Robert Paterson's Weblog

An introduction to the Science for taking charge of your own health

 

A central part of my upcoming book - You Don't Need Medicine - To get Healthy - is to do what Martin Luther did for religion. It is to give us access to ideas that we can all understand and use to take charge of our own health.

I am just starting the part of the book where I introduce you to the amazing people who have worked for decades uncovering the systemic aspects of how our health works. Here is a heads up of the cast of pioneers who will help us all change our own lives and so the world. It's just a quick survey - The Book will have so much more and lots of data and images.

Aging - Professor Michael Rose

We all take it for granted that as we get older, we will get ill. In reality this is indeed the case for most of us today.  But is Aging = getting ill part of our evolutionary design or is it no more normal than the fact that if you lived in London in 1850, you would likely die of cholera?

Professor Michael Rose (UC Irvine) is the world's leading thinker on Aging. It was his insight that convinced me that I could avoid becoming ill and disabled as I grew older and so set me on this course for myself. 

What Michael, and his colleague, Larry Mueller, have found out is what we think of the inevitability of aging = decrepitude is not a set pattern. And for humans not at all.

Humans are designed to get old as fit and contributing people. This does not mean that we don't get wrinkles and grey hair. It does not mean that our sight and hearing may not decline. But it does mean that we are designed to be active contributors to society. The reason for this is tied into our evolutionary past. Raising human children takes such effort, over such a long time, that a small tribe had to have no baggage. The Middle Aged and the Old had to be contributors. In tribes where they were not, they died out.

There is a plateau where the loss of powers ceases. We can see the remnants of this in those family members who reach 85 and are still fit. This group can go on well into their 100's. Of course they die. But they remain vital until just before the end.

What Rose and Meller have found out is that this plateau will normally kick in in middle age - Provided that we live close to the rules of environments that we are evolved to do best in. 

The closer our ancestry is to Hunter Gathering the more the risk and the more the opprtunity. Here is what that means in practice:

• Eat the right diet - a very varied diet that has NO grains or novel foods - Novel being foods that we have not evolved to eat
• Be active - not go to the gym for an hour 3 times a week - get off your bum and move all day
• Have a real Tribe - aka be part of a small community where you play a real role and have a real place. Loss of control and identity is a major negative.
• Be brought up as a small child in a community where adults create a trusting structure around us
• Live in a small community - there is a very tight correlation to aging well and small communities
• Obey the time and seasons of nature - sleep a lot - get sunlight
• Don't travel too much or too far or be in contact with people who do

There is no silver bullet. Our health and how we age is a complex matter involving many interactions that we have with our environment. But the good thing about complex systems is that they have simple rules that we can all understand and so act on.

We can choose to eat differently. We can choose not to sit all day. We can choose to have a real network and to put meaning back into our work. We can choose to make parenting the most important job we have. We can choose where we live. We can choose to go to bed earlier and to spend more time outside. We can choose not to travel too much.

Each of these choices challenge the prevailing culture that we live in. We can choose to push back from that and get more connected to the other pioneers who are doing the same.

All of these choices are hard to make. All connect to each other but they all roll up to the big choice. Do you want to get ill as you age or not? For living as we do today makes chronic illness your destiny. The institution of medicine is making no progress in prevention and can only help you with the sypmtons. Only you can keep you well and only you can restore your health if you lose it.

So here, in the evolutionary setting, is the cast of today's Pasteurs - Doctors and Scientists - who are part of the new revolution in health.

Diet - Profesor Staffen Lindeberg

We are all told to "Eat Healthy" and to "Take more Exercise". But what is healthy eating? Lindeberg has done all the work and he is clear. Traditional societies - those close to our Hunter Gatherer way of life - have NO chronic illness. 

The one thing that traditional people do NOT eat are grains and lots of sugars. Neither do they eat any kind of processed food. When they start to eat the modern diet, they get ill. When Lindeberg took people off the modern diet, they got well.

The modern diet is too novel for us. 10,000 years is nothing in evolutionary time. And the past 50 years of industrial food, is a blip.

Diet is the most leveraged part of taking charge of your health.

Our next two pioneers take Lindeberg's work to the next level.

Diet - Dr Natasha Campbell McBride

Your digestive system is not only a set of organs. Our digestion is a complex and co-evolved colony of partner bacteria. We have trillions of bacteria in our gut that do the real work of digesting our food. The make sure that the good stuff is shared and the bad stuff is eliminated. They are the gatekeepers.

Our digestive system is the core of our immune system. Sick gut flora allows toxins to leave the disgetion and enter the body. All chronic illness has some form of inflammation at the core.

