I’m about to use this space to unburden my brain from the thoughts and ideas whizzing around in there. This’ll be Part 1 of 3 of such unburdening. Read Part 2 here. Read Part 3 here.

I’ve been learning about health & wellness for a few years now… like immersed in it. I follow podcasts, I read everything I can get my hands on, I track down references and draw my own conclusions from data, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking… (time to start doing, but that’s a topic for another day). I do this in the name of curiosity and wonder and amazement and improvement and now… service to others.

But I have to admit, when you get thisclose to the health & wellness dogma out there  – conventional or otherwise – it’s easy to blur the lines between was is actually fact, and what is actually just so strongly believed. I’m using these posts as a place to sort some stuff out. I’m talking out loud to my peeps here.

[Aside: I found this photo the other day – it’s a classroom in my high school – probably my senior year. The banner across the top of the chalkboard caught my eye… ]

This is the danger any human faces when they are seeking answers. We are pretty strongly wired to want to know what’s right, and then to decide what’s right based on our own experiences, and then to let everyone else know how wrong they are – because clearly, they haven’t figured out the right way. I do my best to be objective and scientific… but it’s really difficult to resist drawing conclusions ahead of the evidence sometime.

I say this as fair warning my friends… because I’m about to stitch together a story that’s been developing in my mind. A story about our ill health, our diet and lifestyle, our environment, and some likely ways forward. I’ll reference where I can – and let you know when I’m speculating. It’s my vision of what’s going down with us here in the developed world. This story takes place as a series of observations & interpretations, ’cause that’s how I roll.

Observation #1: We are not alone.

This we know. I’d say this is fact. We are not alone in our bodies – we share our bodies with our microbiome. In fact, there are estimates that 90% of the cells in your body are the bacteria, yeast, viruses, parasites etc… that make up your unique microbiome. We are just really scratching the surface in our understanding of this ‘forgotten organ’ of ours.

We know, for example, that fecal transplants – literally transplanting the poop from a healthy individual into an unhealthy individual – cure a C. difficile infection (a bug that wreaks havoc on your digestive system) 90-100% of the time – depending on the study group. This is really a slam dunk for the importance of our microbiome on our health.

People have experimented with particular bacterial communities (probiotics) to treat eczema. People experiment with parasites to treat neurological disorders and other autoimmune diseases. Researchers are now tinkering with drugs that alter a person’s microbiome to control blood sugar dysregulation. New science (on mice) suggests that the increase in metabolic syndrome (a group of risk factors correlated to heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes) is correlated to a microbiome that is out of whack. Researchers are making mice obese or lean by shifting and sharing bacteria from obese or lean humans into germ-free mice.

We think that our microbiome somehow trains, strengthens, or otherwise challenges our immune system (like a vaccine does) to keep us healthy. We think that our microbiome and their byproducts can help us to create neurotransmitters like serotonin that help keep us happy – and out of depression.

There is probably oh so much more that these invisible guys do. Respect.

But, this is a frontier area of research – with serious limitations today. For example, a gut microbiome sample measured by 2 different labs identifies 2 very different communities. Shit. Literally. The very collection, handling, and processing of these samples expose them to change. Oh, and how do we know what’s a normal and healthy microbiome in a population where it’s so common to be sick? How will this information be interpreted and used? Is it safe to monkey with nature in the form of drugs that alter your microbiome – when we haven’t yet figured it out? (Perhaps a rhetorical question.)

Why manufacture drugs when nature has figured this out for us? Should we all just close our eyes, rub ourselves together, and trust in nature? This is what happens at daycare facilities day in and day out.  Kids are exposed to viruses and like little vectors bombard their classrooms with it – leaving the healthy kids just a little stronger thanks to the immune challenge.

It’s clear that there’s something to this microbiome stuff… we are not alone – and we could stand to have some compassion for our non-human cells, maybe welcome a few more bacteria to the party once in a while to shake things up in there.

More on that in Part 2.

