Michael Arnstein - athletic performance on a fruit based diet?

Michael Arnstein created the Woodstock Fruit Festival in 2011 to share what he had learned reading "The 80/10/10 Diet" by Dr. Doug Graham: first, that he never felt better, but perhaps more impressively, his athletic performance improved dramatically. (Michael has been an "ultra distance" marathon runner for years). The Festival is held on a gorgeous location on a lake in upstate New York every year in August.

Michael celebrated his 40th birthday in 2017 in an unusual way...by competing in (and winning, again) The Hurt 100, one of the more grueling foot races on the planet, run annually in Hawaii. This video document of that event was created by Symbiotic Solutions.

A condensed education in "Natural Hygiene"

Natural Hygiene is a diet and lifestyle philosophy that was described in (at least) two contemporary books, "Fit for Life" by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond published in 2002, and "The 80/10/10 Diet" by Dr. Doug Graham in 2006. Both books were best sellers, possibly because Natural Hygiene is based (in no small part) on common sense.

What do I mean in this instance by "common sense"? We've heard our entire lives that fruits and vegetables are the original health foods. We've all heard the quote by the original medical doctor Hippocrates to "let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food".

Recently "fruit is bad for you" has become a cultural meme. I could give you my ideas about how this (health destructive) state of affairs has come to pass, but that's a topic for another post at a future point. Meanwhile have a look at a short video by natural hygienist Loren Lockman to judge for yourself the long term effect lots of fresh fruit (and vegetables) has caused in his state of health. If this video peaks your interest, it's the first in a brief series of short videos recorded last year at Lockman's Tanglewood Wellness Center in Costa Rica. In total they are a fairly comprehensive but condensed presentation of Natural Hygiene philosophy.

Creative credit: Symbiotic Solutions Youtube Channel

Greens...better than drugs?

The New York Times reported a recent study that shows green leafy vegetables slow cognitive decline by the equivalent of 11 years:

A Salad a Day May Be Good for Brain Health

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/well/mind/a-salad-a-day-may-be-good-for-brain-health.html#story-continues-1

Common Sense! (looking for intelligent life in the universe)

I think I'll do a series of blogs on common sense, because it is, sadly, not all that common, but oh so necessary for the development of real understanding. Looking back at my own progression it's easy to forget how confused I was about the substances and conditions that induce health vs those that cause disease. Along the way certain voices I found spoke with logic and clarity simply because what they said consistently made sense. The cumulative effect of finding these voices has been the reversal of my own confusion and ill health.

Here's a relatively new voice for me, Dr. Garth Davis, a bariatric bypass surgeon who, with a conventional medical education, had gained weight himself, and developed high cholesterol and early stage cardiovascular disease coming into middle age. At first he accepted this fate as a simple consequence of aging or "bad genes", but then motivated by professional curiosity (he is after all a weight loss doc) began looking into the whys and wherefores, taking a deep and long dive into the scientific literature. He had been recommending to his patients a high protein low carb diet, and consuming one himself, but then did a 180. The change in his own health and that of his patients has been extraordinary. There are many interviews and talks by him out there, but I chose this brief one, an excerpt from a talk, because in it he shows off some of that common sense:

If that got your attention, you may want to check this out too...a talk Dr. Davis gave at a medical conference on diabetes, recorded by an attendee in the audience. You may need to turn up the volume a bit or use headphones to hear it clearly. It's gold.

Why I prefer the term "disease reversal diet" to "vegan diet"

The term "vegan diet" has a problem in that it describes a very broad, inclusive, and general set of conditions, and includes the possibility of consuming some of the most health damaging processed foods yet conceived. One could for example consume a high fructose corn syrup soda and potato chip diet and yep you'd be vegan. If that's all you ate you wouldn't be long for this world, but you would have no problem finding all the "food" you wanted on that "diet", it's everywhere. In so-called "nutrition deserts" it's essentially the only diet on offer.

Let's face a few facts. It would be interesting in this context to know the population of Nutrition Desert vs Everywhere Else in the good ole USofA, because the Nutrition Desert areas are essentially an act of genocide. The good Dr. Fuhrman, who has coined the very useful term "Nutritarian Diet", has even written a book on this topic (and much more) titled "Fast Food Genocide: How Processed Food is killing Us and What We Can Do About It".

https://www.amazon.com/Fast-Food-Genocide-Processed-Killing-ebook/dp/B01N27P8BR/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

One can get the Genocide Diet anywhere in the USA, one need not travel to the local Nutrition Desert to partake, but of course "in the desert" it's pretty much all there is.

The disease reversal diet is not magic or some complex and mysterious secret known only to select few. It's basic common sense: fully nutritious foods that are also not system clogging, which means they do not present inefficiencies to the body in digestion, assimilation of nutrition, and disposal of waste. In other words you are giving your body sufficient fuel and nutrition without robbing it of the valuable energy it needs to take care of the pathogens and toxins we are exposed to every day. Basically you are simply "getting out of it's way".

