Monday, February 25, 2008

Day fiftysix

I missed a couple of days. Sorry about that.

Saturday was a very happy day for me. I spent the bulk of the day with my wife Ruth. Since I had this trip coming up, we drank in each other's presence. We took care of financial matters in the morning, took a yoga class at noon, and then had lunch at Red Lotus. Later, I made us a light dinner and we watched the movie The Green Mile. This movie has been haunting me ever since. It was certainly Oscar-worthy but never got considered. I am not sure for the reasons for this, but the message of the movie is very apt for our current age. I will not belabor this issue, but highly recommend that you consider renting this film.

I also read much of the book In Defense of Food, an Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan. If you have not read this book you should do so. I agree with much of it, disagree with other parts as well, but find that in general it crystallizes many things, notably how we got to the state we are in with our pathetically dysfunctional food culture. The areas that I disagree with are the consumption of animal products (which he allows), and alcohol. Michael Pollan maintains that moderate consumption of alcohol is beneficial to your health. I am no teetotaler, as many of my friends know, but I highly suspect that the studies which correlate alcohol to improved health are subject to many of the defects of things like the Nurses Study, i.e. the sample consumed a standard American diet (or a slightly modified version of it) during the study. It has yet to be proven that consumption of alcohol has benefits in combination with a very healthy diet. I highly doubt that it does.

Otherwise, though, this book is great. It certainly helps to understand the reasons why our food culture is whacked in ways similar to how The Pleasure Trap helps you understand why you desire to eat unhealthy foods. Both books are necessary in order to understand how we got into the state we are now in.

Both of these books, by the way, were recommended by my good friend Jodi. Many thanks to her for these excellent suggestions.

I am now reading another book, The Autoimmune Epidemic by Donna Jackson Nakazawa. This book is not one which recommends the consumption of a whole foods plant based diet. It is very fascinating nonetheless, particularly for someone like me, whose body is eaten up by autoimmune disease.

Here are the numbers: 23.5 million people in America have a serious autoimmune disease. That's one in 12. This is more than double the number of people that have cancer, and more than five time the number of people who have cardiovascular disease.

The budget of the federal government for autoimmune disease for last year was $559 million. That's one tenth the budget for cancer and one twentieth the budget for heart disease.

Hmmmm.

The question is why? I haven't gotten very far in the book, but I will keep you apprised.

Looking at the WFPBD books, like Dr. Fuhrman's, Dean Ornish, John McDougall, Caldwell B. Esselstyne, and such, it is obvious that these books predominantly concern heart disease. Dr. Fuhrman claims no benefit to his program for cancer. The China Study claims a cancer prevention benefit, but not a treatment. Similarly, The China Study spends a great deal of time covering the issue of heart disease, cholesterol, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis and the like.

Other than Dr. Fuhrman who has a chapter on autoimmune disease in Fasting for Health, there is almost no mention of the issue of autoimmune disease.

It would seem the the bias in favor of heart disease and cancer as the big health issues of our time has leaked into the WFPBD crowd as well.

Reading the autoimmune book (which I will hereafter refer to with the acronym TAE, for The Autoimmune Epidemic), it is very obvious that autoimmune diseases not only destroy the health and quality of life of millions of Americans (myself included), it also kills them in large numbers. Diseases like schleroderma, lupus, and MS are inevitably fatal. In fact, psoriasis alone kills a few thousand people a year, primarily from the side effects of treatment. Those folks die in terrible pain as well.

No wonder I seriously contemplated euthenizing myself when faced with the prospect of dying of this disease. I watched my father fall to pieces. By the time he died, he no longer had fingernails or toenails. They had turned to dust. Huge clouds of psoriasis flew off him whenever I touched him.

I will not do that. It pains me to know that he could have been cured. (Cancer eventually took his life before psoriasis did, mercifully). I will maintain my course. I will beat this thing eventually.

I am now in California. I am eating very well. The flight yesterday was a bit of an issue. I became swollen and inflamed during the second leg of the journey, possibly as a result of consuming wheat. I must stay away from gluten I suppose. I needed to eat and the healthiest thing that I could find in DFW airport was a humus and veggie sandwich at Au bon pain. It was a bad idea. I had very little if any pain on the first leg, but was quite bothered by arthritis pain and swelling in my second leg.

Today, though, I am feeling well. I had oatmeal for breakfast (with berries and a little soymilk). for lunch I had a huge salad and a bowl of vegan split pea soup. I feel quite strong and well rested. My plans are to attend a yoga class later and then a late dinner, possibly back at the hotel.

More later.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Day fiftythree

I have been pretty stressed out today. Work problems. I have much travel coming up, and I am not very happy about that.

I need my job to settle down. I need time to heal, time to eat healthy food. I do not need a bunch of work stress and co-workers asking me while on the road why I do not eat steak.

I am going to have to do this, it looks like. Bummer.

I am still on the diet, though. My diet today was a blended salad smoothie and then a regular salad for lunch. All vegan and very light. I worked out this afternoon, and felt good doing so.

The plan for the weekend is to continue on the diet, go to Ray and Debby's house for dinner tonight, possibly ride bikes tomorrow (or possibly yoga), and then fly to CA on Sunday.

More later.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Day fiftytwo

I am beginning to lose weight again. My weight was down to 234.6 this morning, after spiking back up to 237.

This is very cool. Especially because I am making no effort to control quantity, particularly in foods which I can have unlimited amounts of. These include beans, fruit and green vegetables. I am pigging out on this stuff. I am trying to limit the amounts of nuts, nut butter, and fatty stuff like avocado that I eat.

Apparently this is paying off.

I am still not having any pain from the vasectomy procedure of 2 days ago, although there is some bruising down there.

Psoriasis wise, I am having lots and lots of scaling. My skin is in very bad shape. I am going to yoga tonight which should scale me off and help with that.

I have no real arthritis anymore. I probably should simply stop blogging about this. I just don't have it at all, or very, very little.

Irritable bowel syndrome is also a thing of the past. I will advise you if this spikes up again. For now, assume my BMs are very nice. Nuff said?

Also, enlarged prostrate is completely resolved. Same thing. I will let you know if that changes. Otherwise, assume my prostrate feels like it did when I was in my twenties.

My BP is around 130/78, give or take a few points. Not a problem in other words.

Soooooo, I am running out of health problems. That's a good thing. The skin remains my only remaining target. That may take a while, the way things are going. But I am very persistent.

I will continue to blog on that issue, as well as diet and weight loss. The plan for now is to continue the diet until early May. At that point, I will consider my options for the next fast.

More later.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Day fiftyone

I missed yesterday due to my procedure (a vasectomy). I made it through with flying colors. I have virtually no pain or soreness. I am not sure how to interpret that. It seems too good to be true. But it is. It actually feels like nothing ever happened.

I have one small stick, and no stitches. Weird!

I am sticking to the diet. Today I have had some fruit and my pasta with tomato sauce. I used the Quinoa pasta from whole foods, which is recommended by Dr. F. The sauce I made myself, as I describe in a previous post. It improves with age. I added zucchini squash to it as well, plus lots and lots of garlic.

Delicious. I do not miss meat.

Plans are to go home, relax, eat the diet and continue to heal.

More later.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Day fortynine

Seven weeks today.

