Is ice cream a superfood, pursue daily discomfort, and you need to break before you can glow

This has been called the most “preposterous”, but real claim in modern nutrition science. 

A 2018 Harvard doctoral study (and subsequent analysis) found an unexpected association: small, daily portions of ice cream (half a cup) were linked to a lower risk of heart disease in diabetics and reduced insulin resistance. While surprising, researchers found it difficult to explain, noting the findings were “not a fluke”

Studies from the HarvardDash and SciTech Daily suggest that in some datasets, people who ate ice cream regularly showed lower rates of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular issues compared to those who did not.

The mechanism isn't fully understood, but it is believed it might be due to Milk Fat Globule Membrane (MFGM) in real dairy, which can lower cholesterol and inflammation. Additionally, the combination of fat and protein in ice cream may cause a slower spike in blood sugar compared to refined carbohydrates like bread, or in this case, most store bought, big brand ice cream, which isn’t real ice cream. 

From my perspective, the key to these findings here is REAL dairy. 

Effectively, real ice cream is just milk, cream, sugar, maybe some real vanilla extract, and to call it custard, also egg yolks. 

So if you were to make your own ice cream at home, and used full fat, grass fed milk, grass fed cream, raw honey (for your sugar), and then even added some pasture raised egg yolks, you are talking about a food that is absolutely loaded with healthy fats, vitamins, minerals, and all kinds of immune regulating compounds from the dairy fat, egg yolks, and raw honey. 

That sure sounds like a superfood to me.

The researchers did also note that despite this finding being surprising, this was probably due to people eating real ice cream, loaded with real, and very healthy dairy fat. 

It’s also worth noting that portions probably matter, and the average daily ice cream intake was a half cup. 

Most notable to me from this study was that the regular ice cream consumers actually had improved insulin resistance and lower risk of diabetes, which is definitely not an association I think many of us, myself included, would make. 

I think this highlights just how good real dairy fat is for you. 

Dairy gets an unfair rep, as many of us have issues digesting dairy, and others have immune responses to it, but most of the digestive issues are a result of larger digestive issues that need to be cured, and the immune responses are often to processed dairy, devoid of its fat, and far from “real” dairy. 

Keep in mind, dairy, or milk, is the perfect food made by nature to act as a “serve all areas” of nutrition for infants. 

The quality of dairy fat and protein is unparalleled; the key again, is to be eating dairy in its natural state, which means, full fat, and grass fed, and ideally raw or fermented whenever possible. 

I think the biggest takeaway from this study is just how good real dairy can be, especially dairy fat, can be for our health, and to actually help reduce risk of disease. 

And if you stick to the following ingredients: grass fed whole milk, grass fed whipping cream, raw honey, pasture raised egg yolks, and real vanilla extract, ice cream is absolutely a health food, and I’d argue a superfood. 

PRO TIP: To really amp up the benefits of your homemade ice cream or custard, add colostrum to it. Then you’re really getting all the anti-aging benefits and the full spectrum of dairy’s benefits. If you’re not familiar with colostrum, check out my blog about this magical superfood of mother’s milk. 

“Aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort.”

-Gary Brecka

Despite the vastly different environment and lifestyle we now have compared to our early hunter-gatherer ancestors, our biology is still quite similar. 

As a result, there is an interesting bifurcation that has taken place, whereas we now have access to food 24/7, including an abundance of highly processed options, but because our biology is still very similar to early hunter-gatherers, we also still have the survival mechanisms that in the past, would have kept us alive by helping to preserve body fat during times of starvation and famine, but now just help make us overweight. 

Furthermore, we now work mostly indoors, versus our hunter-gatherer ancestors who had to have the thermal hermetic stress responses to working and being outside in cold winter and hot summer months. 

And finally, we used to have to eat what was seasonal, because that’s what grew and was available, but now we have access to produce all times of year. 

In short, our biology responds positively to the aforementioned stressors, however, we now live in a world where for the most part, we are not forced to deal with these stressors. 

As a result, it wouldn’t hurt to do what we can to try to mimic and get back to some of our more ancestral, way back, pre-industrial ways of living, as that’s what our biology is still designed to respond to. 