Once you have really done that, the body immediately begins to vector toward health on all fronts. It may however be uncomfortable at first, when you clean house dust gets kicked up, and when you begin the disease reversal diet "lodged" toxins are mobilized into the pathways of detoxification and elimination, a process that may very well make one feel worse for a period of time (depending on how much "cleaning" has to be done).

Here's a few clues you may not be consuming the disease reversal diet:

- your energy fluctuates quite a bit during the day.

- digestive processes may cause you discomfort (you should not be any more aware of healthy digestion than you are of normal healthy breathing).

- it may take longer than a single minute to "do your business", and afterward you may feel compelled to open a window out of consideration.

- you may experience any of a broad variety of physical or emotional discomforts with relative frequency.

- your BMI is above the healthy range.

- you may have one or more of the very broad category of health conditions caused by not consuming the disease reversal diet.

There are additional terms other than "disease reversal diet" which identify essentially the same approach:

- SOS free whole food plant based (SOS free = no added salt sugar oil).

- 80/10/10 diet.

- Nutritarian diet.

- Fruits and vegetables with legumes and moderate nuts and seeds diet.

It's interesting how "fruits and vegetables" have been known as the healthiest diet since the time of Plato and Hippocrates, but quite recently has morphed into the "meat and vegetables" diet. Humm...how'd that happen? Was it "science" (using the term loosely) funded by the "disease induction and management consortium"? (Comprised primarily of these industries: meat & dairy, manufactured foods, fast food, big pharma, big health care.) Or was it post industrial cultural biases? Or both?

We love to hear good things about our bad habits...we're only human after all. But we can do better, it only takes education and personal experience to really see and feel the difference.

Let's shine a bright light onto this "invisible" genocide, and get rid of nutrition deserts wherever we find them (even, or especially, in our own bodies). It very likely won't be easy or quick...a huge slice of US GDP has become dependant on the "disease induction and management consortium"...it may even be greater than 50% all told? I somehow think the Fed does not publish that statistic.

Was Chipotle Sabotaged for banning GMO's?

I think it's quite possible after reading this:

You may remember that last year Chipotle was the first restaurant chain to announce that it would phase out the use of genetically modified foods, also known as “G.M.O.’s”. Shortly thereafter, and quite mysteriously, an E. coli outbreak was reported, across fourteen states, from Washington to Pennsylvania, and only in Chipotle restaurants. According the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.), the odds of an E. coli outbreak crossing a single state line is only three percent, as restaurants generally buy their produce and meat regionally for freshness. The likelihood of an E. coli outbreak crossing fourteen state lines, coast to coast, is probably a small fraction of one percent. Additionally, as many restaurant chains use produce and meat from the same sources, it is probably a fraction of a fraction of one percent that such a nationwide E. coli outbreak would only affect one restaurant and not any others.

After six months of thorough investigation by the Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.), the C.D.C., fourteen state and local Health Departments, as well as scientists hired by Chipotle themselves, all have independently concluded that there is not a single traceable source of E. coli from any Chipotle restaurant, in any food ingredient, preparatory surface, or piece of equipment. Literally thousands of individual tests were conducted on the all the foods, on all the kitchen surfaces, and on all the appliances at the suspect Chipotles, and no trace whatsoever of E. coli was found in any restaurant or food ingredient. The C.D.C. being unable to trace the source of a restaurant’s food poisoning, after thousands of tests and half a year of effort, has never happened before in the entire history of the organization.

from this page

https://www.march-against-monsanto.com/mystery-e-coli-strain-smoking-gun-in-chipotle-sabotage-federal-investigation-reveals/

Is it mere coincidence the disease reversal diet is also the way to fix global warming?

Anyone who is paying close attention to nutritional science, anecdotal experience, and epidemiological evidence already knows plant based whole food diets are exponentially better for human health than animal based diets. But what's this about the animal agriculture industry contributing more to global warming than all global transportation combined?

Perhaps it makes sense what is best for human health will be best for the health of the earth too...after all, we are the species destroying the ecosystem. Is there a link?

The new documentary film Vegan 2017 is worth a look.

Women's Nutritarian Diet Health Study looking for participants

The link below will take you directly to the info page.
https://nau.edu/nutritarian-womens-health-study/

Here are a few lines from that page:

The Nutritarian Women’s Health Study (NWHS) is a long term observational study on the effect of the Nutritarian diet on overall health plus the occurrence, recurrence, and progression of chronic diseases (including all forms of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke).

"We can reduce cancer rates – breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer – by 90 percent or more by people adopting what I call a nutritarian diet." ~ Joel Fuhrman, MD

Women over 18 years old who agree to participate in a research study that examines the effect of a nutrient dense, plant rich diet on a variety of lifestyle diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, and many cancers, especially breast cancer.

An introductory video about the study:

HOW CAN THINGS HAVE GONE SO WRONG? (a very brief overview of history)

A friend who reads this blog sent me an email saying he's reading food labels now and noticing all the stuff in "foods" we've never heard of and have no clue what it is. He ended saying "how can things have gone so wrong?"

