that they end up gaining weight even as they restrict calorie intake.

Carbohydrate ingestion prior to exercise may raise insulin levels, but will blunt GH secretion; protein without carbohydrate, on the other hand, will raise insulin levels without blunting GH secretion (). Whether ingesting protein immediately before exercising is necessarily good in the long run is an open question, however, because GH secretion is likely to be greater for someone who is exercising in the fasted state, as GH secretion is in part a response to glycogen depletion (, ). And, as we have seen from the infusion study, GH secretion is disproportionately important as a positive nitrogen balance factor.

Compensatory adaptation applied to human biology () suggests that the body responds to challenges over time, in a compensatory way. Which scenario poses the bigger challenge: (a) high GH exercise with more amino acid loss during the exercise, or (b) high GH exercise with less amino acid loss during the exercise? I think it is (a), because the message being sent to the body is that “we need more muscle to do all of this and still compensate for the loss during exercise”.

Maybe this is why top crossfit practitioners end up looking like bodybuilders, and cannot lose muscle even when a slightly lighter frame would make them more competitive in crossfit games. Their bodies are just responding to the stimuli they are getting.

You can eat a lot during the Holiday Season and gain no body fat, as long as you also eat little

This post has been revised and re-published. The original comments are preserved below. Typically this is done with posts that attract many visits at the time they are published, and whose topics become particularly relevant or need to be re-addressed at a later date.

Dried mussels: A little plate with 160 g of protein (plus some comments on high-protein low-carbohydrate dieting)

Many hunter-gatherer groups employed various methods of drying to preserve meats. Drying also increases significantly the protein content of meats; this is the case with dried mussels. I discussed this effect of drying before here with respect to small fish (). The photo below is of a plate with about 240 g of dried mussels that I prepared using the simple recipe below.



To prepare your mussels as in the photo above, you will have to steam and then dry them. You can season the mussels after you steam them, but I rarely season mine. Almost none of the food I eat requires much seasoning anyway, because I use nature’s super-spice, which makes everything that has a high nutrient content taste delicious: hunger ().

- Steam the mussels for about 10 minutes, or until all are open.
- Remove the mussels from the shells; carefully, to avoid small shell pieces from coming off into the mussels (they are not kind to your teeth).
- Preheat the oven to about 200 degrees Fahrenheit, and place the mussels in it (on a tray) for about 1 hour.
- Leave the mussels in the oven until they are cold, this will dry them further.

About 240 g of mussels, after drying, will yield a meal with a bit more than 160 g of protein – i.e., the proportion of protein will go from about 20 percent up to about 67 percent. In this case, most of the calories in the meal will come from the protein, if you had nothing else with it, adding up to less than 800 calories.

This comes in handy if you need to have lunch out, as the dried mussels can be carried in a plastic bag or container and eaten cold or after a light re-heating in a microwave. To me, they taste very good either way; but then again anything that is nutritious tends to taste very good when you are hungry, and I rarely have breakfast. I often eat them with pre-cooked sweet potato, which I eat with the skin (it tastes like candy).

You may want to think of dried mussels prepared in this way as a protein supplement, but a very nutritious one. You will be getting a large dose of omega-3 fats (3.11 g) with less omega-6 fats than you usually get through fish oil softgels (where n-6s are added for stability), about 1,224 percent of the recommended daily value (RDV) of magnesium, 461 percent of the RDV of selenium, 1,440 of the RDV of vitamin B12, a large dose of zinc, and (interestingly) almost 100 percent of the RDV of vitamin C.

Since mussels are very low in the food chain, accumulation of compounds that can be toxic to humans is not amplified by biomagnification (). But, still, mussels can be significantly affected by contaminants (e.g., petroleum hydrocarbons), so sourcing is important. The supermarket chain I use here in Texas, HEB, claims to do very careful sourcing. Telltale signs of contamination are developmental problems such as thin shells that shatter easily and stunted growth ().

For those readers who are on a low-carbohydrate diet, please pay attention to this: there is NO WAY your body will turn protein into fat if you are on a low-carbohydrate diet, unless you have a serious metabolic disorder (see this post: , and this podcast: ). And I mean SERIOUS; probably way beyond prediabetes. Do not believe the nonsense that has been circulating in some areas of the blogosphere lately.

