Some Final (Brief) Thoughts on the Great Health Debate--Listen Inward, Plants, Keep Pleasures Simple, Get Outside! And Questions

I was getting all ready to make a bunch of tables and charts showing which experts on the Great Health Debate said what, who agreed with whom on what, what the overall numbers might suggest. But I have a billion other things to do today, my computer's memory is maxed out and internet connection falteringly slow, and I paid attention to Sean Croxton and Mike Adams in the wrap-up talk on Sunday night, when they said that the major problem they both faced was too much computer time and not enough outside time! I also concluded that detailed person-by-person final analysis and number-crunching on frequency of recommendations would be missing the point of the Debate itself, the dizzying array of different presentations and worldviews as to what works for health.

Instead, then, I offer something more in keeping with the time available to me today and also more in keeping with the spirit of the Debate, I think. It can be summed up in the title to this post, and here are a few more thoughts.

Look Inward
No two experts offered completely identical world views; all experts believed that what they do works. Since I'm celebrating this blog's anniversary, it seems an appropriate moment to link to a post I wrote over a year ago now, on Pyrrhonian Skepticism and its relationship to diet. This school of philosophy observed that there are conflicting phenomena and opinions about everything and advocated suspending judgment to reach the goal of absence of perturbation. This array of different interpretations of different claimed phenomena seems a perfect example of that.

Plants
It seems obvious that eating more plants is beneficial, that eating a diet based on plants is healthful and ecologically sound. Even the proponents of meat-eating or of low-carbohydrate diets recommend eating plenty of vegetables.

Keep Pleasures Simple (not Refined)
This is one of the more important ones to me. You'll remember that I was uneasy about Dr Young's and Dr Goldhamer's rebukes against pleasure, and that I then observed that for me, 'overstimulating' foods are not pleasurable. I've given that some more thought, and compared notes with my husband, who can eat a whole plate of brownies at a sitting and find it very pleasurable, and realized that I do understand what they are saying, agree with them, in fact, and that it comes down to a matter of definition of 'pleasure.' Very concentrated foods, especially very sweet/salty/oily foods (or foods laced with 'excitotoxins'), produce a physiologically overstimulating response that can lead to compulsion around that food--and for sound evolutionary reasons. These are the foods that are most refined, farthest removed from 'ancestral foods,' least familiar (evolutionarily speaking) to our organisms, and most associated with obesity, heart disease and other 'diseases of civilization.' They tend to increase appetite and weight-set-point, especially if the additional stress of guilt and compulsion surround them.

This isn't to say that one shouldn't enjoy one's food. Food can be--should be--pleasurable, but keep the pleasures simple. Note to self: this includes my current yen for almond and peppermint extract and other intense flavors...

Get Outside!
It's essential to health...

and there is so much magnificence...

I seem to be overcoming my own lack of inclination to get outside these past few days and am looking forward to going for a good hike soon if it doesn't snow too hard. I do think that feeling guilty/obligated to get outside, like I was feeling, is counterproductive, though, as once again, pleasure and delight is part of why it's good for us!

A Few Questions
Who gets to be an 'expert?' Sally Fallon made the important distinction between primary researchers (in the lab) and secondary researchers (reading the data, comparing, number-crunching)--and doctors in clinical practice fall somewhere in between, or partake in both. Are the conclusions of someone who has focused in narrowly and knows certain aspects of a particular field completely intimately more valuable than those of someone who may not be as minutely, specifically trained but who is looking at a much larger picture? To complicate the question further, the 'primary' researchers are often funded or otherwise have an agenda, and we know that you can prove anything with research by setting up the study correctly (which is why it was striking that Colin Campbell mentioned in his 'bonus' talk that he hadn't expected to find correlations between animal protein and childhood cancer in the Philippines). Secondary researchers can also have axes to grind, but generally they may stand a better chance of impartiality. People who have had 'road-to-Damascus'-type conversion experiences in their health transformation may often be great experts in their own bodies, and may be inspiring simply for that reason, that they really have discovered what works for them. Often, however, they may wind up less open to accepting that what works for them may not work for everyone.

What research is relevant? In the very first talk, Drs Mercola and Cousens agreed that they keep an eye on research only for 'trends' and do not set enormous store by individual studies--for the abovementioned reasons in part--preferring to rely on their own findings in clinical practice. This was a very striking statement, especially on the very first night, and lent some skepticism to some of the glib citing of research statistics on later nights. For those of us in pursuit of knowledge, it seemed like a good reminder to pay attention to individual studies but to withhold absolute judgment based on them. Any further advice on how to answer this question, of what research deserves attention, is something for which I'd be most grateful.

I will share some odd thoughts over the next while about how my personal thinking has been affected by this Debate, but this is my final 'objective' post about what was offered. So I'll come back and add on if I think of more that needs to be included, and would be grateful for any comments on what else needs to be covered.

much love.

Phil's Laundry and Other Outlandish Things; The Great Health Debate Days 6 & 7

Phil really ought to be the subject of a TV show: almost daily, being around him ensures you'll get exposed to things you'd never imagine otherwise! A little later in this post, I'll share a story about what we took to the laundromat today. Stay tuned! Or, if you're not interested in the Great Health Debate, scroll down to the bottom of the post...

It's a crisp 13 degrees downtown, which means that a little farther from the coast it's well below zero here. Beluga Lake, on which I've been doing my driving practice had more cars on it today than I'd ever seen before! More on that shortly also.

First, though, I hope that my summaries of the talks so far on the Great Health Debate have been useful and interesting. Tonight will be the last night, with Mike Adams and Sean Croxton wrapping things up and also two pre-recorded talks, from T. Colin Campbell and Charlotte Gerson. (Obviously), I haven't listened to those yet, and I'll be back in a day or two with comments about those and some general summaries of what was offered throughout the event. Today, I want to share some thoughts on night 6, with Mark Sisson and Frederic Patenaude, and night 7, with Dr Will Tuttle and Sally Fallon. These were the two most polarized pairs of talks so far: each pitted an advocate of animal products (Sisson and Fallon) against a vegan speaker (Patenaude and Tuttle). However, on night 6 the focus of the debate was  high- versus low-carb and insulin, whereas on night 7 the focus was on the ethics of veganism versus the claimed necessity of consuming animal products.

