This one's for you Mom

Virginia Ruth Munger, my sweet mother, was progressively less healthy her last 30 years, with the last five a particularly difficult passage. She had no clue all of her maladies could have been reversed (if caught early enough) with lifestyle changes, and while I was beginning to have an inkling was not coherent enough to overcome her skepticism. My early karmic role was the rebel, misfit, and angry young man, which tortured the poor woman intensely. In the final analysis, having survived that tumultuous period, and matured a little bit (with a little outside help), I can see her better qualities carried the day. Bravissima beautiful Virginia.

According to my fitbit gizmoidal, I did a run earlier today of 9 miles in 2 hours. That's not screaming fast (OK it's pokey), but I jogged or ran the entire distance, and managed to stay on the balls of my feet for most of it. I really have no idea how long ago it last was I could have done that. I suppose it was the summer I spent in Colorado hiking 5 of 7 days a week. I was 32, now I'm 62. OK, so I can remember, it was 30 years ago. My goodness.

we range north

I'll tell you what, when I realized we humans are on one level nothing more than furless animals, and the implications of that, it broadened my appreciation of the modern state of the human condition considerably.

In the first place I realized if it weren't for our tool making capability (our human intelligence), we would be limited to living in the tropics, or near tropics. Without fire and the ability to make warm clothing, we'd be sunk in colder climates. Humans would not have been able to range north (or south) away from warmer climes.

This led me also to thinking more about what sort of bodies we have in terms of diet. We mammals can be either herbivore, carnivore, or omnivore. I grew up thinking we humans were omnivorous, but now I wonder. Or more precisely, obviously we can be omnivorous, the question should be what is the optimum human diet... which diet contributes most to good health? Clearly, the world is not universally ready to agree there is an optimum human diet, or if there is one, what it is. We see experts of every stripe disagree on this. But curiously, there is little debate about the idea all other species on the planet have optimum "species specific" diets.

But again, similar to the "lack of fur" question, if it weren't for our intelligence and tool making capability, it seems we would clearly be more of the herbivore persuasion, with potential for opportunistic omnivorism. We clearly do not have the physical makeup of a carnivore - no claws, fangs, or digestive system of the carnivore. Without tools we would find hunting difficult. That probably goes some way to explaining why our tool less anthropoid ape cousins are nearly exclusively herbivore. There is some opportunistic omnivorism in some of the species, but when we consider total intake by calories, the insect and animal consumption are arguably negligible. The vast majority of calories of all anthropoid apes come from plant sources, except certain human populations (most humans are predominantly plant eaters however).

Unquestionably our brains expanded our capacity for adaptation tremendously, allowing us to range beyond the tropics, where it is thought first humans originated. We ate from the tree of knowledge and were cast from the garden of eden. Never looked at it that way before.

So we can adapt to some degree to any condition almost anywhere on terrestrial earth. Modern technology helps a lot too. No one would want to live at the research station in Antarctica wrapped only in fur pelts huddled by fire!

None of this, however, addresses the question of optimal conditions or diet: what diet would produce the best health, disease resistance, athletic performance, and longevity, other things equal (activity, sleep, etc.)? Too complex to be examined in total at once, studies break the question into component parts and extrapolations are made to the whole, not a true scientific "answer" to the question. As a result science isn't really asking this specific question. But we have a lot of anecdotal experience and opinion... and more debate and disagreement.

As an aside, Campbell, the topic of a previous post here, and his "China Study", is the only scientific study that I'm aware of attempting to answer the larger "optimum diet" question. But of course, there is much debate about his conclusions. I'm going to repost the link to an overview lecture of his life's work, titled "Resolving The Health Care Crisis", it's well worth 20 minutes of your time IMO, if you haven't yet, food for thought, if nothing else:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CN7PF10RKo

One thing is pretty clear, the official extrapolations we have been living by since the advent of industrialized food production have needed recent modification, and that (slow) process may still be underway. There has been a definite shift toward a greater quantity and variety of plants in our diets. It may not be coincidence given our biology, if we take adaptability out of the equation. Indeed, by that measure, it might be argued we are strongest and best with a predominantly plant sourced diet.

Oh, and that smaller population of humans I mentioned previously that does not source most of their calories from plants? That would be us, the inhabitants of the industrialized world. The ones with soaring rates of obesity, diabetes, cancer and heart disease.

