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

Flame Retardants - A Hoax and a Major Health Risk

We get chronic illness from living in toxic environments. The younger we are, the more vulnerable we are. Surrounding our infants and children with flame retardants is not a good thing.

They don't work anyway. The whole thing was based on a scam. And here is the infomation.

Please take care. 

Are you an entrepreneur? Time to get connected to others like you

 

The bottom line from Startup Canada

It's all going to be about the ecosystem. Alone we are weak - but together....

So on PEI, please set up an organization to do this. Hope is not a method and good intentions are not enough. I appeal to the PEI BioAlliance and to the Queen Street Commons to form a nucleus. This would be a great start.

Apple Rules! Here is the one I owned back in 1982

Ah the good old days 48K and lunar lander!

And Visicalc!

And Bank Street Writer

via smartpei.typepad.com

It's been 30 years since I first got my Mac. I feel old but boy do I still love my Mac

Movember - A Caution

It's Movember. Good for you for caring to do something. But did you know that your money will not go to helping anyone avoid cancer but to Big Pharma to help them make money out of you.

Mustaches are everywhere this November. In October we are all pink and Running for the Cure. But please think a bit please. BTW I was one of a small group of CIBC Executives that started Run for the Cure - so I am not just being a Grinch here. I have many family members with Prostate Cancer and others with breast cancer - so I am not just sitting on the fence throwing rocks  today. 

"The Cure" is the business model of medicine. There is no business is helping you avoid cancer. So medicine does not do health. 

Please remember that medicine is above all a business. A business that makes its money by selling us tests and treatments. A conversation that you will never have when you meet your oncologist for the first time is how you got cancer. The conversation that you will never have is how to reduce your risks - other than by taking more medication. 

Do you know how to avoid cancer? Did you know that only 7% of women who are diagnosed have the gene and even then only a few of them get it? Did you know that if you are a woman in the UK you have a 42% chance of getting breast cancer?

When your PSA level is high or you have a cancerous lump, no doctor will tell you that this may not kill you. No one will tell you that most men over 65 have prostate cancer and die of something else years later. 

Did you know that early testing, mammograms and PSA tests have done nothing to reduce the overall mortality rate? 

If you want to avoid cancer then please start to discover the wealth of information that talks not about the CURE but about how we get it and how to avoid it. It is in your power to reduce your risks. Become part of the new revolution in health where the research looks not for the silver bullet but at the complex system that it our health.

Please don't just be a well intentioned supporter of a multi billion dollar industry.

Can you believe medical research? Why you should be careful. What is to come!

Every week it seems there is a new research report claiming that this or that works. It's confusing. But at least we thought that research was pure.

This excellent report from the Washington Post suggests that we must be more critical about how medical research is done.

Take the case of Avandia - a drug to help diabetes. 

"Whether these ties altered the report on Avandia may be impossible for readers to know. But while sorting through the data from more than 4,000 patients, the investigators missed hints of a danger that, when fully realized four years later, would lead to Avandia’s virtual disappearance from the United States:

The drug raised the risk of heart attacks.

A Food and Drug Administration scientist later estimated that the drug had been associated with 83,000 heart attacks and deaths."

The report sheds light on the many conflicts of interest today in so called medical research.

Why is this? Is it just greed? I don't think so. I think that the answer is that we have the wrong model for healthcare. It has a mechanistic worldview that cannot cope with the complex world of health today. 

Most of medical research today is done is the context of finding a "Pill for each ill". Each part of the body is seen as separate. Each illness is seen as separate. Most of us believe this too. We Run for the Cure, we buy daffodils for Heart and Stroke. We all want a pill to stop us from getting fat. And the entire medical establishment makes its money because of this belief. They sell pills, tests and procedures. They do not sell health. Healthcare is a transaction business based on a mechanistic view of reality that is as off base as thinking that the world is flat.

It would appear to the naked eye that the world is flat. But now we know that it isn't. It might appear that each disease and each part of the body are separate but of course they are not.

Our health is part of a complex system that includes not only each of us but all of us and all of the environments physical and social that we interact with today and for millions of years in the past.

For instance our gut is not just an organ but it is an ecosystem.

Here is a snip from this excellent article in the Economist

"A healthy adult human harbours some 100 trillion bacteria in his gut alone. That is ten times as many bacterial cells as he has cells descended from the sperm and egg of his parents. These bugs, moreover, are diverse. Egg and sperm provide about 23,000 different genes. The microbiome, as the body’s commensal bacteria are collectively known, is reckoned to have around 3m. Admittedly, many of those millions are variations on common themes, but equally many are not, and even the number of those that are adds something to the body’s genetic mix.