I’m a health coach – I’m throwing my all into spreading some serious health around. I’m pretty passionate about what I’m doing these days.

I’m also aware of how my brain works. I’m one of those people with great ideas running around in my head – and I end up thinking that everyone can see those ideas for some reason.

For example: I’m giving a free health & wellness seminar that I call ‘Thrive’ (I really need a better name for it – I’m on that)… it’s scheduled from 4:00-5:30 on Friday, June 27th at Jules Pilates Studio in Madison. I’ve arranged it, it’s going to happen… and now of course people will know about it, because it’s going to happen.

I didn’t say I was a marketer 😉

So, let me tell you a bit more about it – and then I’ll get to the meat of this post.

This workshop is during Dane Buy Local’s Independents Week celebration (June 27 – July 7)… It’s a workshop that walks you through some important phases that you’ll likely go through if you are about to seize the day – to begin your own personal health revolution… today.

• Motivation
• Open mindedness
• Awareness
• Where YOU begin
• Food as Medicine
• How to travel this journey

In this workshop – I’ll outline my own (ongoing) personal health journey – because I believe it’s a common story that goes something like:

• girl thinks she’s fat
• girl loses weight conventionally/restrictively
• girl’s friends encourage her because they think she’s looking hot
• girl loses health
• girl’s doctor fails her
• girl takes ownership of her body
• girl’s head has to change/fight convention
• girl finally begins to thrive…

It’s about a diet mentality gone very wrong, and thankfully I discovered the error in my ways – and I really want to share it with you.

I’ve also got an important exercise for you to do. Despite the baseline commonality that conventional health & wellness wisdom may be wrong about a lot of things, we all live unique lives.  We all have unique stressors: our support networks, our habits, our jobs, our environment, our perspective, our upbringing – all as different as can be. Our bodies are all informed by vastly different circumstances – making our starting points in this quest for health very different. In this workshop, you will see where YOU should start.

Finally – I’ve got a unique approach to human health, which is why I question a lot of conventional health advice. My background is in geology and paleobiology/evolutionary science. I am very interested in how the human species best thrives (you might be too)… I call my approach ‘ancestral’ – and I’ll talk about this more at the workshop.

In addition to the valuable information that you will take away from this workshop, I’m offering some crazy deep discounts on my group health coaching program for the duration of Independents Week.  Like, 2 for 1 – so bring a friend – bring your own personal support network – and the 2 of you can split the investment. Express your interest anytime from June 27 – July 7 – and your program fee is only $65 / month for 6 months.

And because I’m incredibly interested in your success in this program – I’ll even let you try out the first session before you invest. For real.

Hey – if you happen to be reading this and thinking to yourself – “Damn, self, I’d love to hear what she has to say, but I’ve missed this opportunity.” Fret not. Contact me and I’d be happy to arrange a workshop for you and your colleagues.

And now, our regularly scheduled programming.

5 reasons why there’s no time like the present to invest in your health.

1) Your current life & health is the sum total of everything that has happened to you and your body since the day that you were conceived. Seriously. It’s taken you (insert your age here) years to build you so far. Small, consistent, daily shifts in your current routine will change your body & life. The sooner you start, the more life you can soak up down the road. There’s no time like the present.

2)  “Procrastination is the thief of time” – I’m pretty damn good at this, and you might be too. “I’ll start tomorrow” is sort of a survival technique that many of us live by. Problem is, we don’t reap any rewards today – or tomorrow –  if we’re always planning to change at some point in the future.  There’s no time like the present.

3) We’re pretty comfortable in our routine, right? Which is why we often fail to see the bigger picture. It can be exciting to shake things up – to jump outside of your comfort zone where real change happens. Plus – there are SO MANY OPTIONS out there… gazillions of new food, ways to move, things to do, blades of grass to touch… abundance!  You’re robbing yourself of variety and quite possibly some great joy if you stick to the way things have always been done. Imagine the possibilities… There’s no time like the present.

