http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2010/02/04/guest-post-matt-stone-of-180degreehealth/comment-page-1/#comment-15503

Thanks!

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“One of my favorite examples is that continent that eats a primarily low-fat, starch-based diet, but has health that is irrefutably better than the status quo in the United States and many European countries.  It’s called Asia. “

-To quote Nora Gedgaudas: “Most people think the Japanese eat a low-fat diet, but this is a myth.  The truth is, they get plenty of fat from eggs, chicken, beef , pork, shell fish and organ meats. “ (87)

“I’m talking about is the Mountain Pima of Northern Mexico.  They don’t live on the American reservation and they continue to follow their traditional farming practices.”
-Key phrase here: THEY CONTINUE TO FOLLOW TRADITIONAL FARMING PRACTICES.

“Their diet does not consist of mostly meat, white flour fried in vegetable oil …, Pepsi products, alcohol, and packaged ‘food’ products- like the diet of the American Pima.  They are the genetic twins of the American Pima, but they, as Andrew Weil describes, ‘remain lean, active, and free of the diseases of Western civilization, while their relatives from the same gene pool have ballooned into the fat, hypertensive diabetic Indians who are now so numerous in southern Arizona and northern Mexico.’”

- Dr. Francis Pottenger’s famous study where he monitored the lives of multiple generations of cats will help explain the phenomena at work within these Mountain Pima people.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the study, but Francis Pottenger raised four groups of cats.  Each group of cats were fed different foods: A Raw Milk-Raw Meat diet, A Pasteurized Milk-Raw Meat diet, A Evaporated Milk-Raw Meat diet, and a Sweetened Condensed Milk-Raw Meat diet.

Pottenger monitored the progress of the successive three generations of cats from each group, and the second and third generations (note: not the first generation of cats bred, but second and third generations) of cats bred from the diets consisting of Pasteurized Milk, Evaporated Milk, and Sweetened Condensed Milk where all in a significantly worst state of health than the previous generation.  Of course, the group of cats that stuck to the diet most inline with that of their ancestral heritage (Raw Milk-Raw Meat) had no de-generative developments.  The complete opposite of the other three groups of cats.

So what does this have to do with the healthy, lean Mountain Pimas and the fat diabetic American Pimas?  It has everything to do with them!

Before the industrialization of food and the overproduction of sugary treats and low-fat fads, both the American Pimas and the Mountain Pimas were following a diet that was completely in-line with that of the ancestral heritage (they ate the same types of foods that their ancestors always ate; foods that their bodies had been designed/adapted to consume).

At some point, the American Pimas strived away from their traditional, nutrient-dense diets for more modern diets of refined grains/sugary snacks/poor nutrient diets.  The product of this movement away from their traditional diets has lead to the de-generative condition the current American Pimas are in.  Just like Pottenger’s cats, the American Pimas’ diet of “white flour fried and vegetable oil…, Pepsi products, alcohol, and packaged ‘food’ products” destroyed their health.

Meanwhile, the Mountain Pimas, like you said, continued following their traditional diets that they had been designed/adapted to follow that provided them with everything they needed for perfect health.  If they were a group of Pottenger’s cats, they would be the ones who followed a Raw Milk-Raw Meat diet.

Unfortunately, this only part one of the equation.

“What their diet does consist of, in contrast to the American Pima, is EVEN MORE high-glycemic carbohydrates.  Their staples are corn…, potatoes…, beans…, and other grains and tubers, along with primarily game meats. “
-Quality over quantity, my friend.  I guarantee you those potatoes, beans, corn, grains and other tubers are on a completely different level of nutrient than the ones you find at Winco/WalMart/what-have-you.

What I mean is, I can guarantee you that if the Mountain Pimas are truly following their traditional diets, they are soaking/sprouting/fermenting all of these high-glycemic foods.  And guess what this does for the human body: makes these foods more digestible for human consumption!  Grains are full of anti-nutrients and phytic acid, things that steal vitamins and minerals from your body.  To quote Nora Gedgaudas again:

“ Grains and legumes typically contain very high levels of a substance known as phytic acid.  Phytic acid actively binds minerals and eliminates them from the body and results, with increased consumption, in widespread mineral deficiencies, including calcium, iron, magnesium, and zinc.  Legumes typically containing 60% starch and only relatively small amounts of incomplete protein, also contain potent protease inhibitors, which can damage one’s ability to properly digest and utilize dietary protein, as well as damage the pancreas over time, when over-depended upon as a source of calories.

By soaking/fermenting/sprouting their grains, which I guarantee the Mountain Pimas primarily do, they are eliminating a good deal of these phytic acids and other anti-nutrients that damage their body, as well as reducing some of the starches of the grains which will not have such an impact on their blood sugar.  Not all of these damaging agents, but a large percentage of them.

To summarize, these Mountain Pimas are eating potatoes and grains that are nutritionally superior (for grains that is) then the baked potato the American Pimas are getting at their local Wendy’s.   To be frank, the Mountain Pimas’ food is probably all-around superior than the American Pimas’.  Their game meat is most likely naturally grass-fed, and they probably consume the organ meats of the animal as well.  On top of that, they might use the bones for nutritious broths, too.  You see, there is a lot more to factor in when it comes to the diets of these two peoples than to make the generalization that the Mountain Pimas eat a high-carb diet, so it must be okay for us to be too!  In actuality, their carb-protein-fat ratio is probably very rounded (we’re probably talking 40-45%-25-30%-25-30% range here).