All four speakers had some admirable things to offer and also some points that seemed highly questionable, to say the least. Perhaps this is because of my personal proclivities, but I didn't come away feeling any more confused as a result of what these speakers had to say, but I think it may partly have had to do with the fact that, as Sally Fallon herself confessed at the beginning of her talk, she--and they all--are secondary researchers: they're not physically present in labs designing and carrying out experiments, nor are they in clinical practice. Additionally, I felt that neither Mark Sisson nor Will Tuttle added a lot to the debate in terms of nutritional discussions, whatever the other merits of what they had to say. Now for some specific remarks on each pair of speakers.

Mark Sisson and Frederic Patenaude
First of all, kudos to Frederic for bringing together such a coherent talk at what was apparently short notice. If he and Kevin hadn't mentioned it, I wouldn't have realized that he'd had less time to prepare than the other speakers. And kudos to Mark for his light-hearted and humorous approach.

I mentioned above that the main point of difference presented between these two was that Sisson was advocating a low-carb diet (less than 100g of carbs/day, which isn't actually that low, but precludes grains, sugar, more than a little fruit, etc) with animal products, and Patenaude was advocating a high-carb, low-fat, vegan, whole-foods, high-fruit diet. Each was clearly very convinced of the rightness of his own position, and each was also clearly convinced that high amounts of fat and carbohydrate cannot coexist in a diet and have health be maintained: one or other macronutrient has to be restricted. Before I go on to their reasons for this, I should say that this throws up a red flag for me right away. As I shared in my 'this much I have learned' post, my experience has led me to believe that all fats are not created equal and all carbs are not created equal, and therefore to reduce the whole picture of health to a need to restrict a whole class of macronutrient seems like an oversimplification.

Mark Sisson, somewhat like Daniel Vitalis, advocates an atavistic strategy: a return to hunter-gatherer-type food choices, with the belief that this includes exclusion of grains and reliance on a high amount of protein and fat. Aside from the fact that research has been emerging to show that hunter-gatherer societies generally ate a lot of carbohydrate in the form of root vegetables, my question here is the same one I had for Daniel: what of the possibility that our rapid evolution with the rise of agrarianism means that we are no longer 'epigenetically' equipped for a step backwards like that? Sisson agrees with Mercola and Cousens that keeping insulin low is the key to longevity and health, and claims that eating high-carb inevitably raises insulin.

Frederic Patenaude points out that the human body's motor is glucose: that's the source of our fuel, and claims that it makes most sense to derive that fuel from complex carbs and lots of fruit (he claims that the latter is not a problem because of the fiber and minerals accompanying the fruit sugar). His further claim, that we should eat carbs because they are 'what taste good to us' derives from the Natural Hygiene and Instinctotherapy schools of thought. Although I agree that whole foods taste great to a clean palate, I think this claim is a minefield in this day and age of hyperstimulated tastebuds. You end up having to distinguish between what tastes good 'naturally' and what is part of the 'Pleasure Trap,' and can easily be misunderstood by people who think that twinkies and cheeseburgers 'taste good' as arguing for those! So, his first claim, which is essentially a claim of economy (get glucose from carbs rather than by gluconeogenesis from proteins or going into ketosis) is more attractive. Speaking of ketosis, he quoted a newspaper report that mentioned as axiomatic that ketosis slows down brain function. I'll say something in the next post about the credibility of sources like that, but although there are certainly problems associated with being in ketosis for extended periods of time, I think it's very unlikely that people eating the kind of diet Sisson described are in ketosis much of the time.

Sisson's and Patenaude's respective incredulity over the macronutrient ratio opposite from what they favored was amusing. Sisson suggested that the Ornish patients who had lowered insulin with whole grain diets may still have had net elevated levels of insulin 'under the curve' over the course of the day and implied that much of the improvement in readings was due simply to reduced calories. Patenaude cast doubts that low-carb advocates are really eating low-carb, including a personal query against Mark Sisson's cream in coffee and occasional beer! His claim that it's actually impossible to eat low-carb was clearly incorrect, since whole populations have done it (although perhaps he's correct that this wouldn't have been their first choice): also, as I've already mentioned a couple times, you can actually eat quite a lot of carbs on what is still called a 'low carb' diet. Patenaude claims to maintain low blood sugar while eating a lot of fruit but minimizing fat: we don't know what his insulin levels are, however. And while it's great that he feels good eating fruit, he didn't really address the possible problems with fructose. Recent research has suggested that the fact that fructose does not spike blood sugar levels (because it's processed through the liver) does not necessarily mean that it's healthier for the body overall.

Some people took exception to Sisson's philosophy of 'not getting into it with vegetarians:' of accepting that there are vegetarians who are very sure that they are 'right,' and he's very sure of his opposite position. I actually think that this is a sane way to go (of course I think that, living with someone with a very different diet to my own), and overall I enjoyed the level of openmindedness and acceptance of other perspectives displayed by both Sisson and Patenaude: a rare thing where each is a strong believer in a polarized position.

Will Tuttle and Sally Fallon
Acceptance of other perspectives was a feature not much in evidence last night in Tuttle's and Fallon's talks. Sally Fallon said several variations of 'there is no right/healthy way to be a vegetarian or vegan' and went as far as to implore vegan women not to have children. Will Tuttle said that humans continuing to eat meat would destroy the planet in short order. Tuttle's perspective was spiritual (he has traveled in Asia and has a doctorate in Comparative Religion: he was a very passionate, charismatic, inspiring speaker (although he definitely had a tendency to get carried away, rant, lose focus). Fallon was equally sure of her views and forthright, but in a more 'earthy' way. It was interesting that aside from the 'animal products/no animal products' polarity, Tuttle was focused on our need to evolve away from our historical ways of being and move to another level, whereas Fallon was focused on the need to return to traditional ways, meaning pre-Industrialization, small-farm-based food production and including grains and dairy: i.e., not an atavistic/'primal' regression a la Sisson or Vitalis.

