Several readers have asked me for more information about myself. Blogspot doesn't have much room in the profile, so I decided to make a post about my perspective on health and happiness. The photo above is me with my 10-year old daughter before the daddy-daughter girl scout dance last March. As you can see, my daughter doesn't take me too seriously :)First, I am not selling or endorsing any products or services nor do I receive any money for what I do with this blog. The views presented here are those that I feel are most likely to be correct based on careful consideration of the evidence. However, I have found that the more I read about health, the more extremely complicated it is to fully understand - especially the science behind it all. It's so complicated that I'm skeptical anyone really has all the right answers. I certainly don't. For any health question, the best we can do is to learn as much as we can about differing views and make judgments based on the preponderance of the evidence. But be careful about the source of the information. There are many groups that offer health advice who are heavily funded by large commercial interests that have a vested interest in the recommendations. In other words, beware of those pedaling advice that will increase their profits. They may be more interested in your money than your health.
The internet and search engines are a wonderful tool for accessing health information. That's why I set up this blog, to help serve as a guide to some of the good health information that I have found. The trouble is, there are so many conflicting opinions, how do you sort out what is right and what is wrong? My gut feeling (pun intended :) is that historic and prehistoric evidence of diet and related health are a good context to use in making hypotheses about diet and health. Studies of traditional diets and the health of people eating these diets can tell us volumes about the types of foods necessary for adequate health and even optimal health.
Science is all about testing these hypotheses. Ideally science should be conducted in an unbiased manner with carefully developed studies that clearly support or refute various hypotheses. Unfortunately, health science has become more about finding ways to make money, as in selling drugs or other products, rather than to find out how diet can best provide optimal health. Many scientific studies are poorly conceived and end up providing meaningless results. Others are statistically manipulated to favor pet hypotheses that are not well supported by the evidence. And a few are downright frauds. Interpreting the results of scientific studies can also be very difficult because you have to consider the details of how the study was conducted and analyzed in order to determine what the results mean. You also have to wade through all the sciencese and baffling terminology, which is almost as bad as legalese.
Financial investments tend to follow avenues that yield the most profit, and unfortunately drugs are where the money is. Even government funds are often channeled toward studies favored by large commercial interests with strong political influence through lobbying efforts and direct political support. I am not totally against drugs. I believe they do have a place, mainly in traumatic situations where quick fixes are needed. However, for long term health I suspect that most drugs cause more problems from side effects than they solve. And they are usually targeted at symptoms rather than treating the cause of the problem. If you don't treat the cause of the problem, it won't go away. The drugs will only mask the symptoms and cause further problems through their side effects.
Of course, I recognize that finding the cause for many health problems is no easy task. There may be as many causes as there are problems. But diet and lifestyle are likely to be major players for most chronic illnesses and most health problems today are the chronic type - like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Some health problems may be genetically mediated, but even many of these may respond to dietary and lifestyle choices.
As you can tell, I have come to believe that diet and lifestyle are the main factors that shape our health. Please read some of my other posts for more details and also visit the links on the sidebar for a lot more information.
And now, if I haven't thoroughly bored you to death already :) I'll tell you a little about myself. I have not had to deal with any major health problems thankfully - just the usual metabolic syndrome tendencies that most people over 40 seem to have these days. I was born in 1952 and did receive some dubious vaccines and sulfa drugs as a child in the late 1950's. My tonsils were removed when I was about 5 years old and I can still remember the awful smell of the ether gauze they placed on my face to put me out. And a dentist with dollars in his eyes gave me lots of amalgam fillings in the early and mid 1960's. I was skinny and shy while growing up near the border in South Texas. I worked on my grandfather's conventional farm during the summers in high school and early college years.
I had enough interest in health to take a college course on nutrition on my way to getting a master's degree in engineering. I also briefly became a vegetarian for about 6 months to join a meditation group, but quit when I ended up joining a different group. I started eating whole wheat bread and joined a local food coop when I was in college. I majored in meteorology and minored in environmental health engineering. I wanted to be a weather forecaster, but ended up getting into the environmental field where I now work as an air quality forecaster and I'm also involved in air quality data validation and analyses. I have lived in the Austin, Texas area since 1970. I met my wife here in 1992. We got married in 1994 and our daughter was born in 1997.
After college, I became a soda junky, drinking 3 or 4 every day and regularly ate sweets for dessert. That's a lot of sugar and caffeine. I also ate a fair amount of fried commercial foods, though not every day. Otherwise, I had a fairly good diet, with whole grains, vegetables, fruit, meat, and conventional dairy. My sweet tooth led me to gradually gain weight. I'm about 6 feet 1 inch tall and I weighed about 170 pounds at age 20, about 185 pounds at 30, and was up to about 195 pounds when I met my wife at age 40. After college, I started jogging about 2 miles several times a week. Then a girl friend talked me into doing a one-hour aerobics class several times a week in my mid 30's and I kept it up even after we broke up several years later. Not long after I got married, I moved and quit the aerobics class because the location wasn't convenient any more. My only remaining exercise was yard work and walking the dog a few times a week.
My wife encouraged me to take advantage of the free annual physical offered by the health plan I had from work, so I went for my first full physical in 1995. The doctor sent me to the dermatologist to check out a pink irregular patch on the side of my face by the ear and the biopsy tested positive for basal cell carcinoma. That's the least dangerous kind, so I didn't worry about it after it was removed. Although, I did begin avoiding the sun as much as possible and using sunscreen when I had to be in the sun, based on conventional skin cancer avoidance advice.