And it really is a system, for evolution has aligned the interests of host and bugs. In exchange for raw materials and shelter the microbes that live in and on people feed and protect their hosts, and are thus integral to that host’s well-being. Neither wishes the other harm. In bad times, though, this alignment of interest can break down. Then, the microbiome may misbehave in ways which cause disease.

That bacteria can cause disease is no revelation. But the diseases in question are. Often, they are not acute infections of the sort 20th-century medicine has been so good at dealing with (and which have coloured doctors’ views of bacteria in ways that have made medical science slow to appreciate the richness and relevance of people’s microbial ecosystems). They are, rather, the chronic illnesses that are now, at least in the rich world, the main focus of medical attention. For, from obesity and diabetes, via heart disease, asthma and multiple sclerosis, to neurological conditions such as autism, the microbiome seems to play a crucial role."

THIS is the kind of research that makes sense. It is not based on trying to find a silver bullet that can be sold. It is looking at the total ecosystem that is how health really works. Humans have a massive internal and complex system that interacts with itself AND with everything outside both social and physical AND with all that has shaped us in the past NOT just in our own life but for millions of year prior. 

We are not machines. 

The revolution in medicine that I will describe in my next book - You Don't Need Medicine - To Get Healthy - will describe how this systems perspective will overturn the mechanistic worldview that dominates medicine today.

Here is a glimpse of the thinking that will shatter the old system.

 

Dear Readers, It is time to start to think critically about medicine the same way that we are thinking about media and education. 

Small city or region in decline? - Like PEI - A way back

PEI, has spent a lot of development money from the Feds on new rinks etc and of course on a new road. But other than the wages of the workers, what of this money has  put PEI in a better place for the future?

Here is what Chatanooga did instead. They used their Fed development money to make the city, the best internet and most wired city in America. It cost $111 million. (Link NYT Tom Friedman)

"The majority of Chattanooga homes and businesses get 50 megabits per second, some 100 megabits, a few 250 and those with big needs opt for a full gigabit per second, explained Harold DePriest, the chief executive of EPB, the city’s electric power and telecom provider, which built and operates the network. “The average around the country is 4.5 megabits per second.” So average Internet speed in Chattanooga is 10 times the national average.

That doesn’t just mean faster downloads. The fiber grid means 150,000 Chattanooga homes now have smart electric meters to track their energy consumption in real time. More important, said DePriest, on July 5, Chattanooga got hit with an unusual storm that knocked out power to 80,000 homes. Thanks to intelligent power switching on the fiber network, he said, “42,000 homes had their electricity restored in ... 2 seconds.” Old days: 17 hours."

And this has meant that business is flocking there as are people who need the web.

"Chattanooga replaced its belching smokestacks with an Amazon.com fulfillment center, major health care and insurance companies and a beehive of tech start-ups that all thrive on big data and super-high-speed Internet."

As the web becomes the key, communities that offer the best connections will attract the best work. And for the web, location does not matter. In the industrial world, PEI is on the edge. On the web it could be in the centre.

Owls Hollow or Toys r Us - What will be your choice this Christmas on PEI?

It is no coincidence that Toys rUs opens on PEI this Chritmas. One of their ambitions is to close Owls Hollow.

Owls Hollow is one of the best toy stores that I have ever found and I have lived all over the world.

So what does your Christmas Toy budget mean. If you choose the big box, you will play a part in closing Owls Hollow. Ask yourself why this is a good idea? Is there that much of a price difference? And what kind of toy are you buying? Made where and by whom? Who wins and who loses?

I have 3 grandchildren. I love PEI. I am dropping by Owls Hollow when I come back to see my mum in December. You will not find me at the other place.

 

Banks are being Disrupted by the Process of the Innovator's Dilemma - Part 1

This podcast is all about why we think that the major banks will fade away in the next 15 years. It will not be a nice time. But a better system will replace it. Jordan and I are struggling to understand this ourselves and want to offer you our conversation so that we can all get a better sense of what is to come and so what can we each do to get ready. 

The Banks seem essential and inviolate. But then, 30 years ago, so did "Big Steel". But a new small company came in to the bottom of the steel market and began to take away business that Big Steel did not want. Big Steel gave up the Rebar market without a fight because they could not make money there. So Nucor grew, as did other mini mills, and took on Big Steel step by step until there was nothing left.