I think those two polarities sum up the two talks fairly handily, but each speaker said a few shocking things that I want to mention.

Tuttle's claim that using animal manure in food production is 'absurd' and that animals should not be part of our sphere of influence was problematic. Although I agree philosophically with his claim that we cannot 'own' another animal, where are all the animals going to go if they're all set free? Presumably, as we always did, we need to coexist with them. His picture of veganic farming sounds like a call to create an ecosystem in which we have cut ourselves off from animals and I believe that that is impossible. Even the health of the soil is crucially dependent on earthworms and smaller micro-organisms, and I don't think anyone is going to recommend that we remove them from the ecosystem. Animal poop--including our own--has been a building block of the soil for all time. And although an argument over who got to keep the humanure when someone left a farm was legendary in the community I used to live in in HI, it really is possible to take animal poop without exploiting or dominating the animal. You can go to the beach and collect guano, or go out in the woods...

I've met vegans before who eschewed pets and abhorred companion animals because of that argument against domination, and I understand what they're saying but think it's an oversimplification. It also doesn't say anything against the practice of hunting. Daniel Vitalis might say (and I might agree) that the genetic modification of plant crops is an even worse, and more environmentally detrimental, form of domination. Small-scale polyculture farms are a wonderful thing to strive toward, as is reforestation, but I think that Tuttle's estimation of how much food can be grown on a homestead and how many people it might feed was unrealistically high. Reforestation won't necessarily be compatible with growing a lot more plant food for human consumption: one of things that we struggle with, gardening up here, is getting enough light on the garden plants in the Boreal Forest. Plus, like I said, all the animals have to go somewhere.

Up here, where it's relatively wild, coming through our homestead we have moose, pheasants, eagles, various corvids and songbirds, an explosion of snowshoe hares, squirrels, and the occasional visit from our neighbors turkeys and dogs! When they're not hibernating, we have black bears right here too. And when they come through, they all poop! My point is that we coexist with animals and that treating them with respect shouldn't have to mean an artificial sequestering of them from our ecosystem.

The most shocking thing that Sally Fallon said was that animals raised for human consumption die more humanely than they would in the wild. Having just read Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, I find it hard to accept the claim that farmed animals die quickly and instantly--and what about the quality of their life prior to slaughter?

The other shocking thing that she said was that she is not concerned about mercury levels in fish (although she is concerned about mercury fillings): that a healthy gut has the enzymes and other protective agents to escort mercury from the body and allow fish to be eaten without concern. It's true, she was talking about her personal choice, but since so many people nowadays do not have healthy guts; since we are 'bombarded with toxins' from so many sides; since even the FDA warns of the dangers of mercury levels in certain fish, it seemed like a potentially irresponsible claim. Otherwise, most of what she said was about what one would expect: that a whole-foods-based, omnivorous diet, preferably from organically raised livestock, is essential to good health. Some of the scare-mongering stories about vegetarian babies growing in rotten teeth were startling, but of course there are likely just as many positive stories from those who advocate for vegetarian diets. [Edit and afterthought: I agree with some other commenters that her allegation that vegetarianism is responsible for such epidemic health problems seems unrealistic given that in actuality, the percentage of vegetarians in the population is so low! Another fallacy that she perpetrates is the implication that all vegetarians eat tons of soy. Most health-conscious vegetarians are pretty careful about soy, I think. While the story of the prisoners in Illinois being fed soy in an uncontrolled experiment is truly horrific, it doesn't fit the story of most plant-based eaters.]

What else would you like to hear about the Great Health Debate? I will share some closing thoughts in my next post, and then during the week that follows, I'll share some of my personal perspectives and the ways in which it has confused me! And I'll be happy to address any other requests too.


Back to Phil's Laundry...
Anyone who's spent any time around Phil knows that their freezer is at risk of being populated with dead birds and crustaceans, assorted roadkill, and pelts. Phil is endlessly curious and avid to possess the essence of beings that he encounters. This means that when he comes across a dead animal when he's out hiking, he's likely to either bring it all home and put it in the freezer or skin it and bring home the pelt! (Yes, this is a contentious bone sometimes when I need to put food in the freezer!)

Well, this winter Phil has had mercy on me and decided that it's time to tan some of the pelts.
Remember that juvenile eagle that was in our yard? 

He was on cleanup duty! Phil had put out a hide and he cleaned the remaining pieces of meat off. A nice supplement for the eagles in a lean season.

Afterwards, Phil poured kerosene on the hide and rubbed baking soda into it, as much as it would take. He left it overnight and then in the morning thawed it out, washed all the kerosene and baking soda off with some cheap shampoo... And then we took it all to the laundromat! Hopefully no one was looking. We had to put them through twice: still a distinct stink of kerosene when it came out.

Phil has a story of a caribou hide that he took to a laundromat one time years ago, where things went horribly wrong and the hair came off all over the washing machine. I don't think he ever went back there! I was so relieved that nothing like that happened today.

...and Other Outlandish Things
It's outlandish because it's a frozen lake! I've never seen so many people and cars on a body of water before. Here are little kids racing their snow-machines. (For non-Alaskans, snow machines are like all-terrain vehicles for winter: fast, noisy, with runners instead of wheels, enabling rapid access to all kinds of places that would otherwise demand an arduous hike or a day of snowshoeing. Adult-sized ones run around $10k and are the ultimate testosterone toy.)

Speaking of testosterone toys, the adults get their fun too. This is ice-racing--an assortment of beat-up but souped-up vehicles racing around the ice in a circle. Lots of skidding and sliding.

What's the strangest thing you've put through the laundry?

Missed Anniversary and Letter-day; Blog Accountability; More on the Great Health Debate; Mountain Dragon

Missed Anniversary and Letter-day

Perhaps it's not surprising that I missed my blog's first anniversary, given that my parents don't remember their wedding date and we don't even know my mom's actual birthdate for certain (they never quite got clear on converting the date from the Jewish lunar calendar to the western solar calendar). But there it is: in the midst of all this discombobulated to-ing and fro-ing between here and Anchorage, February 1st, the anniversary of this blog's beginning, came and went unremarked. So, happy belated birthday, little blog!