4) Do you have minions kids in your life? These guys are so malleable, they literally soak up information all day long. Their lives and their bodies are on some sort of trajectory that is largely influenced by what goes on at home. You are one of their most important, if not the most important role models. They will learn their habits from you. Is there a new direction that you’d like to go? They’re watching… there’s no time like the present.

5) The monetary reason… right now – I’m offering deep discounts for in person group health coaching… designed to help you slowly and sustainably shift your life and health in a health gaining sort of direction. Money talks, I know. This small – proactive investment in your health today could save you hundreds of thousands of dollars down the road. You can see this I’m sure. 75% of our health care costs today go toward largely preventable disease maintenance. There’s no time like the present to take control.

Let me help you to do this… you’ve already read this today, you have some interest and awareness – you’re on your way, don’t lose momentum.

Want to be part of something big?

See, I have this thing… and I’m so passionate about this thing, and I know that this thing is something big.

And I want to share this thing with you, so badly.

It’s a project that is far reaching… I’m on a mission that could add quality years to your life, and tens of thousands of dollars to your bank account. I’m currently trying to quantify exactly what that would mean to you.

But for now, I can give you some rough estimates. I’ll use myself – 5 years ago to give you an idea of what I mean…

5 years ago, I was on 2 prescription medications: cabergoline for elevated prolactin & consequent infertility, and a beta blocker called nadolol for wonky heart beats.

I think that these were generic meds, and I had some insurance to help cover the costs - so my out-of-pocket cost was something like $10/mo ($120/year) for these prescriptions, I was pretty lucky. Without that coverage, I would've paid more like $300/mo ($3600/year!).

But the larger cost of taking those prescriptions stems from the fact that those medicines were designed to relieve my symptoms. And they did. My prolactin levels came down, I got my period again, and my heart stopped randomly flipping out. A fun side effect of both of those drugs was low blood pressure. No matter how hard I worked out at the gym, I could not get my heart rate up above 140 bpm. That was interesting for sure. I wonder what the long term effects of that would have been. Hmmmm.

My doctors were content with this drug solution - and I was too. Hell, it didn't cost me much and my problems were solved.

Anyway, back to the larger cost. There was something going on in my body that was causing my prolactin to elevate, and my heart to flip out. And for sure, it wasn't a cabergoline and nadolol deficiency. While my body was screaming at me loud and clear that something was wrong, I was busy trying to silence it instead of listening to it.

Here's where I get to be arm wavy - because I know how this story really ends 😉

If I had stayed on that path of medicating my (not life-threatening but scary) health issues, I might have set myself up for some more serious health issues. If you can't tell if your body is sick (because you're treating the symptoms), then you sort of run the risk of actually having compound health issues.

But in my case, I had a wake up call. Somewhere between my doctor failing me and my instinct telling me that I wasn't designed to be medicated, but I WAS designed to heal.

I also looked around me - observed the health issues that my family was tackling - and decided that the various thyroid diseases, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, and gall bladder disease that is prevalent in my family - was not going to take me down. There must be things that I could do to decrease my chances of any of these diagnoses.

Because 75% of chronic disease.... it's preventable.

AND $3 out of every $4 spent on health care are attributed to chronic disease management. Here are some estimates for the cost of chronic disease:

• $215,000 - lifetime costs of Alzheimer's care
• $140,000 - lifetime costs of a stroke
• $13,700 - annual costs of Diabetes
• $30,000 - annual cost of Heart Disease
• $20,000 - $100,000 - annual cost of Cancer

(I have a hard enough time saving for retirement - these numbers are scary)

So there's a huge potential cost for our health care - and an even bigger cost to our quality of life down the road... that we have a whole lot of control over.

More than you may realize.

My own health journey has me pretty fired up to share. So fired up to share that I've found new purpose in life.

Which is actually a huge positive feedback thing for me... and my health. HUGE.