Now don’t get me wrong, those hunter-gatherer ancestors I keep referring to would probably love a lot of the comforts of the modern world we live in, as everything would feel like luxury, but the fact still remains, our modern world, full of its luxuries, does not match our biology. 

I would even argue that our seemingly growing levels of anxiety are actually a byproduct of our comfortable, modern world. 

If our biology still very much matches our hunter-gatherer ancestors, who were spending each day trying to survive, their anxiety in many instances was literally centered around life or death. 

Meaning, we used to live with a very real, necessary anxiety. Sleeping with one eye open was probably an actual way of life. 

Our modern brain still functions in that way, but now, our daily life is far from “life or death”, just trying to survive, so now we need to create our own stress, and if we don’t, the brain fills in those gaps, and creates anxiety over far more trivial things, because to be anxious in many ways, is to be human. 

We are now in the very privileged position that we should create our own stress to accommodate our biology which is a mismatch for this modern world. 

So to fight aging, we should actually seek discomfort in the form of daily, strategically targeted bouts of discomfort known as hormetic stressors. 

A hormetic stressor is a low-dose, short-term stress that triggers your body to adapt and become stronger, more resilient, and more efficient.

Essentially, a positive response to a targeted amount of stress. 

The key here is a “strategic, and targeted amount of stress”. 

✔️ Sit for 10-15 minutes in a sauna, and the body will produce heat shock proteins that improve cardiovascular health, reduce systemic inflammation, and has been shown to reduce risk of all cause mortality, meaning sauna literally decreases your risk of dying from everything. 

🚫 Sit for 2 hours in a sauna and you may die, and at minimum, suffer from heat exhaustion and organ shutdown. 

✔️ Take a 5 minute cold shower, or sit in an ice cold plunge for 3 minutes, and you will produce cold shock proteins that reduce inflammation, speed up your metabolism, and help your body better regulate blood sugar for the day. 

🚫 Sit in an ice cold plunge for 60 minutes, and you will suffer from hypothermia. 

✔️ Both your bones and muscles actually strengthen through stress, so lifting weights 3x a week will keep you younger, as many of us are not getting this stress as part of our daily lives. 

✔️ If you fast for 16 hours in a 24 hour period on a daily basis, or for more than 24 hours on a periodic basis, your body will respond with a host of anti-aging and disease preventive benefits. 

I recently wrote extensively on the plethora of anti-aging, disease preventative benefits of fasting, so for a complete rundown, check out The Complete Guide to Fasting.

And the more hormetic stressors you strategically throw at your body, the less anxiety and mental stress your mind will feel. 

Stress is stress, so imagine you have a daily “stress account” that you need to empty each day, and every time you dig into some discomfort strategically, it’s like a withdrawal, and the more you withdraw, the less likely your mind is to fill in those gaps by creating its own stress in the form of anxiety. 

The more cold showers you take, the more sauna sessions you have, the more you hit the weights, go for a run or walk, go without food for periods of time, the more withdrawals you make on your “stress account” and thus, the more likely these hormetic stressors are to also positively impact your mental and emotional health. 

Our biology is still very ancestral, and it responds positively to targeted levels of stress, so weaving small bouts of hormetic stress into your daily life is the cheapest, easiest way to fight aging, and the increased risk of all diseases that comes with it. 

Glow sticks need to be broken first, before they can glow. 

Before the light, there’s pressure. 

Before the radiance, there’s rupture. 

A glow stick doesn’t shine in spite of being broken—it shines because of it. 

The breaking is what activates what was already inside.

I find this analogy truly acts as a metaphor for life. 

The moments that crack us open: failure, loss, uncertainty, reinvention, often feel like endings.

But they’re also inflection points. 

They strip away illusion, ego, and comfort; forcing us to confront what’s real. 

And in that raw space, something new can ignite.

Growth rarely comes from staying intact. 

It comes from being stretched beyond what we thought we could accomplish, from being dismantled and rebuilt with greater clarity and purpose. 

The glow isn’t accidental, it’s a rite of passage, and is earned through the fracture.

So if you’re in a season of breaking, don’t rush to label it as ruin. 

It may be activation. 

The light you’re looking for isn’t somewhere else, it’s already within you, waiting for the moment you’re cracked open enough to let it shine.