I don't have much to add to that today, but over the next week or so, I will offer some reflections on what this year of blogging has allowed me to offer, what it has brought me, where it came from and where it's going.

Another milestone that came and went this week was my completion of a second 12-week chelation cycle. This is the end of a huge detoxification procedure that began with the removal of mercury fillings last April and May and hopefully leaves my body largely free of the mercury and lead with which she was riddled. Which means that the coast (or tract) is clear for some effective yeast cleansing--on with the rollercoaster and more dietary tweaks coming up soon. 

Chelation involved taking capsules of DMSA, a sulfur-based compound that escorts metals from the body, following each week of this with a Vitamin C IV and then a rest week of mineral replacement. It's a harsh process (nausea, paresthesias (weird physical sensations), crankiness, constipation, mood swings), which I mitigated by sweating in the steam shower--that seemed to help me not to feel quite so lousy. I have to say, though, that the last couple of cycles really were not so uncomfortable and nauseated. This was probably due largely to diminishing amounts of toxic metals mobilizing out, but the addition of starch to my diet and resultant improvement in general 'motility' may have helped too.

I want to get on to talking about The Great Health Debate, so I'll table the post-chelation talk too, but I believe that it's important to celebrate the end of this arduous process.

The Great Health Debate and Blog Accountability

Since my last post, we've heard David Wolfe and Daniel Vitalis, both of whom I know personally and am very familiar with, and Drs J. E. Williams and Alan Goldhamer, both of whom I hadn't heard of before. Tonight, it's Mark Sisson and Frederic Patenaude--I know Frederic and have worked with him (but years ago now) and am at least somewhat familiar with Sisson's work. Two more nights to go after this!

It's probably not at all surprising, but I confess that at this point I'm feeling very confused about diet and nutrition! Just to help that confusion, I've recently been making dietary experiments on my own account, between decreasing PUFAs and adding starches, so I was hardly on firm ground to begin with. However, Tina recently talked on her blog about feeling grateful for the feeling of accountability it engenders and I'm with her on that. When this whole Great Debate is over, after I've summarized what I see as the most important points, I'll talk a bit about my personal dilemmas. 

For now, though, I'm going to continue offering selected observations about the last two nights of talks, as objectively as I can. 

The last two nights were an interesting foursome of talks indeed: a nice contrast for me in that the first pair were very familiar to me and the second totally unfamiliar.

Wolfe and Vitalis

Wolfe and Vitalis share a keen interest in wild plant and fungal foods (superherbs) and their nutritional and vibrational importance, as well as the recognition that it is difficult to acquire adequate calories from these alone: they address this shortfall in very different--opposite ways. Vitalis' approach is atavistic: a return, as near as possible, to 'our ancestral diet,' turning his back on farmed, mass-produced, altered foods: a local, all-wild-food diet, which inevitably means going to animal foods for caloric bulk. Wolfe, instead, turns to the state of the art that modern technologies can offer, bringing the ultimate distillations of the most powerful foods from all over the world. He agrees on the importance of local foods, but eschews animal products to avoid the karmic implications of eating them. I appreciated this spiritually-oriented approach: spiritual karma is really the other side of the physical fact of toxin accumulation associated with eating higher on the food chain. Just because it's spiritual/non-tangible, it's not to be dismissed.

I love David Wolfe's charisma and dedication to creating positive energy: however, a lot of the time I wish that he had his facts straighter! As a Classical Linguist, I find many of his etymological and historical excursions very frustrating, and the inaccuracy contained there tends to make me doubt the credibility of some of his other assertions. I wish that I'd gotten in his face back when I was a regular in the kitchen at his events and asked him to have me edit for him! His comments on chocolate were a whitewash, for sure. He simply dismissed the notion that it causes a problem for anyone (which already makes his claims suspect, because so many have experienced trouble) and insisted that in historical studies, together with olive oil and honey, it's the number one longevity food! (Now, where do those three coexist? I can think of many places where honey and one of the others coexist locally, but where do olives and cacao both grow? I've seen some olive trees on the Kona side in Hawaii, but marginally...)  Something else that David said about which I'm somewhat dubious is that it's a scientific fact that Caloric Restriction creates longer lifespan. Now, as a diehard restricter, you'd think I'd be all over that! But from the research that I've been looking at lately, I'd have to say that the CR hypothesis remains that and is not an established fact at all. But the overall message of increasing your vibration, seeking out the best, doing your best, is always delightful.

Daniel Vitalis is also a very charismatic and persuasive speaker, and his points about the equation between agriculture and deforestation, between cultivating and diminution of potency, are very thought-provoking. The contrast in vigor, speed of growth and herbal properties between wild and cultivated greens in climates as diverse as Hawaii and Alaska has always frustrated me as a gardener and provoked a lot of thought about the value of cultivating at all. I also loved that he made the point that if you're going to eat meat, you should use the whole animal, both from the 'karmic' and from the nutritional perspectives. I strongly believe that if someone is going to eat meat, they need to pay attention to that. I think that like David, however, his silver tongue allows him to get away with some assertions that may not be totally accurate: for example, his discussion of our anatomy versus that of our primate relatives left something to be desired. And while he addressed epigenetic decay and deformity, he did not address the glaring possibility that epigenetics means that we have physiologically evolved to a modern, agrarian diet and may not be able to simply reverse all the problems by reverting to a putative atavistic diet.

Williams and Goldhamer

Drs Williams and Goldhamer shared a focus on whole foods but were very different in personality and approach. Dr Williams, who has been described as 'The Indiana Jones of nutritional research,' was so personable and easy to listen to. Dr Goldhamer was more bombastic and insistent and came across as more of a zealot, somewhat as did Robert Young. 