Things have gone wrong in a number of ways over time. Grain storage is credited as the transition technology of nomadic humans to civilization humans...for the first time we did not have to migrate with the seasons, with distinct advantages to staying in one place with permanent structures, eventually leading to government buildings, libraries, schools, etc.

But grains aren't a food humans can pick in nature and eat directly, it must be hulled and cooked first. Some health experts use a thought experiment to quickly evaluate how "efficient" a given substance is: how much energy is expended finding and converting to an edible form, then once in the body breaking it down and converting to fuel and nutrition. If you found it growing "in the wild" could you make a meal of it in the original form you found it in? Could a child eat it? Would they want to? Animals in nature are hungry and looking for food a good bit of the time, but they don't eat just anything. Each animal has a "species specific diet", and knows what and what not to eat based on instinct, look, smell, and taste.

Digestion of food uses a lot of the body's energy reserves, which explains why we can get tired or sleepy after eating "heavy" meals. Heavy foods are not efficient foods, a lot of energy is required to convert them to usable energy.

Grains are carbs, therefore calories, which is the basic fuel supply we need to get through each day with energy. Fuel comes first, without it nothing else happens, and we are wired by nature to seek calories. An empty calorie is of course not good because it has little to no "micronutrient" content (vitamins and minerals). White rice will provide fuel, but without nutrient density eventually health will decline.

Whole grains do have some micronutrient content, but are not the most nutrient dense food we are adapted to. The broad range of fruits and vegetables better meet our need for both fuel and nutrition.

And this is the first step in how we started going wrong, a dependence on foods that are not sufficiently nutrient dense. Whole grains are not devoid of micronutrients, but they are not high in micronutrients either. Humans used stored grains at the beginning of civilization to get through winter. Then in the spring, summer, and fall would shift to more nutrient dense foods to build up their internal store of vitamins and minerals and get through the next lean months of winter.

The next major step in "going wrong" came with the industrial revolution and with technologic refinement of foods into concentrated substances. This hurt intrinsic value of foods in two ways. First foods could be refined to the point they were completely devoid of micro nutrients, creating the first empty calorie "food-like" substances. Grains became white flour, vegetables became oil, certain fruits and vegetables became sugar. These empty calorie food-like substances do provide "fuel", but ultimately their lack of micronutrient content catches up and health begins to deteriorate. 

Empty calories go a long way toward explaining why so many of us now suffer from so-called "post-industrial metabolic syndrome" diseases, which are degradations of the intricate and complex metabolic pathways in the body, resulting in the most common killers of developed world populations (heart disease, cancer, diabetes, auto-immune diseases).

The first vitamins were discovered in 1912 and initially thought of as "accessory factors". As they came to be understood as "essential" the assumption was made we had at last discovered the cause of health, and if we simply take these single chemicals out of foods their beneficial effect could be concentrated. "Fortified" foods would give us all we need, and even further these nutritional concentrates could be put into pills and capsules, taken daily, and et voila! disease would be banished forever.

Something happened on the way to paradise however, as Dr. Fuhrman points out (author of Fast Food Genocide: How Processed Food is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It), the advent of supplements coincides exactly with the sudden rise in cancer rates in developed world populations.

https://www.amazon.com/Fast-Food-Genocide-Processed-Killing/dp/0062571214/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Fortification of foods may have some value in certain cases, but as an overarching mechanism to improve human health it has been an abject failure. Contemporary nutrition scientists such as Colin Campbell (author of Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition) point to current studies that indicate nutrition only becomes effective when "nested" within the context of the many other hundreds of individual nutritional chemicals in a single whole food (like an apple). Their beneficial effect depends on collaboration. Dr. Campbell compares it to a symphony orchestra, an entity much greater than it's individual constituents.

Dr. Campbell also points out how extremely complex biology and nutrition are, and that much is still not known, but what we can know is that "nature's design" actually works quite well (else we would not still be here), and better than anything we are likely to come up with. His ultimate point perhaps is that biologic and nutritional systems are considerably more complex than currently appreciated, and this underappreciation impedes our approach to truth, sending us instead chasing down one blind alley after another.

https://www.amazon.com/Whole-Rethinking-Nutrition-Colin-Campbell/dp/1939529840

The next and final big step in "going wrong", was the advent of the food engineering industry with a focus on sales and profit instead of nutrition and health. These engineered "foods" can be thought of as "pleasure traps", purposely designed to subvert the interactive complex of instinctual biologic mechanisms that tell us when we've had enough, and what to eat and what to avoid. (A brilliant discussion of this in greater detail: "The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force that Undermines Health and Happiness"). The purpose of these engineered "foods" is to create "return customers" by "cultivating" addiction.

https://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness-ebook/dp/B001A38YCC/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511125973&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Pleasure+Trap

Nature does not provide food trucked in 24/7/365 in unlimited quantities. Consequently we evolved in nature to seek calories. It works because it's almost impossible to over consume calories in nature (where no engineered substances loaded with concentrated fats and sugars are available). Purveyors of engineered food-like substances can (and do) use our instinctual responses "against us" for profit, creating wide spread health destroying addiction in the process. These engineered substances actually have way too many calories, and way too little usable micronutrient content, in a context our biologic instincts tell us to eat more of. The final insult is these calories are contained in goo-like substances that clog up our intricate metabolic pathways, and make us sick.