Grains are major disrupters of our gut flora. Anti Biotics are mega disrupters. 

Gut health is a vital part of total health. McBride, whose son developed autism and so spurred her work in diet,  is a great communicator and her lab has developed a wide range of strategies that can help. 

Diet Dr Mary Vernon

Fat does not make us fat. We get fat when we disrupt our insulin mechanism. We do that when we overload it with too much sugar. When I say sugar I mean a very wide range of foods that have a high sucrose and glucose load.

Once you understand how this process works, you will never believe that fat makes you fat again and you will be able take make a major change to your health. 

Dr Gordon is one of many people that are working on this metabolic part of our health. I offer her up here because she is so clear and personable. 

Diet Gary Taubes

If you are still hanging onto the fat makes you fat and that grains are good for you, then Gary Taubes has done all the research to demolish this. 

Activity - Dr James Levine

We are all told to "Take More Exercise" - We think that this means go to the gym. The real issue is we must be more active. One hour three times a week in the gym, has little effect on you if you have sat for 10 hours a day. 

Professor Levine makes it quite clear that sitting on our bum all day is a big problem. We are not designed to sit all day. We are designed to move all day. 

How long do you sit all day? 8 hours 12 - 16? We have become like astronauts but in a bad way. 

So what to do? Design activity into your day. I use a standing desk. Walking is the best exercise too. Have walking meetings like the monks used to do.  Your son has ADD at school - maybe not - Maybe he is right and needs to move around all day - maybe it is school that is sick?

This one insight offers all of us a wide range of new possibilities to improve our health. Activity is a design issue. 

Sleep - More than a rest - Dr Charles Czeisler

Just as we are designed to be active, we are designed to sleep. Sleep is not a waste of the day time: it is a powerful resetting process that operates many restoring and repair functions for the mind and body. Dr Czeisler is one best people in the field. His work explores not only what sleep does for us but what YOU can do to get better sleep. 

Sunlight or Vitamin D - The Vitamin D Council

When we moved inside as a species, we lost contact with a vital part of what we get from the sun, Vitamin D. The Vitamin D Council is a goldmine of information about why we need more D than we are getting by living inside all the time.

We evolved in Africa. We are evolved to need a lot of Vitamin D.

Our Social Environment - Dr Sir Michael Marmot

Do you work at the bottom of a hierarchy? Then you will get ill and die 4 times earlier than those at the top. Married to your work as a man? Retirement will kill you in 5 years. Are you at the lower end of the vast income inequality in the US and the UK? You will get ill. 

How much control and Status we have in life directly affects our health. Medicine and access to healthcare has nothing to do with these differences in health outcomes. 

Dr Sir Michael Marmot is the world's leading authority on how human social environments affect our health. Cubicle land and factory work is lethal. Large differences in national income is lethal. Inequality is lethal.

His research on the Brtish Civil Service is a landmark piece of work that sheds light on how this works. 

Our Social Environment - Professor Robert Sapolsky

So how does this process work? All primates get stressed by social issues. Zebras only worry at the moment when they are being chased by the lion. Baboons worry all the time about their place in the troop. Humans worry even more. Our consciousness can be a curse. We can worry oursleves about the mortgage or global warming too. 

Sapolsky is the leading scientist studying the primate and human stress mechanism.  

Sapolsky is a brilliant scientist and a remarkable explainer. His lectures online are very accessible and offer massive insights as to why we, as the most social of all animals, have to pay attention to our social environment and do all we can to make it less stressful.

And what to do to cope with our stress? I have two favourites here - The late Dr Viktor Frankl and the very much alive Dr Gabor Mate. 

Social Environment Early Childhood - Dr J Doug Willms

The single most important social factor on our health over a lifetime is the social environment that we had from 0 - 3. When I say 0, I mean from the moment of conception. Children's world view, and so their stress reaction to life is set by 3. This setting drives the development trajectory for life. 

Professor Doug Willms is the authority on the link between family culture and long term development outcomes for children. 

So how we parent is key. If we are too top down, use power all the time, don't touch enough, speak to but not converse with - all signs of a stressed person - then we set up poor conditions. If we allow everything, let the child run her life, don't stand firm on important issues, are distant - then this too has poor outcomes. The worst being when each parent has one of these two styles.

The best outcomes are from parents who stand firm on important things but allow a lot of room for all others. Who have lots of conversation with their infants. Who touch their kids a lot and who are affectionate with each other. 

This style of parenting is not tied into any one income level. So many of us have been captured by our own stress response to the corporate world. It leads me to believe that earning our living in a different way will help.

