Please think more about the food we give to our kids.
"As far as Cheerios goes, you'd never get the impression there might be anything unnatural about their cereal. According to its website6:
"Cheerios has been a family favorite for years — with good reason! Its wholesome goodness is perfect for toddlers to adults and everyone in between. Made from whole grain oats, Cheerios has no artificial colors or flavors. Those wholesome little O's have only one gram of sugar. They're low in fat, have no saturated fat and are naturally cholesterol free. Cheerios are also an excellent source of folic acid and a good source of fiber.
Maybe that's why parents feel so good about serving Cheerios to their families. It's a healthy way to start the day, a perfect snack, and tastes great in a recipe. You can trust Cheerios for a lifetime of wholesome goodness for your whole family."
However, two of the first three ingredients in Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios are corn starch and sugar — two ingredients that might be genetically engineered (a majority of corn-based ingredients and sugar from sugar beets on the US market is now GE). The thing is we can't know since they don't have to disclose whether they're using GE ingredients or not on the label. But the fact that General Mills chose to cough up well over a million dollars to avoid GE labeling definitely leads one to believe that, most likely, these (and/or other ingredients) of Cheerios ARE indeed the genetically modified versions. If that's the case, then there goes the "trust" for "a lifetime of wholesome goodness."
The fact that General Mills would rather pay millions to hide that their products contain GE ingredients rather than give you the choice to buy something else, or reformulate their product without GE ingredients (which would be the sensible thing to do if they were really concerned about children's long-term health and well-being) is quite telling. And fortunately, people are now starting to see through these shady tactics where actions do not match their words." (Mercola)
The real power of IT to help people live better has still not yet been harnessed. It can do shopping but not address issues that are more human and so messier. The UK wrote off 12 billion pounds for a failed system of health information. IT departments are also blocking many organizations from using the web too.
This revelation is not news. But Euan's thoughts about a solution are.
Clue - CEO's doing a Moses will not work. This method has been at the core of why large scale IT projects have failed. Euan offers a simpler, practical and hopeful solution.
In this interview, Jordan MacLeod talks about the Zombie Monetary Apocalypse. A Zombie can move but has no life. It feeds on the living. Jordan tells us why our monetary system has become this and what we have to do. We have to reinvent money again - we have done this many times before - so that it reflects what we need our economy to be.
A Zombie Bank is a bank that has to be propped up by government. It does not support a real economy but plays with money. The price of supporting Zombie Banks is to suck the life out of people and the world.
The core of the problem is the current design of money itself. It cannot die. It is eternal. When 75% of the economy was social, this was not a major problem. But now we all pay cash for every service. Not a single thing is free or can be found in the social economy. You don't have an extended family, so you pay for daycare. You don't know how to build anything so you buy everything. You don't grow food, you buy it all. 100 years ago, we did not need a lot of money. But today, money drives you and all that we do.
So, money is no longer only a means for exchange for a few services. It has become an end in itself. Because it has no expiry date or life cycle, it violates the principles of life. It is a zombie!
This is why we are destroying our society and our world. It is a design problem.
But Jordan is not a pessimist. Because money is now digitized, the pioneers of the digital world have the knowledge and the power to design a new system. People are working on this now. Soon money will be created by an open and wide system rather than by a few banks. Soon money will reflect who we are and what we really need. We think it is only a matter of time. More on this here
Most of the conversation about meat safety in Canada and the US revolves around inspection. Can we inspect better. This misses the core health issue.
When animals are concentrated and fed food that makes them ill and so have to be medicated, the risks are a product of the core process.
When animals are killed at the rate of 400 an hour, covered in shit, shit that is full of bacteria because of the mismatch in diet, the risks are escalated.
When small plants are shut because they cannot afford the inspection protocol, the risk is magnified further.
As this system concentrates further the risks shift into being inevitability's.