Plus we have to factor in Pottenger’s cats premise.  These Mountain Pimas probably have an overall superior state of health and well-being than the American Pimas that allows them to consume grains better than the American Pima.  It’s like comparing the third generation of the cats raised on Raw Meat-Sweetened Condensed Milk and the third generation of the Raw Meat-Raw Milk group of cats.  The Raw Meat-Sweetened Condensed Milk group of cats are going to have severe deficiencies that will never allow them to be able to eat grains to the extent that the Mountain Pimas can.  The Mountain Pimas are playing with a full deck of cards, meanwhile, the American Pimas are missing some.

Unfortunately, not just the American Pimas, but all Americans are in this boat.  We have been eating so poorly for so long that today’s generation cannot be handle putting the same amount of crap into their systems as their grandparents were capable of.   Trying to justify drinking a case of diet soda every day because grandma and grandpa did it till they were 80 just does not work out.  We’ve simply been dealt with a lesser hand to play with, and we have to play with these consequences the best we can.

So even if we could eat grains that are fermented/soaked/sprouted, it still may not be the best thing for our bodies because we’re not on the same health level as our ancestors, or as the Mountain Pimas.  This is why I generally always avoid eating starches.  They weren’t in our diets for the first 2.5+ million years,  we were able to handle them while they were properly prepared for the 10,000 years they have been in our diets, but those of us who have been living on a modern diet all our lives, we have just wreaked too much havoc on our bodies to be able to handle large portions of grains again.

Unfortunately, as of the moment, I do not agree with the idea that glucose does not cause insulin resistance.  I believe the consumption of starchy carbs does do a number on your insulin/blood sugar.  But is that because I consumed large amounts of fructose as a child that messed up my insulin response in the first place or because excessive amounts of glucose from eating too much starchy foods does it on it’s own.  I haven’t read Johnson’s book, only read articles about it, but that’s what I believe Johnson is arguing; that fructose messes up your insulin, which causes the reactions to glucose that would not be normal if a person had never had fructose (or possibly large amounts of fructose) in their lives.

“And that is one hell of a big iceberg involving leptin, the hormone with the greatest influence over metabolic rate, appetite, and levels of lipolysis… and lipogenesis… of any other biochemical.  In fact, if you had to narrow down insulin resistance to one primary biochemical reason, it would be the state of “leptin resistance,” also thought to be caused primarily by fructose — whereas other dietary carbohydrates have the opposite effect. That’s why starch-based cultures in Asia and elsewhere don’t overeat, have healthy metabolisms, and are generally better off than people in places that put ‘sugar on top.’”
-To quote Nora Gedgaudas yet again (you should really read her book Primal Body- Primal Mind):
“The only thing that can possibly restore healthy leptin functioning is a diet that is very low is guar and starch (which includes eliminating grains, breads, pasta, rice, and potatoes, as well as sweets) and is sufficient in healthy, natural fats.”

I think that says enough right there.  As for the Asia-eats-starch-and-are-skinny theory, as I stated earlier, this is a myth.  They traditionally have a well-rounded diet that is not overly starch, and the ones who do eat mostly starch are the ones who are extremely poor and, consequentially, in terrible health.

Thanks for the post, Matt.  I’m very interested now in getting to the bottom of this fructose-glucose thing.  My opinions haven’t really changed about glucose, but I’m willing to investigate.

(Apologies for errors, I’m tired of writing.  This took a while.)

It seems like Conventional Wisdom/the media has picked up considerably on the Omega-3 thing over the past couple years (at least that’s when I started hearing about them).  While it is a good thing to spread the message of consuming more Omega-3s, this could just play into another bit of nutritional trickery for the everyday consumer.  What I mean by this is while your strolling down the aisles of Safeway or Albertson’s, the Jolly-Time Popcorn with added Omega-3 content is not going to provide the same Omega-3s (if any) that a good piece of grass-fed beef or wild caught salmon would.

From a science perspective, a basic understanding of Omega-3s doesn’t require a two-semester course in biology at a major university.  In fact, it seems to be pretty clear cut on what you have to do in order to get good Omega-3s in the diet.

First off, lets distinguish some of the big Omega-3s.  Let’s start with the “parent form” of Omega-3s, which is called alpha-linolenic acid (ALA).  ALA is found in “leafy green plants and plankton” (Primal Body-Primal Mind reference).  In fact, these leafy green plants/plankton seem to be the foundation of which we are able to obtain Omega-3s. The main Omega-3s ALA converts to are eicosapentanoic (EPA) and docosahexancoic (DHA).  These Omega-3s are essential fatty acids, meaning our bodies cannot produce these fats through other foods we eat.  We can only get these fats through Omega-3 rich foods.  EPA and DHA are crucial materials for the brain as well as the rest of the body.

So, when we eat ALA (parent form of Omega-3s), our bodies can convert the ALA into the EPA and DHA for the various needs throughout the body.  The final key factor in the Omega-3 equation is an important enzyme called delta-6-desaturase (D-6-D).  The importance of D-6-D lies in it’s ability to convert ALA into the more needed forms EPA and DHA.