I am having a vacestomy tomorrow. That means I need to eat light for dinner and can have no solid food after midnight.

I am having the low invasive vasectomy. I had the standard vasectomy in 1998, but it did not work. When they tested my sperm for this round, I had 770 million with a motility of 90%. That is a very healthy sperm count. There is no doubt that I am fertile.

It is very inappropriate and irresponsible for me to father a child at this point in my life. I am 53. I need to be sterile. This will take a huge burden off of my wife Ruth and free us up in many ways.

The downside is the discomfort. I must admit that I am nervous about this. But that is something I will have to get through. My BP this morning was 130/78, not bad for a mildly stressed out individual.

I still seem to be gaining some weight post fast. I was 237 this morning. I am being very compliant, so I am not sure what is up with that. I am going to have to not worry about it. I will just continue to eat the diet and let the rest take care of itself.

I had some pain last night in my hands. My nail beds mostly. This is probably due to the killer workout that Jon and I did yesterday. I stressed my grip out a lot in this workout, and that has probably led to some inflammation in my hands. This disturbed my sleep last night. I am going to need to invest in some weight lifting gloves if we keep doing this.

Following up on the exchange with Alex and Alice on Friday night, Ray and I have been swapping emails. I include both our comments below verbatim. As far as I am concerned, Ray and I are OK about this now:

Ray's email:

We can talk about this later, but I believe you misunderstood Alex and Alice's points. I believe they were promoting change (or at least I know that Alice described what she did in detail). I suspect what she is promoting is not as far off. I don't think it was an excuse at all. I think she took every opportunity to point them to lifestyle changes but was describing their unwillingness to change. I think that is unfortunately true. While they may not have the full scope of what is possible through diet changes, I believe Alice is a lot more aware ... based on my side conversations.

Both Alice and Alex are finishing their training. Alex is finishing a dual degree program giving him an MPh (master in public health) and an MD. The MPH does give him some great training in epidimeology. Alice is an RN who is finishing her FNP (Family Nurse Practitioner). They met on a medical mission's trip to Honduras last year. I would say that they are potential converts rather than the system.

I think that Ruth's suggestion is good for now. You are developing an extremely compelling story. I can only tell you that when I discussed your situation with Walid, one of Pam's study partners from Eastern Virginia Med School, he was very interested. His dad, a physician, was an early advocate of diet and lifestyle changes. If Walid goes into primary care, he would like to focus on that approach. I have sent him quite a few references.. of course he has been very busy in med school, but I am confident he will follow up. In some respects we can change people this way.

You are doing great.

Ray

My email in response:

I am hopeful that you are right about Alice and Alex. It is possible that I misunderstood them, given that the discussion turned to malpractice rather than generally about the system itself. Malpractice is a hot button for most folks in the medical industry. The fact that the issue threatens the livelihood of many medical professionals creates anger and resentment. This may disguise the desire for change behind a wall of defensiveness. I suspect that happened Friday night.My passion is also driven by anger of a different sort. Robert Kyosaki says that passion is anger mixed with love. Since my family is littered with catastrophes brought about by medical malpractice and mismanagement, I have some anger about the issue too. The litany includes:

  1. Ruth, who was misdiagnosed as depressed, given Paxil, jacked up to twice the recommended dose, and then pulled off cold turkey by her primary care physician. The PDR says you have to tritrate by no more than 10 mg per week. She was at 80 mg. The maximum dose is 40 mg. She cratered within 24 hours and ended up in the hospital with a serotonin storm in her brain. She almost died.
  2. My mother, a heavy smoker, was prescribed hormone replacement therapy by her OB/Gyn for menopausal symptoms. These drugs had a known side effect of causing breast cancer which was far worse in women who smoked. The physician neither her told her this, nor followed up with recommended exams. She died within 2 years at the age of 57.
  3. My sister Debby was prescribed high blood pressure medication which had a known side effect of causing depression. The physician failed to understand that she was living in an environment of incredible stress. (She was a Dallas County District Attorney in charge of sexual crimes. Ever watched the show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit? That was her life.) She became suicidal within a few weeks and shot herself in the head with a 35 caliber pistol, dying instantly.
  4. My daughter was given the DPT vaccine at the age of 2 as part of a routine wellness checkup. Within a few hours her fever spiked to 105 degrees. It cooked her brain. She became severely autistic and mentally retarded for the rest of her life. It was known that the DPT vaccine caused this in a significant fraction of children who received it, but the drug was not withdrawn from the market until years later, and many more children, including my daughter, became autistic as a result.
  5. In my own life, I have been examined and treated by many health care practitioners in the past year or so. My health was going downhill rapidly. I was in a downward spiral. Lack of sleep combined with pain was causing me to lose hope and a will to live. No one ever told me to change my lifestyle in this manner until you did.

So, you and I have had very different experiences in our lives with the medical industry. Mine has been in general profoundly negative. To be fair, there have been some exceptions. Sam’s appendix and my brother’s brain tumor being two prominent examples. But in general, I have observed that I am far healthier staying as far away from the medical profession as humanly possible.

Thanks for your encouraging words. I will keep going.
More later.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Day fortyeight

Seven weeks tomorrow. Wow!

I had lunch with Ray and Debby today. I think I got across the position of where I am with WFPBD and the medical industry.

Ray stated in his email to me this morning that he does not think that the evidence concerning WFPBD is clear enough to warrant a lawsuit. He believes that in order to sue, one would have to prove that a WFPBD approach would be effective, and that would require a double blind clinical trial. We discussed how that could happen. The cost of an average clinical trial is in the hundreds of millions, so that is unlikely, obviously.

However, I think the evidence is much clearer than required. Simply because Ray is the bar too high. The duty to inform of an alternative treatment does not require that the treatment be a slam dunk. It is required to inform if the treatment is at least as good as the one the doctor did inform of. Thus, WFPBD does not have to be proven to be the cure for all mankind's ills. It is good enough if it is a major thread in the medical literature, and a patient had a condition of which the treatment was a viable alternative. Angioplasty has been shown in many studies to be a temporary fix at best. Most patients' blockage returns within six months. By pass is also of marginal benefit. Yet doctors have no problem recommending these treatments.

So, even assuming there is "dispute", it is still required to inform the patient. After all, the doctor is required to inform the patient concerning side effects which may or may not occur. He or she is also required to inform of alternatives to otherwise dangerous or risky procedures.

Further, there are several references to the issue of malpractice in the literature. Caldwell B. Esselstyne refers to this in his book, and is also quoted in The China Study. Joel Fuhrman as well in the fasting book. So, as I said, the statement I made on Friday night is not as controversial as it sounds.

Eventually, I think this sort of lawsuit is inevitable. All of the doctors in this body of literature refer to a situation in which as patient goes to a conventional practitioner, gets standard care, gets no results, then goes to an alternative practitioner, gets amazing results, and then goes back to the first doctor and asks the WTF question. (Fuhrman is very strong on this set of events, referring to it repeatedly in his books, as well as the newsletters.)

In many of these cases the first doctor throws the patient out rudely. It is inevitable that in so doing, the doctor is going to piss off the wrong patient who happens to be smart, aggressive and wealthy. Then the doctor will end up being sued. I strongly suspect that this set of events has already happened multiple times. These cases are most likely being generously settled, because the malpractice insurers (most of whom are incestuously related to the health insurers) know that they are potential losers.