Healthy meat structurally comes from animals that eat what they are designed to eat. For cattle this means grass. No cow ever ate grain until the 20th century. Healthy animals live the lives that they are designed to live. This is not crowded into a shit filled pen with a concrete floor. Healthy animals who eat and live as they should do not need antibiotics. Animals that travel short distances to slaughter are not so stressed as those that are trucked long distance. Animals that are killed in small batches are killed with reverence and care as they deserve.
But what is going on is that in the guise of Food Safety - all that is truly safe is being sacrificed to the hugs factory system.
What we can do is to chose with our wallet. If 20% of Canadians only bought real meat from real producers and real outlets, then the big system would fall over.
"In the US, an undergraduate education used to be an option, one way to get into the middle class. Now it’s a hostage situation, required to avoid falling out of it. And if some of the hostages having trouble coming up with the ransom conclude that our current system is a completely terrible idea, then learning will come unbundled from the pursuit of a degree just as as songs came unbundled from CDs."
For the record, how many official deaths from flu have been reported so far this year? One.
There is an important piece by the CBC just out. It explodes the myth of flu. Not that the vaccine may not work. Not that there are risks with the vaccine. But that we have been sold a story about the risks that just has no basis in fact or evidence.
"There are no real figures on deaths from influenza. They don't collect that information," he said. "So if they don't collect that information, how do they know it's a threat? And if they don't collect that information, how do they know that their policies will work? This is called faith-based medicine, not evidence-based medicine."
Every year, Mary Meeker offers up her thoughts about the meaning of the web. Every year, she gets me thinking. This year more than ever - for she has spotted a trend that I think has great potential to change the very core of our culture. (Link Here to the Full Report)
She Call this Trend Asset Heavy/Asset Light. This one slide of many makes her point. We used to have to own everything. Own music, cars, houses employees. Now we can share or rent part of them. It's all about how the technology works.
Property is the centre of the Modern World culture. And when I say Modern World, I mean since the advent of agriculture when we stopped moving and settled. Who owned the land and the flock became the central obsession. This lead naturally to patriarchy and to inequality. It lead to the rule of the 1%.
So here are some facts. With the meltdown of the global economy, a very large number of young people in Europe and North America have no prospect of owning a single family home. Not that many even own cars. They have so little money that they cannot own much at all.
BUT they have access to much of what they need through sharing. With the web, it is easy to get the use of a car or a bike in many cities now. Going on holiday, Airbnb offers you a cheap place and the owner an income that was not possible before sharing. It becomes possible to reduce the cost of your stuff by sharing both as a sharer and a sharee.
Millions will grow to middle age without owning a lot of stuff and will see it as normal to share. They will have learned that in this new world, they do not need a lot of money to get what they need and to be happy. No pensions and old people's homes for them either as they will have no savings and governments will not be able to afford to look after them. With a learned and experienced culture of sharing, I think that we will find it easier to live with others than we do today.
Above all they will learn how much more free they are by sharing than by owning. Free in every way. Free to spend time with their kids, Free to move. Free to stay! Free to be in charge of their lives.
I think that status will change as well. In the property culture, he who has the most stuff wins. Today most of us go into debt to look like a person who has a lot of stuff. So most of us are today slaves who drive BMW's and live in big homes.
In the new culture, status will start with how free you are. Then it will be how much of a contribution that you make. This was always the mark of a high status person in the pre modern world.
This one issue of property was in my mind the barrier to going home to a culture that fits who we are. If Mary Meeker is right, then this one insight is truly a great one.
Here is a map of human culture that I design many years ago that shows where we might be - at a time of this great return.
Have a look at the first paradigm 3 million to 3,000 BP. Then look at the current one. A match in the making?
It would make sense to have such a return for all development is somewhat circular and looks like this.
It's recursive. So History does not repeat but it does rhyme. Human culture develops like a single human. I wonder, are we growing out of the "Teen years". Are going back to a more Generative Age?
Here are more of my working notes for part of my new book: You Don't Need Medicine - To Be Healthy.
