Healing Chronic Disease
This article does NOT constitute medical advice. Consult with your physician before making any changes to your medical plan.
This article will specifically address the nutrition needed (light, electrons, water, and food) for healing chronic diseases, and I will touch on some lifestyle factors as well. Ultimately, the goal of healing, in my opinion, is to realign with nature. In order to heal more quickly there are certain human innovations and interventions that are helpful in the short term, but beyond a 12-24 month healing program you will learn that living a life aligned with nature is the best approach. I will warn you upfront that much of this article will severely challenge many of the views we have held about nutrition for our entire lives. I believe we have been misled by industry and government in many ways. It has taken me nearly 10 years of research to harvest this information needed to give me a view of human nutrition through the eyes of evolution, nature, and our ancestors, and in a way that applies to nearly all chronic diseases of the modern world. For years I believed I understood nutrition, but I was wrong in many ways. After 50 years of life it is only now that I finally feel I have learned to think for myself. The following information is profound.
I will begin by summarizing four pillars for healing chronic disease:
1.) Nutrition: The light, electrons, water, and food that we ingest and manufacturer in our bodies. The timing of that nutrition, and the way in which we receive it. Yes, light, electrons, and water MUST be considered nutrition (and it's not what you think).
2.) Lifestyle: The daily things we do or don't do (which often go unnoticed).
3.) Mental: Truly embracing gratitude and forgiveness.
4.) Additional Treatments: supplements, prescription drugs, acupuncture, pain reprocessing talk therapy (PRTT), meditation, chiropractics, myofascial release, drinking deuterium depleted water, yoga, weight lifting, massage, cupping, neurofeedback training, red light therapy, sauna, cold plunges, ozone therapy, hyperbaric oxygen chambering, etc.
This article will focus mostly on #1 Nutrition. In my opinion, based on the information I have studied up to this point, I would estimate that, out of the four items above, "nutrition" (including light, electrons, and water) accounts for about 75% of healing from chronic disease. The other three items are important, but I don't believe these other items can provide full recovery unless we first align our nutrition with nature and evolution in the way our ancestors did. You will see how this transpires in the discussion below.
Let's start with an example of how chronic disease typically manifests so we have a visual picture. A child is born, hopefully with the privilege of a vaginal birth that will provide the necessary microbiome needed for a healthful life. An unfortunate C-section immediately puts the baby at higher risk of chronic disease due to the lack of microbiome that nature intended us to receive from the vaginal canal of our mother. Any antibiotics that the mother received prior to the baby's birth puts the child at further disadvantage of a damaged microbiome. A mother's poor nutrition and lifestyle does the same. Within a few hours or days of birth that baby is given several vaccinations which not only contain known toxins that are stored in the fat cells of the baby, but these vaccinations also cause further damage to the microbiome. Adjuvants in the vaccines may predispose the child to allergies which might include dairy, nuts, eggs, gluten, and dozens of others. While in the birthing hospital the child is subjected to blue light from overhead LED light sources and non-native EMF like WiFi and electronic devices. This immediately begins to damage cell mitochondria through a variety of complicated pathways that we will discuss. As the child grows they are subjected to thousands of man-made toxins on a daily basis, many of which begin to accumulate in the body or damage the mitochondria of our cells. These toxins come from the air we breathe, the water we drink, the clothes we wear, the light we receive, the fabric on furniture, the chemicals in carpet, the food we eat, soaps and cosmetics and sunscreens we put on our skin, detergents we use on our dishes and laundry, energy sources that power our homes, cars we drive, and much, much more. Some inflammation and immune response begins to occur as a result, and mitochondria begin to slow down, but it is not yet enough to elicit pathological symptoms in the child. Maybe the child begins to experience an abnormal number of ear infections, colds, headaches, ADHD, allergies, etc, that did not exist in ancestral tribes but that we have accepted as "normal" in the modern world. A course of antibiotics is administered, as an attempt to quell some of these illnesses, which further damages an already compromised microbiome. At a young age the child is offered a screen like an iPad or television. Frequent exposure to the blue light from screens further damages the mitochondria. Perhaps the child rides in a electric car that damages cell mitochondria due to the EMF. The child is kept out of direct sunlight which deprives the child of UV and infrared light that is so very vital to run pathways that can repair mitochondrial damage caused by blue light and non-native EMF. The sunlight is most often not offered to the child. The child is fed food that contains harmful amounts of glyphosate which is patented as an antibiotic and further destroys the microbiome and facia of the body. The damaged microbiome begins to make copious amounts of its own toxins. Then the child goes to college where they encounter Epstein Barr, little sleep, lots of stress, alcohol, more vaccinations, more antibiotics, maybe birth control pills, and likely many doses of Tylenol and Ibuprofen. Now, after two decades of exposure to man-made toxins, and abuse to their body and their microbiome, the immune system activates regularly. Inflammation becomes chronic and rises steadily. You can see where this is leading. The system is being primed for a crash.