The bottom line, from what I can see is this: There is a major thread going on in the medical industry involving non-conventional researchers who are willing to try alternatives to standard medical care. They are stumbling around trying various things. The thing they keep coming up with (often independently of each other) is WFPBD. Because it works very well for many issues. The conventional medical industry is resisting this. The question is why?


On Friday night I referred to the issue of cost. That is the medical industry wants to preserve the standard of care as being in favor of relatively expensive procedures like bypass and angioplasty (thereby enriching themselves) and opposed to less expensive procedures like WFPBD. That is obviously a very cynical explanation, and one which got a huge push back Friday night.

Another potential explanation is liability avoidance. This is the reason given by Campbell and Esselstyne. The Cleveland Clinic would not allow Esselstyne to set up a clinic to practice medicine using WFPBD because "the patients who had been given angioplasty and bypass would sue." That's a real obstacle to this becoming mainstream. This is the real reason for my interest in being involved in a lawsuit. David Boise was able to make a huge impact in our society in the area of tobacco. He filed the tobacco lawsuit, and eventually many abusive practices on the part of the tobacco industry were stopped. This is one way in which we change things in America.

Having said that, as I said yesterday, I am prepared to give this a rest for now. I have to take care of myself. I need to heal, rest, avoid stress, and eat healthy food. I am not in any shape to take on the medical industry right now.

Give me six months. Yeah, maybe then. But for now, I will take a break.

My friend Jodi recommended a new book by Michael Pollen. I need to check this out.

More later.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Day fortyseven

I weighed 236.2 this morning. Yes, I know. That's a seven pound weight gain from my low weight after the fast. Still six pounds less than my weight of 242.2 the day before the fast. That means a six pound weight loss in four days of fasting.

I'll take it.

My waist is still 45 inches flat.

I am now up to full strength again following the fast. I attended another yoga class today, feeling very strong.

Last night I had a transformative experience at Ray and Debby's house. I began to play the crowd a bit talking about my ideas about the abusive and negligent American health care system.

Turns out two of the attendees to the dinner work in the health care system. They took exception to what I said, as you can imagine.

I am not sure their exact capacities. They were a married couple, named Alex and Alice. I think Alex is a doctor.

At any rate this led to a series of heated exchanges. In the process, they defended the American health care system and maintained that they do not have a duty to inform patients of their options with respect to treating disease with WFPBD (my new acronym, i.e.: whole foods plant based diet; like it?). They started by maintaining there is dispute about the issue. I.e., WFPBD does not reduce blockage, cholesterol, blood pressure, etc. I doubt that is the case, but there is certainly dispute about whether angioplasty, bypass, statins, etc., are effective too. And they seem to have no hesitation about discussing that with their patients.

I kind of got them off that point by saying, "Most cardiologists agree that WFPBD works, but they then assert that no one would want to do that."

They jumped on that one in spades. Alice told a story of a patient who had very high cholesterol, way above 300. This patient was not receptive to discussing lifestyle changes. When she talked about the consequences, the patient said that he was "not afraid".

And this is an amazing thing. This patient who Alice obviously disrespects and regards as pretty ignorant and misguided was her excuse as to why she does not need to inform her patients of options.

Wow.

The standard thus is that patients are weak, self-indulgent idiots who cannot take control of their own health. Who need to be given pharmaceutical drugs because they have no self-control.

And of course, in the process, they are sentenced to death.

I couldn't help it. I found their arguments momentally stupid, wasteful, and disrespectful. And I showed them so. In the process, I did not convince of anything, of course. At least, not today.

My bottom line is that so far I have nailed three major health problems with WFPBD: Enlarged prostrate, arthritis and irritable bowel syndrome. Any three of which are enough to take you out for good. Yes, the skin remains an elusive target so far. But it will clear, eventually. I simply need to stick with it long enough. There maybe some tough times to come, but I will live on and be healthy again.

I went to doctors for all three of these health conditions, and was prescribed various pharmaceutical drugs for all of them. As well as for psoriasis. None of these doctors, all of them heads of departments and at the top of their fields, informed me that I could treat and cure these diseases without drugs by a simply lifestyle change.

Eventually, I will undoubtedly go see all of them and show them what I have done. Perhaps that will not change the way they think about the practice of medicine. But, perhaps some day it will.

In discussing this with Ruth last night, she basically told me to give up for now. Focus on myself. Stop trying to change the world. I somewhat agree. I need to stop obsessing, enjoy the diet, enjoy my new state of health, and let the rest happen when it happens.

More later.

Friday, February 15, 2008

Day fortysix

I have not weighed today. Ruth swept me a way for a wonderful Valentine's day holiday / date, and thus I am a bit off my normal routine.

Yesterday, we had Red Lotus for lunch. This is a good place for vegans. I have discussed this before. I had tofu with black bean sauce and brown rice. Very tasty!

For dinner we went to Tosca's. You have got to check this place out. Many excellent vegan choices, if you work with the management. Same ownership as Blue Corn Cafe, which I have discussed previously. I had a vegan salad, and then the spinach fettuccine with grilled spinach, tomato and a wonderful vegan sauce. Yes, the fettuccine was not fully ETL compliant. However, it was the best that I could do on short notice.

This morning, we had breakfast at Windows in the Franklin Hotel in downtown Chapel Hill. Again, an ETL challenge. However, we worked with the chef and ended up with a fruit plate containing cantaloupe, honeydew and raspberry, and then grilled asparagus, spinach and roasted potato.

So, all things considered, I maintained the diet fairly well.

I am somewhat tired as the bed in the Franklin was nowhere near as comfortable as my bed at home. (When have you been to hotel that was?) But otherwise feel fine.

My plan is to eat in an ETL compliant manner, and workout at the gym. I may do yoga tomorrow morning, or I may end up riding the bike, depending on the weather.

More later.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Day fortyfive

My weight today is 231.2, a 2 pound weight gain from yesterday. As we have learned, some regaining after a fast is normal.

I am now back on the full diet. I am still having little or no issues with my joints. Arthritis responded very, very quickly to the diet. I am also no longer having irritable bowel syndrome. That stuff is going very nicely.

Another area that has responded is the enlarged prostrate. I was having typical 50-year old prostrate issues. You know, trouble starting, chaotic stream, sometimes an after tinkle, etc. Plus a feeling of pressure and burning down there.

All gone. Completely gone. It feels like my prostrate felt when I was in my 20s.

Amazing.

I had a recent conversation with a co-worker who was saying that the diet was great, but most folks wouldn't want to do it. My response was:

"I hear that a lot. If someone had told me that I could nail arthritis, irritable bowel syndrome, and an enlarged prostrate by simply giving up animal products, refined carbs, refined fats, alcohol and caffeine, I would have replied 'Hell yes!'."

Which is, of course, the problem. No one is being told. Because the medical industry does not believe that the people will do this.

I feel terrific right now. I am somewhat stressed out because of work and financial issues. But overall, my mood and energy level are extremely high.