Unconscious Process

This post will serve as bookend to "Scientific Process", a couple of posts ago. It's the other side of the coin, the same issue really, only the other side of it. At question is how do we know anything, and how do we make decisions? This is an issue that affects health, and pretty much everything else too.

My parents had some interesting books, one of them was the collection of Einstein's letters. He spoke out on the issues of the day, and corresponded with other thinkers and colleagues. I read this so long ago my memory of it is not specific (I want to remember to remember to re-read it:), but as I recall he had an interesting correspondence with Freud. Perhaps their correspondence was not mere happenstance, both of these great scientists had a strong interest in unconscious process. And they both have many wonderful quotes attributed to them, one of my favorites of Einstein's goes something like: many things that can be measured aren't important, and many things that can't be measured are. That's an interesting thing for a scientist to say, since science is basically the art of measurement.

That's a funny way of putting it, that science is the art of... anything. We normally don't think of it that way. But I guess that explains the evolving nature of scientific knowledge - it's a creative process, and process can be precise, but it can be messy too.

There's an old saw about science kicking around, I don't know who said it first, but it is repeated often enough: "if it can't be measured it doesn't exist". Clearly Einstein didn't see it that way. But there is the idea that measurement is the foundation of science, the first step, and repeated throughout the process.

Before that however there must be the inductive leap, the flash of recognition of what might be true, and what to try to measure in the first place. Induction is one of the more interesting things the human mind does, but it's a bit of a mystery because it happens in the unconscious, and we still do not understand the unconscious very well (some things that are important can't be measured). We've certainly made inroads, and we have rough maps that probably are about as accurate as early maps of the globe were. But a precise model of that landscape we do not have.

So the unconscious is basically "dark" to us, it's happening all the time, but we have limited "view" of it. If that weren't true, it wouldn't be unconscious at all! It is thought the unconscious accounts for most of our mind/brain activity - we know part of what it's doing are "background chores" like keeping the blood pumping, and all the rest of it. The body is a complex machine... good thing we don't have to remember where all those switches and knobs are! - can you imagine?

We go completely unconscious when we're asleep, except in dreaming, which seems to happen on the border of conscious and unconscious activity. The autonomic part of the unconscious mind is also directing a lot of "repair work" on the body while sleeping, and perhaps dreams are a part of the "emotion body" house cleaning process, keeping us sane and whole.

We also get ideas in dreams, and when we're awake inductive leaps seem to come out of "nowhere". But they are not really out of nowhere, they are out of our mind/brain's large capacity - most of which is on the unconscious level. We know we remember a lot more stuff than we can think of at any given moment - it can take a day or longer to remember certain things, and "sleeping on it" sometimes helps. In a hypnotic state people can often be brought to recall everyday things from decades past and long since forgotten. And Jung and others have suggested we even have collective memory, the "collective unconscious" of all of mankind. Wow, maybe we potentially remember "everything"! Now that would be worth writing home about:) In any case, a large part of the brain appears to be, in effect, a very large and complex (but gooey) RAM chip.

Creative process is another name for inductive leap. Artists learn to trust this, and value it almost as their "stock in trade". Scientists trust measurement, and since they are measuring "the new" in original research, discovering just how to measure accurately frequently takes place in stages, perhaps even over years and decades. Meanwhile we sometimes see inaccurate conclusion drawn on initial measures, and "interim realities" constructed along the way, which can be problematic when these interim stages are not benign. Ah well, two steps forward and one step back is the order of the day, the path is not a straight line or perfectly linear.

At bottom of every process is unconscious formation, the ongoing collating, sorting, and synthesizing all the disparate bits of memory we all have in there, until finally, fully formed, it manifests as conscious thought. It's one of the more amazing things about being human really.

here's the thing

That last post was too long, too dry, too boring, and tooo heavy! This one will be much lighter in tone.

losing weight is difficult right? It's not only a matter of getting on the right track, it's also a matter of staying on it, which may require a little intrapersonal work. Beyond that it's actually not all that difficult, in terms of how it's accomplished. It is basically calories in vs calories burned.

but here's a neat trick. if you limit your diet to the foods with a high nutrient to calorie ratio, you're more than halfway there. You can eat till full, have your calorie and nutrient needs met, and lose weight slowly but consistently, probably about a pound a week on average. It takes a while because you're eating till full, but that's actually a good thing - you really want to lose the excess weight gradually and consistently, so the body's autonomic metabolic reference points are adjusting along with the body. (This is the reason crash diets don't work.)

so what are the high calorie foods most responsible, the culprits? some are obvious, members of the carb family like alcohol and refined (concentrated) sweeteners of any kind. What may not be as obvious is how high refined fats are in calories. Even "healthy" vegetable oils like olive oil are 100% fat, and very high in calories on a proportional basis. The less oil you put in and on your food the better.