The central thesis of the book is that our health is directly connected to the environment. That is why you and I can make the changes that we need to be healthy.
This post is a sketch for the chapter in the book that will be about our body. My Notes on the choices that we face for Diet are here. My notes for the ideal Social World will be here. My notes on all the science that supports this thesis are here.
It's all a system. See the connections to the rest as we look today at your body.
The Body and the Natural World - Make the ideal fit
Today, most of us sit for 10 to 15 hours a day, do no heavy physical work and live in an environment where night and day have no meaning. Most of our lives are spent inside. We think that this is normal. We think that this is progress.
But our bodies were designed for a very different way of life.
For millions of years, so long as we were awake, we moved. We did not take exercise, we were active. We carried a baby all day. We carried wood, water, animal carcasses and our possessions. We used our bodies as tools. The sun and the moon were our main sources of light. They, and the seasons, drove when we went to sleep or woke up. We lived outside. We lived in the sunlight of the day. At night, we felt the pull of the moon. We were integrated into the natural world and our bodies were linked into all the signals of that larger world.
We are still that person. All our "wiring" is designed to operate in this kind of environment. If we live like this our bodies do well. If we don't....
Think for a moment how different your life is today from even your grandparents. Think of how little you use your body in the normal course of the day. Think of how unimportant the dark is. Think of how the clock and not the sun rule your day. Think of how different your children's life is. They are inside all the time. They hardly ever move. They know nothing of the natural world. Think how normal this all feels!
It is very hard for us to see how massive these changes have been. We don't see the huge gap that has opened up between what we do and what our bodies need. All we might hear is "Take more exercise". The gym, sport or even a marathon is not the issue.
The gap is not about what we add onto our daily lives. The gap is to be found in our daily lives.
So let's see what this gap is. When we see it, we can see what to do to close it. We can see what is in our control to be healthy again.
Activity - Don't sit!
I used to sit at work for more than 8 hours a day. I was in the car for 2 hours a day. And, when I got home, I sat all evening and watched TV. 8 hours at the office, 2 hours in the car. 4 hours watching TV. I was a blob.
Every day people exhort us to "Take More Exercise". We understand this to mean "Go to a Gym"; "Train for a Marathon" ; "Play Sport" and "Get a Personal Trainer". I could never do this. As with diet, I could not do what all the experts told me to do and I bet this may be hard for you too. I did not have the time and I hated mindless exercise. But the real issue is not "Exercise" but "Activity". Sitting all day is the big mismatch.
So now I saw that sitting all day was my life, what did I do to change this?
So how do we do modern office work without a chair?
This is an answer. This picture is of my standing desk. As you can see I hacked it out of my old desk and a box. I now only sit down at the end of the day and have a drink and read before dinner. And that is when it is not my turn to cook and so keep standing.
So I work, as most of us do today, in front of a screen. But, because I stand, I move all day. At first this was hard. By 10.30am my legs would ache. But, after 3 months, this became my new normal. It is like taking sugar out of your coffee. At first, you hate the new taste. But after a while, you can never go back.
This one decision not to sit all day at work is a game changer.
Choosing a Desk
You can do what I did and hack a desk or just go out and buy one. Here is a link to a review of desks and how to adapt to to them.
I work at home and for myself. It was easy for me to choose to work this new way. It also cost me nothing. If I had more money I would add a treadmill. The ideal is to walk at 1 1/2 miles per hour all day.
If you have a job, you have to convince your employer. There is good evidence that this works well and that organizations that are getting behind this gain benefits very quickly. If they struggle with this idea, get them to set up a small experiment at work and measure what happens. Like this:
"Take Salo, a financial consulting firm based in Minneapolis. The company has 12 treadmill desks, and encourages walking meetings and a mini-breakaway game — a mixture of pingpong, tennis and a bit of squash.