My son worked me out last night as well. Jon has ambitions to become a personal trainer. By the time he was done with me, I was breathing in shallow gasps, and drenched with sweat. That was 30 minutes of grueling, unending cardiovascular exercise combined with heavy weights. It was great. By the time we finished I could not lift my arms to pull my shirt off.

It has been years since I have been able to work out at that level. Further, I can tell I am making more gains on each workout as I stay on the diet. It's like the diet somehow supercharges the workouts and makes them more effective. Not only can you do more in the gym, but the amount of growth and development that you experience when resting is much greater.

This is an amazing thing. Most of the muscle and fitness magazines I read advocate a high-protein, animal based diet. This seems to be counter the entire culture. It would be extremely interesting to try this diet with world-class athletes to see what results you get.

My plan for today is to eat normally. Ruth and I are going away for a one-night romantic Valentine's day date.

More later.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Day fortyfour

My weight today is 229.2, a loss of 29.7 pounds. I have lost about 11% of my body weight in a bit more than six weeks. My waist is still 45 inches.

Dr. F. responded to me. Turns out that he was not mad at me after all. He has a glitch in his web site which does not mark updates to older threads as unread. I was advised that by another member, who suggested that I create a new thread, which I did. Dr. F. responded very quickly to that post and we have been corresponding ever since.

I take back every mean and nasty thing I ever said about Dr. F. on this blog. His input to me was as follows:

My input is that is sounds like you are doing great and healing can't take place much faster than this. You are already seeing progress and it hasn't even been two months. You still have lots of weight to lose and it is not going to continue to come off at such a fast rate. I hope you can be more patient with your skin as you may have to lose lots more weight still.

Considering the fasting you have done already and the weight that has to come off, I think you should give it some time now, just on the nutritional program (at least 6 weeks) and then consider another fast if you can. But, continue to keep me posted with your progress.
So, that then becomes the new plan of record. I am going to continue with the nutritional program for six weeks starting today. That will take me until March 26. Given that I have a lot of work-related issues coming up during that period, as well as 4 weeks of back to back travel, that makes sense to me.

I will look at my next fast sometime in late March or early April. Possible after April 1, since that is the deadline for our next round of documentation. That would put me into the dead time. I could afford to take a couple of weeks off at that time to do a longer term fast.

I will continue to investigate the possibility of doing the fast at home versus a residential approach such as True North in California. The cost of doing it at home is obviously far less.

Symptom wise, I am feeling pretty terrific today. I slept very well, with only a little itching. I am slightly stressed about a deadline that I have at work, but if I focus I know that I can knock that out today. Once that is behind me, I will feel better in that regard. I have virtually no arthritis symptoms at all. That has been a major, huge win on this program. My swelling is basically gone. My hands are very flexible and pliable. I feel really young again.

Also, as expected, food tastes really, really great. It feels wonderful to be eating again. You have no idea. A full stomach is the nicest thing in the world after four days of water only fasting.

Ruth says that she cannot imagine me fasting for 14 days. I understand where she is coming from, given how difficult the last fast was. But I will definitely do it if I can nail psoriasis for good. I am very confident that I can do that.

More later.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Day fortythree

I have started eating again. Like I said previously, that fast was rough. I was beginning to want to crawl out of my skin.

I am better now. The level of itching is way down. Not gone, but better.

This morning I was 230.2. That's another .8 pound from yesterday. I continue to shed pounds. My waist this morning is 45 inches flat. That's another half an inch. So my waist is finally shrinking as well. Yay!

I have been eating high moisture content fruit (watermelon, cantaloupe, grapes, banana) and am adding high moisture content steamed vegetables (zucchini and yellow squash) to restart peristalsis. Once that occurs, I will add back salad greens. My next meal will probably be a blended smoothie consisting of high moisture content fruit and some frozen spinach. Once that is going, I will add in fibrous vegetables (asparagus, broccoli, brussel sprouts). By tomorrow EOD I should be eating nuts, legumes and such.

This will be my last short term fast. I know enough to know what I need to about fasting. I will continue to maintain the diet for another month or so. This will give me some time to work on professional issues (I have several up-coming trips), the house, my relationships, and such. Fasting basically occupies so much of your attention that you are not engaged in life during that period. This again tells me that I need to be completely off, both professionally and personally, during a fast. It's basically like you go to the hospital. Thus, what will be required for a long terms fast is that I take a dedicated period of time off of everything.

Anything less is a half measure and will probably fail. Fasting is hard work by itself. You need to persevere. It takes mental energy to avoid eating. Also, your level of emotional and physical capacity is way, way down. You simply cannot function normally. I was hoping that I could continue to be involved in life to a reasonable extent while fasting. But that simply does not work. At least it didn't this time.

My overall symptoms were that I was extremely weak, faint at times, had a rough time concentrating, poor emotional sensitivity, and so forth. I was definitely not where I am now. As I sit here having had a couple of meals, I can tell that I am far sharper and more energetic than I was during the vast majority of the time I spent on that fast.

I am not sure when I will be able to arrange this. I will work on this later. For now, I continue with the diet, and other healthy habits I have established over the past six weeks.

More later.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Day fortytwo continued

I forgot to mention that today is six weeks since I began the program. I am fasting right now, so I will not belabor the point. But that was the initial period during which I committed to try the program. I have now reached that point.

I will continue to fast until 12:20 a.m. tomorrow morning, in about 7 hours from now. I will post again after refeeding.

More later.

Day fortytwo

Today I weigh 232.0, a weight loss of 1.8 pound from yesterday. My waist is 45.5 inches, a loss of 1/2 inch.

I am extremely flaky and stupid right now. My emotional maturity is very low. I cannot seem to form sentences very well. I am retyping a lot for example.

This will be my last short term fast. Next time I fast, it will be the real deal. I have dropped some weight and made some progress. But I need to do the whole enchilada to see the results I need. Further, it is possible that going to a residential fasting center may be the best approach. That way I can fast in a supported environment without being a burden to anyone else.

I have investigated Alan Goldhamer's fasting clinic in California, which is the only surviving fasting center that I know of. (Not really true, but I do not like the look of the others I have found on the web. Let's say his is the only one that I trust.) The costs are modest. You need to pay a $500 admission fee, and then the cost is about $130 per day. Since this is physician supervised, it would be covered under insurance, or through my FSA. I could fast for about 2 weeks for around $2,500.

I will investigate this further, and report back here what I decide to do. Ruth is willing to help me fast here at home (although that is a significant burden to her) but I am definitely comfortable here. At a minimum, I am discovering that I will need to take the time completely off. Working while fasting just does not work. You need to focus on the work of fasting, not on something stressful.

Symptom wise, I am totally going nuts. My skin is extremely flaky right now. I am having tons of itching. I feel like bugs are crawling all over my body. My arthritis is way down though. That has been the main effect so far. Arthritis is very much reduced.

My plan was to get my blood drawn today. However, Ruth has asked me to refeed a day early on this fast as she has a special surprise for me for Valentines day (which is Thursday) and will need for me to be "at full strength". Given that that sounds like great fun, I am strongly encouraged to do this. I have agreed to start refeeding tonight at 12:20 a.m. Given that, getting my blood drawn is probably a waste of time. If Dr. Sharp told me to refeed, I would already be ready to do that.