A high-protein low-carbohydrate diet is one of the most effective diets at reducing body fat, particularly if you do resistance exercise (and you do not have to do it like a bodybuilder). That is not to say that a high-fat low-protein diet (like the "optimal diet") is a bad idea; in fact, the optimal diet is a good option if you do not do resistance exercise, but that is a topic for a different post.

Latitude and cancer rates in US states: Aaron Blaisdell’s intuition confirmed

In the comments section of my previous post on cancer rates in the US states () my friend Aaron Blaisdell noted that: …comparing states that are roughly comparable in terms of number of seniors per 1000 individuals, latitude appears to have the largest effect on rates of cancer.

Good point, so I collected data on the latitudes of US states, built a more complex model (with several multivariate controls), and analyzed it with WarpPLS 4.0 ().

The coefficient of association for the effect of latitude on cancer rates (path coefficient) turned out to be 0.35. Its P value was lower than 0.001, meaning that the probability that this is a false positive is less than a tenth of a percent, or that we can be 99.9 percent confident that this is not a false positive.

This was calculated controlling for the: (a) proportion of seniors in the population (population age); (b) proportion of obese individuals in the population (obesity rates); and (c) the possible moderating effect of latitude on the effect of population age on cancer rates. The graph below shows this multivariate-adjusted association.



What is cool about a multivariate analysis is that you can control for certain effects. For example, since we are controlling for proportion of seniors in the population (population age), the fact that we have a state with a very low proportion of seniors (Alaska) does not tilt the effect toward that outlier as much as it would if we had not controlled for the proportion of seniors. This is a mathematical property that is difficult to grasp, but that makes multivariate adjustment such a powerful technique.

I should note that the 99.9 percent confidence mentioned above refers to the coefficient of association. That is, we are quite confident that the coefficient of association is not zero; that is it. The P value does not support the hypothesized direction of causality (latitude -> cancer) or exclude the possibility of a major confounder causing the effect.

Nonetheless, among the newest features of WarpPLS 4.0 (still a beta version) are several causality assessment coefficients: path-correlation signs, R-squared contributions, path-correlation ratios, path-correlation differences, Warp2 bivariate causal direction ratios, Warp2 bivariate causal direction differences, Warp3 bivariate causal direction ratios, and Warp3 bivariate causal direction differences. Without going into a lot of technical detail, which you can get from the User Manual () without even having to install the software, I can tell you that all of these causality assessment coefficients support the hypothesized direction of causality.

Also, while we cannot exclude the possibility of a major confounder causing the effect, we included two possible confounders in the analysis and controlled for their effects. They were the proportion of seniors in the population (population age) and the proportion of obese individuals in the population (obesity rates).

Having said all of the above, I should also say that the effect is similar in magnitude to the effect of population age on cancer rates, which I discussed in the previous post linked above. That is, it is not the type of effect that would be clearly noticeable in a person’s normal life.

Sunlight exposure? Maybe.

We do know that our body naturally produces as much as 10,000 IU of vitamin D based on a few minutes of sun exposure when the sun is high (). Getting that much vitamin D from dietary sources is very difficult, even after “fortification”.

Aging and cancer: The importance of taking a hard look at the numbers

The table below is from a study by Hayat and colleagues (). It illustrates one common trend regarding cancer – it increases dramatically in incidence among those who are older. With some exceptions, such as Hodgkin's lymphoma, there is a significant increase in risk particularly after 50 years of age.



So I decided to get state data from the US Census web site (), on the percentage of seniors (age 65 or older) by state and cancer diagnoses per 1,000 people. I was able to get some recent data, for 2011.

I analyzed the data with WarpPLS (version 4.0 has been just released: ), generating the types of coefficients that would normally be reported by researchers who wanted to make an effect appear very strong.

In this case, the effect would be essentially of population aging on cancer incidence (assessed indirectly), summarized in the graph below. The graph was generated by WarpPLS. The scales are standardized, and so are the coefficients of association in the two segments shown. As you can see, the coefficients of association increase as we move along the horizontal scale, because this is a nonlinear relationship. The overall coefficient of association, which is a weighted average of the two betas shown, is 0.84. The probability that this is a false positive is less than 1 percent.



