February 2022 – 500 Words A Day

500 Words – Day 020 – Raw Vegan Requiem – Natural Hygiene; A Bridge Too Far -873-

I recently spent a full year on a raw vegan journey after I found a group on Facebook that promoted Natural Hygiene that promoted a diet that was not only vegan but one that followed a diet primarily based on fruit and gentle leafy greens. I also decided to remove garlic, onions, caffeine, dark chocolate, even added salt, and bore deeply into eating mostly fruit and salads as suggested by this aforementioned group. The only exception was a small amount of homemade hummus added to my salads in place of dressing. So I guess if someone wanted to nitpick a little they could say that I was only 98% raw vegan. There is too much evidence and data demonstrating that those that live the longest eat legumes on a daily basis. That and I just make good hummus.

I feel it was a worthwhile endeavor that allowed me to learn firsthand a lot about how the human body functions when exposed to a raw vegan lifestyle over a long period of time. Not something a lot of people can say. An its overall cleansing effects on my body were well worth the time and effort. I am grateful for what it did for me and I still believe that it was the right thing to do.

Would I recommend this diet to everyone? Not necessarily. It would depend on the individual and what their diet had been like for the year leading up to their wanting to take on such an endeavor. If they had been a strict vegetarian for a year first then by all means. I wouldn’t see any problem in making the shift. If they were omnivores, I would suggest transitioning to a vegetarian diet for a good six months beforehand. I believe healthy and gradual transitions are the best way to find success in dietary changes.

These days I am no longer a raw vegan for a number of reasons, but most importantly is because there is no evidence that it is the best way to go about getting to 120 years of age with a body that looks and feels no more than 34. Aside from the fact that there is no evidence to suggest that such a hygienic Edenic diet would do such, my main concern with the raw vegan or even fruitarian diet is that it is too easy on the body ultimately resulting in a more fragile state of existence, premature decline, and lower mortality overall.

Humans did not become the dominant species by eating a perfect or overly hygienic diet. On the contrary, it is because of much adversity and stress in our lives that brought us to where we are today.

An all-fruit diet in today’s world is problematic because we just don’t have access to enough variety on any given day to have a wide enough diversity of nutrients to make it even feasible to get enough of what we need, in the way our body would need it for our body to thrive.

And then there is the overly-hygienic state that an all-fruit diet will land your body in that would ultimately leave you with a microbiome that has diminished diversity which is not a good place to be. Our body and mind need to be exposed to small amounts and diversity of stress on a regular basis to maintain a strong state that can better deal with unforeseen future adverse situations. An overly hygienic, or sterile state is not a good place for a human or any other organic life form to be found outside of a sterile or hygienic environment. And none of us live in a cleanroom. We live in a diverse world filled with much adversity and as such our body needs exposure to adversity and even small amounts of environmental stress to remain anti-fragile and strong when unforeseen future adversity should arise.

To be clear, I am still a vegan by definition because it provides us with the greatest opportunity to make it to 120 years with a body that looks and feels no more than 34. However, I don’t believe that we need to limit ourselves to a raw diet and that adding certain plant-based foods that need to be cooked first is an important part of greater longevity and a fuller life experience. They provide a necessary and beneficial derivation through mild adversity that strengthens the body overall.

So rather than arguing about which version of vegan diet is better for every individual, I can say with all certainty that there are other principles that are more important than a list of approved foods that exclude things like cooked legumes, sweet potatoes, and cruciferous veggies. Clearly, some plant-based/whole food is better at cleansing the body than others, but there does come a point where a complex living system can become too hygienic and the needle of health starts pointing in a negative direction. A Natural Hygiene diet is the best for cleansing, but not good for overall longevity and to suggest that it can be a permanent lifestyle is overreaching. A bridge too far.

Adversity and variation are what build a strong and robust body that will make it further down the road while avoiding any states of disease.

500 Words – Day 019 – Stress. Are you getting enough? -1299-

Stress. Our life depends on it. The quality of life and the amount of years we will live on Earth is a direct result of the quality and kind of stress we apply to the systems of the human body. We are like a tree. Apply too much stress at one fine point and it will fall over and die. Add just the right amount, applied at random intervals and the tree will grow strong, both above and below the ground.

I imagine most people would not see stress as something beneficial to their life. But it is. Quite beneficial in fact. In reality, most of us living in the Western World have become quite soft if you will simply because we have come to a place in history where we have plenty. We don’t have the right kinds of stress that would provide our bodies with the right kind of stress that would lead to an overall improvement in the human condition.

Yes, we can age more gracefully with the right amount and kind of stress in our life.

We are very rich compared to our great-grandparents that were born just a little over 100 years ago. We not only have plenty, but we also have a variety that they couldn’t have imagined. But along with the variety of nutrient sources we have today, most sources are foods that are processed and lacking in the actual things our bodies need to help us achieve our fullest potential.

And then there are the right kinds of foods that our body needs much more of. Plant-based/whole-foods. In some places, like Los Angeles for example, we have plenty of access to these natural food sources, but the sad reality is that most don’t have access to the variety that mother nature has created for us. And as such we just keep eating the same few things over and over again. Of bananas, apples, oranges, grapes, strawberries, and a handful of leafy greens we have plenty, but we tend to lack diversity. And because of international trade and refrigerated shipping containers, it is dirt cheap to get a narrow selection of produce in plenty all year round. So we are missing out on the benefits of seasonal variety that would be beneficial for our body.

