A trip through the history of obesity

I became curious about the history of obesity and came across two papers that seemed to disagree with each other in a single but I think important way:

A trip through the history of obesity

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23384950/#:~:text=The%20origins%20of%20obesity%20can,a%20disease%20in%20the%20Antique.

And, 

The Origins of the Obesity Epidemic in the USA–Lessons for Today

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9611578/

I decided to write to the author of the latter paper, and then decided to make it a blog post:

Greetings,

I hope you don't mind comments from the public. I am writing to question your thesis that fat and carbs had little to do with obesity in the USA. I'll get right to the point, the history of obesity goes way back:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23384950/#:~:text=The%20origins%20of%20obesity%20can,a%20disease%20in%20the%20Antique.

Of course there was no gluttony among hunter gatherer populations, it began with civilization and wealth. The basic instincts of hunter gatherers are still with us (biological evolution is gradual), and then as now are to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve energy. The couch potato set-up. The basic problem is the profusion of calories (fats and carbs both) that occurred with the technologies of modern farming, refrigeration, and transportation, combined with modern "conveniences" that allow unconscious free reign to the instincts.

However I agree that modern ultra processed diets are additionally very health destructive caused by adding high levels of toxicity to the standard diet and lifestyle of too many calories per unit of work. How could anyone not agree with that? Yes obesity is a disease that degrades and shortens life, but it is primarily the toxins in ultra processed food-like substances that have created the epidemic of chronic diseases in young and old, obese and non-obese alike.

So the many modern metabolic diseases are an overdetermined problem, caused by the proliferation of calories, the technologies of convenience and comfort, and the addition of high levels of the extreme toxicities of ultra processed foods.

How did I come to this perspective? I'm 71 years old. At age 50 I was told by two cardiologists I had advanced CVD and the odds of near term heart attack were high. Instead of modern medical interventions I began consuming the literature of what might be called "the cause of health". The first eye opener was Caldwell Esselstyne's book "Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease ''. 

Following that were the hundreds of published works of the increasing number of MDs who were regularly reversing chronic diseases, primarily with a simple change of diet to whole foods, with additional lifestyle changes. They raise their voices to the extent possible, but are not promoted by the powerful healthcare industry that profits from chronic diseases, and is the biggest part of GDP by a large margin. It's mostly unconscious turf war biases that cause pharmacology to even go so far as to sabotage these health promoting voices.

I'll mention one other book that was helpful to this layman, "The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force that Undermines Health & Happiness" written by Doug Lisle and Alan Goldhamer of "True North" fasting clinic in Santa Rosa, CA, which has been saving and changing lives since 1984. Alan Goldhamer probably knows more about medically supervised fasting than any human in history.

We agree on the essential piece, whole foods are critically important for health. We may disagree however in that I feel the current chronic disease epidemic is an overdetermined problem.

Best regards and keep up the good work!

Dave King

The "Invented Here" Bias

If you've studied bias at all you will have come across the invented here bias. This is where an individual or group has put effort and time into something/anything, and unconsciously resist realizing it was a waste of time/effort, or worse, not only that, but the effort has destructive consequences.

Then, there can also be compound bias, where "invented here" is not only destructive, but also generates revenue. What should we call this bias? I like the way Upton Sinclair expressed it: "It's difficult to get a man to understand a thing when his salary depends on his not understanding it". I guess we'll call it the the salary bias.

We've had a huge example of this compound bias staring us in the face for decades now. Slowly, perhaps, more of us are beginning to see it.

And what I'm speaking of specifically is how this compound bias has obscured a problem in so-called modern medicine. I'll also rush to say there is a lot of good in modern medicine, but of course that fact additionally works to obscure the more unfortunate aspects.

And they are huge. And what are they specifically? 

Widespread massive damage to human health is caused by a single idea, which is that pharmacology is the cause of health.

When in fact, unfortunately, modern pharmacology is on the whole quite health destructive. What do I mean by this? We are "issued" lifetime prescriptions for chronic health "diseases" that are easily, quicky, and efficiently reversed by one thing alone - a simple change of diet.