I will go down to the health club and sit in the sauna a while, so that I can calm down my skin. My son will need to go with me, in case I pass out. I am very faint. Walking for any distance causes me to have big white brightly-lit areas in my central vision, and I become very dizzy. I have almost passed out three times in the past 24 hours. Not good. So I need my son, who is very strong, to help me in case I pass out in the sauna.

Having said that, if I do not scale off my skin I will go completely nuts. As I sit here, I want to claw my skin off.

Of course, yoga is completely out of the question. I could not do the standing series at all. I would definitely pass out. I frequently become faint while doing yoga anyway. In the state that I am now in, that would be extremely stupid. I am not even going to try.

So my updated plan is to refeed starting tonight at 12:20 a.m. I will start out with high moisture fruit like watermelon, mango, cantaloupe, honeydew, and the like. I will add steamed zucchini and summer squash on the second feeding. Then I will introduce higher fiber content vegetables like broccoli and brussel sprouts. All prepared simply by steaming. Nothing raw, and nothing with any added oil or spices. I will work on that later.

Second day I will begin to add salad greens and raw vegetables, continuing to eat fruit. By 48 hours from when I started, I will be back to eating nuts, whole grains, and legumes. Those will be the last things I add back in.

I will of course keep you up to date on my progress.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Day fortyone

I weigh an amazing 233.8 today. That's a weight loss of 4.1 pounds from yesterday. My waist is still 46 inches.

I am lightheaded and queasy, but my arthritis is pretty much gone and my itching has largely stopped, especially in the crotch area.

At noon today I will be at 50%. I was 242.0 when I started the fast. At my current pace, I would end up with a 16 pound weight loss by the time I finish Wednesday morning, about 8 pounds lighter than I am now, or about 226. If that happens, it will be fairly incredible. I have not seen that weight in a long, long time.

My plans today are to lay low. I will continue to fast, try to get a bit more energy and generally not do too much.

More later.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Day forty

This is the second day of my five day fast. My weight this morning was 237.9. That's a weight loss of 21 pounds.

That's not a low weight yet. I was 246.4 on 1/22, on the last day of my four day fast. However, I will probably hit a new low weight tomorrow, given the progress I am making.

I slept fairly late this morning. Then I attended the yoga class at noon. I am now drinking mineral water with lemon juice. Nothing other than water or zero calorie clear liquids have passed my lips since 12:20 a.m. yesterday morning.

I actually feel pretty good. Last night I was having issues with my skin and joints. Since yoga, though, that has really calmed down. I am inclined to lay down for a while, take a nap, and then generally take it easy.

More later.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Day thirtynine

I am now fasting. My fast began last night at 12:20 a.m. I will fast until 12:20 a.m. on Wednesday morning, 2/13/08. 120 hours total, as I have said.

Presently, I am not too hungry with just a bit of a headache. I am thinking about going to the gym to sit in the hot tub. Probably will not work out. Mostly today I have been resting.

My weight starting this morning was 242.0. We'll see what happens over the next 5 days.

Following up on my post yesterday, the yowel circuit (described in the book The Pleasure Trap) works just fine as long as you are consume a natural, whole foods, plant based diet. It will be defeated if you consume a nutrient dense diet. A rat, for example, will maintain a healthy weight as long as it is fed an appropriate diet. When it is fed a diet of white bread and chocolate, however, it will gain 50% of its body weight in just 60 days. The yowel circuit does not work in this case.

This is what I have experienced. A diet consisting of steak, eggs, chicken, chocolate, ice cream, cookies, bread, pasta, etc. has left me in a state of obesity. I am definitely in the obese category. My first goal should be to get below that level, down to where I am merely overweight. That means my BMI should be less than 30. Presently, my BMI is 32.5. That means that I need to be below 220. That is a weight loss of 22 pounds from my present weight.

My eventual goal weight is 175. But that is going to take a while. I think 220 is achievable in the next couple of months at the rate that I am going. I did lose almost 20 pound in the first 4 weeks, after all.

Of course, the skin is the primary objective. In that regard, I am having some issues. Of course, things tend to kick up when I fast. I am very itchy and somewhat scaly. Hence the idea of sitting in the hot tub.

More later.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Day thirtyeight

Another tax issue has been resolved. I just got the notice from the IRS. Instead of $4,200 for TY2005, I owe $159. Wow! That's a big difference. This is a good day.

I will begin fasting tonight. In the meantime, I am eating my fill. I had a smoothie blended salad this morning and I am having another now. I also had a huge salad for lunch. I also had an apple with almond butter a few minutes ago. In addition to the bowl of black beans I had before that.

You get the idea. I am eating like a pig. But it's all good stuff. Whole, natural, plant-based foods.

I will fast for 120 hours from midnight tonight until midnight on Tuesday night. This time I will also do a 2 day refeeding period in which I will start out with high water content fruits and vegetables and gradually add other things until I end up eating legumes and whole grains by Thursday of next week, a week from today.

In the process I hope to drop another 10 pounds or so. I will keep you in the loop on that as it progresses.

I am also burning through the book The Pleasure Trap. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is looking at the issue of diet and exercise. It explains a lot. It provides a theoretical framework for why we are in the shape we are in. And how to get out of it.

Basically, humans have three basic motivations:
  1. Maximize pleasure
  2. Minimize pain
  3. Avoid effort
Things which cause pleasure are things which enhance health and promote reproduction. The assumption of the organism is that you are dealing with an environment of scarcity. Thus, food, water, and mates are in short supply. You would experience pleasure then by consuming food containing a lot of calories since by so doing you would enhance your ability to survive and reproduce later.

In terms of nutrients, humans are motivated to seek out and consume three types of nutrition, all of which are very scarce in the environment:
  1. Protein
  2. Fat
  3. Salt
  4. Sugar
Any food that contains an abundance of these nutrients (within reason) is considered to be highly palatable. For example, chocolate is high in fat and sugar, and is thus highly palatable. Similarly potato chips are high in fat and salt and are thus highly palatable. Something like meatloaf or Texas style barbecue is high in all four classes of nutrients. We experience great pleasure when eating these foods.

Remember that we are supposed to live in relative scarcity. We should be eating lots of roots and berries. Once in a while, maybe we catch a fish or steal an egg, but the day-to-day existence is pretty much seeds, berries, tubers and such.

In our society we have made highly palatable food readily available for a very cheap price within a very short timeframe. The minimize effort drive is also satisfied. You do not even need to get out of your car.

The book also explains our process of becoming full. Even in environments of relative abundance, animals will not become obese. There is a suppressor mechanism that shuts off the drive to eat. This mechanism consists of three things:
  1. Stretch response
  2. Nutrient density sensitivity
  3. yowel circuit
The stretch response is the nerves in the stomach that signal fullness. The nutrient density sensitivity is a sense of how "rich" (i.e. nutrient dense) a food is. And the yowel circuit is a set of nerves that tell the organism "You're Overweight Eat Less", or yowel for short.

We defeat these mechanisms in various ways. First, the stretch response is defeated by removing dietary fiber from the diet. An astonishing 4% of grain products consumed in this country are whole grain. The remaining 96% is basically white flour, having all or nearly all fiber removed. This gives the food far less bulk, thus not signaling the brain that you are full.