Throughout the day, employees rotate on and off the available treadmill desks. Craig Dexheimer, Salo's director of operations and administration, loves his. He's lost 25 pounds since he started using it. If employees get distracted while walking, he suggests they stop or slow down the treadmill.
A few years ago, Salo took part in a Mayo Clinic study headed by Levine to see what happened when employees used treadmill desks. The study was small — just 18 participants. For six months, they rotated on and off the desks, walking, on average, about three hours a day. Everyone lost weight. And overall, Dexheimer says, health improved. "Total cholesterol decreased, plasma triglycerides dropped on average 37 percent in total for all 18 participants.
"Remarkable," he says. "We didn't even go to a gym. We just went to work!"
And productivity didn't suffer. In fact, Dexheimer says, during the six months of the study, Salo's revenues were the highest ever. The environment, he says, was simply "more dynamic." (Source: NPR)
This story has it all. Make moving at work the new normal. Activity is not an add on. It must be how we live.
So, now you don't sit at work, what about the rest of the day?
The Commute
Most people commute. The average American spends 18 1/2 hours a week in their car. They spend 2 months a year in the car! (Source)
2 months a year sitting in the car! Ideally, we all have to reduce the time we spend sitting in the car. And, apart from the downside of sitting in the car for so long, think of all the other things you might do in this 2 months? Think about what this 2 months in the car also costs you? (See You Don't Need a Job)
I solved my commute time challenge by working at home. I work as a writer. My commute is a 20 second walk to the home office. But working at home has its draw backs too. We get lonely. We get interupted. We lose momentum. We are not designed to work alone. Do you have a Co Working site near you? Co Working sites are in many locations now. Here is a directory. There will likely be one closer to you than your office. When I lived on Prince Edward Island, the Queen Street Commons, my co working place, was 10 minutes away by car. It was a welcome break from home.
But what if you have a job and live far away from work? Can you negotiate a telecommuting deal? Progressive employers are getting behind telecommuting. It's not for everyone and it is not for every job or employer. But neither is 2 months in the car. Some jobs have to be at the plant too. So in the end, we have to decide what on balance is best for us. Many of us don't have jobs anyway. Most of us will lose our jobs. (See You Don't Need a Job)
The Job and how that system works is of course the centre of the problem of the health breakdown of modern society. As you will, see throughout this book, the Job adds risk factors to our health. At some point, we all will have to confront this.
But for now, ask yourself how can you reduce the amount of time you spend sitting in the car commuting?
TV - Get rid of it
The average American watches 76 days of TV a year (153 hours a week Nielson) I cannot stop thinking about the 2 months in the car commuting and 2 months on the sofa watching TV. No wonder we don't have any time.
It's not just the time spent sitting watching TV: which is such a long time anyway. But I think also of how TV drives all sorts of additional poor health factors. TV acts like a sedative. We don't just sit, we slump. We go into a zone. It also isolates us. Each family member has their own TV and schedule. So it affects how we eat and with whom. We tend to eat alone and to make the TV schedule the home schedule. TV also is a major factor in why so many sleep so badly. We stay up too late and we upset our circadian clock by its light.
TV is like junk food. It is a pivot of the culture that is making us ill. And of course Junk food and TV go together don't they? Getting rid of junk food and TV are the two easiest actions we can take for this choice depends on no one else. It is all in our control. Both are hard to do at first but, after only 3 months, you will feel so much better and this good feeling will spur you on to do more.
My wife and I have been disconnected from the TV for 3 years now. At first, this was hard. TV was so central to our lives. But soon we felt the difference. I don't slump for hours at the end of the day. I am not assaulted by all the ads and jabber. Meal times are social again and they drive the evening schedule. We have time to cook real food. We talk! We read. And we go to bed early. More on that in a minute. Oh and cutting the cord to TV saved us about $90 a month or $1,000 a year. It just about pays my wine bill.
But what about the web? We spend a lot of time there too. The great thing about the web is that it is not passive. We do not just collapse before it. It does not force us to break our attention every 4 minutes. We don't have to be slumped in a lazy boy to use it. I stand to use my computer. It has no schedule. It's not perfect but it is much better than TV.