When I say simple, I mean logistically and structurally. If we are one of the many millions of victims of modern pharmacology, those of us with lifetime prescriptions, all we have to do is go to our kitchens and throw all the food there away (get out the trash can!), and then start over by re-populating the kitchen with the right foods.

How do we know what those foods are? I'll oversimplify, but only by a bit. They are only whole foods. Let's define that a bit further: whole foods have one ingredient, yep it's that one thing that food is. Those foods will also be fresh, and in their raw state, and we will have to consume them before they go bad. Which limits us to a very tiny fraction of all the "foods" in a modern grocery store. 

How inconvenient! On the other hand, how important is being well and feeling good? I'm not talking about the "feeling good" that is a result of the spikes and crashes we get from alcohol and sugar/fat rich desserts. That is addiction, a form of misery.

So, let's expand a bit, but still limit ourselves to things that are still only one ingredient, as one example, the single foods that can be put into a can with absolutely nothing else. These can be difficult to find, a can of beans probably has salt added, which is not a food, or a can of corn has sugar added, also not a food. There are "flavor enhancers", and addictive, and thus, health destructive.

Does that characterization seem extreme? Well it's not, a big part of the health crisis of today is we have come to think of addictive (and toxic) over-flavored "foods" as normal. With a few notable exceptions, "whole foods" do not have intense flavors. The one that comes to mind for me as I write is pineapple. It's a whole food that is very good for us with a strong flavor.

Whole foods have natural sugars and salts inherently.

The easiest fastest way to cut down on the modern addictive health destructive over-flavoring practices is to eliminate refined sugars and salts from our diets. It takes a minute or two to realize how addicted we've become to over-flavoring. 

"Damn, this tastes bland!"

It only takes a week or two to realize how much better we feel eating this way. And only a bit longer than that to realize the real flavors in whole foods have been obscured by intense flavors for most of our lives!

And then to begin to realize how good whole foods can taste.

So... no salt and sugar is best, and very light with the herbal seasonings.

Also, when we combine too many different foods into one recipe the different flavors tend to average toward "grey" (using a color mixing analogy), and strong seasoning will be required. Eat more simply and deliciously by choosing the whole foods that are freshest and most flavorful, and not too many at once.

There is even a practice some of the healthiest people do called mono-meal, where only one fresh and ripe whole food is consumed in one meal. This actually gives some of the benefit of fasting, where the goal is to give the body a rest from the energy spent on digestion. Which may not sound like much of a big deal, but the effects of fasting are profound. The energy not being diverted to digestion is huge, and that energy then goes to "house cleaning" the body, which is also known as "the body heals itself".

And it's easier to digest one food at once, and particularly healthful if we also choose the foods that combine the quality of easy digestion with nutrient density. Fruits and leafy green leaves are especially good in that regard, and in fact a meal of fruits and green leaves is a pretty good combo. Have you ever had fresh mango on chopped romaine? It's delicious, particularly once past the cravings for ultra-flavored "foods".

Eat as much of this sort of thing as you want. This is called ad libitum feeding, and the healthiest diets are based on it. Eat till you're satisfied.

And the combinations are limitless.

We never have to stop learning. I believe one of the greatest qualities a human can have is curiosity. And to borrow a corresponding quality from cats, nine lives.

Many things in life become so common we stop seeing them. That does not mean they are not there.

Post pandemic - there are excess deaths around the world

Dr John Campbell has been reporting on the excess death data coming from global government agencies that collect health data.

There is an average baseline of deaths in the population that varies a bit by season. It accounts for normal ongoing average death rates due to car accidents and seasonal flu and age related causes. When the death rate spikes above that average something else is going on. And something else is going on right now. The odd thing is media isn't saying a word about it, and state health agencies aren't doing the data analysis that would answer the question: what is the cause of this? The most obvious question that should be analyzed, I would think, are the excess deaths occurring mostly in vaccinated or unvaccinated populations?