I was still eating too much, especially sweets, though I can't blame my wife for that :) and my weight went up to around 215 pounds, my total cholesterol was 218, HDL 36, triglycerides 402, and LDL wasn't calculated because the triglycerides were too high. Unfortunately, my doctor suggested that I go on a low-fat diet to try and lower the cholesterol. I switched to low-fat everything. But many of these foods were high in sugar to make up for the lost flavor of the fat. I switched to skim milk even though I didn't like the flavor. I even switched from butter to margarine because it was supposed to be "more healthy" (yuck!). By the next annual checkup in 1996, my cholesterol was 230, HDL 32, triglycerides 438, LDL not calculated.
Low-fat obviously didn't work for me. Too bad the doctor didn't put me on a low-carb diet back then. Instead, he put me on a statin to lower my cholesterol and told me to stick with the low-fat diet. Well, I figured the doctor should know what's best, so I kept it up. The statin did lower my cholesterol to 163, HDL was up to 39, triglycerides down to 252, and LDL was 74 in 1997. My risk ratio was now in the good range, so I thought I was doing well. However, I was hungry all the time and continued over-eating and gaining weight. I was up to around 225 pounds by then. I switched to diet sodas in vain. My weight kept going up. By the time I turned 50 in 2002, I was around 235 pounds. My blood pressure was borderline high at about 140/80 and sometimes higher. But my cholesterol was down to 134 after I switched to Lipitor because of a medical plan coverage change. My triglycerides dropped to 167, with HDL 37 and LDL 64, giving a good risk ratio, so I thought I was still doing well. After all, the adds on TV were saying to "ask your doctor if lower is better" for cholesterol and heart disease.
My weight continued going up and was around 245 pounds in 2005 when I started seeing a new doctor. My cholesterol was 127, triglycerides 178, HDL 35, and LDL 56, which still gave a good risk ratio. But she recommended that I try exercising more to lose weight. She said I needed to exercise at least 30 minutes every day to lose weight. I started walking 2 miles every day, which takes me about 35 minutes. A friend of mine at work had lost 30 pounds on a low-carb diet, so I also decided to drop the low-fat diet and try lowering the carbs. I started buying all the foods that said "low-carb". But I was still drinking diet soda full of aspartame and now eating foods loaded with sucralose. And I was still addicted to sugar. I cheated every weekend with big desserts. I still managed to lose some weight for the first time. I lost about 10 pounds in 6 months from spring to fall. But I promptly gained most of it back over the holidays by cheating too much on sweets.
Then, over the holidays in December 2005, I decided to look on the internet for information about how diet might affect floaters in the eyes, which had gotten worse in recent years. I read that high blood pressure may aggravate floaters and since my BP was borderline high, I started searching for dietary ways to lower blood pressure because I didn't want to take drugs for it. I found links that led to many alternative health web sites, including Dr Mercola, Weston A Price Foundation, and Life Extension Foundation. Initially, I was impressed by the scientific information provided by LEF and began taking a lot of supplements. However, I did not like their heavy emphasis on supplements since they were selling lots of supplements - too much of a conflict of interest. And I have always felt that diet must greatly influence health. I still had trouble believing that much of what I thought I knew about health and diet was wrong. But after a week or two of carefully reading and re-reading the abundant information from WAPF and Dr Mercola, I was convinced they are likely to be right and much of what I had learned from conventional sources was wrong. Trans-fats and polyunsaturated fats are bad. Saturated fats are good. Dietary cholesterol is good. Raw dairy is good (for most people). Conventional dairy is bad. Sugar, as well as aspartame and sucralose are bad. Getting sun is good. After a couple of weeks I finally decided to make some major changes in my diet.
In mid-January 2006, I dropped the Lipitor, broke my sugar addiction, switched from diet soda to coffee for my caffeine habit, started using coconut oil, and switched to organic foods and pastured meats. I continued keeping carbs low and my weight started dropping by about a pound a week. I lost about 20 pounds from January to March of 2006. In March 2006, my cholesterol was back up to 162, which is in the "normal" range (it was below normal with Lipitor, which is not good), triglycerides 131, HDL 38, LDL 98, and fasting insulin 13 (I had to pay extra for the insulin check that's ironically not covered by my health insurance). In March 2006 I found a local raw dairy source for milk and cream and I broke my caffeine habit as well. I started making my own kefir from the raw milk in July 2006. I switched to raw milk and cream from an all Jersey herd in August 2006 and increased my daily walk to 2.5 to 3 miles a day. In May 2007, I started jogging some of my daily walk. I haven't done any more blood work.
Today, I feel much better than I did three years ago. My weight is still around 220 pounds, but I have added a lot more muscle mass from the walking and jogging. My goal is to get my weight back down to at least 200 pounds, so I still have 20 pounds of fat loss to go. My blood pressure is down to around 125/70 and my resting heart rate has dropped from 80 to 90 beats/minute to around 60. I am drug-free, except for an occasional beer :) and I have to look in the mirror to remind myself that I'm 55 and not 35.
So now that I've totally bored you to death, I do have a music reward that some of you may like. It's a romantic New Mexico guitar instrumental that I found a few months ago by Ottmar Liebert. Enjoy!
Reaching Out 2 U