A beta coefficient of 0.84 essentially means that a 1 standard deviation variation in the percentage of seniors in a state is associated with an overall 84 percent increase in cancer diagnoses, taking the standardized unit of the number of cancer diagnoses as the baseline. This sounds very strong and would usually be presented as an enormous effect. Since the standard deviation for the percentage of seniors in various states is 1.67, one could say that for each 1.67 increment in the percentage of seniors in a state the number of cancer diagnoses goes up by 84 percent.

Effects expressed in percentages can sometimes give a very misleading picture. For example, let us consider an increase in mortality due to a disease from 1 to 2 cases for each 1 million people. This essentially is a 100 percent increase! Moreover, the closer the baseline is from zero, the more impressive the effect becomes, since the percentage increase is calculated by dividing the increment by the baseline number. As the baseline number approaches zero, the percentage increase from the baseline approaches infinity.

Now let us take a look at the graph below, also generated by WarpPLS. Here the scales are unstandardized, which means that they refer to the original measures in their respective original scales. (Standardization makes the variables dimensionless, which is sometimes useful when the original measurement scales are not comparable – e.g., dollars vs. meters.) As you can see here, the number of cancer diagnoses per 1,000 people goes from a low of 3.74 in Utah to a high of 6.64 in Maine.



One may be tempted to explain the increase in cancer diagnoses that we see on this graph based on various factors (e.g., lifestyle), but the percentage of seniors in a state seems like a very good and reasonable predictor. You may say: This is very depressing. You may be even more depressed if I tell you that controlling for state obesity rates does not change this picture at all.

But look at what these numbers really mean. What we see here is an increase in cancer diagnoses per 1,000 people of less than 3. In other words, there is a minute increase of less than 3 diagnoses for each group of 1,000 people considered. It certainly feels terrible if you are one of the 3 diagnosed, but it is still a minute increase.

Also note that one of the scales, for diagnoses, refers to increments of 1 in 1,000; while the other, for seniors, refers to increments of 1 in 100. This leads to an interesting effect. If you move from Alaska to Florida you will see a significant increase in the number of seniors around, as the difference in the percentage of seniors between these two states is about 10. However, the difference in the number of cancer diagnoses will not be even close to the difference in the presence of seniors.

The situation above is very common in medical research. An effect that is fundamentally tiny is stated in such a way that the general public has the impression that the effect is enormous. Often the reason is not to promote a drug, but to attract media attention to a research group or organization.

When you look at the actual numbers, the magnitude of the effect is such that it would go unnoticed in real life. By real life I mean: John, since we moved from Alaska to Maine I have been seeing a lot more people of my age being diagnosed with cancer. An effect of the order of 3 in 1,000 would not normally be noticed in real life by someone whose immediate circle of regular acquaintances included fewer than 333 people (about 1,000 divided by 3).

But thanks to Facebook, things are changing … to be fair, the traditional news media (particularly television) tends to increase perceived effects a lot more than social media, often in a very stressful way.

How to handle a dog attack

For most people, dog attacks are not very common. But they happen occasionally, and the experience can be traumatic. Incidentally, they are also a good reason why I am not a big fan of barefoot walking or running. Broken glass pieces and nails can be a problem if you are barefoot; so can dog attacks.

The photo below, from Dreamstime.com, shows a charging dog. It reminds me of an incident many years ago where a dog attacked my two oldest sons, who were very young at the time. They were unsuspectingly playing at a park in Southern New Jersey, when I saw a dog running in their direction across the park. Part of what I will say in this post is based on experiences like that.

I should also say that I grew up around dogs. My grandfather had a farm that was managed by my uncle, and dogs were critically important in managing the farm. One problem we had was that domesticated pigs would often become feral, or would mate with wild boars, in some cases leading to a particularly vicious breed of large feral pigs. I was once attacked by one of these feral pigs while hunting. One of the farm dogs came to my rescue and probably saved my life.



If you are like most people, when you go walking outdoors, you do not carry a walking stick or a cane. Maybe you should. But if you don’t, thick-soled sneakers can be used in a reasonably effective defense in a dog attack situation.

Dogs attacks’ main targets: The faces of children

Dogs tend to be loyal friends, but they must be monitored for signs of aggression, and can be particularly dangerous to children. A significant proportion of dog attack victims are children 5 years of age or younger, who more often than not sustain injuries to the face, with secondary target areas being the hands and feet ().