I really appreciated Kevin Gianni's gracious appraisal of Young's zealotry as being due to the fact that he works mostly with people with very serious ailments and the frustration of working with such people and having them be non-compliant. I suspect that the same is true for Dr Goldhamer, who runs a fasting retreat center and has had some amazing successes with reversal of serious illness through fasting and moving patients onto a no-sugar, no-salt, no-oil high-raw vegan diet. However, I mentioned my wariness of Dr Young's apparent total discounting of the role of pleasure in nutrition. Dr Goldhamer goes even further in this: his main book is called The Pleasure Trap and he alleges that sugar, salt and oil trigger an addictive dopamine response in everyone, causing repeated bad food choices and downwardly spiraling health. Fasting, according to him, is perhaps the only way to cut through this pattern and restore sanity to the palate. 

Now, I have an 'austere' part as big as anyone's, and this kind of reasoning would seem like an obvious hook for me. Which is why it may be a good thing for me that I'm married to Phil, Mr Eat-anything-and-everything-and-remain-pretty-darn-healthy, and have been reading Matt Stone's work, encouraging a more abundant and accepting approach, moving away from demonizing common foods. Because I wasn't totally hooked by this: I had to note that obvious dopamine junkies, like my own husband, are not dying of their habit, and would probably trade extra pleasure for extra years of life. As I said in my last post, wouldn't it be good 'to be able to transmute some of the gray areas and rough edges of perfection with grace and gratitude, to let pleasure and appreciation round out the nutrient levels?' I should also note that my experience with the dopamine-triggering foods that make me feel compulsive (sugar, artificial sweeteners, sometimes chocolate) is very definitely not one of pleasure: it's a compulsive, dirty, unpleasant-turn-in-the-rollercoaster feeling. Icky, not pleasant at all. But maybe that's just me.

I respect Dr Goldhamer and am glad that he provides the service that he does: it sounds like he has really helped a lot of people. However, with respect, I didn't agree with everything he had to say. For example, he placed oils in same the 'deranged-excitement-causing' spot as refined sugar and alleged that as refined, processed foods, lacking in fiber, they give no satiation indication and lead to overeating and that whole doomed road. I used to believe this: I used to avoid anything with any oil in it at potlucks--even olive oil on a salad--let alone eat any at home! But nowadays, I eat a lot of coconut oil and even without fiber, it sure does have a satiation index. Sometimes, if I'm way too hungry, I just pop a little piece of coconut oil and it usually keeps me stable until I can eat something. My experience is that fats generally add satiation. 

I should also say that he was explicit that the health challenges that his center most often addresses are the 'diseases of civilization' like heart disease, hypertension, etc, as well as the autoimmune diseases. In my ND's parlance, I would guess that his patients are mostly 'disease of excess' patients, whereas a 'disease of deficiency' person like myself might not benefit so much (I have to say this, for myself and for any other recovering compulsive faster)!

Dr Williams is so interesting, especially because of his decades of experience with indigenous peoples. He has spent time with Bering Sea Siberians, walrus hunters living almost entirely on animal foods, a very high-fat diet, and with Q'ero Indians near Cuzco, Peru, who lived almost entirely on starchy plant foods. Both peoples were very healthy, as healthy as one another despite the extreme difference in their diets, until they moved to cities and started eating processed foods, pointing up the fact that what their very different diets had in common was the absence of any processed foods. This is, no doubt, a familiar story, but hearing his first-hand experience both as a doctor and a human being, really brought it home.

This experience is perhaps what allows Dr Williams to exude such a sense of balance. He recommended a largely vegetarian diet, but had had the experience of seeing some vegetarians failing to assimilate plant-based protein, even though they were taking in an adequate amount, and had remedied that with small amounts of animal proteins in certain cases. He still came across as recommending predominantly plant-based nutrition, but with caution and circumspection. I really appreciated that he made the distinction between taking in enough nutrition and actually assimilating it once you've eaten it. This is such a crucial issue and I've been surprised that it hasn't received more attention as yet.

I don't want to go on too long, so I'll leave it at that for tonight and come back in a day or two with some comments about the next few speakers.

I forgot to share this in my last post: on the beautiful drive to Anchorage, I look forward to this particular view every time we take the turn up into the mountains. 

Do you see the dragon head? I think I managed to capture it.

I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts on the Great Health Debate. And if you're not listening in, is my analysis helpful so far or is it too abstract?

Taking Trips/Trip Apathy, More on The Great Health Debate

On Sunday, we diverted to Whittier, three quarters of the way to Anchorage, to meet up with a couple of friends and spend most of the day on their boat in Prince William Sound.

It was a gloriously sunny day, although the kerosene heater they had on board made the all day sojourn much more bearable than it might have been. Swift little boat, speedy driver--we left quite a wake in the stunning wilderness of ocean...

This is Phil's element, his delight, his absolute joy and fulfillment.

On our drive home yesterday, we spent some time talking about the trips Phil is hoping to make come spring-time, some of them challenging, dangerous, lengthy; all of them involving significant time in the wilderness with minimal equipment. Some of them, I'm invited on, others, not. Then, we have guests coming up this summer, as we always do, some of them supercharged athletes. I'm feeling so much stronger than I was last year and have been looking forward to being able to join in for more of the adventures, but some of our guests may be so intent on hardcore long-and-hard-going that I may not be able to keep up.

Lately, however, I simply haven't been feeling drawn to go out much, let alone far out in the wilderness. Given that we're surrounded by semi-wilderness, and given that it's Phil's life-blood, I've been feeling some guilt around this. Shouldn't I be stoked and excited to go out and be in the midst of such gorgeous wilderness, with the best possible guide and companion too? I don't really know what to say about that, except that I just need to watch it, and that mostly, when Phil is going somewhere and it doesn't sound like 'too much,' I go too: I allow myself to be taken out there and exposed to it, and I keep the space open for the desire and delight to return.

Is it a defect and deficiency in me, this inward-lookingness, this lack of desire to be outside? Of course, it's cold out, but I'm learning to cope with that pretty well and not to feel emotional pain around the simple fact of cold/fatigue/hard going.