Up to this point in the discussion I have neglected to include one of the greatest contributors to chronic disease, which is chronically elevated insulin. Humans did not evolve in a way that allows our physiology to process carbohydrates in the high concentrations, dosages, and frequency that nearly every American consumes today. We evolved to consume carbohydrates in small quantities for maybe two or three months per year when the plants were in season. We have misaligned with nature. World renowned archaeologist, Dr. Bill Schindler, explains in his book Eat Like A Human, that even ancestral humans living in tropical jungles only had access to fruit during limited months of the year. Fruit did not grow in the year-round abundance that we often imagine in the jungle. It was seasonal. Plus there was great competition with other species for fruit, and the plants laced the fruits with many toxins (that humans have now partially removed) to prevent overconsumption. Prior to the agricultural revolution and depending on latitude, the human body generally had 6-10 months per year when it could recover from limited carbohydrate consumption during the non plant-producing season. Agriculture has only existed for about 10,000-12,000 years which is not long enough for evolution to respond to high dose carbohydrate consumption and processing. It's really only been about 150 years that we have had such worldwide access to extremely high doses of very dense carbohydrate foods at high frequency, so there is absolutely no chance that evolution has kept up with the speed of that change. We simply have misaligned with nature. With this abundance of high dose dense carbohydrates surrounding us all day long every day in every aspect of our life we have literally drowned our cells in insulin. High concentrations of insulin do two things. First, insulin tries to force glucose into cells that are already maxed out with too much glucose, so the cells begin to retract their insulin receptors because they can't store any more glucose. Insulin resistance begins and blood glucose levels may slowly begin to creep up. Second, and more disastrous, is the chemical damage that excessive insulin causes to mitochondria. Excessive insulin, which did not occur in humans prior to our year-round high carbohydrate diets, triggers a large increase in ceramides which are waxy signaling lipids in the cell membrane lipid bilayer. These increased ceramides, through a series of steps, lead to a large increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS). These ROS free radicals strip electrons from the electron transport chain (ETC) in the mitochondria. The natural result of a properly functioning ETC will be the production of ATP which eventually assists in transcription/translation of DNA/RNA into functioning proteins needed for life, but high levels of insulin impair this process. The result is mitochondria that are so damaged that they cannot properly build a cell, repair the cell, and they cannot properly produce ATP for energy. Furthermore, dense cholesterol-rich islands of phospholipids in the cell membrane bilayer, called rafts, become damaged from the increase in ceramides. These rafts contain the insulin receptors which themselves become damaged and as a result cannot properly signal the cell to allow glucose to enter the cell. This is a chronic disease nightmare.
I will begin by summarizing four pillars for healing chronic disease:
1.) Nutrition: The light, electrons, water, and food that we ingest and manufacturer in our bodies. The timing of that nutrition, and the way in which we receive it. Yes, light, electrons, and water MUST be considered nutrition (and it's not what you think).