Social Environment Parenting - The Late Jean Liedloff

Just as Michael Rose goes back in time to show us a lifestyle that is suited to how we evolve, so the late Jena Liedloff does this in how best to parent. Her work is the manual of our evolution and is very accessible and pragmatic

Social Environment - PTSD - DR Jonathan Shay

PTSD is a massive issue in the west today after more than a decade of warfare. Here again people have been shaped by their environment. So is the cause of PTSD the trauma of seeing or doing  bad things? 

Shay has discovered that this is too simple a perspective. The deeper cause of PTSD, and all illness caused by trauma, is Betrayal. This is why incest is such a terrible act as it involves the worst betrayal of all.

PTSD is driven by bad leadership. A military that has leaders who care not for their men but for their careers. A political class that goes to war and exploits the patriotism of their young men for a game and not a real cause. A system that rotates men too often and breaks their attachments.

This betrayal was seen everywhere in Vietnam.  All that was wrong in Viertnam has taken place again in Iraq and in Afghanistan. As those involved learn that they were betrayed, their feelings will deepen. The PTSD epidemic will grow.

Shay also has done the work to find a way for these men to come home. And it is not drugs or experts. It is in helping people help each other. It is in helping them find a tribe again. Medicine and conventional therapy does not work. Only the tribe can offer the trust required to quiet the demons. 

Changing Deep Beliefs - Alan Deutschman

How do we change our wiring? If we have depression, PTSD, had a shitty childhood, have addictions? There is no pill. There is no smart man in a white coat. But there is a proven social process and journalist Alan Deutschman has made a lifetime study about what this is. 

His work, Sapolsky's, Mate's, Frankl's and Shay's all intersect and support each other. Alan offers a special clarity and great case studies.

Changing Deep Beliefs - Neuroplasticity - Dr Norman Doidge

And so what is this kind of change that Alan reviews so clearly? ? We have to rewire our brain - literally. Our beliefs, or our automatic responses to an event, have been hard wired in our brain by repetition. The more times we go to THAT place, the faster we go there. It is like a river cutting a chasm.

Doidge and Sapolsky have unravelled how this mechanism works and are using the understanding of the plasticity of the brain to change the wiring. 

Dr Norman Doidge has had great success in helping people rewire. Even people with schizophrenia. 

Good for you

This is a long list and if you have reached this far, well done. As you can see there is not a pill in sight. I hope you can see that all of this is related and all of this intersects. It's complex. But if you make a start, you will be amazed at how you start to change and gain confidence.

The best place to start is diet. It is the most leveraged area and you will get the fastest response in health gains. Then you will have the confidence to try other areas.

If you want to know more now, I have a supporting website called the Missing Human Manual. There is loads more information, videos, articles etc from all of these people there. If you want to even deeper, Michale Rose has put together a major work on the evolutionary context at 55 Theses

Why Modern Medicine is a Fail for Chronic Illness - And What will replace it

Why has modern medicine failed to stop the chronic illness epidemic? My quick answer is this. Modern Medicine has been captured by a simple linear idea of how the world works. It can only deal with local and simple problems. It cannot comprehend complex problems. It keeps trying to use simple tools, a pill based on one pathway that are based in the simple idea of cause and effect.

This all came from early success. 

Joseph Lister created a breakthrough in medicine in the 1860's when he discovered that you could prevent infection in major operations by washing your hands and spraying the site with carbolic acid. Of course it took more than 10 years to be accepted but by the 1890's surgery did not mean a high chance of dying from infection.

Lister solved a problem that was simple and local. Keep the wound clean. Keep all that touch the wound clean. Keep the room where you treat the wound clean. Jenner did the same with small pox. Vaccinate with a close relative and you create immunity. 

That is progress. But it is also the problem. Ever since then medicine wants the simple answer. It's early success in treating the simple has trained it to see only local cause and effect. 

This is why it has failed and can only fail in treating chronic illness. For Chronic Illness is a complex problem brought on by interactions between your ancestry, the food you eat, what you do with your body, how much time you spend outdoors, your social status and how much sleep you have. There is no local cause. There is no one cause. There is only many variables interacting over long periods of time that result in emergence of disease that in turn result in the emergence of more disease.

You become obese, then you might develop Type 2 Diabetes, then heart disease, then eye problems and so on. Or you might get depressed and then get an auto immune disease such as IBS or worse. 

Modern medicine treats each new disease as a stand alone. Much of the treatment drives further disease.

Our failure to see the difference between what can be seen as simple and local and what is complex is what is at the root of our failure.  Now chronic illness is an epidemic. Every decade in the 20th century it has got worse. Since 1980, the epidemic has accelerated exponentially. Billions of dollars has been spent in "research". The entire medical world has been looking for answers. And they have failed. Why?