Second, the nutrient density sense is defeated because the range of sensitivity is relatively small. A fat content of 15% is very high in nature. Wild game contains this amount of fat, and that was basically the richest product that a primitive human could consume. We selective breed and artificially feed animals to produce fat content of 50%. Our sensitivity is simply not geared up to handle that amount of calories.

I am still reading how the yowel circuit works. I will update you on that when I get there.

At any rate, a very interesting book. The conclusion is the same. We need to stop consuming the following nutrients:
  1. Meat, fish and fowl
  2. Dairy and eggs
  3. Refined carbohydrates
  4. Refined oil
  5. Recreational drugs including caffeine, alcohol and tobacco
Which leaves the following nutrients which we should consume in abundance:
  1. Tubers
  2. Legumes
  3. Fruit
  4. Vegetables
  5. Whole grains
  6. Nuts
The book advocates no portion control whatsoever. You eat as much as you want. You simply change what you eat. I like this approach actually.

It is slightly different from Dr. F. in that he attempts to control portion on some nutrients (no more than 1 ounce per day of nuts for example).

But the basic, core message is pretty much the same.

More later.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Day thirtyseven

Last night we made a most excellent dinner. The heart of this dinner was the famous Browning salsa, which I have been making for most of my adult life. I adapted this recipe slightly for a low fat, low sugar, low salt diet. Here is the modified recipe:
  • 6 large onions chopped
  • 20 cloves of garlic crushed
  • 6 large bell peppers (red or orange are best) chopped
  • 20 medium Roma tomatoes pureed (a blender works best)
  • 4 large boxes of cherry tomatoes (about 4 pounds) pureed
  • 1 large bunch of cilantro picked over and chopped (throw into the blender with some of the tomatoes)
  • 4 Tbsp of cumin
  • 5 cans of diced tomatoes (low salt preferred)
  • Depending on taste, up to 20 jalapeño peppers, sliced in half, deseeded, and then chopped fine (canned jalapeño can be substituted, but be careful of the salt)
  • About 2 Tbsp of olive oil
You will need to be very careful while chopping the jalapeños. They are quite spicy and juice on you hands can easily burn your eyes. Do not touch your eyes or face while handling these puppies. You should probably wear gloves while doing this. While canned jalapeños are safer, I like the fresh ones better. Also the canned ones I have been able to find have a lot of added salt.

Put chopped onions, bell peppers, jalapeño peppers, crushed garlic, and cumin in a large pot. Add the olive oil. Saute over low heat until soft. Add fresh pureed tomatoes, cilantro, and canned diced tomatoes. Simmer over low heat, stirring frequently.

Be careful of the amount of jalapeños you add. It is easy to make this salsa too spicy. Also, the spiciness of the jalapeños can vary greatly. Add a little more during the simmering stage if you did not add enough earlier.

What you will end up with is a salsa that has a big kick in terms of flavor, but has no added salt and almost no added oil. There is naturally-occurring sugar in the tomatoes, but no added sugar as well.

This recipe makes a lot. It fills up the biggest pot we have, which is quite large. We take this salsa, put it into large zip lock bags and freeze it. It can be thawed at any time to become the basis for a vegan Mexican dish.

Now for our dinner. We roasted vegetables in the same manner as described earlier in this blog. In this case, we used onion, bell pepper, broccoli and portobella mushrooms. Once the vegetables were roasted, we grilled corn tortillas on the cast iron griddle. (I do not use flour tortillas. They have more than twice the calories of corn, as I have discussed previously on this blog. Also, corn tortillas are whole grain, and flour tortillas are basically just white bread. I avoid flour tortillas like the plague.)

Using a large clay pot with a cover, we began layering as follows:

A layer of salsa
A layer of grilled tortillas
A layer of roasted vegetables

And so forth until the pot was full.

We then baked the entire pot in an oven at around 400 degrees, until everything came up to temperature (about 15 minutes).

Note that this recipe is completely meat and dairy free. Some of my family members miss the cheese, but I do not. I find that the vegetables mixed with the salsa and tortillas are very delicious. Those who are unable to eat Mexican food without dairy are welcome to put shredded cheese on top. A maneuver of which I heartily disapprove, but one which I cannot control. My daughter did this, for example. She is still consuming some dairy. But eventually I suspect that she will come around.

More later.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Day thirtysix begins

I am now reading The Pleasure Trap in earnest. Another most interesting book.

The basic idea behind this book is that people attempt to optimize their lives by increasing pleasure and minimizing pain while also minimizing effort. In a natural context, this is a very reasonable approach to survival. Pleasure and pain are hardwired to cause us to seek a mate, nourish ourselves, get as much rest as possible, and avoid injury and disease. All of this programming results in an optimally healthy and robust life.

In a modern context it does not work. An excessive supply of highly caloric, high fat, animal-based food combined with a sedentary lifestyle wrecks havoc on the average American. In the process, the medical industry engages in the Reduce Pain strategy which prescribes symptomatic relieving medication for the resulting health problems. This is The Pleasure Trap. Following our instinctive survival pathways in the modern context is killing us.

The solution is to discipline the body, reducing or eliminating the consumption of animal products, refined fats and carbohydrates, and salt, and increase the consumption of natural, whole, plant based foods. This requires the exercise of denial. There is no doubt that processed Western foods are delicious. There is nothing more tasty than french fries, Snickers bars, ice cream and the like. Further, the sedentary lifestyle is definitely more comfortable and appealing than one with a lot of physical activity, which is simply not comfortable.

What is required is that we escape from the Pleasure Trap. I have not reached that point yet, but will update you more when I get there.

Today, I have had a blended salad smoothie consisting of blueberries, banana, kiwi, blackberries, frozen spinach, ground flaxseed and soymilk. My plan is to go down to the office and have a big salad for lunch. Jon and I are planning on working out tonight.

I will commence fasting at midnight Thursday night, a bit over 2 days from now.

More later.

Monday, February 4, 2008

Day thirtyfive continued

I forgot to mention that today is 5 weeks. I am now 5/6 of the way through the initial six weeks of the program.

Yay!

OK, my impressions of The China Study book. The bottom line that T. Colin Campbell states in the final chapter of the book is what I have been saying all along. So apparently I have not been misinterpreting the signs. The gist is this:
  • The impact on our society of the SAD is greater by far than any other challenge we face from similar forces such as terrorism, global warming or the like.
  • The cost to society of the SAD is also greater than alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs or anything of that sort. In fact, it is likely that a smoker who maintained a strict vegan, whole foods diet could smoke a pack a day every day of his or her life and never get cancer at all. That's not to say that smoking is good for you. But in our upside down, inside out society we have placed huge emphasis on the wrong thing. We are trying to get people to stop smoking. What we should be doing is trying to get the to stop eating meat.
  • What is at stake is nothing less than our society, our civilization, and ourselves. If we keep going the way we are going now, we will drown in our massive health care costs. Exporting the Western diet to the rest of the world may be our legacy of death and destruction to that part of the world as well. The rising rates of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and the rest in those parts of the world is a striking warning of what happens when people abandon their traditional food culture for our processed, animal product-based diet.
I have discovered many things in the past 5 weeks. That's for sure. I need to learn more. I am on a rapid, accelerating learning curve. I do not know where this path will lead me. But I am intrigued.