After all, the CDC had to admit that mRNA vaccines failed on the two things vaccines are supposed to do for us, prevent infection and stop transmission. Now the backstop narrative combined with that admission is the vaccines did at least lower the death rate, and millions more would have died without the global vaccine campaigns.

On the other hand, isn't it also obvious if they had worked as promised vastly fewer deaths would have occurred? We don't know that number since vaccines that worked did not occur, but is it unreasonable to think that number would have been vastly lower than the "deaths prevented" number trotted out by bid pharma?

And how do we know that number is accurate to begin with? The data served up by bid pharma is provided by bid pharma, and the agencies captured by bid pharma. And the very bedrock principle of science, the principle that makes it science to begin with, is to exclude bias in both the construction of the model under test, and in the analysis of that data. We have both of those biases contaminating the data we get on all things pandemic.

Well let's admit there's an inherent problem in much of how medical "science" is done, no group can afford to pay for it other than bid pharma (which includes captured "health" agencies and legislative and regulatory bodies). So that makes it OK for bias in model under test and data analysis? 

Not if you want to call it science!

Well, let's ignore that little problem and call it science anyway. And as we heard zillions of times during the pandemic, let's all "follow the science!". 

No problem, except it isn't science.

It's very unfortunate, but we cannot trust any of the "health advice" coming from bid pharma these days. Actually, make that the past two decades, but who's counting. And bid pharma has control of the entire health care complex. Which in total compromises the biggest chunk of the entire US economy.

The corruption in this situation has become so very obvious in the past few years even non-health nuts are beginning to see it.

Orwell is no longer knocking on the front door, we have welcomed him into our homes, and he is ensconced on the living room sofa. 

Hello George! What took you so long!

Why are "we collectively" so resistant to seeing the obvious in this case? It is too shocking and disturbing to contemplate. In fact I don't even want to publish this post to my reader group (which is small by choice anyway). Why? All but a very few got all the jabs, and the power of suggestion could well be counter-productive in this situation. So what do we do?

I guess George is here to stay.

Dr. Campbell shows us current data on the excess death data in this recent video report:

https://youtu.be/qiWj9Jf2o-I

Dr Malhotra has some big questions

Dr Malhotra, a prominent British cardiologist, is campaigning against the corruption and corporate greed in the big food and big pharma industries that actively destroys human health. To say these two industries have conflicts of interest is egregious understatement.

Dr Malhotra is also beginning work on a documentary film titled "First do no Pharm", you may find the information about that quite interesting as well, and this vid ends on that discussion.

Let's hear what Dr Malhotra has to say in this conversation with Dr John Campbell.

https://youtu.be/_J1Tr90dFuQ

Myocarditis / What is the Risk of Death from Myocarditis? England Lancet Study

A physician, Dr. Moran, does an expert review of the risk of myocarditis from mRNA covid vaccines. 

The most important part of his presentation is what he says at the very end, which is to get healthy and stay healthy. Good health is more protective against severe infection than vaccines by significant margins. Pharma makes no profit on health, and they own the narrative, so we don't hear what is best for us via media.

We desperately need a health care establishment that does not put profit ahead of health. But physicians who are publicly vocal about this problem can lose their jobs and be punished in other ways. The pandemic made this obvious to those who were paying close attention, and the result for the health oriented among us is trust in the current configuration of the pharma industry fell precipitously from an already very low level.

Which is not to say there is no benefit to be had from pharmacological medications, only that when healthy they are few and far between. An important part of maintaining good health is educating oneself about which is which, and taking responsibility for your own health.

And pharma clearly does not want that. It almost sounds ridiculous to merely point out the obvious: the capitalistic pharma business model of growing revenues is based on an increasingly unwell population. There is no pharma medication that can make you robustly healthy, they all have side effects...in other words they are all toxic.

Only great diet and lifestyle choices can be the cause of health.

Find doctors that are healthy, you can tell by looking. More and more younger doctors have become diet and lifestyle aware, and more importantly, practice it in their own lives.

Doctors are not pharma, but what they are allowed to say to patients is regulated by pharma.

Be aware.

https://youtu.be/geJ3cP3Ycz4