This is the classic story of how disruption works as told by Clay Christensen in his classic books - The Innovator's Dilemma and the Innovator's solution. 

In this post today, I interview Jordan MacLeod, author of Natural Money . Jordan is one of the leading thinks about the future of money today.  We see signs that this process of disruption is well under way. We think that the big banks will be challenged as Big Steel was and that this will take place in the next 5 years. 

In this segment, the first of 3, we identify the pressures that the banks have put themselves under that are exposing them to new disruptive entrants. Mainly driven by the fact that the banks treat the small person and the small business very badly. 

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation estimates that roughly 10 million households in the United States do not use a bank, up from nine million three years ago. And the agency says 24 million more households have a bank account but still use nonbank financial services, like prepaid cards.(link)

Now that Visa is a for profit organization, it is aggressively raising fees for small business - maybe thinking that they cannot do anything about it.

Millions of people now wire money internationally. This has been a gold mine for banks who charge a fortune for this.

The large banks have proved that they cannot be trusted.

All this combines to empower new small competitors that are eating in to the bottom of the market that the banks don't like anyway - their Rebar market.

Walmart is banking the bottom end. Dwolla will do a money transfer for 25 cents. Square is targetting the small business . Dwolla and others are eating into the bank clearing system itself.

All this is happening very quickly and is being aided by banks that are small and who also resent being used by the majors.

What this implies is, that at some point, Money itself will be questioned. For today money is created by bank lending. With a Fractional reserve system, each dollar that a bank lends to you only requires a reserve of 10 cents. The other 90 cents is magic. 

In parts 2 and 3 of this series we will talk about what may happen as the major banks are eaten up from the base and a confidence in them continues to fall. Where will we put our money then? What will money be then? These are huge issues. We take money for granted now. But history reminds us to be cautious when a large system is under threat. 

Not an easy topic.

In the meantime, I have a lot more about the new system that is to come in my second book You Don't Need a Banker

PEI Government Pension Plan - Don't Count on it

The PEI Government plans are underwater by over 400 million with most new retirees retiring in the next 10 years. The market is not going to make up the difference. We live in different times. The pensioners cannot make up the difference. And the PEI Taxpayer - most of whom don't have a pension - cannot do this either.

Some facts. PEI Tax revenues are about $800 million a year. So $400 million represents about 50% of one year's revenue. Healthcare costs will rise to $800 million by the middle of the next mandate. 

PEI cannot pay the $400 million for the government pensioners. And PEI cannot pay for $800 million of healthcare costs either. The next 5 years are going to be "interesting!". The contract that we all thought we had signed up for - pensions and healthcare will have to be broken.

More here.

So what does this mean to you if you are a pensioner. You will be pissed off for a start. 

“The average pension is about $16,000 a year, which is not a lot of money. Our members aren’t living large when they retire,” she said

That’s why Bovyer says it concerns her to hear comments about taxpayers being on the hook for public service pensions.

She believes government wants to move from the current defined-benefit plan, to a defined contribution plan.

This is the only hope to get anything. You are going to have to take less. You are going to have to do what the rest of us are going to do - live in a different way.

And Ms Bovyer, $16,000 a year from investments is a lot of money. That represents well over a million dollars per person. How many Islanders have that in their savings?

So what does living in a different way mean? It need not mean eating cat food. But it does mean thinking like this:

• Do you need to live alone in a one generation household? Housing is your big expense. What abut your kids? The extended family is the unit that helped us all along before pensions
• What is your exposure to oil and heating costs? Have you insulated your home and done everything to reduce your energy costs. This is another big risk area.
• Grow food. You will have lots of time. Run chickens, grow veggies. Put in a hedge on higher food prices.
• Do you live in the country where you have to drive everywhere? A car is the single most expensive thing you own and it exposes you to oil price increases. You will also reach a point when you cannot drive. Live in town!
• Car share and help your neighbours - they will do the same for you
• The average male Islander becomes disabled from chronic illness at 65! He lives for another 10 years unable to cope on his own. Get well!!!!!!!!!!! BTW the average PEI woman follows this track 5 years later

This kind of living is not unfamiliar to many Islanders. It is just below the surface ready to come out again. If pensioners spend all their energy fighting the $ battles that has to be lost, then they lose everything. But if you work to help each other make this transition back to how your grandparents lived, a much better future for all lies ahead.