Arthur De Vany on Steroids, Baseball, and Evolutionary Fitness 03/29/2010
What this covers
Russ Roberts hosts economist and evolutionary fitness theorist Arthur De Vany in a wide-ranging conversation that splits into two distinct halves. The first addresses a concrete empirical claim: whether performance-enhancing drugs explain the rise in baseball home runs. De Vany argues the statistical evidence does not support this conclusion. The second half moves to De Vany's broader theory of human metabolism and exercise, grounded in the argument that modern health problems stem from a radical mismatch between our Paleolithic genome and contemporary diet and activity patterns. Throughout, the discussion treats outliers and statistical distributions as central to understanding both athletic performance and human physiology.
On baseball, De Vany presents home-run data spanning four decades showing a stationary distribution across most of the population, with only the top decile displaying a temporary peak in the late 1990s. He argues this pattern reflects rare outlier talent and swing mechanics rather than a drug-driven shift across the playing population. Steroids themselves, he contends, degrade connective tissue while enhancing muscle, and cannot impart the rare kinetic timing elite hitting requires.
The fitness portion develops his core claim: insulin, driven by simple carbohydrates, is the master hormone that switches human genes from repair and maintenance toward reproduction and aging. De Vany argues that jogging is counterproductive because it recruits only slow-twitch muscle fibers and signals the body to shed fast-twitch mass, whereas high-intensity, intermittent exercise mimics ancestral activity patterns and yields superior metabolic benefits. He prescribes brief, intense weight training twice weekly and a grain-free diet sourced from the supermarket periphery. Throughout, he emphasizes that human physiology is a complex adaptive system that resists top-down interventions.
De Vany argues that observed gains in home-run hitting reflect rare high-tail talent, swing technique, and shrinking strike zones rather than steroids, and more broadly that human health is governed by an evolutionary metabolism best served by a hunter-gatherer diet and intense, intermittent (fractal) exercise rather than steady-state aerobic training.
- The statistical distribution of home runs has been stationary for 40+ years except in the top decile, which is dominated by rare outlier talent, not a population-wide steroid-driven shift
- Insulin, driven primarily by simple carbohydrate (glucose), is the 'master hormone' that switches genes from repair/maintenance toward reproduction and aging
- High-intensity, fractal-pattern exercise builds fast-twitch muscle and metabolic benefits that steady jogging cannot, because jogging only uses slow-twitch fibers and sheds muscle mass
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Exceptional home-run hitting follows a power-law distribution analogous to the de Solla Price law of scientific productivity (half the papers in a department are written by the square root of the participants); a few rare 'geniuses' produce extreme performance with high year-to-year variance, so outlier seasons are expected, not evidence of cheating.
“half the papers in the department are written by the square root of the number of participants okay this is the the the de Sola law the solar price law of human productivity”
Carbohydrate cravings arise because chronically high insulin (driven by diet and inactivity) and insulin resistance act as an allocation conflict: the brain, deprived of glucose that is siphoned into fat and muscle, drives cravings, so insulin resistance is the brain attempting to deny nutrients to other tissues to preserve its own supply.
“the cravings are your brain striving to get the glucose the instantly resistance is nothing more than your brain trying to deny nutrients to your other tissues so as to preserve it for itself it's simply an allocation problem between your brain and your the rest of your body”
On the African savanna, simple carbohydrate (glucose) was the scarcest nutrient, available only occasionally via honey, tubers, or seasonal fruit; because glucose was the rarest signal of abundance, it became the most powerful trigger for genes to turn on reproduction and turn off repair — framing humans as 'disposable somas' whose genes will sacrifice them once reproduction is favored.
“glucose would have been the least abundant nutrient and therefore would have become the most powerful signal to the to the genes to turn on reproduction and turn off repair and maintenance because your genes know if you reproduce then they don't have to take such care of you you're a disposable soma”
Top-down command-and-control diet and fitness regimes fail because the body is a complex adaptive system: interventions that look obviously effective (e.g., skipping breakfast and lunch to lose weight) set in motion compensating forces you cannot control, so they backfire.
“if you think you can lose weight by skipping breakfast and lunch you're going to be sorely disappointed the things that seem obviously effective in in weight management don't often turn out that way because they set in motion these other forces”
Standard statistical practice harmfully discards outliers, but in home-run hitting, health, and physiology it is the rare outliers that exert the massive, life- and economy-changing effects, so throwing them away misses what matters most.