Some More Thoughts on The Great Health Debate

It's the fourth night of The Great Health Debate tonight--David Wolfe and Daniel Vitalis, two wonderfully engaging speakers, both of whom I know personally (although I haven't seen them for years). I haven't heard all of tonight's yet, so I'll talk about the last two night's offerings from Jonny Bowden and Joel Fuhrman on Monday and Donna Gates and Robert Young on Tuesday. For all kinds of logistic reasons, these were presented as individual lectures, rather than conversations like that between Cousens and Mercola, which was fine, as having each pair juxtaposed allows the listener to compare the approaches quite handily. For me, last night's pair of talks from Donna Gates and Robert Young was the most informative and also the most unsettling so far, largely because I was less familiar with their work than that of anyone else so far. Joel Fuhrman was a pleasant surprise too, though.

I've read books by Jonny Bowden and as a 'voice,' he was pretty much as I'd expected him to be--pleasant, personable, a mine of important if somewhat specious information. Before hearing Fuhrman speak, I'd had him pegged as a low-fat vegan zealot, but it turns out that he is much more open and balanced. He does not recommend super-low-fat diets but recommends a good amount of high-quality fats. He does recommend a vegan diet, so long as one is conscientious about it, but doesn't condemn other styles of eating. His suggestion that if one is going to eat animal products, one use them 'as a condiment,' sounds sensible and accessible even for die-hard meat-eaters. I found it interesting that although he said that eating a lot of raw vegetables is a good thing, he said that not eating things like cooked bean soups didn't gain you anything. That was an interesting way of putting it, that you don't accrue a benefit from omitting something. On this path, it's very easy to get into thinking that omitting things is a holy grail.

Donna Gates continued the balanced, compassionate, non-zealous espousal of what has worked for her and in her clinical practice, with a special emphasis on the importance of fermented foods traditionally for humans and in therapeutic settings, especially to do with the yeast epidemic. I found it a good reminder to eat my kim chee and drink my kombucha!

But then Robert Young came on and said that all fermented food is toxic. I'd have to say that he was the first genuine zealot in the series of speakers. Everyone else so far, even those espousing a strong position in favor of veganism or of omnivory, of low-glycemic diets or anything else, has emphasized the importance of individuality and the necessity that everyone experiment and find out what works best for them. It was quite humbling to hear these very eminent experts all acknowledge that human health and nutrition are so complex and compass so many factors that there is not a definitive black and white truth to be preached.

Well, Dr Young does believe that there is a truth, that he knows what it is, and that anyone who does anything different is going to an early grave. He puzzled me at the outset by saying that vegetarian and vegan diets 'don't work,' and then, moments later, saying that if you eat meat you're killing yourself. It turns out that the diet that he espouses is an 'alkalarian diet,' completely vegan and largely raw, but also predominantly 'green.' Everything should be alkaline, your poop should be green, you need fat for fuel but protein and carbohydrate are life-destroying. No middle ground, no exceptions.

It was striking to me that Dr Young was also the first speaker who did not in any way acknowledge the component of pleasure in food. Dr Fuhrman, (who thinks that salt is a killer), agrees with Dr Young (who thinks that salt is essential) that 'cravings' are not a good way to make food choices, that they are the product of addiction and deranged gut flora. But Dr Fuhrman still talks of making delicious salad dressings and other delicious foods. I didn't detect anything in Dr Young's talk to suggest that enjoyment was a worthwhile component of nutrition. There have been times in my life that I've found such an approach very attractive, but at this point, I think that enjoyment is an important piece.

I am really grateful to receive such a variety of perspectives (I'll say a little more about this when the series has ended). For someone like myself, with a tendency to extremism, it's especially welcome to have some of the more 'extreme' viewpoints and espousals juxtaposed with different others, as it curbs my tendency to fall into the latest most extreme most restrictive most austere... What if I can mend my metabolism and eat wholesome food without being afraid? What if I don't have to follow the most forthright and browbeating of the 'gurus'? I'll never be able to eat 'anything and everything' like Phil does: I don't think I'd want to. But to be able to transmute some of the gray areas and rough edges of perfection with grace and gratitude, to let pleasure and appreciation round out the nutrient levels? That sounds good to me. And meanwhile, it is important to me to learn as much as I can and to expose myself to the greatest possible variety of approaches: great therapy for an extremist.

Revisionist Peas!


I'm continuing to make that favorite cherry-almond smoothie I shared recently as an oft-chosen part of lunch.

I've made it a few different ways: the most surprising recent one, when I didn't have any (coco)nut milk handy and needed a little more 'substance:' I added a cup of frozen green peas! I've been loving those so many different ways lately: they're a great value. Couldn't taste them in there at all and they gave it a great texture...

Are you tuned into the Great Health Debate?
What's your most surprising addition to a smoothie?

The Great Health Debate, Our Perceptions of Experts, Impulse Indulgence vs. Make Your Own

I hope everyone's having a beautiful day. Sun is shining the snow bluish here, up in Anchorage, floating around again, on funny schedule and chancy internet connections again. We spent almost the whole of yesterday _outside_, on a boat, in Prince William Sound. I'll post more about it when I'm home and can upload photos.

Internet connection notwithstanding, I'm listening to The Great Health Debate and really hope that I can catch as much of it as possible this week. They have an amazing line-up of genuine experts from all sides of the nutritional spectrum: for example, last night's debate, that I'm catching up on now, was between Gabriel Cousens, MD and Joseph Mercola, MD. The luminescent level of speakers stays as high as that throughout the course. It's an amazing thing that Kevin Gianni and the Renegade Health folks have put on. These two, one raw vegan, the other high-raw omnivore respectively, are compatible otherwise in that they both advocate a metabolic-typing approach. I had to admire the respect with which they debated with each other and look forward to continued sincerity and courtesy in the information-sharing to come.

As someone blessed with slow internet connections, I'm also eternally grateful that the talks are basically audio files, not videos, which would be very frustrating: it makes it far more likely that I'll get to hear all of it.

So, I'll be spending some time with them this week and encourage anyone else with like interests to do so too. It can be so enlightening to meet experts in person, and also to hear their voices, even over the computer: get a sense of how they talk, how they interact, what their energy is like. It must be a little daunting as an 'expert,' especially a 'nutritional expert,' that every nuance and foible may be judged, and may be used to judge the efficacy of the approach that you espouse! I feel a little shy of coming out here with my impressions of Cousens and Mercola as personalities--but I met Cousens in person too about seven years ago, and my impression now is similar to what it was then. I would say in brief that I find both of them quite impressive but also with some significant reservations. Despite the 'spiritual' emphasis, there is definitely a strong 'ego energy' present.