I had an interesting conversation today at Whole Foods. I was there having dinner with Ruth. (Various forms of steamed and roasted vegetables, black beans, brown rice, grapes and pineapples.) I visited the book department. There I noticed that Whole Foods does not carry The China Study, Eat to Live, Fasting and Eating for Health, Reversing Heart Disease, or any of the rest of the books I have become aware of.

Very strange.

I confronted the manager of the department about this issue. He had heard of Dean Ornish. Dr. Ornish is probably the best known of the whole foods crowd. The oldest is actually John McDougall, I recently discovered. But whatever.

My question was this:
"I have recently discovered a body of literature that advocates the use of diet, especially a vegan, whole foods, plant based diet, to cure all sorts of diseases. This diet is extremely good for your business. I am presently buying virtually all of my foods from Whole Foods, because you have by far the best products for this sort of diet. Yet you do not sell these books. That seems strange to me. Why don't you sell these items?"

He had no idea.

I will continue to work on this. It seems to me that Whole Foods needs to get with the program. But whether they do or not, I am on the program for good.

I attended Bikram tonight, so I am in my post yoga state. That is to say, my skin is scaled off and very soft. I have little or no pain in my body. But I am physically exhausted. Bikram yoga is the most physically demanding form of exercise I have ever engaged in. But it is also one of the most effective. I can tell that profound changes are occurring in my body.

More later.

Day thirtyfive

Tough day today. I am in the process of getting a vasectomy (at the age of 53, more children being very inappropriate). This killed the vast majority of today, waiting in the waiting rooms of UNC Hospital, being poked, prodded, bombarded with radiation, and having my bodily fluids collected and analyzed.

In the process, I waited from 9 a.m. until almost 1 p.m., and became ravenously hungry. I had previously consumed a blended salad with banana, kiwi, blueberries, spinach, ground flaxseed and soymilk. (I am presently consuming another one of these.) My wife kindly met me for lunch at a local Chinese place called Red Lotus. Red Lotus is here.

I know you are now reacting with total indignation. What could I be thinking? Chinese food? It can't be good.

Fortunately, Red Lotus is different, and fairly unique, in this regard. We both had the red Thai curry with tofu. This is a completely vegan meal, and aside from some added salt is also completely ETL compliant. It comes with brown rice and a vegan wonton soup. The only part of the meal that might be considered non ETL compliant would be the soup which contains pasta. Aside from that, this meal was excellent.

Symptom wise, my arthritis has almost completely resolved. I have very little pain in my body. My wedding ring, which I could not even wear at the beginning of the year, is now very loose.

I still have a lot of flaking and scaling on the skin though. I am hopeful that the fast at the end of this week will peel off another layer.

In that regard, my plans are to begin fasting on Thursday night at midnight (Friday morning in other words), and continue until midnight Tuesday night (Wednesday morning). That's 5 days or 120 hours, midnight to midnight. During this period, as usual, I will consume zero calorie clear liquids. As a new procedure I will introduce a refeeding period of 1/2 the length of the fast, rounded off to the day. In this case, I will refeed for 2 days. During this period, I will consume only fruit and high-moisture content vegetables. On day 1 of refeeding, for example, I will eat watermelon to start, followed by steamed zucchini 2 hours later, and so on. By day 3, I will reintroduce beans and grains.

After this, I will wait 4 weeks and then consider another fast of 6 days. Depending on what happens on this fast.

The idea is to gradual acclimate the body to fasting. My philosophy on fasting is a little different. I intend to maintain as close as possible to my normal activities while fasting. I have been told to only rest, but I find that my energy level is quite high, and there is no reason not to continue to do something. Otherwise, I simply get bored out of my skull. If I feel like it, I will exercise lightly, for example. Yoga would certainly be a possibility, as well as light cardio. Something like walking. I will of course refrain from extremely strenuous activities. I will also push a lot of water. I like the combination of seltzer or mineral water with lemon juice. This gives me enough of a mouth feel and taste that I don't get completely deprived, and also keeps a good urine flow going.

I have completely read the book The China Study. A very eye-opening book. More on this later.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Day thirtyfour begins

I have been reading more of the The China Study. It is still annoying.

Dr. Campbell talks about a doctor in Cleveland, Ohio, named Esselstyn. His website is here. He was a cardiologist at the top of his game. But he became disenchanted with the results. He did the research and figured out that a plant based, whole foods diet could reverse heart disease. He quietly did the study and got astounding results.

His reward? Instead of being rewarded for his success, he became a pariah. His patients kept going back to their other doctors pissed off that they had spent years suffering and spending huge sums of money on treatments which could have been easily avoided. Eventually, although Dr. Esselstyn practiced in a hospital supported by the Seventh Day Adventists (among the most health conscious of Americans), they eventually drove him out of the practice of medicine in that hospital.

Today, the standard medical practice still revolved around surgery and medication. The patients are told to go on the American Heart Association diet, which is largely animal based and is known to be completely ineffective. The vast majority of these patients get worse, not better, with this course of treatment. The prognosis for the poor patients who go down the path of the standard medical care for heart disease is not good. Not good at all.

Again, even when doctors are confronted with the irrefutable evidence in the scientific literature supporting a plant based diet, they say "Sure, but no one would want to do that. I can't even get my patients to quit smoking."

Yes, it is hard to give up animal products. I have done it. On Friday night, at the dinner at Ray and Debbie's house, my wife brought a rotisserie chicken from Sam's club. How I wanted to tear into that chicken! But I knew if I did that I would take a big step backwards. That is the slippery slope.

So I stayed veg. I am veg today. I will continue to be veg for the rest of my life.

Can they do it? Sure they can! I did it, and so can you.

More later.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Day thirtythree begins

OK, so it's a little late for me to say the day "begins". So I have been busy.

Last night Ruth and I had dinner at Ray and Debbie's house. We had the famous butternut squash soup, which is featured on Ray's blog.

OK, so it should be. Not there yet.

Ray! Put the squash soup up there dude! That stuff rocks!

Anyway, we feasted on guac and salsa, only no chips. "No chips?" you say? Yeah, we had tortillas instead. Corn tortillas, to boot. OK, Debbie, so corn tortillas don't have 100 calories. They have 63, according to John McDougall's web site. And flour tortillas have a whopping 90 calories! OK That's not as much more as I said. But still more calories than the corn tortillas.

Your best bet for eating salsa and guac is fresh, corn tortillas grilled on a black cast iron skillet. Delicious!

We also had salad, steamed broccoli, and, yes, the cool butternut squash soup.

I won't tell you about the details. I will let Ray do that.

Today, we got up and went to a 15 mile bike ride with Ray and Debbie and the rest of the biking group. I had a blended salad for breakfast before the ride. Later I made Ruth and I a lunch consisting of adzuki bean soup and more corn tortillas with avocado and salsa.

Right now, I am spending time with Jeanae and resting. That bike ride was pretty grueling!

I have been reading a book called The Pleasure Trap by Alan Goldhamer. He is a doctor who maintains a fasting house in California. Basically, Dr. Goldhamer says that we are caught in a trap in which our instinctive behavior leads to self-destructive results.

This is based on the idea that we engage in behaviors which increase pleasure and avoid pain, while expending minimum effort and energy. In the process we experience feelings of happiness, fulfillment and so forth.