“I'm trying to argue in my home run paper and in life and in health and physiology that it's the outliers that really exert the massive effect they're rare but unique life changing an economy changing types of events”
Medical and economic research is unreliable: only about half of medical studies ever replicate (and economics is likely worse), meta-studies that pool disparate samples are 'frightful' and have produced bad conclusions, and progress requires continual testing and rejecting rather than seeking confirmation of theories.
“only about half of medical studies ever replicate... I'm sure the replication rate in economics studies is even worsse”
Most exercise does little good because people do unproductive exercise below the intensity threshold; the value of exercise is not burning calories but altering muscle mass and hormone drives, and in the Cooper Clinic data (Ruiz) the strongest people had the lowest incidence of cancer death in a stair-step gradient.
“our exercise really does very little good it's not about burning calories is about altering your muscle mass and changing your hormone drives”
Caloric restriction works to extend life only because it lowers glucose and turns down the insulin/IGF growth-and-reproduction pathway; therefore one can get the same life-extension and repair benefits simply by restricting glucose rather than enduring miserable total caloric restriction.
“the people who tried to do caloric restriction are trying to turn down the insulin IGF pathway... it must have been glucose that was turning on the genes... all we had to do is restrict glucose and we get the same benefits”
Modern human longevity gains are due mainly to reduced infant mortality, protection from pathogens, and abundant food (we live like protected lab rats), not to grain-eating; once a hunter-gatherer survived to adulthood their probability of death was no higher than ours, and farmers living beside hunter-gatherers in remote environments lived shorter lives than the hunter-gatherers.
“infant mortality is a primarily determinant of life expectancy we do have we have been removed from pathogens and food shortages... We are basically like lab rats they live three times longer than wild animals”
Exercise research is biased toward aerobic exercise because aerobic work reaches a measurable steady state in the lab while intense exercise never does (a 'streetlight' bias), and diet research is biased against fat and in favor of carbohydrate while neglecting the damaging anti-nutrients in grains.
“most of the early laboratory work on exercise was done with aerobics exercise because that you can measure in the lab you can't do an aerobic or intense exercise very well that way because the body never hits a steady state”
The right way to exercise is to follow a fractal pattern like a wild animal or child — mostly easy/languid periods punctuated by occasional bursts of all scales including very intense sprints — so that a few moments of intense exercise equal hours of low-intensity work in metabolic effect (improved insulin sensitivity, altered stress hormones).
“follow a fractal variation in your activities as well meaning a lot of sort of easy language periods a few bursts of all scales including some very intense one”
The frequency distribution of home runs has been stationary over more than 40 years (1959–2004): the bottom 90% of hitters shows essentially no change, and only the 90th-percentile and above show a temporary peak around 1998–2001, meaning there is nothing left to explain with steroids.
“the distribution of homeruns has not changed these are just a few draws from the underlying distribution which has been stationary over a more than a 40-year period of time”
After a high-intensity session the body keeps burning energy (fatty acids) at a prodigious rate for four to five hours, so the benefits of exercise come largely from the post-exercise metabolic period rather than from the activity itself.
“he is earning energy for about four four or five hours after the sprint he burns energy at a prodigious rate you don't have to be doing something to be burning the realizing the benefits of the exercise”
What you weigh is governed by your metabolism (directed mainly by insulin, the master hormone), not by simple energy-in-versus-energy-out: 'you are not what you eat, you are what your metabolism does with what you eat.'
“it's not your energy expenditure versus your energy intake it's what you are not what you eat you are what your metabolism does with what do we and your metabolism is being directed over me much by insulin which is as I say the master hormone”
Performance-enhancing drugs, including steroids, are largely a myth; there is no strong evidence that they enhance performance, with the only real effect being dehydration-induced increases in red blood cells that aid endurance.
“the theory that the homerun hitting is enhanced by by steroids or that in fact more generally that there are any things such things as performance-enhancing drugs is largely a myth it's not not supported by by any really strong evidence other than some some dehydration which tends to increase the number of red blood cells”
Jogging is counterproductive because it uses only slow-twitch fibers and stays below the intensity threshold, signaling the body to shed fast-twitch muscle mass; as a result joggers are on average fatter (higher fat-to-muscle ratio) than other athletes, and humans evolved as 'lazy overeaters' for whom steady jogging is unnatural.