And is it unfair of me, as an intensely verbal person, to feel uncomfortable/judgmental when an 'expert' mispronounces or malaprops several words? And speaking of judging experts, Ray Peat, on the basis of whose research I'm experimenting with minimizing PUFAs, as I shared in the last post, is an interesting and engaging speaker but he 'um's and 'er's so frequently and so much that you start to wonder whether all the neurons are firing! Fatty acid deficiency? If I start to 'um' and 'er' too (except when I'm multitasking, when I'm allowed!), tell me and I'll go back and pound some flax seeds, ok? On that note, interestingly, both Mercola and especially Cousens talked emphatically (if not at great length) about the importance of PUFAs and omega-3's. I wish I could have asked them about Peat's research and what it says to that in their judgment.

Being in Anchorage, being on the road, being unsettled and boomeranging, occasionally I succumb to a packaged indulgence, especially when there's a tide of hormones to ride out too and/or I didn't get enough to eat the day before. If there's something bar-shaped that has no gluten or dairy and is raw-ish and I haven't tried it before, I sometimes feel the need to do so, and almost always wish I hadn't (they're never cheap).

This time, I tried an 'Organic Fiber Bar' in the chocolate flavor--yet another nut-date bar with some added fiber, and some sunflower oil that I really would not have preferred to have (I don't like that concentrated sunflower taste in sweet things). The sunflower taste is the biggest strike against this, but generally the chocolate flavored nut-date bars are not my favorite. One good thing that I'm noticing, though, is that these kinds of bars don't crash my blood sugar as much as they used to.

What is it about these packaged snacks that is so appealing, even when I can read the ingredients and be pretty sure it won't taste great and that I could make something far better? (Of course, being in Anchorage in the Natural Pantry and being hungry both play a part). My own stuff almost always tastes and feels way better, and is definitely worth the time invested. Maybe I should make fancy foil wrappers for it... Of course, chia-sweet-based snacks are out of the picture for me for the time being (interestingly, I wasn't really eating them for a bit even before the PUFA-minimizing experiment). But I have my barks, which are always good, and have been experimenting and playing with some other things too: I'll share soon. I've also been eating more plain raw carrots and leftover roasted yams/parnsips as snacks, but am planning a challenge to design a low-PUFA-compatible snack: I'll share more soon.

Are you an impulse indulger or do you always bring your own? Do you feel ok about impulse indulgences?

PUFA Talk, Photo Uploading, Fun With Leftovers

Happy weekend, everyone!
Since this post will be otherwise unashamedly food and nutrition-related, I'll start with the view from our front door.

Gorgeous, no? (Gorgeous snow!)  The gilding, the distillation of color contrasts--a mirror for mind's thoughts to bounce off.

Thank you for all the helpful advice on resizing (downsizing) photos and de-bloating picasa.  My less-than-tech-savvy brain was beginning to get a grip on some suggestions, and then I remembered it's First Friday, which meant drop-in computer help at our local library. So I got some wonderful help and a clear angle on how to do this--thank you so much, Ryan and the library! picnik.com allows me to shrink the huge pictures already in picasa, and iPhoto will allow me to make them small to begin with: an extra step, but they'll upload faster. Orders of magnitude smaller--I had no idea that the resolution size could vary so much (for so little apparent gain)...and it's an extra step before uploading, but at a few hundred KB instead of 3MB, they'll load up so much faster.

PUFAs and Why I'm Experimenting with Minimizing Them
PUFAs = Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids: the long-chain, highly unsaturated fats found in nuts, seeds and their oils, fish. Highly unsaturated means that many carbons in the carbon/hydrogen chain are unbound, which means that they can easily pick up extra oxygen bonds: i.e., oxidize. I think pretty much everyone knows now that seed and grain oils are a poor choice for cooking especially, (even more so if hydrogenation is involved or prolonged high heat) and probably for general consumption: being so highly oxidative, they go rancid fast and also 'go trans'--the molecule changes (or is changed by hydrogenation) in structure to something that is not recognized or easily incorporated by the body, something that is clearly correlated with heart problems, elevated cholesterol, etc.

It's also fairly generally acknowledged that maintaining an optimal omega-3 to omega-6 ratio within one's polyunsaturated fat intake is important for health maintenance: high omega-6 correlates with inflammation, tumor formation and much more. Hence the fish oil craze, hence the importance of flax seeds, hence the whole concept of 'essential fatty acids.' There is a high polyunsaturated fatty acid concentration in the human brain, and many nutritionists believe that we need to ensure consumption of two of them, EPA and DHA, in particular, for optimal brain and mood health.

Even raw-foodists (other than 80-10-10-ers, who restrict all fats severely) sometimes note that they feel better not eating too many nuts and seeds, but on a raw food diet especially, it's very easy to make these a staple and to end up with a huge omega-6 intake.

I've always had this on my radar, and (like Gabriel Cousens recommends in Conscious Eating), have made sure to balance especially high-omega-6 foods like sesames and sunflower seeds with some flax or chia. Coconut, of course, contains almost entirely saturated fat, and perhaps this experiment was appealing to me because I've always 'felt' better with coconut than with other nuts and seeds.

Recently, I've been reading Ray Peat's work, and it seems appropriate that I was led there by Matt Stone's research trends since, on the PUFA issue at least, this is a complete 180 from anything I'd read before. It's a 180 but it's also stunningly plausible in places, and Peat has a PhD in Biology and has been working on the interactions between nutrition and hormones since the late 1960's. According to his research, Polyunsaturated fats in general, not just the trans fats, not just the omega-6's, are less than optimal for consumption for several reasons, mostly connected with their oxidative nature. They correlate with lowered metabolism and increased fat storage, with inhibition of proteolytic enzymes and detoxification enzymes, and with increased estrogen output (which also lowers metabolism). He cites studies suggesting that many problems that have been linked to 'fatty acid deficiency' have been remedied by adding vitamin B6 in some cases and E in others.