So, when we eat dark green vegetables/seeds/walnuts that have some ALA in it, we are getting all the Omega-3s we need, right?  I can still avoid the plague red meat and eggs are, right?

Wrong.

While it’s true that dark greens/seeds/walnuts do have ALA that can be converted into EPA and DHA with the enzyme D-6-D, things are slightly more complicated.  Humans don’t do the best job of converting ALA into EPA and DHA.  There are a variety of reasons for this.  For starters, if you have ancestral roots from Northern Europe/Native Americans/Inuit, you probably lack D-6-D enzyme all together, which makes you completely dependent on consuming EPA and DHA rich foods in order to obtain these crucial Omega-3s.

To be fair, lets say you do have a copious supply of D-6-D.  There are other dietary factors that greatly affect the ability of D-6-D.  Lets start with those terrible starch-carbohydrates.  Starchy carbs tend to provide the body with the sister fat of Omega-3s: the somewhat vilified Omega-6 fatty acid.  Omega-6s are not as bad as they have recently been made out to be by the media, though.  The important thing to remember when it comes to Omega-6s is it’s ratio to Omega-3s, which should be close to a 1:1 ratio (but normally is as high as 9:1 in most people, if not higher).  The problem Omega-6s are causing is that they compete with Omega-3s for who gets the D-6-D.  I suppose it would be the equivalent of watching two sisters fight over the same clothes.  D-6-D would be the clothes, and Omegas 3 & 6 are the sisters.

So when Americans overeat the starches, they load up on Omega-6s, which than demand the D-6-D to be broken down, and leaves those wonderful Omega-3s to go untouched, and ultimately (I believe), unused.

While there are other factors that could be named that affect D-6-D function, suffice to say that by cutting down on starchy carbs and trying to get a more balanced Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio, we are vastly improving our chances of getting Omega-3s in our diet from ALA forms.

BUT, we could just avoid the issue all together and actually consume EPA and DHA foods.  Again, you can only get EPA and DHA foods from completely grass-fed animals.  That means grass-fed throughout the animal’s entire lifespan; not a couple weeks.  Wild-caught fish, not farmed fish, also have good amounts of EPA and DHA.  Or, you could even go with non-farmed sardines.  But the overall reason why the animal needs to have basically been raised on it’s natural diet is because the animals themselves are not born with EPA and DHA reserves, it’s the things they eat- grass, plankton, etc…- that give them their EPA and DHA content.

So by eating a cow who has been fed corn and cardboard all his life, you’re eating a cow who has not been been given the opportunity to obtain EPA and DHA through it’s natural diet. (And animals are much more efficient at converting grass to Omega-3s than humans are; maybe it has something to do with multiple stomachs…)  And, as Nora Gedgaudas says so often in Primal Body- Primal Mind, if it’s not in your diet, it’s not in your body.

If you have come to the end of this post, and are utterly confused, I’ll simplify this message a bit:

EAT GRASS-FED ANIMAL PRODUCTS OR WILD-CAUGHT FISH PRODUCTS IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN OBTAINING VITAL OMEGA-3S.  DO NOT RELY ON JOLLY POP POPCORN-WITH-ENHANCED-OMEGA-3-CONTENT-ESQUE FOODS FOR OMEGA-3S.  IT’S NOT THE SAME.

If you’re interested in furthering your knowledge of grass-fed and grain-fed beef, check out Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  He actually follows the process our food goes through.  Good book.  Or, of course, you could read Primal Body-Primal Mind.

If you’re interested in obtaining grass-fed meat, check out www.eatwild.com or www.grasslandbeef.com.  Or check out www.WestonAPrice.org.

Sorry for any grammar errors, I have things to do and it’s already quite late so I will neglect editing.  I apologize.

E.M.R

While there are a plethora of excellent topics to convert into posts within this book, the hour I currently writing at has grown quite late.  Thus I will keep things a bit on the short side, or make an effort to.

You see, as Nora puts so beautifully in her book, we humans have been around for quite a long time; 2.6 million years according to Science.  And for all of those 2.6 million years, around 10,000 of them involved humans incorporating grains into their diet.  You may be thinking, “Ten thousand years! Geez whiz, we’ve been eating grains forever!”.  Well, when compared to the average human lifespan, yes, that is a long time.  But when you compare it with the the lifespan of human existence, that’s roughly 0.00385%  of the time we’ve been walking around this planet.

Not a very long time at all, my love.

You see, for those roughly 2,590,000 million years inbetween agriculture and the suppose first year of the human, we’ve been eating a very different diet than that of which agriculture has come to provide us with (I’m talking about grains here, people!).  The diet of which I speak is, of course, a consisting of moderate-protein, moderate-high fat, very low-carbohydrate diet.

The reason for this?  Because fat and protein were the most common thing around for us humans to eat back in the Ice Age.  We were called hunter-gatherers for a reason; that reason is we were always on the hunt!  And when a week of hunting wasn’t too productive, we went on the gather.  But what we gathered was certainly not wheat, legumes, or rice, unless I suppose the poor fella was starving to death.  But if they even did eat grains out of desperation, these primitives would have had to eat the plant forms of these foods; not the wonderful breads, beans, or rice that we have come to cherish (or despise) today.