The whole thing is a nasty business that for the most part we have been unaware of. In my opinion it is no stretch to say we have been victims of unscrupulous marketing practices, sanctioned by governing regulatory bodies charged with protecting us from such practices. Instead they protect GDP and most significant revenue streams...has it ever been different? Moral? Educate and protect yourself.

When we eat these engineered substances until "satisfied" we are on a fast track to gain weight, develop insulin resistance, and eventually fall victim to one or more of the various so-called "metabolic syndrome" diseases that put individuals on an expensive merry-go-round of doctors, medications "you'll have to take the rest of your life", and suffering, ending lives decades prematurely.

It doesn't have to be this way. The first thing to realize is every individual is responsible for their own health, while also realizing (unfortunately) there is a forest of misinformation put forward by purveyors (and other economic beneficiaries) of industrial food products. And we love to hear good things about our bad habits, which is important to remember as we weigh and consider what we learn about the foods and practices that are responsible for the creation of health.

The solution is actually more simple, easy, and (shock!) enjoyable than one might think. Reading books such as those mentioned above can help tremendously with overview, perspective, and motivation.

Oh She Glows!

Oh She Glows quick vegan video recipes makes trying the plant based whole foods diet oh so easy.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGpp6-GXxWFhMLQGbX5VDKA/videos?flow=grid&view=0&sort=dd

Fitness buffs! Check this out - THE 300 POUND VEGAN

Jeff Morgan has landing some very good interviews. Here he speaks with NFL Defensive Lineman David Carter.

An Apple a Day Keeps the Lean Gains on the Way

Fitness buffs of all persuasions, check this post by Jeff Morgan.

Golden Handcuffs - The GDP Problem

As Doug Graham is fond of saying, you can be fit without being healthy, but you can't be healthy without being fit.

A friend took me to task recently for not pointing out sugar is bad in my blog posts. OK, agreed, sugar is bad, but let's look at that a bit deeper.

People of the developed west consume more calories from vegetable oils than sugar. Both are empty calorie substances (can't call them food). But more calories than sugar? How is that possible?

Oils are in everything. It is not difficult for us to get 1/3 cup of oil in a day! Oils and other fats create the precondition for insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. True, any empty calorie is bad (displacing nutrition in the diet), but the precondition for insulin resistance and diabetes is the primary culprit, and sugar is not it.

People on an 80/10/10 diet can eat refined sugars (but it's not recommended) and will not develop insulin resistance or adult onset (type 2) diabetes. Most do not know this yet, but this is changing.

Then my friend (a good friend BTW) proposed the idea that most of the world eats more plants than we do but does not experience greater longevity.

Well, sure, but second and third world populations can suffer from impure water, poor sanitation, lack of calories, lack of nutrition, and lack of access to medical attention. However the evidence is clear, populations living in benign conditions (where basic needs are met) that also consume a whole foods plant based diet (low in fats and high in carbs) experience not only greater longevity (in many cases much longer), but perhaps more importantly, good health their entire lives. Peoples of the developed west typically experience a precipitous health decline well before death, for the last 20-30 years of life.

So if we add an additional condition to longevity studies - length of healthy life - a very different picture emerges.

Dr. Fuhrman, a whole food plant based medical doctor who has coined the term "Nutritarian Diet" proposes the idea if we integrate the benefits of technology and medicine intelligently with a plant based diet the healthy life expectancy in the developed world could extend to 120 years. Epidemiologic studies also show aggression tends to decrease in plant based populations...maybe we would be less inclined to blow ourselves up too.

So what's the hold up? Well, first of all the population would be healthy not sick (and getting sicker). What is the precondition for a healthy economy? Growth. Here's perhaps the most curious irony of our time (a time infested with curious ironies) - economic health depends on a sick population, and economic growth depends on a population getting continually sicker. Now there's a winning formula.

So if the entire developed world went to Dr. Fuhrman's Nutritarian Diet what would happen? Need (demand) for health care would fall off a cliff and force a massive reduction in scale of that industry. Most MDs would be forced out of practice. Big pharma would shrink precipitously. All the funds raised for "the search for cures" would no longer be needed. The processed and fast food industries would collapse. Big agriculture practices would be forced into major changes. We would only need 25% of current (and still growing) hospital bed capacity. Insurance costs would be much lower, forcing a big down size of the insurance industry. etc etc etc.

In other words, the collective impact on developed world GDP would be catastrophic. It's probably no stretch to propose that greater than half of developed world GDP has become dependent on the combinations of the "disease induction" and "disease management" industries.

Is it any coincidence the primary resistance to global warming solutions is also economic? Is it also coincidence the primary human contribution to global warming is animal agriculture? Did you know that? Most people still don't, that's changing too.