More than 100 years ago there was a lack of not only quantity, but also a variety that led to disorders like scurvy, beriberi, kwashiorkor, pellagra, and goiter. The wrong kind of stress. Today we no longer have the problems like these that were a result of deficiency of nutrients. Today we have too much but not enough diversity of the right stuff and now we suffer from metabolic disease from overconsumption and lack of variety. And then the icing on that cake is that even if we are getting a sufficient amount of calories from the right kind of foods, the lack of variety is oftentimes resulting in food allergies and behavioral disorders related to food and dietary fads. Again, the wrong kind of stress

Our American(Western) lifestyles would benefit greatly from a little adversity and high-quality stress that would produce beneficial results leading to a better overall picture of health and wellness.

Hormesis, Health, Homeostasis, and Aging.

You’ve heard it said, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” A phrase coined by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). This is a principle called hormesis. It is what happens when we go to the gym and work out. We stress our body and it responds positively. But that is not the only kind of hormesis. Toxins, or poisons, can also result in a hormetic effect that offers protection and extended longevity of lifespan.

For thousands of years, it has been observed and practiced that low doses of poison could be beneficial to health in the long run. Studies have shown that small amounts of alcohol can double the lifespan of worms(nematodes) as well as enhance the memory of mice. However, high amounts of alcohol in humans result in cardiovascular disease, cirrhosis of the liver, cancer, and neurological disorders. However, there is an overall reduction in mortality, especially of the kinds resulting from coronary heart disease and stroke in those that have small amounts of alcohol.

And apparently, there is a similarly protective effect from cigarette smoking on Parkinson’s disease and may have similar effects on Alzheimer’s dementia. I imagine this has more to do with nicotine which is used as a pesticide in agricultural settings. Remember, low doses of poison can be beneficial. But alas, modern man tends to not practice temperance when it comes to smoking and drinking, which ultimately then makes them both toxic at the levels most will enjoy.

Unfortunately, these two specific hormetics tend to be well overused. But that is another topic for another essay. Nonetheless, hormesis can benefit overall homeostasis resulting in a better quality of aging.

Aging is the condition or process of deteriorating with age and death is the final manifestation of the body’s inability to maintain homeostasis. Homeostasis is the result of the body’s efforts to maintain a stable environment to the benefit of the overall creature(us). A state of ease in contrast to a state of dis-ease. Well, versus unwell. And this is all maintained through a number of different mechanisms, or physiological processes that for the most part go unnoticed as we make our way throughout the day. For the most part, it is an automatic process that takes place, which I imagine is a good thing for us. Especially since our body still needs us to keep breathing, whether we are awake and aware, or not. A feature I definitely appreciate being automated. Some other processes our body automates and regulates are pH, glucose, blood pressure, toxins, and temperature.

What most of us call aging is a shrinking back of the hemodynamic space that is often taken for granted when we are young. We take it for granted in our younger years because our body simply feels and works better. But eventually, sometime around our twenty-fifth year, we begin to feel aches and pains that we didn’t experience in our youth. One might even say it’s all downhill from there. Some make it into their thirties or forty’s before feeling this way, but not without some effort on their part through sober-minded thinking and decision-making processes or by pushing back a little at the gym. This pushing back is called hormesis.

As we get older we start to notice things changing, usually because of what we see in the mirror. An increase in skin blemishes. A thinning out of our hair. Maybe a few gray hairs start showing up. Fingernails and toenails not looking as healthy as they may have at a younger age. And these things are actually good visual indicators of our overall health. They can speak volumes without ever having to use a word as they allow for someone that studies aging to see not only the current state of the body but also what could have led us to that point in our life.

Good health is the result of a body’s ability to maintain homeostasis, but it comes at a cost. A cost that is factored into our current lifespan of 120 years which we are sorely lacking the ability to attain here in the twenty-first century. Likely from a lack of adversity. Maybe it’s time we start being a little harder on ourselves.

We’ve really gotta get this figured out. We are missing out on so much good life. We are literally throwing away the greatest asset of all. Time. And the time we do have really tends to be hindered in the way we age in our latter years.

This is a sad reality that I am going to fix. I’m done aging badly.

500 Words – Day 018 – What is Autophagy? -689-

To eat oneself is the plain meaning of autophagy. It is our body’s way of cleaning itself out. It is the way by which our body removes dead or degenerate cells that have lost their optimal functionality. This way the body can regenerate itself. It literally eats itself and in the process recycles the amino acids or proteins in a form of reincarnation, and it happens over and over again. Our body recycles itself because it is an efficient thing to do. It is the act of repeated incarnation. The process by which our body heals itself by tearing itself down and rebuilding with its own flesh through the process of granulation. A wound healing in the grandest sense of the word.

The human intestinal tract is an amazing ecosystem. A habitat for that which makes up much of our humanity. It is inhabited by diverse and complex colonies of synergistic micro-organisms that not only call us home but are also absolutely necessary for our overall health and wellbeing. We may be an individual in a sense but we are likely better understood as a host of a grand buffet of bacterial components spanning a diverse spectrum of individual players both commensal and pathogenic depending on the situation they find themselves in. It’s one big dinner table in there and there is a lot of diversity in its many different guests.

The lining of our intestinal tract which is also known as our intestinal epithelium interface interacts directly with this houseful of guests and acts as a barrier or first line of defense against bad players that might be interested in finding their way into our tissues. This lining of our intestinal tract has a number of mechanisms by which it protects us against micro-organisms that might want to attach themselves or even make their way into our vascular system. One of these mechanisms by which this is accomplished is mucus. A mucosal lining that has antimicrobial properties that can limit bacterial interaction with the host’s intestinal surface.