And according to Primal Body-Primal Mind, the benefits of a diet based in fat and protein may have just-so-happened to help humans gain an edge over the rest of the animal kingdom; intelligence.  A.k.a: bigger brains!  Nora talks about how the excessive availability of Omega-3 Fatty Acids in the human diet actually may have contributed to the “three-fold increase in the size of the human brain”.

Pretty fascinating stuff, huh?

Unfortunately, our current dependence on grains and processed foods has been chipping away at that lovely brain size our ancestors worked so hard to develop.  Nora follows up with the statistic that roughly 10% of the human brain has been lost in the last 100 years alone because of EPA and DHA deficiencies (which are essential fatty acids obtained through Omega-3 Fats).

A bit of a strange note to end on, but hopefully enough to contemplate about. There is so much more to cover when it comes to the consequences of what we eat, but I have seemingly failed in my attempt to keep this post brief.  If you are interested in learning more, I HIGHLY recommend reading Primal Body-Primal Mind.  It’s basically the modern-day equivalent to the fictitious Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (not the book series, but the actual guide) when it comes to healthy eating/living in a world continuously falling apart.

And on those comforting words, I wish you all a wonderful day.

E.M.R

Dr. Mercola published a great interview/article today on his wonder website (www.mercola.com).  The interview was with Dr. Shiv Chopra, who apparently use to be a “drug company insider”.  Dr. Mercola provides a better explaination of all Dr. Chopra’s qualifications in the interview, but to put things matter-of-fact-ly, the man knows his stuff when it comes to viruses/vaccines.

Many of you may not be familiar with the negative perspective Dr. Mercola and Dr. Chopra share when it comes to vaccines.  The vast majority of Americans have been raised believing vaccines are crucial medical tools towards preventing life-threatening diseases such as Polio, Hepatitis, Small Pox, etc…  A belief that increasingly looks to be wrong.  (But not to the fault of the everyday American.)

While it may be true that a very small number of  vaccines used today may actually help prevent some of these deadly diseases, Dr. Chopra strongly advocates that the majority of the vaccines so commonly used today are not only not necessary, but could actually complicate the vaccine recipient’s health considerably more than aid it.

If any of you are wondering where you have heard this topic before, famed Playboy model Jenny McCarthy  -yes, that’s right, Jenny McCarthy of all people- has brought some fame towards the issue.  She claims the vaccines she gave her son when he was 15 months old lead him to develop autism.  She claims that the mercury in the vaccines, which is usually put in as a filler or chelating agent, was what caused her son to become autistic.

Now, when it comes to vaccines, my knowledge is pretty limited.  But from the little I know about vaccines, the more I have to side against the use of them.  I believe that a healthy individual who eats a diet optimal for his/her health (I’m not talking about cheeseburgers and pizza obviously) will be much more capable of defending itself against these diseases than a vaccinated person.  We are exposed to disease-causing viruses and bacteria everyday.  A healthy body can fight these off through it’s own natural defenses.

To be honest, that’s a pretty heavy statement.  But a statement that I am finding out to be more and more true the more I learn about vaccines.  Dr. Chopra says in the interview that injecting a protein directly into a human body goes against everything nature has evolved to be.  Never before in nature has a protein been directly placed into the blood stream.

Now some of you may be wondering why I chose to say “protein” instead of “virus”.  From my understanding from the interview, this is because a virus cannot be isolated. Viruses work by feeding off an organism they attach themselves to.  This means that the protein and the virus have to be injected together into the human body for the vaccine to potentially work.

Proteins are never suppose to reach our blood streams.  Why is that?  Because proteins are suppose to be broken down into amino acids while you are DIGESTING whatever food you ate that contained those proteins!  It’s common sense, right?  Foods contain proteins that are broken down throughout our digestive systems into amino acids, which than are used as building materials for the rest of our body.  The only time proteins (not already-broken-down amino acids) do not get digested and are able to get into the blood stream is when you have a nasty condition called Leaky Gut Syndrome.  Leaky Gut can lead to allergies and auto-immune diseases because these proteins that are leaked out from the gut into the blood stream get attacked by the immune system.  While I’ll get into more detail about Leaky Gut in a future post, the fact of the matter is, proteins in the blood stream just don’t result in good things the majority of the time.

But the decision is still tough, nonetheless.  For all of us out there who don’t know as much as they would like when it comes to issues like vaccinations, it’s something that can cause a lot of stress in our lives.  We’re stuck in a Catch-22; you may think vaccines are not great for you or your child, but the threats of diseases like small pox, meningitis, etc…that are perpetuated by doctors, the media, and the government may be enough for you to wilt under the pressure.  It’s all very tough.

Thus the name of this blog: The Frightened Enlighten.  The more we learn about things that have been purported for so long to be good for us- low-fat diets, vaccinations, and so on – but turn out to be crippling towards our health, can really give us a rough time over deciding what is right.  We have the choice of further seeking out the truth, or just accepting reality and continue living out our lives the way the majority of us do (think Neo in The Matrix here).

Anyways, if you are interested in listening to Dr. Mercola’s awesome interview, check it out here:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/01/05/An-Expert-Explains-the-Flu-Vaccine-Deception-and-the-Swine-Flu-Hoax.aspx.