Here's where the something big comes in. I've started a group coaching program that I call THRIVE. It's a program for women who are tired of feeling shitty. For whom conventional medicine & dietary advice is failing. Who have open minds and are ready to make change. For women who aim to gain health in a way that makes perfect sense.

And when you do gain health - and you're ready to pay it forward - I have you covered too. For me, part of thriving means having more to give - and I hope to give back to our community in some way.

I know that life is expensive today. We all have lots of bills. This part of the reason why a group coaching approach makes sense. The individual investment is relatively low, and the rewards can be enormous.

And the community, support, and accountability - well, it's super nice.

Right now, and through the end of April 2014, I'm offering 2 for 1 if you enroll in the THRIVE program with a friend. That's 50% off.

It is currently offered in 2 locations in Madison.  The group at Jules Pilates Studio on the west side of town meets every other Wednesday from 5:15-6:45 pm, and the group at Chrysalis Hair & Body on the east side of town meets every other Sunday from 2:30-4:00 pm.

AND if you'd like to try it before you invest - just RSVP to me... I'll set you up.

Bring a friend

You are worth any investment really... You are so worth it.

Most of us live in a box of some sort. The foundation for your box was made with support from friends and family, and the rest of this box was crafted by you with the things that you’ve learned and the resources that you’ve gathered.

And you made this box, because that’s just what humans do, we make boxes. From the moment you were born, to the day that you are reading this crazy message – you’ve been in the business of building, renovating, and re-decorating this box of yours.

There’s another name for this box. You can also call it your comfort zone.

And boy is it comfortable in there. Damn cozy. It’s got all of the niceties. It’s wired with all of the modern conveniences you’ll ever need to get by.  And as a bonus, you have complete control over who has access.

Let’s look at this comfort zone of yours from a different perspective.

How often do you peek outside it? Do you know who’s hanging around outside this box? What’s going on outside of those walls? Have you ever climbed on top of this place to see what it feels like up there?

I think it’s safe to say, opportunities in life, they are found outside of the box – outside of your comfort zone.

If you envision everything and everyone that has made you who you are today, I bet the biggest changes in your life have happened because of some leap that you’ve taken. A time when you’ve moved outside of your comfort zone.

Conversely, if you’re seeking major change in your life (ie. relationship, career, body image, health, fitness, dietary), you are quite unlikely to find it in that box of yours. Because, it’s business as usual in there so how will things change?

How do you move away from your comfort zone?  Think about standing in front of a giant, cold, swimming pool.  Are you the type of person who slowly inches in, or are you the just jump in and get it over with kind of person?

Me, I’ve never been a ‘just jump in’ person – always favored the slide-into-the-pool-and-freak-out-the-entire-time approach. <<<That right there is my comfort zone. And that right there is the reason why, I need to start jumping in with wreckless abandon.

Yes, there is fear involved. Sometimes what you need to do is to face that fear… and do it anyway.

I’m happy to let you into my brain on this one – because I’m in the process of leaping as we speak. I have a whole pile of fears, and I’m about to face them head on.

Meredith’s Comfort Zone: I’m sooo comfortable behind my laptop, writing, creating, virtually socializing… I can literally wake up in the morning and sit down in front of this machine and just go to work.

Meredith Wants Major Change: Yes, yes I do. I’m building a new business, and I want to make an impact on my local community. ^^^ Ergo, Meredith’s Comfort Zone is not going to cut it.

Meredith’s Leap: I realize that to meet my goals, I need to literally get out of my house and meet face to face with people, I need to run workshops, I need to offer classes, I need to get out of my jammies in the morning  This means networking events, this means figuring out how to market myself, this means just starting my group coaching program.

Leap with me!

Tell me in the comments – What is your comfort zone? What is the major change you’d like to make? How can can leap out of your comfort zone to make that change?