So important is this barrier our body even goes so far as to produce its own anti-microbial compounds by which to keep some of these bad players at play. One I find fascinating that our body generates on its own is lectin. A compound that is also a plant defense mechanism that we humans need to be careful of. We don’t want to be consuming too much of this compound as it is found in fresh produce as it will interfere with proper digestion, metabolism, and assimilation of nutrients. We refer to this dietary form of lectin as an anti-nutrient because it interferes with the absorption of nutrients like zinc, phosphorus, iron, and calcium. As you can see, we are not so different from the plants that live around us. We have common interests.

As you can see our intestinal lining plays a very important role in the maintenance of our overall health and wellbeing. Just another reason to be extremely diligent in the foods we choose to put in our mouth. Our intestines are not only our interface with the outside world but are also a banquet table and a battlefield. On one side is the outside world where the food we put in our mouth passes through for consumption by the trillions of micro-organisms that inhabit the passage, on the other our inside world(vascular), bathed in blood that leads directly into our liver through our portal vein for further processing and filtration before the blood that circulates through our intestinal lining enters back into general circulation.

And if everything is functioning as Mother Nature intended that whole internal environment will be continually recycled and reincarnated over and over again, day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year, for a complete lifetime. What does our ingesting and assimilation will eventually be ingested in this continual process we call autophagy in which our extremely conservative body eats itself to rebuild itself for the betterment of life, not only within this creature we call us, but to benefit the greater outer world we call home. Mother Earth.

500 Words – Day 017 – Anti-fragility and Hormesis -709-

What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You What?

Is it possible that a random bacon double cheeseburger could ultimately make a vegan live a longer, healthier life? What if a raw vegan or even a frugivore could live ten to twenty years longer by simply eating something that is not within their strict framework every once in a while? Is it possible that consuming a diet that is too easy on the system is actually worse than one that is not?

I am beginning to wonder. Because complex organic operating systems are weakened, sometimes even unto an early demise where there is a lack of stress. And as we have seen over the last few years, 2019-2022, Mother Nature does not favor the weak. On the contrary, she favors the strong.

I can’t imagine each and everyone one of us hasn’t heard this many times over. Kelly Clarkson made a hit song with this title in 2011. It’s not just a catchy song, it is also a very true statement within a complex system that has the ability to adapt. In the scientific and medical worlds, it is referred to as anti-fragility or hormesis.

In Greek mythology, there was a story about a creature with nine heads called Hydra. The monster would occasionally emerge to stir up the people and livestock of the mythical land of Lerna. When someone attempted to defeat this creature by cutting off one of its heads they would find that two more grew back in its place. What didn’t kill Hydra made him stronger.

This concept can also be seen in the plant world through a process called topping in which the main stalk of the plant is cut resulting in the plant redirecting its energy and growth hormones out to the side branches resulting in the branches growing more robustly in an outward fashion instead of continuing skyward. The intended result is a plant that produces more fruit.

And this is why you see so many humans working out. What doesn’t kill us does quite literally make us stronger. You see, some things benefit from a shock to the system that pushes a smooth running organic machine out of balance. Even our bones grow stronger when put under stress by physical activity. But there does come a point where that stress can become too much and the benefits are no longer as robust. This brings me to my another question I will address later. How much is too much?

So, back to the double bacon cheeseburger question. Could an occasional curveball actually be better for the human body than a perfectly executed raw vegan diet? It would seem so. Even Dr. Valter Longo, author of The Longevity Diet notes that those who indulge in a small amount of fish once per week ultimately live longer healthy lives than those on a strict, 100% uncooked whole-food/plant-based diet. Nonetheless, he still stresses the importance of maintaining a 95% whole-food/plant-based diet. But I don’t really remember ever hearing him clearly state what that mechanism of action is by adding a little fish to the diet.

My feeling is that it boils down to the hormetic/anti-fragile effects of the animal food product acting as a small amount of poison that kicks our body’s immune system into high gear. That just a few ounces of fish once per week causes our body to produce an excess amount of neutrophils, eosinophils, basophils, monocytes, and lymphocytes that then go out into the body to fix the problem.

And this is where the magic happens.

Not only is the specific poison addressed by all of those amazing immune cells that our body produces for times just like these, but they also go about cleaning up a whole host of other lesser things that were flying just below the radar at a subclinical level improving the overall health of the human body. Cleaning up other senescent cells that are no longer beneficial to life, but not quite problematic enough to trigger an immune response. Individually, those senescent cells won’t take out the creature(us), but over time they will and do build up to a level that eventually precipitates a health crisis that most aren’t even aware of until we start experiencing systemic inflammation requiring an interventional response.

500 Words – Day 016 – Fruit Only? -746-

I do not believe that we are primarily frugivores. Going back into our ancestral records demonstrates that we have always been hunters and gatherers that ate whatever was available in sufficient quantity for us to maintain life. This whole notion of us being primarily frugivore is pretty clearly born out of our modern lifestyles that have been made possible because of the Industrial Revolution. And using teeth for an argument is flawed because there are simian frugivores with massive fangs contrary to what one would expect to find in an obligate frugivore. Consider the Gibbon; fangs and all.

Cartoon Gibbon with Fangs

If I had to put a name on it, I would say that we are opportunistic omnivores. Omnivores that ate what was available, when it was available at that point in time according to where we lived. Some forms of eating have proven to be better for overall mortality. Still, we are nowhere near the finish line in our understanding of the human condition and what foods it takes to get us back to our so-called Edenic state, which is why I am currently a vegan, but not raw and not frugivore.

I believe that we are still too early in the game to call the outcome as to what is the best diet for humans. But clearly, we are beginning to see that some correlations lead us to believe that a whole food/plant-based diet of at least 95% is the best way to go.

I love the current dietary course I am on for several reasons, and it just makes sense to me, but I do have my reservations. I believe in biological evolution and, as such, 50,000+ years of human adaptation where some small amount of animal-based proteins may very well have become a part of our genetic structures. Even if humanity was born in a pristine garden where there was no need to eat animals, the fossil record demonstrates that we did not follow that path beyond that garden state.