I had a flash this weekend as I was doing a final edit for the first book of my series You Don't need a ..." Modern Medicine, like all of our industrial institutions, has a machine design. All are based in a core process that ends in the sale of a product or a procedure.

Modern medicine is a linear world where the pay off is in the sale of a drug, a test, or a procedure such as an operation or a Botox shot. No one gets paid to work with complexity. So no one does. 

All of Modern Medicine is focused on finding direct cause and effect pathways that end in a transaction that is based also on a mass market model. So in this world, depression can be "cured" by one pill. 

If I am correct - what do you think pile in please - then we cannot expect any results from medicine. Medicine is captured by the fallacy that all linear institutions share of the world being linear and so reducing all interaction to a single payoff - a classroom with a teacher - a newspaper with a journalist - a pill with a doctor.

All the money you raise to go to this research is wasted. All the money we spend in this model is wasted. Investing more in the study of epicycles is not going to make the Ptolemaic system work any better.

So what to do?

Dave Snowden's Cynefin model says it all for me. Modern Medicine lives in the right hand quadrant but our chronic illness lives in the left hand side. 

I don't think that the profession of medicine will welcome this insight. After all they all make their money and gain their status by their investment in the fallacy.

But we can help ourselves. For the systemic causes of chronic illness are all rooted in our lifestyle and in our ancestry. While complex they have only 4 quadrants.

1. Diet - Eat real food - give up all processed food - give up all grains and sugars - don't eat any food that has a chemical in it that you cannot read aloud
2. Be Active - Don't sit for more than 3 hours a day - Do physical work - be outside for at least an hour a day - get a dog - garden - get a standing desk
3. Get a Tribe - You will thrive when you have a real place and status in a  social group - we are primates - we have to groom and be groomed
4. Sleep More - Sleep is not just a mechanical time out - it is a vital part of keeping us renewed and well - we need 8 hours a day - have a dark room - light is the enemy - don't watch TV in bed - don't read in bed - don't get stimulated before bed

There is then one variable about how all of this interacts and that is our ancestry. The closer you are to beig a Hunter Gatherer, the worse the outcomes of breaching the evolutionary norms for these quadrants. That is why First Nations People, Polynesians and Scots and Irish do do badly in the chronic illness spectrum. 

There are no doctors in this picture are there? There will be a new research world though. A Big Data Crowd Sourced world. Where millions of us will share data about who we are - the ancestry variable and what we are doing and then we will start to see the emergent truth of what works best for you and for me. 

Emergence is the new research frontier. But the powers that be will hate that because there is no transactional payoff. There will be no pill. There will be no procedure. There will be only the knowledge that what you and I are eating or doing is working or not for us as individuals. 

We will have to find a new way of setting up this kind of research. 

Trillions of dollars of cost will go away. There will be a true revolution in health and in human society. 

Much more later this fall when I will release "You Don't Need a Doctor" I am still on track to release "You Don't Need a Job" and "You Don't need a Banker" at the end of June.

Time for more vitamin D - If you live above the 37th Parallel you may be deficient

Latitude and vitamin D production in the skin Except during the summer months, the skin makes little if any vitamin D from the sun at latitudes above 37 degrees north (in the United States, the shaded region in the map) or below 37 degrees south of the equator. People who live in these areas are at relatively greater risk for vitamin D deficiency.

In search of vitamin D

Under the right circumstances, 10 to 15 minutes of sun on the arms and legs a few times a week can generate nearly all the vitamin D we need. Unfortunately, the “right circumstances” are elusive: the season, the time of day, where you live, cloud cover, and even pollution affect the amount of UVB that reaches your skin. What’s more, your skin’s production of vitamin D is influenced by age (people ages 65 and over generate only one-fourth as much as people in their 20s do), skin color (African Americans have, on average, about half as much vitamin D in their blood as white Americans), and sunscreen use (though experts don’t all agree on the extent to which sunscreen interferes with sun-related vitamin D production).

Lack of sun exposure would be less of a problem if diet provided adequate vitamin D. But there aren’t many vitamin D–rich foods (see chart, below), and you need to eat a lot of them to get 800 to 1,000 IU per day. People who have trouble absorbing dietary fat — such as those with Crohn’s disease or celiac disease — can’t get enough vitamin D from diet no matter how much they eat (vitamin D requires some dietary fat in the gut for absorption). And people with liver and kidney disease are often deficient in vitamin D, because these organs are required to make the active form of the vitamin, whether it comes from the sun or from food.