Dr. Garth Davis, Bariatric Surgeon

Dr. Davis underwent an interesting change of perspective in his practice as a bariatric surgeon (where the stomach is made smaller with surgery, forcing less consumption of calories).

Here's Dr. Davis in a wide ranging discussion covering weight loss, health, proteins, plant based diets, and paleo diets.

Health and Fitness Mentor Doug Graham answers the question - where do you get your PROTEIN?

Dr Doug Graham, author of the best selling book "The 80/10/10 Diet",  has begun producing a series of short videos that I quite like, and want to share with you.

First up: Where do you get your PROTEIN?

BTW, there's a clip in the vid of Doug deadlifting 385...Doug clocks in at about 145. And he's about 65 years old. And he only started lifting in a serious way about 3 years ago. Fans of lifting can do the math on that one.

Another Great Resource

I've been watching Jeff Morgan's videos occasionally for a while now, and just watched a recent one where his wife does a "what I eat" video. These are popular as more and more of us look for clues and info about how to actually do a whole food plant based diet in "the real world" (wherever that is).

So can we call Jeff and family the typical family going to a healthier diet and lifestyle? Hummm, well maybe not...you decide:)

I'm also going to link Jeff's web site which I hadn't seen before (I think it's new), with Jeff's story and a free recipe book! (Can't have too many of those:)
https://guiltfreetv.org/

Does eating right protect you from air pollution?

From an article in the Oct 19 NYTimes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/opinion/diet-air-pollution.html

It makes sense: the body has only so much capacity to deal with ongoing "housekeeping" activities. Ongoing and normal processing of metabolic waste byproduct presents a baseline load. The ingression of exogenous toxins, some of which is unavoidable to varying degree (like car exhaust), adds substantially to that load. How much capacity is left? If it is insufficient we will lose our health sooner or later as the body becomes overwhelmed with toxic waste.

This is why the foods we eat are so critical...adding "difficult" and toxic foods to the pre-existing load pushes us over the capacity limit, and we begin developing the so-called metabolic syndrome diseases.

The right amount of physical activity is important too, it increases "housekeeping" efficiency substantially.

None of this is hard to understand, so how did we get here? Answer: over-reliance on technological solutions to common sense problems ... the search for the magic bullet that enables us to stay firmly ensconced in "The Pleasure Trap".

Have you read it yet?

https://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness-ebook/dp/B001A38YCC

The "Disease Reversal" Diet

The Disease Reversal Diet is also the diet we are biologically adapted to. The logic for that is simple: the body is a self healing organism - when we eliminate toxic input, and get the correct amount of nutrition, not too much and not too little (which happens automatically on the disease reversal diet, we don't have to think about it, we simply eat as much as we want of the "correct" foods), the body begins immediately to "vector toward health on all fronts".

What that means is we immediately begin going toward our correct weight, and symptoms of physical (and even emotional) discomfort begin to lessen. Within a few weeks we begin to feel very noticeably better with increased energy and feelings of well being. Within a few months we are obviously undergoing a transformative process, noticeable to all around us, but especially to ourselves. We begin to feel amazing, typically for the first time in years. Within a few years we are quite literally a "new" person.

There are variations of this diet of course, the variations that meet our biological needs for fuel and nutrition more closely are also those that are more effective at disease reversal. This same diet reverses the variety of diseases that fall into the "post industrial disease" category, some more quickly and effectively, notably the vascular diseases (heart attack, stroke, and dementia), and type 2 diabetes.

Certain other diseases are also reversed, but a bit more gradually, depending on disease progression. Early cancers for example are reversible, especially those that are not yet symptomatic (those we are not yet aware of, as we know, cancers typically take a decade or more to become symptomatic). Our body intelligence, that complex of mechanisms that reverses diseases, does know however, and begins work on all pathological conditions once we eliminate toxic inputs. All pathological conditions, whether we are consciously aware of them or not, begin the process of reversal as soon as we begin using the diet we are biologically adapted to.

Other diseases reversed include the auto-immune conditions, and again, some more quickly depending on type and progression. In other words, all of the so-called metabolic syndrome conditions, or what some call the post-industrial diseases of dietary excess, can be reversed with the diet we are biologically adapted to.

There is very solid science on the phenomena of disease reversal through diet, an exponentially growing body of research, the earliest examples of which are now decades old.

Of course physical activity is an important component of any healthy lifestyle. The term we hear frequently is "diet and lifestyle", and it's true, we need more than nutrition, but nutrition is the key, and the most effective first step. The reason is simple: better nutrition increases energy and feelings of well being, and when we feel good and have energy we "feel" like moving. In fact it begins to come naturally, our bodies just "want to move" with increased energy.

Weight loss and moderate disease reversal can come with physical activity alone, but we know statistically very little of that is sustained. Other important factors for good health such as good sleep are also notably improved with the foods we are adapted to - these foods create much lower "load" on the body, consequently the body is more at ease, and rest and sleep come easier.