This is a compelling notion. I will write more about this as I learn more.

Later.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Day thirtytwo continued

I have eaten well today.

For breakfast I had oatmeal with dried cherries. Yeah, I know. Dried fruit. Not allowed on ETL. But Dr. F. has dried fruit in the strict section of the recipes sections of the ETL book. So which is it? I asked but he did not respond to me. I think Dr. F. is mad at me. He has not responded to any message I have posted on his discussion board in the past 4 weeks.

My bottom line in a conversation with Ray yesterday is that I am going to regard dried fruit as a condiment. In other words, the reason not to eat dried fruit is that it is calorically dense. So don't eat tons of it. Just for flavoring, in other words.

So I added a handful of dried cherries to my oatmeal. So sue me.

Later, Ruth and I shared a blended salad smoothie consisting of banana, kiwi, cherries, spinach, ground flaxseed and soymilk.

For lunch I had leftover soy chicken and brown rice pasta from earlier this week.

For dinner I am planning on going to Ray's house. I will be meeting Ruth there. I am bringing the adzuki bean soup that has been going for several days. This soup has been modified by adding asparagus and sweet potato. I am hoping to get rid of as much of it as possible, and start over. I need to get another soup going. I am getting bored with this one.

I weighed 240.4 again this morning and still have a waist of 46. I am plateauing again, in other words. Let it happen. When the weight wants to come off it will. I am in no hurry.

More later.

Day thirtytwo begins

OK, so I was wrong. I reached the one month milestone last night at 12:00 midnight.

Midnight on January 1 to midnight on February 1. One month. Yeah that's it.

So what have I learned in this month?
  1. I can definitely lose weight on a vegan diet. Especially if I stick to whole food and stay away from salt, added sugar, refined carbs and refined oils. The essence of the diet is whole, natural, plant based foods as close to their raw state as possible.
  2. I like to eat this way. I am missing animal food products less and less. There are some very delicious and enjoyable foods that I can eat on this diet.
  3. Trying to emulate and replace animal products with phony look-alike vegan products is foolish. The boca burgers, phony vegan hot dogs, cheese, chicken and such are yucky. Simply let that go. Learn to enjoy pineapple, kiwi, eggplant, and the like. There is really nothing to be said for trying to hold on to experience of eating animal products.
  4. My skin and joints love this stuff. I could not wear my wedding ring when I started on this diet, and now it if falling off of me. My level of pain is vastly reduced. My skin is clearing up in multiple locations in my body. As I continue to work through the program, I have no doubt at this point that I will resolve all of my remaining health issues.
  5. Yoga is a nice addition to the program. Especially Bikram yoga. While Bikram is extremely arrogant (he basically thinks his form of yoga is the only "true" yoga), his program is still genius. The folks who are geniuses often turn out to be arrogant as well. The heat of Bikram helps with detox, cleanses the skin, and helps with the itching and scaling of psoriasis.
  6. Fasting helps. I have made breakthroughs on both fasts. They were uncomfortable and boring, but worth the effort.
  7. The process of overcoming the strongholds of addiction in your life makes you a better and stronger person. You can overcome other areas as well once you have given up unhealthy and addictive food. In the end, you become a better, more loving, and whole person.
The last lesson is perhaps the most surprising. I did not expect that.

I have learned a lot as well about nutrition generally and about the policy and marketing of food in this country. In the process, I have come to know that the issue of diet and nutrition may be the most critical issue we face. Many other issues hinge on that one. Medicare/Medicaid. Rising health care costs, and their resulting impact on the American economy. Exponentially rising rates of cancer, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and the like. Looked at as a single vector of costs to society, the unhealthy standard American diet makes the costs of alcohol, illicit drugs and tobacco look cheap.

And we hear nothing about it. That's the amazing thing. I am closing in on the end of the book The China Study, which explains in graphic terms why we are hearing nothing from the media or politicians on the issue of diet and nutrition. The excuses are:
  1. There is a countervailing study for every study showing a link between diet and disease. There is no mistake here. Every time a correctly designed study is performed which shows a relationship between animal products and disease, another poorly designed study is performed which shows no such relationship. The Nurses Study is a good example. 100% of the nurses in this study were daily consumers of animal products. They attempted to isolate a single nutrient, fat, as the source of the relationship between diet and disease. The group which ate a low fat diet did so by replacing high fat animal products (red meat, full fat dairy) with low fat alternatives (white meat chicken, low fat and fat free dairy). It's kind of like trying to correlate the rate of lung cancers among smokers to whether their cigarettes were menthol or not. It's simply nonsense. There were no vegans or vegetarians in the study. Further, $100 million of our tax dollars were spent to conduct this study which "proved that there is no relationship between diet and disease." There's your tax dollars at work for you.
  2. In the moments in which the animal products advocates admit that there might actually be a relationship between animal product consumption and disease, they say "But no one would want to do that." In other words, no one would want to change their diet in order to avoid cancer, heart disease, autoimmune diseases and the like. This is an extremely ignorant and misguided position. I was an enthusiastic carnivore. I could consume 30 - 40 ounces of steak at a sitting. But I was also so eaten up with psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis that I seriously contemplated suicide as a way of ending my misery. Would I be "willing" to change my life style to get rid of psoriasis? Hell, yes! Many, many people are as miserable as I was, and would make the same choice if simply given the correct information.
  3. Some of the resistance is due to the death of a loved one of the scientists involved. They react with the anger phase of grief at the suggestion that a simple lifestyle change could have spared the life of their loved one. They need to get over this. I had the same thing happen to me. I tried to get my mother to change her diet to overcome cancer. She wouldn't do it and I lost her to cancer a few months later. Does this anger me? Yes, it does. Do I resist the message of promoting vegan diet to resolve these issues? Of course not. This is another ignorant and irrational position.
  4. Some scientists are simply sold out to special interests. Effectively, they are whores who will say whatever the highest bidder would like. There are not very many of these but they do a great deal of damage. The objective of the industry is to create confusion, in the same manner as the tobacco industry a generation ago. As long as they have a credible expert with many letters after his or her name who can contradict whatever the scientific truth is (assuming the truth is negative to the consumption of their product), then the public gets a confusing contradictory message. In the process, they continue to maintain their current habits. It takes a cohesive, coherent message to cause the public to change. Eventually, we got that with tobacco and the rates of consumption of tobacco have declined as a result
  5. There is a lot of money involved. Folks spend a couple of hours a day eating and spend a significant portion of their income doing so. They also die, and in the process of dying, they have enormous health costs. Trillions of dollars are involved. The treatment of cancer alone is a $500 billion per year industry. That's just cancer. Factor in heart disease, autoimmune disease, and so forth, and we are talking trillions of dollars here. These are costs that we could avoid or dramatically reduce. In the process, we would take enormous amounts of revenue out of the hands of companies that have huge lobbying and marketing budgets. They will not give up those revenues willingly.
  6. What is called for is a comprehensive reform of nutritional policy. No one in government is talking about this and they should be.
My plans for the current month are to continue to diet and fast as I have in January. By the end of February, I will hit 60 days. That was the period Dr. F. prescribed to see significant results. I am already seeing those results, but expect more. I will continue to update this blog as I have been.

More later.