Selected food sources of vitamin D
Food	Vitamin D (IU*)
Salmon, 3.5 ounces	360
Mackerel, 3.5 ounces	345
Tuna, canned, 3.5 ounces	200
Orange juice, fortified, 8 ounces	100
Milk, fortified, 8 ounces	98
Breakfast cereals, fortified, 1 serving	40–100
*IU = international units Source: Office of Dietary Supplements, National Institutes of Health

For these and other reasons, a surprising number of Americans — more than 50% of women and men ages 65 and older in North America — are vitamin D–deficient, according to a consensus workshop held in 2006.

via health.harvard.edu

Canadians are really at risk of not having enough Vitamin D. If you are old like me - even worse. As you can see - food will not make up the difference.

Why I take 4,000 units a day.

Sun block is also a caution - it screens out UVB - which is what makes Vitamin B. Better to wear clothes and take them off for a bit that screen out the spectrum that we need for our health. More on Sun block later.

Taking Control of Our Health - My report card

So how am I doing at taking control of my health?

My objective is to line up my life to how I was designed to live by evolution. (Yes I will not be saved in the Rapture this weekend). Science tells me that if I do this - I can plateau my fitness where I am now or even pull my active age back a few years. I can be fit, active and healthy until I die.

So here then is the "Map" I am using

Every part of our environment is important. But for simplicity's sake, you can divide it into 3 areas. 

• Fit your diet to what we are evolved to eat. In short that means no industrial foods and no foods of the agricultural era such as grains (sugars), legumes and dairy. It means that 65% of your calories should come from protein. Currently 85% come from grains and plants. Diet is the most leveraged area to work on. It is also where most of the establishment is wrong. If you struggle with this one - recall what your ancestors ate.

• Fit your social world into what we are evolved to be most stress free - have a partner - work hard to have real friends - work to give yourself the most control possible (get out of debt would be a start - reduce your costs of living another) - Train your mind to shut up - recognize your metal patterns and rewire the destructive ones 

• Fit your life into the natural world - that means first of all be active don't sit - don't rely only on exercise if you sit for 8 hours a day - that means get 8 hours sleep a night (light is the key factor try and use it less at night) - avoid radiation wherever you can - it means look at all the chemicals we take for granted at home 

This is not about living in a cave but about seeing what we have allowed to creep up on us and redesigning our lives to give us the best fit possible to who we really are.

For more context here is the link to Michael Rose's 55 Theses which is why I had the confidence to take this route.

And here is the link to the support site that I have set up The Missing Human Manual to offer us all the practical steps. 

So what about me and what about some lessons that I have learned as I have worked in these 3 areas?

For me the diet side has been reasonably easy. I grew up in England after the war. There was no fruit and no sugar then. I did not develop the cravings for it. I did love bread and cereal and dairy though. But when I lost so much weight in the first 2 months and felt so much better - this feedback helped me. My wife Robin encouraged me too but she is a real sugarholic. - it has been harder for her. But seeing the changes in me has helped her. And now she too is 3 dress sizes smaller - lost her cellulite (I did not ell you this) and also feels great. Her arthritis is much better too. So my point is hang in there and the results will motivate you.

Sugar is a drug - you can be addicted to it - so I will not minimize the struggle. But it has a terrible price attached. Hopefully you can keep that in mind?

Can you afford this diet?

Some of you have asked me about the relative costs. So far we are spending about the same as we did before. We eat a lot more meat but we have also been smart about that too and eat a lot more organ meat and cheaper cuts that we make into stews etc. I eat many more veggies even for breakfast! Spend a lot less on fruit too. You can have it but not too much - the key again is to keep your sugar intake low enough so you don't have an insulin spike. By rebalancing our grocery shop - we have kept the costs in the range.

Diet is where you will find the highest imediate return. But the other 2 areas are multipliers. It is not only about diet. It is about making the best fit with our best total environment.

There are 2 parts to this. Your social world and control.

Socially - It is very good for us to have a life partner. Even more for men who have weaker friendships than women. As you struggle with him or her - and who doesn't!!! It helps to know what is at stake and what this partnership can mean. Don't break with your siblings - especially if you are a woman and the sibling you hate is your sister. Reconcile with your parents - you don't have to like them or honour them but forgiving them will help you. Pay attention to your friends. Nourish your friendships - we are tribal beings - we need to be loved and acknowledged in a social group. If you work for the MAN - this is so important - you cannot change your workplace - but you can have a tribe outside of work.

After many years of putting work first, after many years of taking my partner and my family for granted, I don't any more. I won't go into any detail but to let you know that I was as big a fool as many men are and that there was no easy and smooth journey home. 