It’s a lot more informative, as well as interesting than the ramblings in this post .

Take Care,

E.M.R

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Christmas season.  It’s a wonderful time to spend with family and friends. (That is, if you have friends and/or enjoy being with your family.) But for those of you out there who mysteriously always seem to develop a bug over the Holidays, stress may be playing a larger role in why you have been hit with the bug than the bug itself.

This may sound a little confusing, but let me explain. Your body has the option of being in two modes: a sympathetic state that triggers our bodies to be in a “fight-or-flight” state, or a parasympathetic state that is a state of healing and homeostasis.  When stressors cause our bodies to be in this fight-or-flight state, our bodies think there is a threat (the stressors) to our well being and tries to summon all the energy possible (i.e. glucose) our body has stored in various forms.  When the body thinks there is a threat because of this stress, it actually shuts down certain systems of the body (i.e. immune system, digestive system) to save energy, and puts a greater emphasis on systems that will help us either fight the threat or flee from the threat (i.e. your muscles).

Unfortunately, stress cannot be differentiated by the body, meaning, the body reacts to any and all stressors the same way; through this fight-or-flight reaction.  For example, when a student stresses over his upcoming finals, the body interprets this stress in the same way as if the student was being chased by a pack of wolves.

As you may see, this can be a particularly alarming situation for the majority of people who have terrible stress management (I’m speaking about myself here ).  Today, life seems to be full of stress that puts our bodies into this fight-or-flight mode, and thus, puts a tremendous strain on our bodies.  There can be so much stress throughout our daily lives that our bodies may never actually be able to be in that wonderful parasympathetic state that promotes the healing of our bodies, as well as good digestion and a strong immune system (which is particularly important for healing, too).

This is why it is so important to rest when you are sick, have an injury, or have had surgery.  If you try to power your way through or cut your rest time short, and you live a lifestyle somewhat on par with the average American lifestyle (i.e. lots of stress), your body is not only burdened by the stress of the illness/injury/surgery, but is also burdened by all that wonderful stress you encounter throughout the day. (Not to mention, your body won’t be in a state that is optimal for healing resulting in longer recovery.)

As we approach Christmas, and all the stresses/pleasures it can offer, I hope that you will find the time to relax.  Sit around the fire with your loved ones while sipping a cup of green tea (helps relax your body).  Or, if you don’t particularly enjoy the company of your family, ditch’em and watch a movie/read a book by yourself (along with the green tea of course).

Merry Christmas

E.M.R

I’ve been having these stomach issues ever since I was put on antibiotics after my wisdom teeth removal back in October.  I was in very good health before the procedure having not been sick for at least six months.  But ever since that gosh-darn surgery, I simply haven’t been 100%.   It has been almost two months of revolving health issues.

It all began with an infection in the area where one of my wisdom teeth were removed three weeks after the surgery.  They said this was a very rare occurrence because I had fully healed, or seemed to have fully healed, from the surgery.  I was chewing foods and taking names!  But one day, after performing some light exercises, my cheek suddenly started to inflame with pain and swell up.  The rest of the night was spent in relative discomfort as my cheek tripled in size.

So, the very next morning, I went to see the dentist.  Apparently none of the dentists who took a look at my cheek had really seen anything like this before.  Never had they seen a cheek swell up so long after the surgery, as well as after it had apparently fully healed.  While I do not, and probably never will, absolutely know why this happened, I have a theory that I ate some almonds that were not properly prepared and probably had some type of mold on them as a result.  After eating too many of these incredibly crunchy almonds, I believe some of the bacteria from the mold on the almonds may have caused the infection somehow.

Getting back to the dentist trip, the dentist was actually able to pop the area of the infection like a zit.  It was sort of a last minute idea he had before he sent me on my way, but he was able to get a good amount of puss out.  This was very good news because it meant the infection was on a very superficial (not deeply seeded in the wound) level. The bad news about this whole affair, however, was that I was put on a second wave of antibiotics.

Now, there are a lot of situations where antibiotics are overused.  I had a friend who recently received antibiotics for a viral infection.  (Yeah, think that one over…) But, in my case, antibiotics were probably necessary. HOWEVER, what the antibiotics ended up causing makes me wonder if I was better off with the infection being left untreated.

If you think about it, do antibiotics really heal anything?  Or do they just “heal” through destruction?  Now, I can’t say that I know everything about antibiotics, but I do know that they do more than just destroy the bacteria causing the infection in your body.  They also destroy all the good bacteria that lives in your gut!  Bacteria that is crucial for your health and well-being.  Not to mention, they make your life infinitely easier.  When you take antibiotics, it’s almost seems like dropping a nuke inside your stomach.  It’s the Pasteur reasoning.  If the bacteria is not present, than the organism can not get sick. But they don’t take into account the innocent victims (in this case, the good bacteria in your gut) that are wrongly killed off.

I am truly beginning to believe that the double round of antibiotics I had to take “naplamed” any  good bacteria I had in my stomach that resulted in making my stomach extremely sensitive, thus resulting in the string of stomach aches that have plagued me the past couple weeks.