“if you jog you use only your slow twitch muscle fibers and the body says hey I don't need these fast twitch fibers I'm gonna shed muscle mass and it turns out that joggers on average or fatter than than other athletes”
A glucose-deprived brain behaves as if it is dying because it is a Paleolithic brain that does not know it is in the 21st century; however, exercise lets the brain switch fuels — it can live happily on ketones and lactic acid released during workouts — so exercising actually feeds the brain rather than starving it during carbohydrate withdrawal.
“a brain that lacks glucose thinks it's dying it's a Paleolithic brain remember it doesn't know it's in the 21st century”
Practical prescription: work out no more than twice a week for 15-20 minutes with intense, safe weight lifting (heart patients are rehabilitated with weights, not jogging, which is too hard on the heart); building muscle mass consumes glucose voraciously, increases insulin sensitivity, and burns fat.
“they rehabilitate heart patients with weight lifting not with jogging jogging is too dangerous... I would suggest that you workout no more than twice a week 15 to 20 minutes each time”
Long-distance running's runner's high comes from endorphins (opiate-like pain-tolerance chemicals) and is partly addictive, but high-intensity exercise produces the same high while also releasing brain-derived neurotrophic factor that repairs and heals the brain — so intense exercise gives the high plus brain growth without muscle loss, joint damage, or respiratory disease.
“you're releasing so-called endorphins which are opiate like substances... but high-intensity exercise does the same thing but it also releases brain neurotrophic factor which repairs and heals the brain”
Practical diet prescription: shop only the outer perimeter of the supermarket (produce, fruit, meat, seafood) and avoid the dangerous cereal aisle, give up grains, cereal, and milk, eat leftover dinners for breakfast, and during the ~one-month adjustment supplement with magnesium and a little salt while using fresh fruit to ease the brain off glucose.
“simply forage the outer perimeter of your supermarket where all the produce and where the fruit and where the way the meat and seafood are located and then quickly leave the store the cereal section is the most dangerous”
Agriculture, beginning ~10,000 years ago, was a damaging turning point for human health: human stature and brain volume declined, and infectious diseases proliferated because of higher population densities and poor sanitation.
“Jared Diamond and others called farming the worst invention agriculture the worst invention of mankind because we know that human stature declined health declined precipitously brain volume shrunk many infectious diseases began to invade human existence because of the population densities”
The human genome has changed minimally since modern humans emerged ~100,000 years ago (Paleolithic Cro-Magnon DNA from ~28,000 years ago is virtually identical to modern human DNA), so our genes are adapted to a diet and activity pattern that no longer matches modern life.
“there have been very minor changes in the human genome since the last since the first fully human modern humans emerged about a hundred thousand years ago”
Steroids are not a magic pill; they degrade connective tissue relative to muscle (because of altered protein synthesis), causing torn tendons and knee injuries, and cannot turn a poor hitter into a home-run hitter because elite hitting requires rare fine kinetic timing.
“they do all kinds of bad things to the body because the ultra protein synthesis the connective tissue degrades relative to the muscles so you rip tendons and tear knees out”
Intermittent fasting mimics ancestral conditions: hunter-gatherers periodically went days without food (e.g., chased far from home by a predator), so skipping dinner once a week and going to bed hungry replicates a beneficial evolutionary stress.
“they used to skip dinner once a week and just go to bed hungry yeah forever just for the first month intermittent fasting remember just like yeah like my ancestors”
Citing famous steroid users who hit home runs is cherry-picking; the failure rate among steroid users was enormous, and the only systematic evidence (the Cole and Stigler study) found known users suffered a slight DECREASE in performance, likely due to selection bias — users tended to be injured or near the end of their careers.
“to pick a few exemplars who happened to hit um any homeruns is kind of bad statistics you can through this point by simply cherry picking over a sample”
Centenarians worldwide share two traits: they are strong, lean, and muscular for their age, and they have very low insulin; insulin is the 'aging hormone' — a permissive signal of nutritional abundance that switches genes toward reproduction and away from stress-resistance, repair, and maintenance.
“they have two very common characteristics... one there's very strong for their age... and two they have very low insulin insulin is the aging hormone it's the permissive hormone that says nutrition is abundant it's time to reproduce”
The healthy human heartbeat is chaotic/fractal (a decentralized system with many feedback controllers), which makes it resistant to shock and stress; excessive jogging trains the chaos out of the heart, turning it into a metronome, and both too little chaos and too much white-noise randomness are forms of heart failure.
“the human heart beat is actually chaos chaotic this is the new field the so called fractal physiology... If you jog excessively you train the chaos out of your heartbeat it becomes a metronome”
About half of one's meat intake should come from seafood because the late Paleolithic ice age forced humans to the shoreline ~50,000 years ago, and access to seashore-based foods (combined with the intense intelligence demands of surviving the ice age) likely engendered the rapid expansion of the human brain.