I’m a big fan of cultivating things.  Soil, hobbies, knowledge, food snobbery… brain cells… health, you get the drift

From Merriam-Webster:

cul·ti·vate transitive verb \ˈkəl-tə-vāt\

I just returned from my first day at the Well Expo here in Madison – and I’m walking away realizing that I have some work to do.

But first – the goodness.  I’m so proud to be working with Julia McConahey of Chrysalis Hair & Body – Madison’s only non-toxic salon.  I watched her educate people – by having them educate themselves. Winning approach.  She had a ‘skin deep’ challenge, where she asked people to look up at least one of their own personal care products on the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Cosmetics Database to see exactly how toxic the ingredients are.  This was eye opening to a lot of people… Lucky for them though, Lisa Brill from Qet Botanicals (right here in Cross Plains, WI) was close by to help them discover all natural replacements for their favorite bath and body products.

Yes – this is indeed goodness.

I had a chance to walk around the Well Expo and see who was there… it was a pretty busy place, full of vendors who are trying to make a living in the health & wellness industry. I couldn’t help but notice the that the ‘quick fix’ people were still out there – suckering women into buying their shakes or supplements to lose weight.  I guess there’s a market for anything.

I picked up one of the freebie bags full of ads and samples from the vendors at the Expo.  There were a couple of things in that bag that I found particularly counter to good health.  Here’s one:

It’s called ‘Klarbrunn Vita ICE’, orange mango

(+ antixidants, 0 calories, + vitamins)

Wow.  It could also say + preservatives, +artificial colors, +artificial flavors, +artificial sweeteners… but I guess that wouldn’t help it to sound healthy.

Yeah, this stuff does in no way contribute to wellness.  Just don’t kid yourself.

Also, I received a copy of a magazine called ‘Nature’s Pathway’ – advertised as ‘Nutrition, Fitness, Organic & Sustainable Living, Balance, Wellness, Community’.  Sign me up!  It has a ton of health promoting words in it… with one egg-ception.

This article warns that eggs are not healthy.  The author is stuck on their cholesterol content as a major negative. She cites that eggs may increase your risk for diabetes, that eggs have similar effects on your arteries as smoking cigarettes, that egg consumption is linked with heart failure, that they can be a public hazard, that they can increase a man’s risk for prostate cancer, and that they may increase mortality.  Yikes!

And not the advice that I would give – I would say most people have an egg deficiency – but that’s another story

This article is referenced –  I intend to check out those references to see what sorts of studies they are… I suspect we’re looking at correlations and food recall – which are not so much science as they are data massaged to come to a specific answer.  There is nothing that we can learn about causation from such studies.

Maybe I’ll write them and set the record straight(er).

It is very true that wellness is in the eye of the beholder – that we’re all at a different starting point – and that we need to question what we hear and what we read.

My personal health gains began when I learned about and implemented a Paleo-ish diet.

Paleo is a funny word, with a lot of connotations attached to it. A Paleo diet has been misunderstood by people to be a carnivorous diet, even though the bulk of the Paleo diet is vegetables.

It has been ‘de-bunked’ as an approach that is somehow unachievable – because we no longer have access to the food that our paleolithic ancestors ate.  But, that’s not the point of this approach.

Paleo is sometimes seen as a re-enactment even. I suppose there are people who’d rather go back in time and live as our ancestors did, but we’ve got some pretty sweet advances these days… that have extended our lives significantly.

The media routinely puts Paleo through the mill for some reason. Maybe it’s just fun for them to do. It generally stirs up some excitement – and that makes good press.

But let’s sift through the BS, shall we?

There is nothing inherently dangerous about a Paleo approach – except that if everyone did it our grain-based economy would crash.

There is a lot that is inherently dangerous about our current industrialized food system, which supports our economy just fine.

Paleo has become a movement of sorts. A real food movement in my estimation. A real food movement with the added bonus of factoring in lifestyle. It’s about eating, moving, sleeping, and connecting in a way that is inline with our human-ness.

