Robert Paterson's Weblog

April 11 at 12 Noon At the QSC - How to take charge of your health

Are you interested in taking charge of your health? If so we, Robin and Robert Paterson,  are putting on a short Lunch and Learn at the Queen St Commons 224 Queen St at 12 noon April 11. We plan to give you a glimpse at why this is possible, what pragmatic steps you can take and what are the best resources that we have found in the last 12 months that have helped us the most.

You can email me robert.paterson@gmail.com or go to our event facebook page

About a year ago we made a big decision. We were going to take charge of our health. We were blessed with some excellent advice from one of the world's top scientists on aging, Dr Michael Rose, and we went off and did a lot of homework on the new science of health and aging.

By taking some straightforward steps in diet and how we lived, we have pulled ourselves back from the brink. Not only have we lost a lot of weight, but more importantly our health has improved. I, Rob, went for being pre diabetic to having the metabolism of a 25 year old. Robin's chronic and painful arthritis has gone.

You can prevent chronic illness and you can get well if you have it.

In this 45 minute session we will:

• Show you the new science of how to age well
• Offer you our hard won pragmatic advice for how to change what you eat and do and how to cope with the deep desires to go back to our old ways
• Offer you a guide to the best people and information that we have found in a year of searching for good material on the web - so that you can help yourself understand more

 

Eat what we are designed to eat and we will be healthy

Wise Traditions London 2010 - Barry Groves from Wise Traditions London on Vimeo.

Gorillas eat veggies but these are converted to fat - they have the digestive system to make this conversion. Converts to 70% fats in energy source Cows eat grass - but these are converted into fat by their gut bacteria - they consume the bacteria. Cows normally eat no carbs. Converts to 70% fats in energy. Lion 70% fat too - no carbs In nature all mammals are designed to eat a high fat diet.

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

30% of Islanders will have Type 2 Diabetes soon. What this means.

By 2030, 30% of Islannders are expected to have Type 2 Diabetes. What if only 5% had it? This is possible if we make this a priority. With a better diet, the risk goes away as I have found myself.

This epidemic is not only destroying lives but our society - for it is this that is sucking all the resources of the government. Here is how the numbers work. This is what happens when you have T2D.

It is estimated that by 2030 1/3 of the population will have it. So, as more people hit their 60’s and more suffer from Type 2 Diabetes, the need to respond rises exponentially.

Diabetes drives many other conditions including cardiovascular disease.

PEI adults in 2006 with diabetes had to be hospitalized much more often than those without it. 16 times more often for lower limb amputations. 6 times more often with kidney disease. They had 5 times more heart attacks. 4 times more heart failure. 3 times more strokes. They stayed 3 times longer in hospital. Had 2 times more visits to physicians and 2 times more to specialists.

Most diabetics don’t just take one medication, but several.

A typical regimen for an adult diabetic after a couple of years of treatment and following the dietary advice of the American Diabetes Association includes Metformin, Januvia, and Actos, a triple-drug treatment that costs around $420 per month. Two forms of insulin (slow- and fast-acting), along with two or three oral medications, is not at all uncommon.

The real societal problem is not that we die of these diseases but that we that suffer from them. All or concerns in the past have been mortality. But with this large and growing group of people, the issue becomes not mortality but care. This is a major part of the load that we can anticipate. This is where most of the higher costs are coming from. This is a point where the demography plus the epidemic come together. All the healthcare system can do is to carry the load. They have not and cannot stop the rise in the incidence. 

Health - What works - What doesn't - Time to do what works

 

Thank goodness - we are getting close to understanding that what we have been told is wrong

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?

Type 2 Diabetes and Chronic Disease today - Cholera in the 1850's - The Same Problem

Here is a wonderful documentary by the BBC about the building of the great sewers in London. I find it a direct parallel to where we are today when we are confronted by the Chronic Diseases of our time.

We face an epidemic - so did they.

Tackling the epidemic is made almost impossible because the establishment believe that it is caused by forces that don't in fact cause the diseases. Then, they all thought that cholera was caused by smells. Today we think that our modern epidemic is caused by fat in the diet and by lethargy. 

In fact the deep cause is the same - our industrial culture creates environments that don't fit our health. Then it was that millions cannot live without pure water - the sewage has to go away for it is the contaminated water that drives cholera. Now it is that we cannot eat the industrial diet. Such food makes us ill in a chronic way. How we eat is driven by our model. It drives an environmental vector.

Then in 30 years the entire situation was turned around. Not by finding a cure for cholera but by changing the environment. By 1900 London had 9 million inhabitants and Cholera in large cities had been eradicated everywhere. 

We can do the same for the epidemic of chronic disease. But to do so we have to defeat the grip of the establishment and we have to eat differently. This in turn will enable a new food system and then a new society.

Have a look at this film and see if I am right - and by the way it is also a great film.

 

7 Wonders of Industrial World EP 4 the Sewer King from ramuel tamayo on Vimeo.

Seeing is believing - Me 6 years ago and now

I am horrified to see me as I was 6 years ago - on my way to be a typical fat and then ill middle aged man.

It is not just that I have lost the weight - it is that I have reversed a lot of deterioration. With luck I will stay like I am now for most of my life. Sure I will get more wrinkly but the chances are that I will not get type 2 diabetes, heart disease, arthritis - mine has cleared up already - depression or dementia.

What I cannot see is what is happening inside.

But I thought back in the day that being fat and ill and weak was just a normal part of getting older. It's not.

We are designed to plateau in middle age. You can too. You don't have to accept being decrepit.