Robert Paterson's Weblog

The best beef you can buy will be coming to you on Monday

On Monday April 2, we will be starting a CSA financing to help Raymond Loo fund the expansion of his herd to offer us Grass Fed Beef on PEI.

You will be able to buy Chicken Boxes - Pork Boxes and Beef Boxes. All the animals will be raised on Pasture or forage and will be outside moving around as they are meant to be.

We will be using Indiegogo as the way to order. 

I will be posting the site and details on Monday. But you can check out more about this here now

This is what this is all about.

 

I took control off my health - What about you?

PEI has the worst health in Canada. It is our health that drives the costs that are now making cuts in all sorts of services the new normal. 

If we don't want cuts to eductaion, to roads, to social services etc - then we need to think about how we can be well and so reduce the load on the healthcare system.

I used to think that getting fat and then ill as I grew older was inevitable. Maybe you do too. But it is not. If we eat as we are designed too, then we can be well for the rest of our lives. It's as simple and as hard as that. And it is hard because our entire food system is based on foods that have caused this epidemic. It is hard because most of the advice we get from trusted people, such as our Doctors, to eat more grains is wrong too.

So seeing is believing. Here is what happened to me. 

Here I am in August 2009 – pre diabetic – a typical middle aged man. I thought that this was my destiny – that all men of my age had to be like this.

This is who I am now

Not thin – but 35 pounds less and importantly most of my visceral fat has gone as have my man boobs.

With luck, I should be able to be healthy and fit and like this until I die. With luck I have pulled back from the normal on PEI where the average man aged 65 is disabled by ill health and then lives for another 10 years a drain on his family and the state.

My aim was not just to lose weight – this is so much more than just another diet. It was to return my body to its designed natural state which would allow me to plateau. To keep have a long “Healthspan”.

Most of this has taken place as a result of a change in diet – I gave up most modern foods – grains – dairy – legumes. I do cheat now and then too. I am not perfect.  Routinely, I eat no processed food though – drink no pop or beer unless I am travelling and then very very rarely – I am only human!

I do drink a lot of wine. 3-4 glasses a day.

I don’t eat any kind of candy and no sugar at all.

I am never hungry. I rarely need to snack and if I do, I tend to have a few nuts. What about exercise? Diet is the most imprtant element in getting well again. Then it is important to be ACTIVE.

I did spinning for 2 months in the late winter once a week – but most of my “exercise” is activity based. Why pay for a gym when I can stack 4 cords of wood! I feel so much better. Lighter – not just in weight but in spirit. My knees don’t hurt. You put a back pack on with 35 pounds of bricks in it and walk all day and you might see why my knees hurt.

I work at a standing desk and can do that all day now without getting too tired. It took 2 months to be my new normal and is now. I garden, move wood, use the stairs and walk the dog.

I go to bed early and rise with the sun. I work outside all year. If it is not mowing – it’s shovelling. I walk our dog every day rain, snow, wind or shine.

Changing my way of eating was in fact the easiest and fastest way back to health.

You can do this too - if you want to

Run for the Cure - Pink Ribbons - Think more please

I was one of the people who started Run for the Cure in Canada when I worked for CIBC as SVP Marketing. I now regret this. Now I believe the idea of striving for the "Cure" is wrong. What we need to do is to find out WHY WE GET CANCER. When my wife was diagnosed almost 10 years ago this question was never asked, it was all about getting straight to treatment.

Running for the Cure has become a massive BUSINESS. Treatment is a massive BUSINESS. The people involved do very well from our cancer. They hold out the CURE, but say nothing about prevention. Worse are that many are involved in products that are directly linked to you getting cancer. 

I don't believe that Breast Cancer is a lottery, nor that we are condemned by our genes. It is a product of how we live. We can do a lot to reduce our risk.

Here is what my wife wrote a while back. She finds the idea of being a "survivor" inappropriate for her and she finds the lack of discussion about prevention, the failure to decrease the numbers of new breast cancer diagnoses and the lack of publicity about alternatives, very disheartening.

 

 

Your Health - If you watch one video - it is this

 

Dr Wahls was utterly crippled by MS - she found the way home to health for her and for you and me. 

The end of ideology - the awakening

 

Nature is speaking through us - ideology has prevented us from being in touch with out nature and with nature. 

As Paul shows us - the reaction to ideology is emerging itself naturally. OWS is another part of this deep feeling. 

This is how we fed ourselves for 2 million years

 

No wonder the Hunter sees his prey as a soul mate and brother - he has to be immersed in his world to hunt like this.

Amazing that in 10,000 years we have lost our ability to be like this - but all this ability and all this potential reverence surely remains deep inisde us?

Autism - What is driving the epidemic? Look to the causes!