I am convinced most certainly that modern-day man has significantly erred in our ways because of modern convenience. Our overconsumption of animal proteins may be the real problem, not simply the consumption itself. In like manner, a diet that consisted of large amounts of grapes or any other single fruit with every meal would also eventually become a problem.

I am not making up these rules, just appreciating the observations based on our physiological, cultural, and traditional development. It may very well be that the current human condition is based more on the last 50,000 years of human development and subsequent adaptation than we could have imagined. It may be that a 95% whole food/plant-based with around 5% of our caloric intake from small animal sources like fish that is consumed once or twice a week with a spacing of about every fourth day is the optimal diet. This is just how the research plays out, especially for those above 65 from current findings. This leads me to my next point.

Even within the five major communities that make up what we refer to as “Blue Zones,” which comprise our oldest and healthiest demonstration of human life here on Earth, the ones that live the shortest lives are the vegans and vegetarians. The ones that live the longest, the centenarians, are the ones that do incorporate small amounts of animal-based proteins. There is current data among gerontology researchers that sees a decline in health and vibrancy in those who remain vegan beyond 65.

And then, on top of it all, there are always exceptions that anyone can point to that fall outside of specific dietary rulesets that have better health than others no matter how they eat. But these exceptions don’t make the rule. They are simply exceptional. It may very well be that they were lucky enough to come from a lineage of ancestors that were doing things the right way for long enough with strong maternal genetics for enough generations in a row that no matter how they treat their body, they will excel in their individual expression of life: cigarettes, vodka, steak, and all. There will always be exceptions.

I believe that we all need to step back and take a deep breath, making observations while gathering statistics along the way. Maybe in another 500 to 1000 years, we can start drawing reasonable conclusions. But for now, I believe we would best be served to extract our current findings from observable evidence with child-like curiosity and a lack of rigid dogmatism.

500 Words – Day 015 – Follow the Equatorial Sun -542-

Eat like an Amazonian.

Eat only when the sun can shine on it. Don’t let it kiss your lips if the sun can’t kiss it first. Eat only between the hours of 6 am and 6 pm. Hunters and gatherers wouldn’t be out hunting and gathering at night lest they become the prey of another predator. I imagine they would have been back with their tribe around a fire with their head on a swivel avoiding lest they become a convenient dinner. And they certainly wouldn’t have been eating as many calories on a daily, regular basis as we do today. They might have even had times during the year where they might go days without eating. They would have had times of adversity and seasonal variety by default.

In contrast, we go to a store that is convenient. We buy a gallon of milk, a tub of butter, a loaf of bread, and a block of cheese. Then we go about eating these things every day until they are gone because we don’t want them to go bad. We spent good money on them and they are good when consumed together as well. This will ultimately end in inflammation even if it remains subclinical for many years. By the time it shows up on the radar and we go to the doctor we have become so far disconnected timewise from the inception of the cause, we fail to see the connection between this dietary action and the disease it causes. This leads me to my next point.
If you eat something one day, do not eat it the next. As hunters and gatherers, they would have eaten a variety of foods throughout the year. Refined foods with preservatives and refrigeration changed all that. We now eat the same things day after day after day. This leads to a lack of diversity in our gut flora resulting in food allergies, hormonal imbalances, and other deficiencies because of our modern technological conveniences. This leads me to my next point.
Eat at least 95% whole-food/plant-based.* Hunters and gatherers wouldn’t have had the ability to eat animal-based proteins 3 meals a day as modern man does. They would have been eating a diet that was made up of mostly herbivorous fare and ZERO processed foods or preservatives. There was no Piggly Wiggly, HEB, Costco, or Walmart. There were no refrigerators, butchers, burger joints, greasy spoons, or taco trucks to serve up meat three times a day like have available today.

And that is it. Not difficult at all and it can be observed whether you are an omnivore, vegetarian, or vegan.

These are the three main pillars of health that I have discovered from the last 4.5 years of my research into human physiology and disease pathology. It took a lot of time and observation of data from both anecdotal and scientific sources. I have read hundreds of books and countless scientific and medical journals on almost every aspect of how the human body functions and what the human body needs to perform at its optimal levels.

Is this my final opinion or word on this subject? By no means. This is my AT&T position. This is where I am at in my understanding AT THIS TIME.

I will say however that I am feeling a certain level of confidence that these three pillars will likely be the foundation for much of my future writings on the subjects of eating and how it relates to human physiology and disease pathology. Eating the right way shouldn’t be complex. I imagine it wasn’t complex for a hunter and gatherer that was living long before the time of agriculture and the use of crops as we understand the use of domesticated plant and animal food sources.

*For those of you that choose to consume non-plant-based food sources be sure to limit them to 5% of your caloric intake at the most. This would best be observed by eating an animal-based meal in one sitting with 3-4 days spacing. This would allow enough time for the prior non-plant-based food sources to have been assimilated before introducing more non-plant-based food sources back into the body.

500 Words – Day 014 – What Disease? -1049-

From this day forward, I will proclaim that there is no such thing as disease. That is not to say that there aren’t disorders of function(disfunction) within the human experience. Surely there is and we have all experienced disorders to one degree or another.

In other words, I am going to do my best to remove the term disease from my linguistic arsenal because I believe it to be problematic. Problematic in that it allows for a continued building up of ideas and language that takes us further away from the truth of what disease really is. An advanced state of aging. A problem that is a result of our body lacking the vital energies needed to repair or replace the components that we are wearing out. To say it another way, we are using up our body’s resources faster than they can be replenished.