Get rid of your TV. I promise that you will not regret this decision.
Walking is the best exercise
When I hear the words "take more exercise." I think of gyms. I think of good looking, young and thin people in expensive outfits. Then I think of the cost, the time and how old I am and then I get put off. So here is the good news. While going to the gym is good for you, there are simpler and cheaper alternatives to ensure that you are fit.
We have to build activity into our daily lives and not make it an add on. Walking is best exercise that we can take. And, to make this even easier, 30 minutes a walk is the optimum amount of time. That's not too hard to fit into a day is it?
So here is my "gym".
Here is my Personal Trainer!Having a dog is a wonderful motivator. Rain, snow or sun: every day the dog calls me to walk. Not just once a day but at least 3 times a day. There need to walk like this is an important reason why I choose to have a dog. Dogs are like children. They demand a lot for us. But I think they are worth it and I plan always to have one.
Or get a bike. Look around cities like Copenhagen or Amsterdam where biking is the norm. Look at the people. See the difference. It's all about choices.
I have chosen to live in a small community where I can walk to all the important parts of town. The General Store is 5 minutes away. The bank, post office and restaurants are maybe 8 minutes away. This choice was very deliberate on my part.
Chose to make your car less important in your life. Once you make this choice, other avenues open up for you.
We have to be strong
It is important to be strong. As we get older, we lose strength. As we get weaker we can do less and less. It's a vicious cycle. In the end we can do next to nothing to help ourselves live a normal life. So again do we all have to go to the gym to get strong? You can. This is an area where the gym can be a big help and again, you don't have to spend hours there. My Crossfit friends spend very little time at the gym but their time there is very intense.
Intensity is important in strength training.
But I don't go to the gym. I have instead tried to build strength into my daily life. Just as I have tried to build activity into it as well. After all our paleo ancestors did not workout. They just worked.
Here is a big part of my strength building activity.
The joke about heating with wood is that it keeps you warm in three ways. First of all there is the sourcing of the wood. Cutting and stacking. Secondly there is the moving the wood inside and stacking it there for the winter. Lastly there is the moving of the wood every day to the stove. Oh and yes the stove gives off heat too!
You can find your own way to be more active around the home. This is my answer but there are many others. Gardening would be a big help. All that lifting and bending.
What helps is to find something that has a high utility and that forces you to work with your body. It can be anything but the test is "Is it part of your life?' or "Is it an add on?"
Can you see the pattern I am drawing?
An active life is a life where all that you need to look after the bio mechanical needs of our body is built into the life that you live every day. It is the same as eating differently.
The most important factor in how you sleep is light. Our circadian sensors are acutely sensitive to light.
It's the same kind of process with Leptin and appetite. If we eat grains and sugars, we block the Leptin channel that tell us that we are full. Our light sensors tell us to get sleepy is the light goes away. If we stimulate them with light well into the night, they get confused. We lose our internal clock.
So how best to get our clock running properly again?
Here is what works for me. Never have the TV in my bedroom. Even better, don't have a TV as it can keep you up in the light long after you are ready to go to sleep. Read before bed in another room in low light. The bed is for sleep or love.
Keep off social media in the later evening (OK I do cheat here sometimes) NEVER read email late at night.
Go to bed early. I am usually asleep by 9.30pm in the winter. So if I wake up at 3am, as older folks tend to do, I can know I have already had nearly 6 hours sleep and don't fuss.
Have blackout curtains. Many of us live in urban settings with high intensity street lights. If they shine into your bedroom, they will confuse your clock.
Diet plays a role in a good night's sleep too. I used to suffer from heartburn and apnea. My dad died of apnea. Taking grains and most carbs out of the diet has ended this. I regret that I find drinking less is a huge help too.
You don't have to have all your sleep in one go either. We are not designed to sleep for 8 hours straight. We are designed to sleep in batches. A good nap is also very restorative.