As we look at the increase in healthcare costs as we age - we also have to look at the front end.  I am aghast as I look at this grapgh. What has happened?

All this talk about genes etc is just a smokescreen. What started back in the 1970's to drive this?

For me this graph exposes the critical issue for health care and the costs. We have to shift our attention to the causes. They will have to be related to novel issues of our time. 

What society can live with this?

When I'm 64? The Squeeze - The "Impossible Bills" to pay as we get older

We are entering a new age in all sorts of ways. One of the new things that we don't talk about much is what it will mean when most people are over the age of 60.

Our world has been designed and constructed around a normal of most people being young. That is most people being able to absorb higher costs. Over the next 30 years, we will face the opposite. As each year passes, more and more of us will not be able to pay more. We old folks will not have the money. We will have less and less and no where to go to get more. And there will be more and more of us.

We have not talked much about what the world will be like when most of us are old and poor. We have to. And we have to now.

The first boomers are 65 this year. PEI is very exposed. We will have one of the most age skewed populations in Canada. So what does this mean for you and for me?

Do you have a generous pension? I don't. Most don't. If you have one, do you really think it is secure? We can see right now in places like Greece where pensions are being cut. We have seen here that corporate pensions are not safe - Nortel. If you get a Government Pension today - how safe will it be when most other people have nothing?

How much money will you have per year for the next 30 years? At my best possible calculation for me it is in the poverty bracket. What about you? How much a month will you have over the next 30 years? Scary isn't it!

So we are entering a time when the basic assumption that next year there can and will be more money is off the table. But how the system works is based on the idea that there will be more money next year. So with the old assumptions, we are on track for a squeeze and then a collision.

How will I pay my property taxes, my heating bills, look after my health and have enough to eat. How will you? This is how I see these things:

Property taxes - They are 10% of my gross income right now. They are among the largest bills I have to pay. Unlike any other bill, if I don't pay them, I can be evicted from my home. This is the one bill that can make you and I homeless. 

Cities themselves know how damaging these taxes are but have no other source of income. They are systemically starved by the higher levels of government.

In 10 years time, the majority of home owners will be pensioners. Their only asset will be their home. Can we still have a system that taxes people who will have so little cash in a way that drives them onto the street? What then?

I have not a clue what to do here -I do see this as being an "Impossible Bill" to pay. It would not be hard to see my property tax double in 10 years. It would be impossible for me to pay. It would be impossible for any senior to pay.

There has to be a new way to support our cities and not destroy our society. Time now to start talking about this.

Health Costs - As we get older our health costs go up. It is not unusual to spend $500 a month on drugs now if you have had a heart attack. At least 30% of adult Islanders will have type 2 diabetes. If you get this, you will have massive health risks and costs. About 40% of us will get cancer. The list goes on.

When most of us were young, we did not pay attention to this. Hey the system would pay. But in 4 years time, the PEI health budget will exceed our total tax revenues. The health care system will not be able to pay. Nor will you.

We cannot continue as if we did not live in a new time with new rules.

What happens when we are really old? -Worse, when we get to a certain stage, we cannot look after ourselves on our own. The current normal is that we go to a "home". Well my mum is in such a place. It costs about $40,000 a year after tax to keep her there. Fortunately she has a great pension from my late father. But few of us will have that. And even for her, with the world going as it is - is her pension a sure thing? What if she lives another 20 years? Will her pension be there? If it is not, how will I cope? I can't imagine how I would cope.

Many of us will be faced with this. The new sandwich generation of 70 year old people looking after 95 year old parents.

There will be 8,000 85 plus year old widows on PEI in 15 years time. That is a cost to PEI of $320,000,000 or half the current health budget. Stuffing us all in Manors just cannot work when there are so many of us. AND when PEI's ability to raise taxes and revenues will be so limited.

It gets worse. When we get put in an institution, our health collapses and the costs of keeping us ticking over go up exponentially. It is when we have no place in the world. So if we institutionalize the elderly, our normal now, their health care costs shoot through the roof. 

We do know though that if the elderly can stay in their home, that this does wonders for their health.

No organization knows more about this than Canada's Veterans Affairs. What VAC have found is that the longer people stay in their home the lower the costs as they remain healthy. so VAC have a program of support, meals , cleaning, yard work etc that helps the frail stay in their home. This is much less expensive and better for all. It also offers a lot of work.

So here we go in a circle. This will have to be the way. For I cannot as a 70 year old look after my paralyzed mother. I will need help if she has to come and live with me. But if paying property taxes means that I have no home..... see what I mean. 