Here’s what I learned from MY Paleo-ish approach. I learned that our modern industrial food system is not designed to deliver fresh food to the masses. That most of the products in the grocery store are made with preservatives to make them shelf stable, artificial ingredients, to make them taste better to you, and refined seed oil (cottonseed, soy, corn, canola…) that is most likely oxidized.

I’ve learned that a lot of conventional produce is full of pesticides (see the Environmental Working Group for info on the safest conventional produce).

I’ve learned that GMO crops that are sprayed with Round Up ready herbicides incorporate those herbicides into the cellular structure of the plant.

Ergo, you consume preservatives, artificial ingredients, herbicides, pesticides, and oxidized fats… disguised as food. And a lot of people consume a lot of these things.

I’ve also learned that the 90% of your cells that aren’t human (your microbiome) probably don’t play nice with preservatives, artificial ingredients, pesticides, herbicides… we are crappy hosts.

I’ve learned (first hand) that you can make yourself sensitive to certain foods. This is interesting.  If you remove something from your diet long enough, and then reintroduce it, you’re likely to notice it.  Sometimes you’ll notice it in a big way.

I’ve learned a lot more about my body, I’ve learned to respect it more… and that’s been life changing.

I’ve learned to look at our modern world through an evolutionary lens and to try some different things, unconventional things.

Mostly, I’ve learned that we all have a choice to make when it comes to what we eat, how we move, how much we sleep, and how often we take a break and enjoy the company of others.  We can step back and view the human population from a broader perspective and learn a thing or two about the giant social experiment that we’ve got going on right now.  We can compare and contrast the human population at many different points in time, and speculate about how different foods and environmental conditions shaped them – and then try different things on for size.

While I credit the Paleo movement for shifting my perspective, I am not dogmatic about this… I’m always a skeptic… that’s the scientist in me.

I don’t follow anyone’s prescription for life – except my own.

If you’re interested in learning more about this Paleo movement and then personalizing this approach to fit you… I’ve created a 90-card deck of tarot cards called Teach Me How-To Paleo.  It’s full of resources that’ll help you get out of your own way, so your body can do what it’s supposed to do.

Let me know if you check it out!

Truth be told, this particular Lavazza Espresso Point machine has been sitting in a box, in my house, for a couple of years now.

It was given to me, and I’ve never used it.  It’s time to find a good home for it.

SO, I’m giving it away.

Use the rafflecopter widget below for a chance to own this Lavazza Espresso Point machine.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

That’s it.

This giveaway will start  on December 4, 2013 at 12 am central time and end on January 1, 2014 at 12 am central time.

U.S. residents over the age of 18 only for this one – while I get my giveaway swerve down.

The winner will be chosen at random, and notified via Facebook within one week after January 1, 2014.

I will ship it to the verified winner anywhere in the contiguous U.S.

This giveaway (sweepstakes) is sponsored by From This Day Forward Health Coaching and is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, MailChimp, or Rafflecopter.

Let’s talk about the Black Box.

When I was busy studying geochemistry, I put all of my faith into science. Here’s what that faith looked like… I would:

• Micro-sample limestone
• Dissolve it in acid
• Put that dissolved rock through cation exchange columns (that are essentially tubes filled with tiny plastic balls) to strip all but one particular element out of it
• Evaporate the liquid – that contained that particular element – into a solid dot the size of a pencil tip
• Re-hydrate that sample to load it onto something that looked like a staple
• Put that staple into a machine that looks like the future
• Cross my fingers/trust science that the heat + vacuum + magnetic field in that machine would hurl invisible isotopes of that element down a tube, around a corner, and into a cup that could keep track of the size and number of those isotopes

I always joked that I was doing ‘black box’ geology. I couldn’t see a damn thing… I was working on theory, trusting my equipment, and constantly measuring samples of known composition to confirm my science.

Even though nobody can physically see chemical isotopes, our ideas about what was going on in that machine were confirmed time and time again by reproducible results.

What I was doing was not technically ‘black box’ geology – because we have a pretty good idea of the internal workings of that particular system.