At the time of this writing the web sites Documentingreality.com and Arbtalk.co.uk had some grisly photos of dog attack victims (, ). They show evidence that the face is often targeted, and some possible consequences of real dog attacks.

Artificial selection: Dogs and Moby-Dick

Modern dogs are descendants of wolves who came into contact with humans about 12,000 year ago. (This general date is often cited, but is the subject of intense debate, with DNA studies suggesting much earlier contact.) Wolves are apex predators; this was true also for wolves that lived around the time they first came into contact with humans. They hunt and live in packs, and rely on fairly complex body language, a variety of sounds, and a keen sense of smell to communicate.

Even being apex predators, wolves were no match for humans. Therefore, as humans and groups of wolves co-evolved, dogs emerged. Dogs evolved instincts that made them sociable toward and submissive to humans, particularly those humans who fed them and also asserted authority over them – those become their “owners”.

Humans, in turn, came to rely heavily on dogs for protection and hunting, and probably evolved instincts that are still largely unexplored today. For example, there is strong evidence suggesting that having pet animals, many of which are dogs, is generally health-promoting (, ).

The evolution of sociability and submissiveness traits is an example of what is often referred to as “artificial selection”, where animals and plants evolve traits almost exclusively in response to the selection pressure applied by humans. In the case of dogs, this was later taken to new heights through selective breeding; leading to the emergence of a variety of dog breeds, some for utilitarian purposes and others for pure vanity, each with very distinctive characteristics.

Interestingly, artificial selection applied by humans does not always produce more sociable and submissive animals. The opposite happened around the mid 1800s due to excessive hunting of sperm whales. The least aggressive were easier to kill, so they were overhunted. Over generations, this placed selection pressure in favor of the evolution of aggressiveness toward humans. The attack on the Essex by a large bull sperm whale, which served as inspiration for Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick, was one of the first incidents that resulted from this selection pressure (). Whaling increased, and, predictably, attacks started becoming more and more frequent.

When a dog attacks, stand your ground in a non-threatening way

Dogs, like wolves, are territorial animals. Many dog attacks are likely motivated by humans invading what a dog perceives as its territory at a given point in time. I mentioned earlier in this post that a dog once attacked two of my children. They were playing at a park during the winter. Nobody else was there. I saw this large black dog running from a distance in their direction, and I immediately knew that it was trouble. The dog probably saw us as invading its territory.

Having grown up surrounded by dogs, I pretty much knew what to do. I walked toward my children and placed myself between them and the charging dog. I told the children not to move at all, just freeze. The dog came running until it realized that we were not running. It was a “fake charge”, like most are. It stopped close to me, and barked very aggressively, coming closer. I was wearing boots. I raised one of my boots toward the dog’s snout, and when it bit it, I pushed the boot against its snout.

Here is where I think most people would tend to make a key mistake. They would probably try to hurt the dog to scare it off, by, say, kicking the dog as they would kick a soccer ball. The problem is that, because the dog is a lot faster than they are, if they do that they may end up missing the dog entirely and worse - they may end up losing their balance and falling to the ground. This is when dogs can do the most damage, since they would go for the face of the fallen person.

As a side note, often you hear that dogs attack the throat of their human victims, but that is not what the statistics show. Most victims of dog attacks display injuries on the face and extremities. The "myth" that dogs target the throat is probably based on the notion that dogs attack humans because they see them as prey. However, with exception of feral dogs such as Australian dingos, evidence of dogs preying on humans is very rare. I've reviewed many dog attack photos for this post, and could not find one with evidence that the throat was targeted.

So I pushed my boot against the dog’s snout a few times, firmly but not with the goal of hurting the dog, and did not do anything threatening toward the dog otherwise. This calmed the dog down a bit, but it was still acting aggressively and would not go away. Sometimes firm commands to "seat", "stop", "go away" make the dog react submissively. I tried them but they didn't work; instead they probably made the dog more excited. Then I did what probably is the one thing that most land animals instinctively fear from humans …

Sapiens the thrower

I picked up a few pieces of ice from the ground and threw at the dog. One piece of ice hit the dog on the side of its body; a couple of others were glancing blows. As a result the dog became visibly confused and submissive (telltale sign: tail between the legs), and ran away. Here is where another big mistake may happen. People may try to hurt the dog and become too excited when throwing objects at it. In doing so, they may end up not only missing the dog with the flying objects that they are throwing, but they may also excite the dog, and face another attack.