Health Costs - The Hope - There is a way forward on health costs though. I am acting on this way ahead for myself. The chronic diseases that we all think of as normal - heart disease, cancer, arthritis, type 2 diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer's etc are not normal but are a product of our diet and how we live. In a year I have transformed my health and my aging process by eating and living differently. Aged 61, I have the health and the activity ability of a man in his healthy early 50's. I should be able to stay this way until I die.

We can PREVENT these diseases and we can age well.

My regular readers know all about this and if you are new to this - then dig into my site. 

If we do not explore this opportunity, I don't see how we can make it through the next 30 years.

Food the Hope - What such a new way of thinking will do as a consequence is drive out a new food system. Eating right will all depend on access to real food that cannot be raised in an industrial way. Instead of a few big farms, we will need thousands of small operations. Instead osfus buying most of our food in a  processed form from the supermarket, it will mean most of us buying food from local people.

This is a huge work and economic opportunity. It is a huge health opportunity too.

Energy Costs - Oil is like Property Taxes - Heating oil is up 25% this year over last. The heating bill is one of the non negotiables. Heating with oil costs Islanders about $200 million a year. That is the equivalent of a 1/4 of the total PEI tax revenue. So this is the largest family bill we pay. The average is I think about $2,500 a home.

We have no negotiating power with winter!

Helping out a few people each heating season will not work when more than 50% of Islanders will not be able to afford to heat their home. 

We have to find a structural new way. It will have to involve reducing the demand - up to 40% can be saved with better insulation etc - and by changing how we heat so we are not exposed to the global oil price. For surely in the next 30 years, where do we see oil prices going? We have to have an energy strategy that is designed to reduce demand and to cut us off from the rosk of oil prices. No easy thing but there is a lot of thought already.

Food The Risk - Nearly all the food we eat comes from away. Nearly all the food we eat depends on oil too. On oil to farm and on oil to transport. We are so exposed. Look at what has happened to poorer nations, food is all but outside the budget of a family. We have to reduce our exposure to oil and our food. This can only be done, if we grow food in a new way.

Such a way of growing food and such a shift in diet - away from annual row crops that need oil and that contribute to the health crisis - to pasture based animals and permaculture veggies will offer a huge boost to employment. It is a win win win.

My regular readers know that much work has been done to see what such a system would be like and I will not go further here.

So here then is the bottom line for all of us.

IT IS NOT BUSINESS AS USUAL. In 10 years time most of us will be over 50 and many will be close to 70. We will be on very limited and insecure budgets. Our tax system, our approach to health, our approach to food and our approach to energy has to change.

Time is so short. We have to get a lot of the new design done and in action in the next 5 years if we have any hope of making it through the next 30.

Time to start the conversation. Time to help each other and time to help our governments do the right thing.

Ancestral/Paleo Health - Going Mainstream

HealthWatch: Caveman Diet Trend Starting To Catch Fire.

A growing number of scientists, medical doctors and nutritionists have argued that a Stone Age lifestyle could benefit human health and even cure chronic diseases. Dr. Kim Mulvihill reports on how the diet helped her shed 30 pounds.

The CBS journalist is doing this story because she tried this and it works. "CBS 5 medical reporter Dr. Kim Mulvihill was so intrigued by the UCSF research that she became a guinea pig for the scientists.

She was told that she could not lose any weight and was given a Paleo plan to follow.

Within 10 days, her cholesterol dropped dramatically, as did her blood pressure. She then asked if she could lose weight, and modified the diet to eat less. Dr. Mulvihill then shed 30 pounds and two dress sizes. Her cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar levels all continued to plummet in a healthful way.Dr. Mulvihill said she never felt deprived and never felt healthier."

And this weekend CBC covered this on Sunday Morning and the Current on Monday

I think what is driving this is that IT WORKS! After 40 years of telling us to eat more grains and take more exercise, we have the epidemic. If people try this for a month, they feel results. If they do it for a year, they are transformed.

Me in 2009 and me this summer 2011. It took a year to lose 35 pounds by eating differently. My arthritis has gone. I am back to my wedding weight. I did spin for 2 months but mainly I have just been more active. I have a standing desk and I work outside a lot - the garden, wood stacking etc.

My dad died at 55. My mum has been an invalid since her mid 40's. I have a very poor ancestry and I was on my way to join them. But I decided that I did not want that as my future.

So what about you?

Irene - Fibonacci - The Geometry Of Nature

Source - Many people are now thankfully talking about "Self Organization" as our future. But underneath much of the clamour is a bias to an image of self organization that has not structure other than somehow we are all connected.

But Nature keeps reminding us that what appears the most chaotic on the surface ALWAYS has deep structure. Here we see this again withy Irene. On the ground, chaos. But see it from another perspective and we see the key math behind Natural Systems - the Fibonacci Sequence.