Our parental relationships can also be very toxic. Mine were. It took years of hard work to expose what this meant and to reconcile. Our parental environment shapes us like no other. Sorting this out in later life w worth the effort - I promise you.

But I am convinced that after our own body, looking after our social health is a key priority. We are pack animals. Without a strong social structure we are not all we can be.

Control - We are designed to have a lot of control in our lives. Modern life - espcially the workplace works against this now. I was a true work slave for 25 years. I gave that up. It was literally killing me. I had a complete breakdown.

I am not advising you to follow in my footsteps. You may have a job and a skill set that precludes you having control at work. Again changing that right now is beyond your control. But if you have a lot of debt then the MAN has you in his control and you have none.

How best do you reduce his power over you. Get rid of your debt! The stress relief of having no debt is worth any house size or toy or vacation. Like changing your diet, you have to choose this.

Getting out of debt took years of work. It also meant for me - leaving the big city and moving to PEI. That may not be for you. But managing your housing is key. Also if you are young today - having student debt puts you in the control of the MAN right away. Look at your major costs - we got rid our our second car (a car cost about $8,000 a year to run) Insulate your home. See every way that you can reduce your run rate. Eat at home! Add up your coffees and food at work and see what this means. You will be surprised.

The new area that I am exploring in my own life now is my fit with nature and my ideal physical environment. The easy steps have been to stop sitting - the worst thing you can do. But I have also traded money for my own work - heating with wood - gardening - growing food. I am doing things all day. You too can design activity into your life.

What is newer still and worries me is what are all the chemicals I have allowed into my life? I now use baking soda to brush my teeth - look at the ingredients in toothpate! I am going to find real soap. Some don't wash their hair any more. All my clothes are the old fashioned - you have to iron clothes.

Then there are all the cleaning products - teflon pans - plastic bottles and comtainers. I am at the very early stages here of "seeing" what I have added to my own space.

The good news is that I spend a lot of time outside. Having a dog helps, 4 walks a day no matter what the weather. Having a big garden can be a bore but again it forces me out all summer and spring and fall. Like a farmer I get the winter off.

I go to bed at 9.30 and switch the light off immediately. I average abour 8 hours of sleep. Remember when you were a teen and had those wonderful dreamy states when you slept in? I have this every night. It comes from having enough sleep. Sleep is one of the best things we do. It is also an area where many of us trade off.

In summary - I am finding this exciting. Maybe the most control that I can give myself is to take charge of my health and to see that it is working.

My stick is my parent's lives my carrot is my own life - I don't want to end up a wreck as they did - good luck to you too

 

Sleep - What are the trade offs by not sleeping enough #Thesis16

Are you tired? Is there so much work that you are trading off sleep to keep up?

Be careful - you may be trading off more than you think.

 

Research is very clear with less than about 7-8 hours sleep a night, you set up a number of declines.

In your cognitive ability - you get less capable cumulatively.

The six-hour subjects fared no better — steadily declining over the two weeks — on a test of working memory in which they had to remember numbers and symbols and substitute one for the other. The same was true for an addition-subtraction task that measures speed and accuracy. All told, by the end of two weeks, the six-hour sleepers were as impaired as those who, in another Dinges study, had been sleep-deprived for 24 hours straight — the cognitive equivalent of being legally drunk.

In your health

You even get fatter! Here is a link to a comprehensive review of the risks and affects of poor sleep

And you lose that powerful ability to use your unconscious mind to process complex things. Remember how you could go to sleep with a problem and awake to find it solved. well you lose that. And as your problems get more complex, without enough sleep you will not be able to work them out.

So how to get more and better sleep? In the Missing Human Manual we have a video on just that from the world finest expert - Dr Charles Czeisler

Finding a Cure for Cancer - The idea really pisses me off - #55theses

Have Cancer rates declined? Of course not. There is almost nothing out there that plays any role in preventing you from getting it either. Cancer is reaching epidemic levels. Who is not touched by it now?

Medicine enters the scene after your diagnosis. Then you are confronted with a regime that is very destructive. It has taken Robin 9 years to get over most of the effects of her treatment. And she is of course now made more vulnerable by the treatment itself. Some aspects linger on.

I fear that the Search for a cure puts the problem out there outside your control. It takes off the table the reasons why we might get cancer in the first place. It obscures what we can do to take control. Each of us can do a lot to reduce our chances of getting  it. That is in our control.

The first thing to know is that cancer is part of being a mammal. 

In Thesis 15 Michael shows how Cancer is part of who we are as humans - Cancer is related to how our cells work as humans - they divide. This unchangeable situation is part of who we are. As we get older the risks increase.