The best approach here is to focus on having whatever you are throwing at the dog land on top of or as close to the dog as possible; explicitly without trying to hurt it, in part because this improves your aim. Having flying objects coming from you toward the dog is enough to trigger the dog’s instinct to get out of the way of “Sapiens the thrower”. Moreover, if you don’t try to hurt you’ll be relatively calm, displaying the type body language that will trigger submissiveness.

I’ve long suspected that throwing has been a key component of Sapiens’ climb to the top of the food chain, to the point that all land animals have an instinctive fear of humans – even large predators, and much bigger animals such as elephants (as long as they are not “in musth”). One short video has been circulating on YouTube for years; it has various hunting scenes where primitive spears are used (). Many find this video cruel. It clearly shows the enormous evolutionary advantage of humans being able to throw pointy things at other animals. If humans happened to live when Tyrannosaurus rex was around, there is no doubt in my mind that the latter would be the prey.

Keep your face away and your hands closed

Typically you’ll avoid a full-blown dog attack by only standing your ground for a while and not acting aggressively toward the dog. After a short standoff period, you’ll just walk away unharmed. Unfortunately this may not happen if you are facing a dog that has been trained to attack. In this case, having a stick or something like it will help a lot. (In circus acts lions are “pushed around” by trainers holding objects like sticks and wooden chairs; sometimes that doesn't end well - .) If you don’t have one it would be useful to be wearing shoes that can withstand several bites. If not, you can use a piece of clothing, such as a bundled jacket, as a shield.

If you have a stick, or something like a stick, you should not try to hit the dog with it. You should place it near the snout, and push the stick against it each time the dog bites. If you do this calmly and firmly, without trying to hurt the dog (remember, the dog is a lot faster than you are), you will probably discourage biting after a while, turning the attack into a standoff.

What if you don’t have anything with which to defend yourself at first, and a dog attacks you? Keep your hands closed into fists, to avoid having fingers bitten off, and do your best to keep the dog away from your face. As desperate as these situations may be, try to be calm and look for objects that you can use to push the dog away, that you can throw at the dog, or that can be used to wrap around your arms. Frequently there will be objects around that can be of use – e.g., sharp stones, glass bottles, pieces of canvas, loose pieces of a fence, a hose, a tree’s branch. If you fall, try to stand up right away. Very likely you'll sustain injuries to your arms, and possibly legs.

Military and law enforcement personnel are often trained on fighting techniques to handle dog attacks barehanded, such as neck cranks, sharp blows to the throat of the animal, and blinding techniques. I am not sure whether these would be really useful to the average person. In any case, this post is not aimed at military and law enforcement personnel who deal with dog attacks on a regular basis.

Eat beef liver

Beef liver is nature’s super-multivitamin. (Beef heart is just as nutritious.) Dogs, like wolves, have an exquisite sense of smell. If you have seen one of the documentaries about the groundbreaking research by Shaun Ellis (a.k.a., “The Wolfman”), you probably know that wild wolves tend to strongly associate consumption of organ meats with very high status in a pack, to the point that they will instinctively act submissively toward humans that consume organ meats. It is quite possible that dogs do that too. So if you eat beef liver, maybe a dog will “think twice” before attacking you.

Offer the dog a cigarette and a beer

Most dogs can become aggressive from time to time, but not dogs that know how to chill. Therefore, you may consider carrying special dog cigarettes and beer around - only some brands work! Okay, a clarification: the "eat beef liver" advice is not a joke, nor are the others above it.



Notes and acknowledgements

The “charging dog” photo is from Dreamstime.com. The “drunken dog” montage was created with photos from the blog Agrestemundica.

Cesar Millan's site has a number of good suggestions on how to handle dog attacks (). However, I personally think that the way he handles dogs (e.g., often with open hands) is dangerous if copied by an inexperienced person. There is a great deal of "hidden" information that is conveyed to dogs by nuances of Cesar's body language. Those nuances are difficult to copy by an inexperienced person.

An interesting source of information on how to handle dog attacks is the web site Fightingarts.com (, ).