Now of course, it's easy to claim all kinds of things, and one has to wonder why this side of the picture is not more widely known. Part of the answer is industrial/monetary--the market is flooded with cheap seed oils--but that doesn't explain the fatty acids in the brain part. I'm not done reading all that he has to say, and plan to follow up further, checking some references, but some of the detriments that he associates with PUFAs are so close to me that it seems worth making this experiment on myself.

I have a grievously slow metabolism, obviously, having stayed in starvation mode for about half my life so far, and am coming to recognize the benefits of encouraging it to speed up, especially as my body no longer tolerates starvation! Upping starch and focusing on coconut as fat source may help with this. Additionally, after a decade of no menstruation, I'm 'estrogen dominant' as equilibrium struggles to exert itself, which tends to slow metabolism further. If PUFAs and estrogen are in a positive feedback loop and my estrogen needs to be lowered, lowering PUFAs seems like a sensible plan.

From a culinary perspective, within the confines of raw eating this can be quite a challenge, since so many fun recipes are extensively nut or seed-based. But I haven't missed them at all (maybe partly because I've been reaping the benefits of starch (update coming soon). Macadamias have almost no PUFAs, cashews and hazelnuts are also pretty low, and I'm not doing this as an absolute black and white thing, for once! For thickening my smoothies, irish moss has come into my life and it's surprising to me that something so minimally flavored should become such a favorite.

If I find that I'm suddenly plunged into depression, despite all the vitamin D and full spectrum lighting, I'll eat some flax or chia and see if that helps.

Fun with Leftovers


I've mentioned before that I love leftovers but don't always know what to do with them. This past week has been fun. Before we got on the road for Anchorage this week, we had friends over to dinner. I had made mashed sweet potatoes with coconut cream and a salad, amongst other things. For the road, I added some berbere spice and nutritional yeast and some peas to the mashed sweet potatoes, and mixed it all with the salad. This made two very satisfying and delicious lunches!

Then, in Anchorage we ate out one evening at a Thai-Vietnamese restaurant. I enjoyed spicy coconut soup with lots of veggies in it (also a lot of pieces of galangal and lemongrass, which I don't mind but I know some people really do). It was good for lunch next day too. It came with a scoop of rice too: I had a few nibbles but am still cautious with rice because it hasn't sat well with me. I knew Phil wouldn't eat plain leftover rice either, but I also knew he loves rice crackers. So, I mixed the rice with about three tablespoons soy sauce, a dash of sesame oil and a sprinkle of salt and black pepper, and whizzed it with the hand-held blender (that my friend David calls the 'outboard motor'). Stirred in a tablespoon or so of sesame seeds (obviously, my no-PUFA-experiment is just on myself and not on Phil too!) Then, I spread it out flat on parchment paper, dipping my fingers in water to keep them wet, scored it into squares and baked it at 325. It was probably about an hour and fifteen minutes total baking time; I flipped them over and removed the parchment paper half way through.

They were definitely a hit with Phil and did not last long!

Any creative uses of leftovers you'd care to share?
Have a beautiful weekend.

New Year Intentions Check-in; Bearing Up, Bearing Down, Wearing and Request for Photo Advice

Happy February! I'm wanting to check in about New Years Intentions, and am finding myself once again two days behind on things and tired out from another Anchorage trip.

I did get to meet 'Snowzilla' this time (I'm standing there for scale, looking up in awe):

--I don't usually get excited by random artwork, but this was the biggest snowman I've ever met by a long way, and I was excited! Apparently some guy in Anchorage builds Snowzilla every year and the municipality thinks it's a nuisance because of all the gawkers and photographers (whose ranks we duly joined).

Speaking of photography: I know that having photographs in the blog really enhances the experience. Conversely, having the blog as a vehicle for sharing photos is a great encouragement to me to take more of them. However, I've just started to have problems with the pictures. Blogger is telling me that I've reached my storage limit and need to buy more room. When I delete pictures so that I can upload new ones, the deleted ones disappear from the blog. I was also just made aware that the pics I upload from my Canon Powershot are very big files: usually 3-4 MB.

Does anyone have any advice for me on this? I'd love to know how to make the photo file sizes smaller, so that I can fit more pics into Blogger.

Food experimentation pictures, and also goofy pictures like this one--

...on a walk with a wonderful friend, several times around University Lake in Anchorage, we noticed that this rock (or iceberg?) is the local doggie bulletin board. This was Phil's answer, and I just got the shot before several canine characters rushed up to make sure that he wasn't wiping their data.

These weekly trips to Anchorage are taking a toll. In my New Year Intentions post, I mentioned that I needed to become more circumspect with my blogging and blog participation. So far this year, we've been offline and on the road for a couple of days out of each week, so circumspection has been enforced, but it always feels like I'm cramming more into less space. On the other hand, one of my most important blog-related intentions was that my blogging should be a part of my writing practice as opposed to a time-sink that detracts from it. Despite the adverse situation, I would have to say that so far this intention is being carried through successfully. I have written a couple of poems based on thoughts that I blogged about, and have otherwise put thought and craft into my posts rather than just cranking 'em out.

At the one-month mark, the major-theme intention of 'reviewing' is definitely active. This includes things as diverse as going through my notebook and making sure that I'm following through with writing projects on the one hand, and defrosting the fridge on the other! Ask me if I've done these things before we head back to Anchorage on Sunday or Monday...

As we bear up with the disruption and discombobulation, it's also time to bear down on a variety of paperwork things that will make the future a better place, ranging from scholarship applications to taxes. I have signed up for a couple of writing classes coming up this month, so as to continue learning from powerful teachers, and this past week I also taught my first ever poetry workshop myself!

I'm hoping that by the time I post next, I'll have solved my photo dilemma so that I can post more pics (it's snowing and gorgeous here and I wish I could share a picture) (thanks in advance for all helpful suggestions), and this week I intend to write about PUFAs as promised, and to continue to share thoughts about my current starch self-experiment.

Much love