There are so many books to recommend. The first book I read that opened my eyes is "Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease" by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, formally a surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic. It's gets right to the point, an easy fast read. If you haven't read it yet, I recommend it very highly.

https://www.amazon.com/Prevent-Reverse-Heart-Disease-Nutrition-Based/dp/1583333002

edit: A friend comments via email on this post, "and we eat TOO MUCH". My response:

The disease reversal diet has a technical name "ad libitum", which simply means eat until completely satisfied. Fiber is high, caloric density is low (compared to disease causing diets), and it is somewhere between difficult and impossible to go to any other weight than the correct BMI range while maintaining this diet. People on this diet for years become lean and stay lean, it's unavoidable. There is some variation of course within the healthy BMI range depending on other factors.

Here's a link to a study that examined the effect on common health markers in human subjects using an "ad libitum" disease reversal diet:

https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2891-13-99

Going Whole Food Plant Based

I've been thinking recently about writing a blog titled "things I've noticed going vegan" based on my own experiences and observations and some of the challenges I ran into. I would still like to, but meanwhile want to share a vlog on a similar topic. One of the things I realized along the way is the importance of conceptual underpinning -- if it's explained in such a way that just makes tons of sense, it gets a whole lot easier to do.

Here's the personal story of one couple who read a book based on Dr Joel Fuhrman's "Nutritarian" approach that changed their lives:

Our 3 Year Whole Food Plant Based Vegan Transformation

After the nearly unthinkable horrific tragedy in Las Vegas a friend sent an email with the sardonic header "we should declare WAR on ourselves" calling for increased sanity on gun control.

I'm all in favor of increased sanity. My response to the email was as follows:

I don't mean to negate the need for gun control in any way...it's a critical issue, and more and more apparent every time something like this happens.

But compare the number of gun deaths to car deaths, and then compare that number to heart attack deaths, then compare that number to all combined deaths due to heart disease, strokes, dementia, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune disorders, and medical deaths due to meds.

We are a sick society in more ways than one...most people have no clue why they're sick, or that it is not normal, or that meds are not the answer, in fact they are part of the problem. No wonder people are pissed off?

I don't watch much tv, but i did tune into the news on this incident. I was struck by how many commercials for meds there are these days. Wow. This has become normal? We've been sold down the river.

And the juxtaposition of those commercials with the footage on the tragedy was more than just ironic...the promise of health via magic pills vs the tragedy...it was surreal and unsettling.

People don't know why they are sick, or how simple and cheap the (real) cure is, but they have vague notions they are being fucked by big industry and gov.

Yep they are pissed and getting more pissed...good mental health depends on correct chemical balances in the brain. Well, we've sold that commodity down the river too.

The surprisingly dramatic role of nutrition in mental health

clinical psychologist Julia Rucklidge explores a range of scientific research, including her own, showing the significant role played by nutrition in mental health or illness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dqXHHCc5lA

we gain perspective

We become inured to life's conditions. It's part and parcel of how adaptable we are. When change is gradual it sneaks up on us, and we're in a new reality that has become normal. We may have accepted sub optimal conditions without realizing it. There will even be very simple things we can do to get back to a better place, but we won't see them because they are not "normal".

Rich Roll, author of a wonderful book called Finding Ultra, speaks to this topic in this presentation:

Dr. Lustig's New Book - A Critical Topic For Our Time

Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist known for his campaign against refined sugars, has a new book that surprised me a bit. It surprised me because it's rare (unheard of?) to see an established and well known health authority take on the the powerful processed food industries in such a public and confrontational manner. The title alone is worth the price of admission:

"The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains"

https://www.amazon.com/Hacking-American-Mind-Corporate-Takeover/dp/1101982586/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Well done Dr. Lustig! Bravo.

I've been calling the raping of health for profit "An Accidental Genocide", because I do not believe there was a developed conspiracy at the advent of the processed food industry. We genuinely believed, based on best interpretations of nutritional science at the time, that concentration of nutrition with technology was a very good thing. By now we realize that we are not evolutionarily adapted to these concentrated substances, our bodies don't "recognize" them and don't know what to do with them, they clog us up, then make us fat, and then eventually make us sick. And we now know that a whole foods plant based diet is the very best thing we can do for our bodies, our health, and our happiness.

Lustig's current book however is not about how to eat better for health, it delves into a dark topic depicting the ongoing and very real destruction of the health of the majority of developed world citizens. There are dystopian resonances here, and Lustig is to be commended for raising a brave voice against the forces perpetuating this tragic state of affairs.

I call it an "accidental" genocide because these now deeply rooted industries "backed in" to a situation where the profits are simply too compelling to give up because nutrition science is now clear on the relationship between whole foods plant based diets and health, and in direct opposition to the activity of the processed foods industries. "Elephant in the room" applies more aptly than any where else I can think of. So I believe the intentions at the advent of processed foods were not conspiratorial. But I also believe it has gradually shifted toward covering up facts as they have become more and more clear, and yes, that can be called conspiratorial if you like.

My opinion of Lustig's book is based to this point on the linked Youtube video where he's talking about this topic.