The job plays a large role in our not sleeping well too. The job works on clock time and we work by circadian time. Knowing that we have to get up at a fixed time every day puts "Performance Pressure" on our sleep. How I remember waking up and looking at the clock and worry about how I only had 2 hours left. How wrenching the alarm could be. How wonderful it is not to have to get up at a fixed time! I still get up early but now I wake naturally and there is no pressure. Now when I wake in the middle of the night, I can go back and have the kind of dream filled sleep that I had as a teen. It's a joy to go to bed.
Make sleep as important a priority as good food and activity. It's worth it I promise as you will find out as you sleep better.
The Sun and Vitamin D
The sun has become our enemy. When we go outside, we are told to lather on the sunscreen. But the reality is that we are designed to be outside. The sun is how we get most of the hormone that we need to stay well. Many of us live in zones that make it all but impossible on the best of days to get this vital benefit from the sun.
The problem is that we are now starved of a key hormone, Vitamin D.
” Vitamin D is by far the greatest deficiency in the civilized world. Surveys show that at least 70% of all Americans are vitamin D deficient, and up to 85% of African-American women of child-bearing age are deficient. 48% of young girls aged 9 to 11 are deficient. 76% of pregnant mothers are severely vitamin D deficient causing widespread deficiencies in their unborn children. 90% of all hospital patients are deficient, and 99% of nursing home residents are deficient. 65% of Chicago residents are deficient and even doctors living in southern Florida are 42% deficient. It is estimated that at least 1 billion people worldwide are deficient.” Saunders Vitamin D Deficiency (Link pdf)
It is hard enough to get enough D naturally in the North. But now we live indoors, many of us get next to none.
"Caucasian skin produces approximately 10,000 IU vitamin D in response to 20–30 minutes summer sun exposure. This is over 16 times higher than the US government’s recommendation of 600 IUper day!
This high rate of natural production of vitamin D3 cholecalciferol(pronounced koh·luh·kal·sif·uh·rawl) in the skin is the single most important fact every person should know about vitamin D—a fact that has profound implications for the natural human condition.
Technically not a “vitamin,” vitamin D is in a class by itself. Its metabolic product, calcitriol, is actually a secosteroid hormone that is the key that unlocks binding sites on the human genome. The human genome contains more than 2,700 binding sites for calcitriol; those binding sites are near genes involved in virtually every known major disease of humans.
Current research has implicated vitamin D deficiency as a major factor in the pathology of at least 17 varieties of cancer as well as heart disease, stroke, hypertension, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, depression, chronic pain, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, muscle weakness, muscle wasting, birth defects, periodontal disease, and more.
Vitamin D’s influence on key biological functions vital to one’s health and well-being mandates that vitamin D no longer be ignored by the health care industry nor by individuals striving to achieve and maintain a greater state of health.
If well adults and adolescents regularly avoid sunlight exposure, research indicates a necessity to supplement with at least 5,000 units (IU) of vitamin D daily. To obtain this amount from milk one would need to consume 50 glasses. With a multivitamin more than 10 tablets would be necessary. Neither is advisable." (link)
I am not advocating sun bathing. Just as I am not saying we have to be at the gym all day. I am saying that we need to build the sdun back into how we live our lives. This means being outside a lot more and wearing less clothing and NOT putting on tons of sunscreen.
Back to walking the dog. Playing with the grand kids. Wood cutting and stacking. Gardening. Biking. You choose: but get outside as a matter of routine in the summer and take Vitamin D pills in the winter. How much to take? I take 8,000 units a day. This is the equivalent of 20 minutes outside in summer.
Summary
I find that bringing how I live every day back to how I use my body is the best way to look after it.
I can design how I live today to meet the needs of how evolution has shaped my body. I can also do that with how I eat. But can I also live socially as I was designed to live? Can I bring the tribal life and all that comes with that back into my reality too?
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