And so in some sense, the word disease becomes an expensive paywall that prevents us from understanding what is really going on. And this disease is simply the first paywall or locked door that keeps us from really understanding what is really going on. Once you are convinced that you have a disease and you have gone through that door, it is further separated out into many other doorways and dim passages by which the initial problem becomes even more confused, obscured, blurred, and specialized into other, even scarier sounding disorders and diseases that become even more difficult to understand.

This then ultimately leads us down the road to needing a doctor to guide us as blind people through the perilous straights of murky medical terminology. By the time the common man gets to this point they simply don’t know what to do. And in many cases, their doctor’s primary care doctors know little more. From this point, specialists who hold the keys of knowledge hidden behind the doors of specialties and specific diagnoses aren’t really able to help us better understand what is going on simply because they lack the time or skills needed to easily teach us in plain language what is really going on within our body.

And thus we simply trust them in their decision-making processes that landed us in their care in the first place. And once most people get to this point there is little they can do other than simply say okay, submitting ourselves to a course of treatment that isn’t necessarily going to get us back to a state of homeostasis. To a place of normalcy where our body can once again be in its default state of organic and biological flow where everything is working with ease.

And this then leads us back to life…

There is only life and life exists regardless of our consciousness of it. We get to participate in it for a period of time. A span. A spectrum of existence that begins with what we humans call birth, and that existence has a temporal ending that we call death. Metaphorically speaking, we are simply an act if you will. A scene in a movie or play that makes up the whole of our individual lives. Our act or scene is a story that has many stages in between its temporal beginning and end. One story; yet two natures. One that is physical and the other that is spiritual. One is the story of our physical body and the other is that which we call our consciousness. Yet, both are a part of the same individual story that makes up each individual human life. And it is all an animated existence powered by electrical energy.

Our physical body is an organic, carbon-based life form that has been drawn up, gathered together, animated, and electrified as a utilitarian, beneficial, and necessary part of life here on Earth. We are here for a reason. In some sense acting as a counterbalance to another factor that exists within the realm of life on Earth.

So where does disease fit into all of this talk of man’s nature? What if I told you that disease is simply a metaphor for aging that has been used as a marketing tool in some sense? Well, that’s exactly what it is. The marketing of an idea that at the very least implies that there is something going on in our body that is out of our control that needs some form of external input, whether by ourselves or the hands of another.

So let’s just remove the word disease from our common use of language and just call it what it is then. Simply aging.

Beginning somewhere between conception and birth, Aging has been defined as a steady decline or reduction of physiological function that leads to increased susceptibility to diseases that will ultimately end in biological death.

Beginning –> Aging/Disease –> Death/End

When compared to other mammals, humans have what appears on the surface to be a longer lifespan. Approximately 120 years according to what humans have defined as a solar year consisting of 365 1/4 days.

Sidenote: I would like to argue that all mammals within their individual context from their own perspective experience the same amount of perceptible time known as a lifespan regardless of how humans define time. The idea that a day to a human would be something like a week to a dog, as an example. This might explain why a dog is so happy to see its human that has been gone on a two-week vacation. To us humans, it has only been two weeks, but to that dog, perhaps, it has been something akin to us having been gone for almost 2 months time.

Standard evolutionary models of aging are explained as the full potential of our body’s ability to repair or replace cells that would allow for continued existence. The idea is that over time, what we call natural selection through a process called senescence, or the deterioration of age begins to exert less effort in the removal of our spent cells. Our body simply loses its will to take out the trash if you will.

This brings me back to what we have classically called disease. And this is the basis by which I would like to suggest that we stop using this negative, pejorative term for what is simply the process of aging.

500 Words – Day 013 – Towards a Better Future for Humanity -500-

Along my journey to better understand how humanity can live to at least 120 years of age with a body that looks and feels no more than a healthy and robust 34, I continue to re-examine my core beliefs.

A foundation of those core beliefs is that my beliefs, no matter how well-formed, long used, or revered, will always be subject to change based on new information that comes to light which could improve the overall process, means, and methods by which I can attain my longevity goals.

You see, I am not concerned with the journey as much as I am the fruits of that journey, both along the way and at the end of the harvest where my elements ultimately rejoin the dust of the earth from where my elements once came.

I am a part of the Earth and in some sense an extension of it by an intelligence greater than my own that had a purpose in my utility to the greater overall goal which I understand to be the fullness of life that makes up organic life on Earth.

In my understanding, there is no individual outside of our unique role in the overall singularity of life on Earth, which in reality could be just another single living cellular structure in a vast network of living cells in a greater universe, multiverse, or even omniverse that we are yet to even understand that exists well beyond our field of dreams, much less vision.

And yet I lay my head down at night thinking of how we can live a longer, fuller life. Are my thoughts original? Likely not considering the billions and billions of people that live here on this biofilm we call Earth. Is there anyone that is 100% on the same thought path as I am? It is not likely, but I imagine there are many that are following at least part of that path with the same ferocity.

I imagine the world we live in as a grand, vast, and dense symphony of thought that contains many players that have similar goals as myself, yet we lack a greater director or conductor that could lead us to a more beautiful and harmonious thought process. What if someday there would come a time that an individual could rise up to become that great orchestrator of information to lead humanity back to a fullness of life before we rejoin the elements that gathered together to make us what we are?

I look forward to that day and sometimes even have a silly inkling that maybe I could be that person. But even if I am not, I will keep pushing forward knowing that someday it will happen. And considering our technological future that is racing ever faster towards a greater artificially intelligent world, it may be that a singular human may not be that great orchestrator, but simply a programmer that writes the code that sparks the great symphony that will lead us toward that better existence.