I may have more to say after I read it, but for now it appears to overlap the topic of "The Pleasure Trap" substantially, and adds the topic of conspiracy The Pleasure Trap does not really get into.

I'm going to take this opportunity to promote The Pleasure Trap again, because I truly believe it is one of the two or three best books on health one can read. I will also say, based solely on Lustig's comments in the Youtube video, The Pleasure Trap is also the better book if one only wants to get to the critical and relevant points as quickly as possible. It's a tour de force basic primer on what blocks our understanding of the forces and conditions that prevent the creation of health in our own lives. I can't recommend it highly enough.

This Is (Almost) All You Need To Know

This is nothing less than the demystification and simplification of the relationship between diet and health, elegantly explained by dietitian and nutritionist Jeff Novick.

https://youtu.be/0CdwWliv7Hg

Jeff's bio:
http://www.jeffnovick.com/RD/Bio.html

Get This Book!

The Whole Foods Diet: The Lifesaving Plan For Health and Longevity by John Mackey.

https://www.amazon.com/Whole-Foods-Diet-Lifesaving-Longevity/dp/1478944919

John Robbins says about this book "it wouldn't surprise me if this book becomes the definitive guide to optimum health and wellness, it's that clear."

I have posted a few blogs with the title "Tipping Point", as I've sensed a ground swell of changing attitudes about nutrition, the foods we eat, and the immediate and very real impact of foods on our health. If john Robbins thinks this book will play a significant role in that tipping point it's good enough for me.

We boomers grew up in a time where medical doctors would say "eat what you want, it doesn't make any difference". That was 50 years ago, but many of them are still saying it!

What's the deal with that? They're not completely fu**ing stupid are they? Well, no, they are thoroughly educated (and highly magnified, tip of the hat to H.M. Wogglebug, T.E.). They know what they've been taught, and what they've been taught is yet another example of the part myth, part reality meme "better living through science" that has informed our epoch thoroughly.

We wanted to believe we could go into space, squirt goo from a plastic tube as food, take a multi vitamin, live and work in an environment we are not evolutionarily adapted to, and all would be fine.

And back on earth we could watch TV for hours a day while eating depleted (but fortified!) food-like substances from boxes and bags.

As we see all around us, it's not working out so well.

This book may be the best summation to date of the actual facts about the creation of health. Read it and prosper.

What the Health - A Controversial Film

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" Upton Sinclair

The reviews of What the Health on Netflix and debunking videos on Youtube make it clear we are a culture that has been influenced by "studies" conflicted by ties to the meat and dairy industries. But don’t get me wrong, I applaud the paleo diet, it is way better than the standard American diet (any whole food diet that removes refined and processed foods would be), but does it prevent and reverse heart disease? Nope. Type 2 diabetes? Partially (it does not address the cause of insulin resistance, a topic beyond this post). Autoimmune disorders? Nope.

And it becomes clear why this is important in the larger context when we consider that drugs do not heal these conditions either, and it’s not because the drugs “just aren’t good enough yet”. The body heals itself when we “just get out of it’s way”. Given sufficiently conducive conditions the body is a self-maintaining self-healing organism. Some of the damage we’ve unintentionally self-inflicted over the years cannot be undone, but most of it can, enough for radical transformations of health, vitality, and happiness. People who experience this first hand are typically amazed by the speed and depths of transformation, asking “why didn’t anyone tell me about this?”.

We are by and large happy to accept the “bacon is good” studies that make the headlines as they confirm long held pre-existing cultural biases. We consequently do not know about the mountain of research showing animal products are not good for us, but a whole foods plant based diet is optimal for health and happiness. The weight of the evidence is the critical issue here, and it is overwhelmingly on the side of plant based nutrition.

Why do we, the general public, not know this? It’s pretty simple on one level...multi-billion dollar industries have no vested interest in promoting this fact to media or lobbying it to congress. And they do have vested interest in opposing in every way possible science that is detrimental to their bottom line.

A few decades ago there were thousands of studies showing that smoking was bad for health, and a couple hundred studies (with ties to the tobacco industry) showing that it was benign, or maybe even good in certain respects. It wasn’t until the Surgeon General's warning appeared on tobacco products that the balance was finally tipped, and the public stopped smoking in large numbers.

It is worth asking -- why was the government slow to respond to the mountain of evidence showing smoking was clearly harmful to health? There is a one word answer -- revenue. The government does not “make money”, it only collects it from the individuals and businesses within its jurisdiction. Revenues from large businesses are not always visible, but they are there nonetheless. And of course governments have a vested interest in protecting revenues.

Tobacco is one monolithic industry, but this situation is vastly more complex, with huge multi-national industries deriving trillions from “disease management” (rather than disease prevention), along with the industries that “feed” these disease epidemics -- agribusiness, packaged foods (grocery), and the fast food outlets we see everywhere we look in our cities and along our highways.