So the issue cannot be a cure but the choices we make about how we live that either increase or reduce the risks. The most important things to know about cancer are the factors that raise the risks of you getting it and that raise the risks of it becoming more virulent. 

Rogue cells like cancer need to get energy. If you eat a lot of sugars then you likely support the growth of these cells.

 

Of course reducing your risks are not confined to this.

There are a number of lifestyle choices before you that will make a big difference. 

Here is a snip from a great post by Dr Mercola that again fits with Rose's thinking - take as much of the modern world out of the equation.

"I strongly believe the cancer rates are escalating because they are in no way shape or form addressing the underlying cause of most cancers. Instead, most of the research is directed towards expensive drugs that target late stages of the disease and greatly enrich the drug companies but simply do not prevent cancer.

If ever there was an area in which an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure it is cancer. I strongly believe that if you are able to work your way up to the advanced health plan, that you will virtually eliminate the risk of most cancers.

Environmental- and lifestyle factors are increasingly being pinpointed as the primary culprits fueling our cancer epidemic. This includes:

• Pesticide- and other chemical exposures
• Processed and artificial foods (plus the chemicals in the packaging)
• Wireless technologies, dirty electricity, and medical diagnostic radiation exposure
• Pharmaceutical drugs
• Obesity, stress, and poor sleeping habits
• Lack of sunshine exposure and use of sunscreens

This is clearly not an exhaustive list as such a list would be exceedingly long. For more specifics on consumer products implicated as contributors to cancer, please review the Cancer Prevention Coalition's "Dirty Dozen" list.

The pharmaceutical researchers would like you to believe they're doing everything they can to come up with a solution. Yet all we see is research into newer drug therapies. Clearly they're not digging close enough to the root of the problem, because if they did, they'd touch on some of these lifestyle issues just mentioned.

From my perspective, you ignore lifestyle factors at your own peril when it comes to cancer... Because, clearly, drug-based "advances" are not making a dent in this progressively prevalent disease.

On the contrary, cancer drugs are notoriously toxic and come with devastating, including lethal, side effects. Conventional medicine is so desperate to give the illusion of fighting the good fight that many of these drugs are used despite the fact that they're not really doing much to prolong or improve the quality of life of those diagnosed with cancer.

The best-selling (and extremely expensive) cancer drug Avastin, for example, was recently phased out as a treatment for metastatic breast cancer after studies concluded its benefits were outweighed by its dangerous side effects. Treating a disease in large part caused by toxins with toxins seems ignorant at best."

So the bottom line is - you can make choices about how you live that will make a difference.

The closer we live to our evolutionary design the better. If we live in an environment that is alien to how we evolved - we will have health problems. This is the core of Michael's message - Thesis 3

Why should you do this? Remember that cancer is all but unknown in societies that do not live the modern life. Most of the cancer we get is connected to how far away we live from our design.

This does not mean that you have to live in a cave and wear skins. It does mean that the eat better. Sleep better. Avoid a lot of chemicals. Live in the natural world in a better way. Work on your relationships and thoughts to avoid stress.

In follow up posts I will be providing more information on many of the risk areas that Dr Mercola describes. Here are some links for now to our support site The Missing Human Manual

• The dietary science behind food and modern disease Staffan Lindeberg
• Sleep why you need more and how to get it
• Why fat is not the problem 
• If you want to eat better try this
• We are designed to be healthy
• What stress is and how to reduce it
• Be more active

A suumary from Dr Mercola follows

The Missing Human Manual - A practical guide to taking back control of your health #55theses

In the 55 Theses Michael lays down the science behind the context for a revolution in how we think about and act on our health. In short, by living a life more aligned with our evolutionary nature, we can be - on the whole - naturally healthy.

So if you accept this your next question might be "So what does this mean in practice?"

Another question may be - is Michael Rose alone out there? A crackpot even?

In this context I have put together a new support site that will address both your need to know what to do and also your need to know that there is a lot of science and scientists behind this.

Here is a screen shot - here is the link to the site.

Here are links to some recent posts so you can see the kind of material that I plan to include here.

The Vegetarian Myth – Lierre Keith –

Taking back control of our health

Loren Cordain tells the story of what made us human

The Big Picture – don’t Eat Industrial Food

ADHD – Look at Diet!

Walking is the best exercise

Sitting a lot is very very bad for us

How much sleep do you need?

The Science Behind the Diet – Staffan Lindeberg – Food & Western Disease

Depression – Your Character or a Biological Problem

Sugar – The hardest/best thing to give up

Our Modern Diseases – Inevitable or Caused by Diet?