500 Words – Day 012 – Racquetballs, Lipids(fats), and Cellular Health -782-

Everything that we put in our mouths influences our cellular health and function. And it is the nutrients, or foods, that we eat that, after being assimilated, become the building blocks of our cellular and metabolic structures.

Back in the year 1997, I remember a very distinct conversation I had with a friend of the family by the name of Jim Brice. I had just started working out at 24 Hour Fitness and he was the only person I knew that was somewhat of a health guru. Back then we called them health nuts.

I contacted him because I was wanting more information about protein and how I could build bigger muscles without having to spend too much money on a bunch of unnecessary supplements. He moved the conversation pretty quickly from protein powders to cellular structure and why building healthy cells was the first step to building bigger muscles. What he said next has stuck with me for the last 25 years. And he painted a brilliant word picture to illustrate.

He told me that our cells need to be like brand new racquetballs and as soon as he said that, I knew exactly what he meant.

If you are not familiar, let me explain. A brand new racquetball is shipped directly from the manufacturer, packaged in a vacuum-sealed container, to ensure the highest quality product for its intended use. A brand new racquetball is soft, supple, pliable, yet rigid in structure. When the package is opened, it whooshes as the outside air rushes inside. And that is when a racquetball is at its highest useful quality. If you’ve ever held one in your hand, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s all downhill from there though as the ball begins to oxidize as pliability gives way to structural rigidity.

When attempting to understand how sufficient fats are necessary to maintain cellular health and therefore, whole creature health, one needs to first understand what our cells are made up of.

1. 1. Fats
  2. Proteins
  3. Carbohydrates
  4. Vitamins
  5. Minerals

This does not only apply to humans, but it also applies to the foods that we eat. We, quite literally, are what we eat. Or so we’ve been told. But it may actually be more accurate to say that we are what our microbiome eats, which of course is the foods that we eat. That is to say that we are or should be considering first and foremost that there is an intermediate step between our stomach and the nutrients that find their way into our bloodstream. And that intermediate step consists of many trillion micro-organisms and organelles that inhabit our intestinal tract just below our stomach.

So, in a sense, when we feed ourselves, we are technically acting as a banquet server for those intermediary life forms that participate in the digestion process that allows us to assimilate the nutrients from our food.

This brings me to that dreaded F word that is lacking in many whole-food/plant-based diets. Fats. Some would suggest that we don’t need to consume what they refer to as overt fats, like avocado, nuts, seeds, and oils. However, our internal cellular structures require these to function properly. They are necessary and deficiencies will eventually show up. Not right away, but over time. It may even take a good year before we start noticing changes on the surface. That thing we see in the mirror.

The following is an extensive list. I personally abstain from a number of things on this list. Those things will be marked with an asterisk(*).

- - avocadoes
  - canola oil*
  - cashews*
  - olive oil
  - peanut butter*
  - peanuts*
  - sesame oil
  - sesame seeds
  - chia seeds
  - corn oil
  - fish (especially fatty fish, for Omega-3 fatty acid)***
  - pumpkin seeds
  - sunflower oil
  - sunflower seeds
  - safflower
  - soybean oil
  - walnuts

The reason why fats are important is that they help maintain a semi-permeable state of our cellular structures, allowing pliability and nutrient transport across the cellular barrier. In contrast, saturated fats do not function in like manner. They result in the cellular membranes becoming rigid. This is not optimal in that it results in the limited functionality of our cells.

All this to say that we need to be consuming a sufficient amount of fats in our daily diet. But not just any fats. We need to be consuming a sufficient amount of the right kind of fats. And I’m sure you noticed that the list above was primarily plant-based. The exception is fatty fish which this author DOES NOT recommend for optimal health for those on a whole-food/plant-based diet. However, there is some research that would suggest a very small amount once per week may provide some additional benefits to those 65 years of age and above.

–Michael J. Loomis

500 Words – Day 011 – Fruit, Soup, Salad and Time-Restricted Feeding -2919-

-2919 Words- -Reading Time: 12 Minutes-

On December 01, 2020, I began my vegan journey. A diet that would no longer depend on any animal-based nutrient sources. And I don’t see myself ever going back to that way of eating. In this day and age, there is just no justification for it as research, revealed knowledge, and an abundance of sourcing options have made it possible to no longer have to depend on keeping animals for regular consumption of things like milk and eggs.

Notice I mentioned consuming milk and eggs and that I didn’t mention eating meats on a daily basis as many do in this post-modern era of refrigeration and the convenience offered by fast food, butchers, and grocery store chains. Go back just 200 years to the early 1800s and it becomes clear why most people were not eating meats the way we do today in the modern world. It just wasn’t feasible. People were eating a lot more bread, plant-based whole foods, along with milk and eggs which were sustainable food sources for those that could afford the convenience of keeping chickens and milk-bearing animals like goats and cows.

Simply put there just was no option for eating a single meal that contained a pound or less of beef like there is today. And why would you kill the cow or goat for a few good meals when it could provide you with milk for an extended period of time. And hunting larger game was, I imagine, much less fruitful without the rifled barrel of a long-range rifle. If you wanted to eat animals it would have been in much smaller amounts. And things that were much smaller in size that were not sufficient sources of eggs or milk. Things like fish, small birds, and other small animals. But still, not something that would have been an available day in and day out fare unless you lived in a vibrant coastal area where fishing had been commercialized. And that fish would have been much healthier to eat than the fish available at our stores and restaurants today.