Fats are of course essential, one of the three macronutrients, but we may not need as much fat for good health as we've been led to believe. Here's another trick - if you get 100% of your fat requirement from whole foods, you automatically cut calories. And It can be argued also if you get that fat from whole plant sources like nuts, seeds and avocados, you automatically raise the nutrition to calorie ratio at the same time.

Meats and other animal sources are relatively high in fat, and the conventional wisdom at this point is "not the good kind", although there is much debate over what the "good kind" of fats are, so I'll only say if you consume animal products be sensible about it, and think about how large quantities can spike calorie intake undesirably, and keep it to small portions.

I have a vegan bias, so I'll say something about that approach. Many folks find that by just going vegan, and nothing else, they lose weight easily and automatically, without even really trying. Obviously they are getting less calories. There can be a few reasons for that, 1) when people do go vegan they are frequently trying to eat healthier, and they start making choices that are higher on the nutrient to calorie ratio scale. 2) and in doing so, they find they have less cravings for empty calorie junk food. You could try to live on wonder bread alone, and get plenty of calories, but your body will still say - I'm hungry!

So we can make a case that if we begin to concentrate on the quality of our calories we can pretty much forget about counting them, junk food cravings will lessen automatically (the body will feel nourished, because it is), and the weight will just come off gradually, as it should, until we reach the correct weight for us.

There's plenty of junk vegan food out there too, and there are plenty of overweight vegans. How do we weed out the bad stuff? there's a simple way to approach this, and it's true whether you are vegan or not. When you are at the grocery, stick to the outside of the store, most of the stuff in the middle will end up there, around yours. Minimize the boxes, cans and packages to the extent possible. You will find that after awhile it's really not that difficult to cut way back on that stuff. If you're vegan do the vast majority of your shopping on the fresh produce aisle. I notice even at Whole Foods, where there are very good fresh produce sections, how few carts have much produce in them.

Thinking you can lose weight just by exercise alone, without improving your diet, is difficult in my experience. This is not true for someone already in a very good condition and weight - those folks can do a longer and/or more intense exercise session and knock of the pounds quickly by exercise alone. We can get there too, a step at a time.

But just by raising your nutrient to calorie ratio you will begin losing weight staying with your current activity routines, in the vast majority of cases. And as your body gets lighter it wants to move more, and that begins the virtuous cycle of regular activity and good diet, the ultimate condition of optimum health.

Scientific Process

When it comes to nutrition, scientific process is important for a number of reasons, some good, some not so good. We know the benefit of science and technology in our general lives, it has created, and continues to create, much of our human environment. We no longer have to deal with the harsh elements of nature, and lifespan has been greatly extended. There are too many benefits to even begin to count here.

Let's talk about the limitations of scientific process for a moment, because I think it relates to much of the information we are presented with concerning nutrition. First, a disclaimer - I am not a scientist. But I am a technologist of sorts, in my previous profession, and as an amatuer. I'm an interested observer, let's say, and the following are my opinions.

What is scientific process? It can be said to be objective process, whereby aspects of the physical world can be examined for repeatable pattern by constructing a model that can be brought into laboratory and observed under dynamic conditions. But problems can crop up that create erroneous conclusion, which is most of the reason, if you've noticed, scientific "truth" seems to change quite a bit over time.What are those problems?

First, and primarily, testing models are reductions of very complex reality. Best efforts are made of course to accurately identify the relevant dynamic elements. That is not always accomplished however. When we are looking for repeatable pattern under lab conditions, models for testing are designed according to theory - what we think may be happening. We may be, frequently enough are, incorrect in our assumptions, on the margins of dynamic envelope, or at the core of it. When incorrect at core, repeatable pattern will not be found and conclusions cannot be reached.  But when at the margins, pattern may well be found, but it may not result in accurate conclusion. Why is that?