Now, I realize that some of you out there may not be familiar with the importance of having this “good” bacteria in your stomach.  I plan on addressing this sometime in the future, but in the mean time, take a look at Dr. Joseph Mercola’s great blog.  (And I mean GREAT.)  Dr. Mercola provides amazingly useful information that seems to get squelched by Conventional Wisdom (i.e. Medical Doctors, media, etc…).

Here’s a link to an article by Mercola on antibiotics & this good bacteria stuff.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2003/06/18/antibiotics-bacteria.aspx

There is so much more to talk about when it comes to good bacteria and bad bacteria- like dysbiosis, G.A.P.S. diet, etc…-,  but I’m still feeling weak with this whole stomach thing. I hope all of you out there are fighting off sicknesses better than I am.

Take care,

E.M.R

Having been home alone for most of this weekend, I decided to go to the library to see if there were any movies I wanted to check-out.  The pickings were a bit slim compared to previous trips to the library, but I was lucky enough to run across Stanley Kubrick’s classic, Spartacus. Even though I had a fairly weak idea of what the whole plot of the movie was, basically a slave becoming an army leader was what I had in mind, I had heard good things about the film. I already knew about the legendary director Stanley Kubrick, and had made it a priority to see most of the films he had made.  And I had seen the Pepsi commercial that put a comedic twist on that very emotional scene towards the end of the movie where Spartacus is being searched for.  (That’s hopefully not too much of a spoiler for you.)

So I spent most of my Saturday evening, since the movie was 180+ minutes long, watching Spartacus. The plot was not far off from what I originally thought; basically a slave leading a rebellion against his masters that eventually grows large enough to take on Rome itself.  Apart from the times where the DVD skipped, I pretty much enjoyed the movie.

While I was watching, though, I couldn’t help but put myself in Spartacus’ shoes.  While I usually do this when I watch movies, I don’t really do it intentionally.  I tend to catch myself worrying about things the characters in the movie would be worrying about.  But these things usually are sort of irrelevant towards the plot of the film.

The thing that made me ponder a bit, and sort of slapped me in the face, was how terrible slavery truly must have been.  Being forced to do back-breaking work, never having the freedom to decide what you would like to do for the day, wearing poor clothes, and, worst of all, being treated as some sort of sub-human.  This is just a terrible way to be forced to live.  There is a scene in the film where Spartacus has a woman thrown into his cell so he could “get his thang on”, but Spartacus just looks at this woman and says, “I’m not an animal.”.  That really gave me an insight towards how slaves were treated and viewed upon, not just during the Roman Empire, but throughout history.

I’m not saying I thought slaves lived peachy lives before I watched Spartacus, I always knew being a slave was difficult.  For some reason, though, Spartacus just seemed to bring a different perspective towards that type of lifestyle I had never really fully acknowledged before.  I suppose it really made me thankful for the quality of life I have lived thus far.

However, this made me ponder a bit further on that phrase, “Quality of life.”  The more I thought about the “quality” of the life I am living right now, the more I began to wonder how much superior it is today than it was back than.

Don’t get me wrong, I think life today, in many ways, is vastly superior than the ways of old.  This is obvious.  What I am trying to ask here is this; we have been given a wide variety of privileges the majority of people in the past would have NEVER dreamed of.  We have technology, medical advancements, infinitely better sanitary conditions, etc… that make our lives so much easier to live. But the question is, are we really taking advantage of these modern-day miracles?  Are we really getting the most out of these priviledges we have been given in our lives?

I know for a fact that I don’t, lol.  For goodness sake, I sit inside most of the day doing stuff that just wastes time.  I watch television, I get sucked into facebook far longer than I should, I surf the web, I read books for a couple hours (okay, that’s probably not the worst thing I could do), and so on… But is this really the pinicle of human life?  Is this really what living has become?

To answer the first question, no.  To answer the second question, I certainly hope not.

Don’t feel guilty about any of this, though. Honestly, this is what most people know how to do and enjoy doing.  It’s what our generation has become; oh well.  I just can’t help but to think about Spartacus and what he would have done with freedom if he had been granted it.

He probably would have settled down, started a family, and died of old age, lol.  But he would also have had a much greater respect for the freedom because he had known what it was like without that priviledge.

Again, I’m not saying that living in 500 b.c would have been better than living the lives we do.  That’s a bunch of crap.  What I’m saying is that, thus far, the people who can read this blog post are probably living pretty priviledged lives in the sense of having freedoms many people would have died for.

(Don’t get me wrong, though, there still is an ample amount of suffering going on in this world.  Unfortunately, humans have, and always will, suffer.  It’s what we’re truly good at. And maybe the lives we live really aren’t as free as we make them out to be. But we better save that topic for another time.)

I suppose, thought, that Spartacus helped me realize that maybe I should cash in on some of these priviledges I have been given in my life.  Maybe do a little traveling while the world is still in relatively stable terms (I use those words a bit sparingly).  Go camp out in the mountains while we still have the funding to support search and rescue teams.  Because in all true honestly, we don’t always know when these priviledges are going to be there.

Thanks for enduring this long post.  Good luck getting through your Monday tomorrow!