Early on as a vegan, I found myself amongst a group that was eating a diet that consisted of all plant-based whole foods that were completely uncooked. This limited things even further because a lot of things in the plant world that would need cooking to be properly assimilated were also no longer on the menu. Things like legumes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, leeks, onions, garlic, shallots, and most nuts. This also meant that good old sourdough bread with vegan-based butter, garlic powder, and brewers yeast was off the menu. Oh man, I missed that one. They also promote the idea that we don’t need any additional salts whatsoever. That wasn’t so tough, considering everything I was eating was fruit.

This group of what is called Natural Hygienists also recommend drinking only distilled water in that it is the healthiest of all forms of water. Bye-bye coffee and tea. That was a little rough at first. Even though historically mankind has not had access to mechanically distilled water until the last couple hundred years. Rainwater would have been the exception, but most humans throughout the ages got their drinking water from rivers and wells which were far from being distilled. Some sources contain significant amounts of electrolytes or minerals. The only thing I ate for the next year that didn’t fall within this mindset was a quarter cup of homemade hummus as a part of my salads.

This lifestyle and diet were very cleansing, to say the least. I found that it was not as difficult to follow as some do. I read many accounts of people that really struggled with this. That was not the case with me. One thing that might have made it easier for me was everything I read on the topic. The first thing I read on the topic was a whopping 2295 pages called The Life Sciences Health System written by a Natural Hygienist by the name of T.C. Fry. It was the curriculum for the school that he opened and operated American College of Health Science in Texas, which offered a voluminous correspondence course detailing Fry’s views.

When I began reading this document I found it rather difficult to follow as it was only available in PDF format with no easy way to bookmark it. So I decided to utilize my programming and web development skills to set up a website on my server utilizing the same software Wikipedia uses to serve up its website. That way it would then be easier to read through in a more digestible format along with a robust search engine and an easier way to print portions of the text as needed. That document can be found at https://terrain.wiki. This effort made it much easier for me to read through and that way it would be available for others around the world as well.

This diet did amazing things to bring my body back to a state it had never been in before. My body had cleansed itself of much toxicity that I didn’t realize many decades of eating animals along with indulging in too much other good stuff like alcohol, tobacco, salt, caffeinated beverages, etc., had done. I felt amazingly clean internally and externally. I even feel much more sober-minded than I could have ever imagined possible. Which lead me to another question. Were this diet and lifestyle intended to be a permanent solution or just a medicinal tool to fix a toxic overload? Which lead me back around to my prior studies on historical diets as they relate to longevity, human lifespan, and the idea of living to 120 years and beyond with a body that looks and feels no more than middle-age.

I also began to re-examine the works of Dr. Valter Longo, an Italian-American biogerontologist, cell biologist, and author of the book, The Longevity Diet. He is also famous for his studies on the role of time-restricted feeding and nutrient response genes on cellular protection, aging, and diseases. His views and approach to longevity as it relates to aging are amongst the best approaches I have found. Not only to reach our fullest potential of 120 years but how that relates to disease in our body as a complex system. He does this by basing his studies on 5 pillars.

Complex systems like airplanes and automobiles.
Centenarian studies as found in our oldest living populations(Blue Zones), which I will address later.
Clinical studies, such as can be found at the National Institutes of Health.
Biology of aging, focusing on the cellular and molecular processes that contribute to aging and age-related diseases.
Epidemiology, the who, what, when, why, and where of health and the progression of disease in defined populations.

I, like Dr. Longo, have also spent much time examining complex systems and how they can be great tools to our understanding of how the human body works. Especially refineries and waste treatment plants considering our body does both of these things in the processing of our caloric intake.

“Dr. Valter Longo is the Edna M. Jones Professor of Gerontology and Biological Sciences and Director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California –Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, Los Angeles, one of the leading centers for research on aging and age-related disease. Dr. Longo is also the Director of the Longevity and Cancer Program at the IFOM Institute of Molecular Oncology in Milan, Italy. –https://www.valterlongo.com/“

If you are looking to make some meaningful changes to your diet that will help improve your lifestyle and ultimately your longevity, I highly recommend his book, The Longevity Diet. It is well worth the read and time spent.

Around the same time, because of Dr. Longo’s research, I also reflected on my previous studies of the Blue Zones and the Blue Zone diets in particular. None of which are marked by any kind of fruitarian diet. Not to say that these Blue Zone communities found around the world aren’t eating fruit, but they are not making it their mainstay. It is however a part of a well-balanced whole-food plant-based diet fed from locally grown and sourced produce that is not shipped in from all different parts of the world in limited selections as we see in the Western world of convenience we have become accustomed to.

Here is what these Blue Zone diets look like.

95% of your food comes from a plant or a plant product.
Very limited non-processed free-range meats. (note: This author chooses to abstain from all animal-based foods.)
Eat no more than 3 eggs per week(non-factory raised). (See above note on the author.)
Eat at least a half cup of cooked beans daily.
Avoid foods with added sugars.
Snack on nuts.
If you eat bread, choose sourdough or whole wheat.
If a label is needed to tell you what you are eating, don’t eat it. Whole foods.

While people in four of the five Blue Zones consume meat, they do so sparingly, using it as a celebratory food, a small side, or a way to flavor dishes. About 2 ounces per serving and about 5 times per month. One study that has been following 96,000 Americans since 2002, found that the people who lived the longest were not vegans or meat-eaters. They were “pesco-vegetarians,” or pescatarians, people who ate a plant-based diet including a small portion of fish, up to once daily. In other Blue Zones diets, fish was a common part of everyday meals, eaten on average two to three times a week.

–https://www.bluezones.com/2020/07/blue-zones-diet-food-secrets-of-the-worlds-longest-lived-people/

Why is soup in the title you ask? Because I believe they are the best way to get the fullest complement of nutrients that our body needs that cannot be fully appreciated on a completely raw diet. And there are many thousands of years of evidence that soups were a significant component of our ancestral diets.