Your Ideal Diet – A great resource

Sleep badly? Light is the key

The Missing Human Manual – Our Purpose

Here are the main sources that I am drawing on:

Dr Charles Czeisler

Dr Christopher Alexander

Dr David Dinges

Dr Doug Willms

Dr J Fraser Mustard

Dr Jonathan Shay

Dr Megan Gunnar

Dr Michael Rose

Dr Richard Wrangham

Dr Robert Lustig

Dr Robert Putnam

Dr Robert Sapolsky

Dr Sarah B Hrdy

Dr Staffan Lindeberg

Dr's Andrew Clarke and David Brown

Gary Taubes

Lierre Keith

Michael Rose's 55 Theses

Prof Geert Hofstede

Prof Robin Dunbar

Sir Michael Marmot

The Early Years for Children – Summary of Key Research

My intent is to curate the best of the best advice in the full range of issues related to us taking back control of our health.

Treadmill Desks are coming - Activity Trumps "Exercise"

 

We have evolved to be "active". What is encouraging about this video is that very established companies are trying it AND the folks who use them are loving it.

The problem? You will have to get a new wardrobe after you lose the weight!

And the Science behind this? Here is a link to Thesis #2 - Thesis #2 – Natural selection reliably produces high levels of biological fitness, and thus good health, only under the environmental conditions in which it has been acting for many generations

Sitting is appearing to be one of the worst things we can do and it is so new. Most people never sat much until the last century. 

Now I am standing at my desk for most of the day but I suspect that while standing is much betetr than sitting - moving around a lot more is best.

Again the correct word is "Active" not exercise. In my mind now "Exercise" is something you do on top of an Inactive day. The key is to make our days more active generally.  Is this also not true about "Diet". Is not how we see a Diet as a period of time when we eat differently and then return to how we eat all the time. No wonder we fail so often.

What I am trying to do is to live my life differently. Eat what I am designed to eat. Be active all day. Be in the natural world a lot - get up with the sun and go to bed early - work outside.

Fit my life as close as I can to what I am evolved to be most healthy.

Sleep - Are you a Zombie or a Human?

Most Americans as you can see sleep less than 8 hours a night - many a lot less. How about you?

Are you OK if you do sleep less than 8 hours a night? The quick answer is no you are not. Here is the research:-

Every two hours during the day, the researchers tested the subjects’ ability to sustain attention with what’s known as the psychomotor vigilance task, or P.V.T., considered a gold standard of sleepiness measures. During the P.V.T., the men and women sat in front of computer screens for 10-minute periods, pressing the space bar as soon as they saw a flash of numbers at random intervals. Even a half-second response delay suggests a lapse into sleepiness, known as a microsleep.

The P.V.T. is tedious but simple if you’ve been sleeping well. It measures the sustained attention that is vital for pilots, truck drivers, astronauts. Attention is also key for focusing during long meetings; for reading a paragraph just once, instead of five times; for driving a car. It takes the equivalent of only a two-second lapse for a driver to veer into oncoming traffic.

Not surprisingly, those who had eight hours of sleep hardly had any attention lapses and no cognitive declines over the 14 days of the study. What was interesting was that those in the four- and six-hour groups had P.V.T. results that declined steadily with almost each passing day. Though the four-hour subjects performed far worse, the six-hour group also consistently fell off-task. By the sixth day, 25 percent of the six-hour group was falling asleep at the computer. And at the end of the study, they were lapsing fives times as much as they did the first day.

The six-hour subjects fared no better — steadily declining over the two weeks — on a test of working memory in which they had to remember numbers and symbols and substitute one for the other. The same was true for an addition-subtraction task that measures speed and accuracy. All told, by the end of two weeks, the six-hour sleepers were as impaired as those who, in another Dinges study, had been sleep-deprived for 24 hours straight — the cognitive equivalent of being legally drunk.

So what can you do? Well first of all - know that you have a problem. Secondly here are some tips for a better night's sleep. 

In May I will be launching my project on how we can all take back control of our health. Sleep is of course a major part of this. For sleep is more than rest. It heals us and also is an active part of our cognitive and learning process. How often have you had a problem that you could not solve and yet woke up one morning with it solved?

Sleep is part of the 3 part continuum of of ideal settings for a healthy life.

1. Diet - eat what we are evolved to eat
2. Social - live in social settings and have the kinds of relationships that we are evolved to do best in
3. Natural Environment - live as we are designed to be - this includes align with our circadian nature (this is where the right kind of sleep is key) and also be Active (exercise is not enoughy - we have to design our lives to moce around a lot - why I have a standing desk now)