E.M.R

You may recognize the name if you have been a resident of the paleo world for the past few years as Nora Gedgaudas has authored a highly-reviewed book called Primal Body-Primal Mind, which deals with many of the things Mary Enig and Sally Fallon tackle in their respected books I’ve mentioned ad nauseam in previous posts.  Her book deals with the issues of diet and how off course the typical American diet has come.  She also brings in a lot of good science in her book that backs up what she is preaching nutritionally.

Anyways, I was listening to a podcast of Nora’s radio show, Primal Body–Primal Mind Radio, this afternoon about human longevity and “The Keys To A Longer Life and An Ageless Mind”.  The title may sound like the sort of book you would find at the Dollar Tree, but the show was absolutely fascinating.  She spends the first half-hour talking about the nutritional benefits of adopting a low-carbohydrate, moderate fat and protein diet, as well as the benefits Neurofeedback has on an aging brain.

Gee-wizz, I tell ya, she sure did a great job explaining the overall health benefits of kicking the carbs out of your diet and giving fat and protein a little more love.  The main point of that first half-hour of her radio show is the importance of reducing how much insulin your body uses to regulate blood sugar.  How do we do that, you might ask?  Well, by reducing the consumption of all those starchy carbs, i.e. potato chips, potatoes, breads, pastas, beans, rices, etc…, and sugars, i.e. white sugar, brown sugar, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup and so on…

Americans consume about 140 pounds of sugar a year!  (Which may be a generous estimation.)  Sadly, that just accounts for sugar.  All those sweeteners, like the deadly High Fructose Corn Syrup, don’t get added into the equation because they are termed “sweeteners”, not sugars.  Add a high starchy carbohydrate diet, which basically acts like sugars when they are being digested, and we are putting our Blood Sugar on some pretty gnarly roller coasters rides throughout your day.

*SLAP*

Wow, went on quite a tangent there, but it was probably worth it.  Anytime I get on the topic of Blood Sugar, a rant is probably closely following.

But lets not forget about Nora’s great podcast.  She advocates eating less sugary and starchy foods because insulin’s function in the human body is not solely based on regulating blood sugar, as every may seem to think.  As Nora says in her podcast, insulin’s actual biological purpose is “the coordination of energy stores with reproduction and lifespan”.  Flap-jacks Batman, that’s great but what the heck does that all mean? Basically, insulin triggers the body to start forming new cells, “out with the old, in with the new”.  So by reducing insulin secretions in our body, we aren’t causing our body to put it’s energies into making new cells (which is what insulin causes).  Instead, our bodies focus on “maintaining and repairing” your body.

There is another factor towards increasing your lifespan that goes hand-in-hand with the reduction of insulin.  This other factor is reducing your total caloric intake.  Now, what Nora talks about on her show when it comes to reducing how many calories you are eating, ironically, has nothing to do with counting calories.  “Well that makes absolutely no sense!” you might say.  But when you factor in a paleo-esque diet, it does make sense.  As Nora puts so brilliantly, “our appetites are not satisfied by bulk…”, even eating large amounts of healthy vegetables isn’t going to satisfy you in an acceptable way that natural fats will.  (Unless, of course, you over eat.) It’s the natural fats in our diet that tell our  brain everything is going goooood.  Eating fat causes satiety. Not eating three of four bags of french fries.

(Quality over quantity ring a bell?)

So by reducing sugars and starchy carbohydrates, by eating adequate amounts of fat-but not overeating because the goal is to try to not overindulge causing too many calories-, and consuming a proper amount of protein to provide adequate amounts of amino acids as building material for your body is the type of diet we all should be striving to develop for optimal health and longevity.

If you are interested in hearing the actual podcast, here’s the link:

http://www.voiceamerica.com/voiceamerica/vepisode.aspx?aid=42999

Nora probably does a much better, and more accurate, job describing the keys to optimal health and longevity and her podcast.  I highly encourage all of you to devote at least a half-hour to what she says during the first half of her show.  Listen to it while you are doing the dishes or eating a meal because it is well worth your time.

Thanks for reading, have a great Saturday night!

E.M.R

I hinted a bit towards this in my previous post before I went off on the whole Matrix-tangent, but I’d like to restart the topic and roll on from there.  Sally Fallon’s speech, “The Oiling of America”, has a lot of great information about how exactly Americans have come to fear foods that have been condemned as high in cholesterol and fat.  I listened to her speech the other day, and was surprised and shocked by just how beneficial cholesterol truly is for our bodies.

Now, cholesterol has a lot of beneficial functions for our bodies, but for the sake of not boring you to death, and for the sake of not providing info that I don’t totally understand yet, I will stick to some of the more understandable roles of cholesterol has.

The first and, I believe, the most important role of cholesterol is the fact that it is nature’s healing substance.  Cholesterol is a vital substance for healing wounds!  As Sally Fallon says in her speech, it would be very difficult to recover from injuries when you have low cholesterol.  This ties into exactly how we have come to blame cholesterol for heart attacks.  Now correct me if I’m wrong here, but the way atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) is formed is by a build up of cholesterol, and other fatty-like substances, in the body.  But the question that gets screwed up here is why cholesterol is in building up in the arteries in the first place.

“Well, because American eat too much butter, red-meat, lard, etc.. and we all know cholesterol from these foods like to be dumped into the arteries.” says conventional wisdom.