There is also a deeper psychological/cultural issue: most people never really thought of smoking as good for health, at best they thought it was benign but pleasurable. But we have been brought up to think animal products are not only good for us, but necessary for robust health. Animal protein was "high quality" protein, and plant protein was substandard. The news, based on science, is leaking out gradually that the reverse is actually true. Many (if not most) cannot believe it, and even shocked by the mere suggestion. This also adds to the complexity of an overall shift toward a health promoting approach to nutrition.

(For a complete discussion of the history of nutrition science and cultural biases toward nutrition I recommend the book "Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition" by Colin Campbell PhD, arguably the most important nutrition scientist of our time.)

The system is sick, and there are trillions of annual dollars vested in its continuation and propagation.  We might reasonably conclude from this a system-wide health promoting approach may be a long time coming. Meanwhile, those of us who have gained direct experience of healing in self and others can chose a better approach, and provide quiet example of our own successes.

Meanwhile the film does advance facts without really supporting them in the film. The vast majority of criticism I've seen dismisses WTH out of hand on this issue, but most also do not realize there’s a page on the film’s website with links to hundreds of studies supporting the film’s contentions, ready to explore to one's own satisfaction. And if you really want to get into it you will quickly discover this list of studies is only the tip of a very large iceberg.

http://www.whatthehealthfilm.com/facts

The film is emotionally biased, it’s true, but I’m not sure how it could not be -- more than 50% of the developed world is sick to one degree or another, and yet there continues to be little recognition that poor diet is the proximate cause.

And if that were not enough reason for emotional bias, animal agriculture also has huge destructive impact to the earth's ecology, also increasingly documented by science. All told these are critical issues for the individual and for global societies, while the science showing a better way becomes more and more clear by the year. Meanwhile that science continues to be actively suppressed and kept from us, the public, quite successfully, judging by the critical comment What the Health has elicited. So yes, of course there is impatience and emotional bias, this is one of the more critical issues of our time.

WHY I QUIT PALEO KETOGENIC & WENT VEGAN - Dr. Lim

Don't just "manage" your health conditions, reverse them!

Making Health Easier

Transition to the healthiest diet can be difficult...no one you know is eating that way, you can't find it at restaurants, and pretty much every diet related recommendation you see in the media is giving you the opposite advice.

Meanwhile the weight of collective nutritional science going back decades is heavily in favor of a whole food plant based diet. What gives? Well that is quite another topic than this particular post, which is, OK, knowing that everything in the first paragraph is true, how in the world can I possibly do a diet like this ??!!

I found a website and youtube channel by a couple who successfully made the transition. It may help! Check it out:

https://plantbasedcookingshow.com/2017/04/27/plant-based-weight-loss/

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheWholeFoodPlantBasedCookingShow

Dr. Gonzalez Dismantles the Ketogenic Diet For Cancer

I want to post a few links to articles I find interesting:

Dr. Gonzalez Dismantles the Ketogenic Diet For Cancer
http://www.chrisbeatcancer.com/dr-gonzalez-dismantles-ketogenic-diet-for-cancer/

and

The Truth About The Weston Price Foundation

http://www.vegsource.com/news/2010/07/the-truth-about-the-weston-price-foundation.html

What the Medical Establishment does not Understand Yet, pt 2

In part 1 of "What the Medical Establishment does not Understand Yet" we looked at all the forms of diabetes. According to the CDC almost 10% of people in the US have diabetes, and an additional 33% of adults have prediabetes. That's quite a lot of people, and the medical establishment does not know how to cure diabetes, only manage it with medication. But in fact all types of diabetes except type 1 can be cured easily and quickly, and people with type 1 can be greatly improved with that same method of cure.

In part 2 we are going to look at heart disease, or cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the US, in a presentation titled "Confessions of a Reformed Cardiologist".

What the Medical Establishment does not Understand Yet, pt 1

Who am I to say what highly trained medical doctors do or do not understand? Right? Exactly. So instead of me telling you, let me refer you to some folks with "boots on the ground". Here is a presentation by an organization called "Mastering Diabetes".

And one more presentation by the same person, showing the result produced in a retreat seminar for diabetics.

And another one.

Addiction

Addiction is the hoary chestnut obscuring the path to what I referred to in the previous post as "the rather narrow and relatively simple set of conditions responsible for the creation of health".

People commonly refer to addiction as anything we are drawn to repeatedly. That however is an inaccurate definition: are we addicted to good healthy choices like water? Lack of clarity obstructs understanding. A clear definition of addiction is simply a self destructive behavior repeated compulsively. So let's be clear, in a physiologic sense addiction is one thing only: a metabolic/psychologic dependence on a toxic substance or behavior.

The fact many or most addictions are both metabolic and psychologic goes a long way to explaining why addiction is a complex problem. It is like being gripped by two strong forces instead of just one, it makes it much more difficult to break free.

Addiction obscures the path to "the rather narrow and relatively simple set of conditions responsible for the creation of health" due to the addiction response: a near term gain masking long term loss.

Another confounding factor is the "healing crisis", a near term response induced by nutrition and/or discontinuation of toxic input.

I recommend again a careful read of this brilliant book:

The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force that Undermines Health & Happiness