These days I am glad to see that soups are a part of the Blue Zone diets. They are such a great way to gain access to a greater amount of nutrients that are bound up in many of the darker leafy greens, legumes, roots, and tubers. There is a long history of humans consuming soups as a practice with evidence going back about 20,000 years. Of course, back then they were using animal hides, watertight baskets, and hot rocks to cook the soups until they invented vessels fashioned from clay.

–https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soup & –https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1218643

And then there is this notion that we need to be eating three meals per day along with snacks in between. Where did we get this idea from?

The Industrial Revolution and the rise of non-home-based schooling, or public and private schools where there were benefits to schedules and larger amounts of resources dedicated to quantifying time in blocks rather than the fluidity afforded on a farm for example.

Let’s think about that for a moment. Are we still at the height of the Industrial Revolution? No, we are not. As a matter of fact, we are rapidly speeding towards an automated end of the labor vacuum that was created as a result of industrialization. We created a whole host of machines that needed a whole host of human operators that had previously worked in a more agrarian manner. As a result, we needed people that could be available and full of energy for long days at the mill or in the coal mine and they would need energy in the form of food to remain productive. They would also need a system by which their children would be occupied while they were attending to all this new mechanization that needed human operators.

Thanks to an education crusader named Horace Mann, Massachusetts became the first state with compulsory school laws in 1852. Mann also led the charge to change schools from a one-room schoolhouse that taught all children together to a multilevel format that separated children into separate grades by age.

The Industrial Revolution came about in the latter half of the 18th century and became a reality of life on a global scale by the middle of the 19th century. Pretty clearly our modern iteration of schooling was no longer simply about basic education, but about attending to children that no longer had both parents around the home or homestead and these children would need to be prepared for the reality of an industrialized world.

Move forward again another 100 years into the mid-1950s. A new world where many common diseases and disorders were being solved by a better understanding of how the human body worked. And how certain food fortifications could eliminate many of the common disabling malnourishment maladies like pellagra, rickets, beriberi, scurvy, and goiter. All of a sudden, we were improving human life expectancy in the industrialized nations, and as a result of a further industrialized WWII America in support of the war effort, victory gardens and wartime canning became a patriotic symbol promoted heavily by Uncle Sam. A simple way to ensure that there wouldn’t be any food shortages on the homefront in a time when more industries were supporting the war effort and rationing was in effect.

Alas, another outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution would be the birth and growth of large grocery chains that would eventually supplant the need for local, smaller retailers and we now have a world that made it very easy to never have to look back at a world of toiling over the soil for foods. And why would we, when we could go to a store and conveniently purchase packaged and preserved foods, supported by our industrialized city jobs that were providing convenient jobs and reasonable pay in exchange for a more relaxed 40 hours per week thanks to the growth of labor unions.

And that is when the Standard American Diet planted the seed for the world of managed health care that we have today resulting from our modern metabolic diseases caused by overconsumption of convenience foods. And in just two short generations we moved from dietary deficiencies to a world of metabolic disorders as a result of conveniently accessible prepackaged foods leading us into a world of metabolic disorders. In a post-WWII world where both mom and dad have entered the workplace to chase after the American Dream(nightmare), convenience has become King and the healthy homestead has been supplanted by factory farming, mono-crops, soil degradation, and conveniences of all manner which has left us an extremely unhealthy lot.

A recap of what I believe; at this point in time. My AT&T position.

I do believe that there is likely a way to eat that is most beneficial as part of the bigger picture of aging and what Dr. Valter Longo refers to as ‘Juventology’ rather than ‘Aging’. I believe that a whole-food plant-based diet will get humans closest to achieving our fullest potential of 120 years. I believe that there is a place in the overall picture where eating fruit only, or a frugivore diet has its place as a medicinal or cleansing mechanism that should be practiced from time to time, especially when feeling under the weather, but not for long-term maintenance. I believe that we would best be served by doing our best to rotate what produce we eat as much as possible, avoiding eating the same things more than 2 days in a row, and best if only once in a three-day period to avoid any level of dysbiosis.

-Dysbiosis is characterized as a disruption to the gut microbiota homeostasis caused by an imbalance in the microflora, changes in their functional composition and metabolic activities, or a shift in their local distribution. Wikipedia

I believe that the best timeframe by which to eat would be to follow the equatorial sun. Don’t let it kiss your lips if the sun can’t kiss it first. Eat only from 6 am to 6 pm, regardless of where you live on Earth. I believe a feeding window of 12 hours per day is the sweet spot where the fewest health problems will arise. Gallbladder problems tend to show up on the lower end of feeding windows; 8 hours or less. Metabolic disorders; diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases and such begin showing up at 15 hours or more. I believe it is always better to eat heavier foods/meals earlier in the day and lighter, easier-to-digest foods for the last meal of the day; maybe even just a snack.

I believe the best way to determine what the optimal human diet should look like is to mimic the diet and lifestyle choices of the longest living people on Earth, wherever they are found.

Finally, I hesitate to suggest a frugivore model of eating as a long-term solution as some vegans do. I find it problematic in light of our current state of produce quality and access to enough variety to make it feasible. Although, some would disagree with me on this point. However, as I mentioned above, I do believe it is a great medicinal tool for occasional cleansing as needed. And I believe the best way to overcome these nutritional deficits is through soups containing as many dark and vegetables, dense and complex leafy greens, beans, roots, and tubers.

And never go nuts with nuts. Try to limit them to at most every other day and only one quarter cup serving. Personally, the only nuts I eat are walnuts. Not because of flavor, but because they are the healthiest of nuts. Peanuts and almonds are the two least healthy. I would avoid them.

And when in doubt, always eat less than more.