Direct from Wikipedia:

“In science and engineering, a black box is a device, system or object which can be viewed in terms of its input, output and transfer characteristics without any knowledge of its internal workings.”

If there’s one system that is indeed a black box, it’s the human body.

Sure, we think we have some good ideas about what goes on in there… we can study human bodies to physically identify parts, and we can all agree that toxic things are no good for human bodies – but that’s about where it ends.

What is a ‘toxic’ thing anyway? ‘Toxic’ – or something that is poisonous to us in some certain amount – is in the eye of the beholder.  I mean, we all have different opinions on what can be toxic to us.  But toxicity is also functionally different for everyone – depending on the (epi)genetic cards that you are dealt and how healthy you are to begin with.

Not only that, but – it turns out – we’re not a closed system at all – by any stretch of the imagination. Our overall health has been shown to be influenced not only by our diet, but physical, emotional, and mental stressors in our lives… by how content you are with your life.  That means that we can’t be sure that any one particular thing is ‘the thing’ that makes us healthy or sick. Shit. That really screws with what we think we know. How do you test variables in an open system.  <<< This is the crux of the problem, if the problem = nutrition & health research.

Here are a few statements that you should chew on (the ages are randomly chosen, just to get my point across):

• Some people eat meat, and live to be 100 years old.
• Some people eat meat, and only live to be 40 years old.
• Some people don’t eat meat, and live to be 100 years old.
• Some people don’t eat meat, and live to be 40 years old.
• Some people smoke, and live to be 100 years old.
• Some people smoke and die young of cancer.
• Some people run marathons, and live be 100 years old.
• Some marathon runners have heart attacks and die young.
• Some people walk everyday, and live to be 100 years old.
• Some people walk everyday and only live to be 40 years old.
• Some people eat more fat than anything, and live to be 100 years old.
• Some people eat more carbs than anything, and live to be 100 years old.
• Some people drink alcohol and live to be 100 years old.

Have I made my point?

Yeah. We are much more that one particular thing. There are so many variables in our lives and in our health.

What the hell do we do then?  How are we supposed to know if we are headed in the direction of health or not? <<< That should be your call, friend.

There are several approaches. They are holistic approaches to health, to better understanding your own human biochemical factory…

The first approach is for each and every one of us to become a scientist, and for each and every one of us to become experts in our own bodies. We all need to understand that the current size, shape, and health of our own body is the end result of all that has happened to it in life until now.

This means that to some extent – you should question what you think you know, you should keep an open mind, and understand your own role in your health. In this approach, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take full responsibility for your health, from this day forward.

N=1 as they say.  You are your own experiment, remove as many variables from your experiment as possible.

Another approach is to seek to understand human health from an evolutionary perspective. This approach is perfect for the curious, creative, or romantic person. If you can manage to imagine ‘the dawn’ of human life, and set up some visualizations in your head that subtract the influence of modern life (primarily technology) from the picture, you’ll have a better understanding of the conditions under which successful human life was created.

Let me help you a bit.

While there is a lot we can’t be sure of (like what was the diet of the early human exactly?), there is a lot we CAN be sure of. Early humans did not have artificial blue light in the evening. Early humans did not have the same transportation options that we have today – or indoor climate control. Early humans did not have treadmills. They did not have high fructose corn syrup… or television. Early humans did not have processed foods. They did not have the stressors of ‘the-mostly-negative-and-often-misrepresented-news-media-on-demand’. Early humans were intimately connected to nature.

If we participate in a few thought experiments – it begins to inform us about how far removed we are from the conditions under which we (successfully) evolved. And it gives ideas on tweaks we can try in our own lives to help us to gain health.

I’m not suggesting that we all escape from society and hide under a rock somewhere. I’m suggesting that we question how our current environment and its stressors are influencing our health – and that we realize that we can opt to take control over our environment and its stressors to improve our own well being.

Let me know if you’re with me.