“the rapid expansion of the human brain that's a place during that sort of late Paleolithic period was probably engendered or assisted by one the intense need for intelligence to survive that brutal ice age into the access to seashore based foods”
The lean body mass gained from heavy training plus steroids is primarily slow-twitch muscle fiber, which does not impart the strength and quickness (fast-twitch fibers) needed to swing a bat fast, so it cannot meaningfully help bat speed.
“the increase in lean body mass that does sometimes result from a combination of hard training and steroids is primarily slow twitch muscle fiber it's not the fast muscle fibers that impart strength and quickness to an athlete”
Mass does help hit home runs (a heavier player adds about 30 feet at equal bat speed), but contact, timing, and the precision of an uppercut swing path that imparts backspin dominate how far a ball travels — which is why non-massive players like Hank Aaron hit the most home runs.
“Babe Ruth weighed 251 pounds and at equal bad speed a heavier player more massive player will add about 30 feet to the length of the the hit”
Home runs per hit (and per strikeout) is the purest measure of power because home runs per at-bat is confounded by strategy, game situation, manager instructions, and walks, and older players were actually more efficient on a home-runs-per-strikeout basis.
“I think the purist measure of power is home runs per hit... more home runs per strikeout now that takes both strategy and effectiveness into account and it turns out that the older players were more efficient”
The de facto Major League strike zone has shrunk dramatically over time (effectively waist to nipples, far smaller than the de jure zone), likely a Hayekian emergent phenomenon as umpires who shrank their zones produced more offense and were rewarded, which partly explains rising home-run hitting.
“I've always assumed it's a Hayekian emergent phenomenon where umpires who shrunk their strike zones like that we're more beloved by baseball because it made for more offense and people like offense”
Milk should be avoided after early childhood because humans outgrow the need for it by age three, no human drank another animal's milk until food restrictions in northern climates, and milk's insulin-like growth factor and foreign proteins cause insulin resistance and metabolic disturbance.
“milk has an awful lot of insulin-like growth factor in it which causes insulin resistance in insulin resistance in the human being it is somewhat troubling to our metabolism not to mention the foreign proteins in milk”
Grains and grain-derived products are novel substances that entered the human diet only ~11,000-13,000 years ago and had no role in the evolution of human metabolism, so they should be avoided.
“I don't eat any grain or grain derived products they entered the human diet only as early as 11 or 13 thousand years ago”
Strikeouts per at-bat have increased despite the smaller strike zone, which is counterintuitive but reflects an economics elasticity effect: a smaller zone means pitches arrive nearer the batter's power sweet spot, so batters swing harder, and that incentive to swing harder offsets the smaller zone.
“a naive prediction would be of the strike zone gets smaller there should be fewer strikeouts but of course a smaller strike zone means that pitchers are more likely to pitch near your power sweet spots and therefore you're going to swing harder”
Mark McGwire's improvement late in his career was due to perfecting the modern Charlie Lau swing (long extension, backhand off the bat, upward swing path, high finish) rather than steroids, as his home-run efficiency rose only after he adopted that swing technique.
“by that time he had perfected the new modern swing remember there's been a technological change in baseball in terms of the swing the Charlie Lau swing which George George Brett used”
Roger Maris's 61-home-run season is in some respects unexplainable because peak performances rely on the chance combination of many small factors, each contributing a tiny edge over a full season.
“Roger Maris's 6161 Hawkins was the kind of peak performance ha's or in some respects unexplainable because they rely upon the chance combination of many small factors each of which can contribute enormous lead over the course of the whole year”
Bonds struck out very rarely in his peak years (47 times in 2002, 58 in 2003) — 'Ruthian' numbers — and his low strikeout rate and rare misses are unrelated to steroids.
“he won't only strike out forty seven times in 2002 for example and 58 times in 2003 these are pretty much unheard of records those are ruthian numbers”
Marathon running (as distinct from jogging) is useless and frightening, producing damaging biochemical changes in the body.
“I have a top ten reasons not to not to run marathons and it's frightening the biochemical changes that take place from in people when they well they run marathons... but it's totally useless”
Mark McGwire is no less massive now (in retirement, observed in spring training) than during his playing days, indicating his bulk was not steroid-dependent.
“a mark mcgwire is no less massive now than he was when he was hitting have you seen it recently in spring training now he's gigantic”