Reality is dynamic and continually self-changing on an endogenous basis, but models of reality are static and only changed exogenously (by re-design). It's a little bit like the grammar of language, which compared to a living language, changes slowly. The need to find certainty in this complex and uncertain life contributes to a kind of flipping effect of priorities, where the model becomes more important in some ways than the dynamic reality. In school we are taught to speak "correctly", according to a model many years old. I won't argue this sort of societally imposed structure has no good function, but that's another discussion. Suffice it to say, most kids leaving the classroom revert immediately to the colorful living language of their peer group. This analogy serves to illustrate how static models of reality might operate "on the margins" - most of the model is accurate, but important parts are not identified for one reason or another, leading to partially erroneous conclusions where an accurate study of dynamic reality is the goal.

It's not easy to study dynamic reality, it's complex, and it may be changing in real time in ways that are difficult or impossible to identify.

There is another problem with controlled studies called expectancy bias. This is where, going back to model design, a favored "pet" theory (invented here, it has to be good) is the dominant reason for going into controlled study phase to begin with. This may be especially relevant when a potentially commercial outcome is at stake. New drugs that cure difficult disease for example can (and do) also create billions of dollars income for the developer group. But that is only the most obvious example, favored theory status is always conferred to one degree or another, with status of public recognition more than sufficient motive.

Expectancy bias is a problem that manifests as potentially incorrect conclusions when conditions at the margin of the dynamic envelope are not sufficiently defined, or simply not identified to begin with.

But we don't throw scientific process out, baby with bathwater, as a result. On whole it's a very valuable process, we only have to look around the room to see the proof of that. Why is it so important?

Placebo effect and the unreliable nature of anecdotal experience is the very reason scientific process was needed, and why it was developed (necessity mother of invention), and why it works so well, when it does. If we don't like the idea of living in primitive conditions, scientific process is a very good thing, it's the one thing that makes this difference in our lives. So, and perhaps I should have said this earlier (better late than never:), it is a very good thing! Blessed are the searchers, and the re-searchers, of the truth. (In the first instance, we also need the searchers - the thinkers, the poets, the philosophers, and even the rebels and misfits, to ask the questions that lead to new theory.)

So anecdotal experience is an obvious phenomena on one level, but complex on another. It's where mind and body intersect and overlap. It's where dreams become real and the real becomes dreams. It's where art happens, and where we live our daily lives. The problem with using anecdotal experience as measure, or should I say, precise measure, is best illustrated perhaps talking about placebo effect. This is where, when we think something is going to happen (expectancy bias again), the probability it does happen becomes greater in some measurable way. There are many many examples, here's a hypothetical: in a double blind controlled study of a hair restoration formula, the control group is given a fake, which could in no way have any effect on hair growth, and the test group is given the real stuff. Both groups grow more hair by the same amount. Since the test group did not grow more hair than the control group, the effect is not greater than placebo, and the formula is a failure.

As an aside, this kind of thing may well make us wonder if we are asking the right questions - if the placebo effect is so powerful and consistent, why don't we find ways to put it to consistent methodical use? The answer is if method is too transparent, if we can see behind the curtain, we no longer believe "the magic". But placebo is used consistently in less transparent ways - every health care professional, credentialed or not, is imbued with this power if we trust them. In fact everyone we perceive to be of higher power than us is imbued with this "magic" power, to one extent or other. This is why we say children are equal in dignity but not power, and as adults we must endeavor to remain cognizant of this so as to minimally damage. And this is why as adults, IMO, it is good to question authority and the established order, and what passes as "truth", which may be no more than a grammar that is past its "use by" date. Modern democracies are founded on the principle of the importance of preserving the right to question the established order, unfortunately that right is being eroded... but I digress.

Placebo has obvious limits. It will not save you if for example you are given a powerful toxin but simultaneously assured by a trusted source that it is Vitamin A, you have a deficiency shown on your recent blood work, and you need Vitamin A to heal a health problem you've been experiencing. Seeming miracles do happen and I believe in them, but I would not also expect an individual to be protected from toxicity in the above scenario, in a controlled study or otherwise.

Science not only has it's place, in many ways it IS this place, the environment created by industrialized man, our brothers and sisters. We have become so dependent on it, in so many ways that we are mostly unconscious of, that it can give one pause... for example, how many of us could really survive, not to mention thrive, if for some hypothetical reason, there were suddenly no grocery stores? Kinda scary to think about isn't it?

Reality IS anecdotal experience, as messy and unfocused, and dreamy, as it is. We are spiritual beings at core, one with nature, and we must, in my humble opinion, endeavor to remain conscious of that transcendent fact. Ultimately we learn to trust our own experience above all - it's all there really is in the final analysis, on the most foundational level.