Baloney would be an accurate term to use here.  Cholesterol does not build up in your arteries because you are eating too much fat.  (Assuming, of course, that you are eating high quality fats like good quality butter, coconut oil, grass-fed meats, cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil etc… and avoiding those terrible fats found in fast foods, trans fatty-foods, and refined carbohydrates.)  The reason why cholesterol is building up in your arteries is because it is trying to heal cracks and tears in the artery itself.  It’s trying to fix the problem being caused in your arteries because of poor diet (trans-fatty foods, refined carbohydrates etc…).  Why?  Again, because it’s your body’s natural healing substance.

As Tom Noughton says in his documentary Fat Head: “to blame cholesterol for causing heart attacks is like blaming the police for causing crime.  Just because the police are at the scene of the crime doesn’t mean you should try to get rid of the police to lower crime problems.”  Cholesterol is in the same boat.

A secondly, cholesterol is vital for the production of the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone.  As a result, people on low-fat diets may not have as much of a sex drive because their low-fat diets do not supply enough cholesterol for their body.

Cholesterol is also a very powerful antioxidant.  Yeah, you read that right, cholesterol is an antioxidant.  It protects us from free radicals just like the glorified Vitamin C. Also, kind of a thrown in to the subject, it is also known that coconut oil and good quality butter have antimicrobial properties that can help battle bacterial infections.

And finally, cholesterol is absolutely essential for brain and nevrous system development.  It is very important for memory as well as the production of serotonin in the brain.  In fact, Mary Enig writes in her book, Know Your Fats, that: “Research at the University of California, Berkley… has shown that the cholesterol in eggs is helpful to older people whose memory is declining.” (57). Sally Fallon also writes in her book Nourishing Traditions about the importance of cholesterol for infant development.  If I remember correctly from Nourishing Traditions, a breast-fed baby gets about 90% cholesterol from her mother’s milk.  If cholesterol was such a terrible thing, why are babies meant to have a diet that’s as high as 90%?  Of course, humans were not meant to continue this diet as they age, but still, I think this shows the importance cholesterol plays in our lives.  That it’s meant to be a good thing for our bodies, not a bad thing.

I think I’ll call it a day right there.  Cholesterol is HUGE topic, and we really only brushed the surface of the matter with this post.  If you want to learn more, I suggest reading some of Sally Fallon and Mary Enig’s work.  The beginning section of Nourishing Traditions is a great way to get broken into the matter of cholesterol.

So go out there and buy some Kerrygold Butter and ENJOY IT! (And stay the hell away from partially hydrogenated foods as best you can…)

Peace,

E.M.R

I am currently digesting some wonderfully disturbing information presented by Sally Fallon.  This Sally Fallon gal has gained fame and notoriety from her wonderful book Nourishing Traditions, as well as her co-author work done with Mary Enig in Eat Fat, Lose Fat.  (Mary Enig also contributed to Nourishing Traditions.)  This wonderfully disturbing information came from Sally’s (and Mary’s too, ironically), famed speech “The Oiling of America”.

“The Oiling of America” is a particularly disturbing presentation in the form of a basic history course on how America went from a nation with it’s nutrition rooted in healthy fat consumption to a nation anchored in an endless sea of vegetable oils so to speak.

Lets take a brief pause now to mourn the loss of all those readers out in the wild, blue yonder who quickly directed themselves to another webpage so that they could spare themselves another lecture from another crazy fat-fanatic.

…

(Cool picture of Morpheus from The Matrix)

Okay, the minute’s up.  So here we are, a little confused about where we exactly are heading with this post (or at least I am), but the cats out of the bag.  Another Paleo, high-fat-low-carb-diet dude here to tell me how great he feels when he eats a stick of butter and the abomination commonly refered to as carbohydrates…  Right?  Yes!  Well, except for that last part, certain carbohydrates are great for you.  But all that’s for future posts…

This post is an attempt to encourage you to have an open opinion about what I say, even if it goes against everything you have come to form strong opinions about.  Much like Neo (pictured above), the majority of people live in a Matrix they have no idea about.  A Matrix they accept freely because they are not aware of anything else to except.

Now this is all beginning to get strange, but the fictitious Matrix is not far from how we live our lives today.  What I hope to offer with this blog is information to help change that.  To help people get out of this Matrix of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, auto-immune diseases etc… and to help them form a life that is centered in well-being.

But this is not easy. The truth can be enlightening, but it can also be extremely frightening. (Hey! That’s like the name of this blog!) So I guess we all sit as Neo, faced with two options; we can take the “Red Pill” and become witnesses to how things truly are, or we can take the “Blue Pill” and just accept our comfy world; live in the bliss that is ignorance.

Anyways, I hope I don’t sound like I’m making this blog super important.  I was just trying to tie in a favorite metaphor of mine to throw a weak philosophical view on things.  But I still hope I can help some people out there by providing information, and help debunk some myths that have been created and perpetuated by society.

This is the beginning of the Rabbit Hole, and the further we go down, the nastier we will realize how things are.  And I guess that’s the whole point of the blue-pill-red-pill thing, do we really want to get to know that nastier things along with the good things, or do we just want the status quo.  I look forward to traveling -or, most likely, tumbling- down this Rabbit Hole with you all.

E.M.R