2.) Lifestyle: The daily things we do or don't do (which often go unnoticed).
3.) Mental: Truly embracing gratitude and forgiveness.
4.) Additional Treatments: supplements, prescription drugs, acupuncture, pain reprocessing talk therapy (PRTT), meditation, chiropractics, myofascial release, drinking deuterium depleted water, yoga, weight lifting, massage, cupping, neurofeedback training, red light therapy, sauna, cold plunges, ozone therapy, hyperbaric oxygen chambering, etc.
This article will focus mostly on #1 Nutrition. In my opinion, based on the information I have studied up to this point, I would estimate that, out of the four items above, "nutrition" (including light, electrons, and water) accounts for about 75% of healing from chronic disease. The other three items are important, but I don't believe these other items can provide full recovery unless we first align our nutrition with nature and evolution in the way our ancestors did. You will see how this transpires in the discussion below.
Let's start with an example of how chronic disease typically manifests so we have a visual picture. A child is born, hopefully with the privilege of a vaginal birth that will provide the necessary microbiome needed for a healthful life. An unfortunate C-section immediately puts the baby at higher risk of chronic disease due to the lack of microbiome that nature intended us to receive from the vaginal canal of our mother. Any antibiotics that the mother received prior to the baby's birth puts the child at further disadvantage of a damaged microbiome. A mother's poor nutrition and lifestyle does the same. Within a few hours or days of birth that baby is given several vaccinations which not only contain known toxins that are stored in the fat cells of the baby, but these vaccinations also cause further damage to the microbiome. Adjuvants in the vaccines may predispose the child to allergies which might include dairy, nuts, eggs, gluten, and dozens of others. While in the birthing hospital the child is subjected to blue light from overhead LED light sources and non-native EMF like WiFi and electronic devices. This immediately begins to damage cell mitochondria through a variety of complicated pathways that we will discuss. As the child grows they are subjected to thousands of man-made toxins on a daily basis, many of which begin to accumulate in the body or damage the mitochondria of our cells. These toxins come from the air we breathe, the water we drink, the clothes we wear, the light we receive, the fabric on furniture, the chemicals in carpet, the food we eat, soaps and cosmetics and sunscreens we put on our skin, detergents we use on our dishes and laundry, energy sources that power our homes, cars we drive, and much, much more. Some inflammation and immune response begins to occur as a result, and mitochondria begin to slow down, but it is not yet enough to elicit pathological symptoms in the child. Maybe the child begins to experience an abnormal number of ear infections, colds, headaches, ADHD, allergies, etc, that did not exist in ancestral tribes but that we have accepted as "normal" in the modern world. A course of antibiotics is administered, as an attempt to quell some of these illnesses, which further damages an already compromised microbiome. At a young age the child is offered a screen like an iPad or television. Frequent exposure to the blue light from screens further damages the mitochondria. Perhaps the child rides in a electric car that damages cell mitochondria due to the EMF. The child is kept out of direct sunlight which deprives the child of UV and infrared light that is so very vital to run pathways that can repair mitochondrial damage caused by blue light and non-native EMF. The sunlight is most often not offered to the child. The child is fed food that contains harmful amounts of glyphosate which is patented as an antibiotic and further destroys the microbiome and facia of the body. The damaged microbiome begins to make copious amounts of its own toxins. Then the child goes to college where they encounter Epstein Barr, little sleep, lots of stress, alcohol, more vaccinations, more antibiotics, maybe birth control pills, and likely many doses of Tylenol and Ibuprofen. Now, after two decades of exposure to man-made toxins, and abuse to their body and their microbiome, the immune system activates regularly. Inflammation becomes chronic and rises steadily. You can see where this is leading. The system is being primed for a crash.
Up to this point in the discussion I have neglected to include one of the greatest contributors to chronic disease, which is chronically elevated insulin. Humans did not evolve in a way that allows our physiology to process carbohydrates in the high concentrations, dosages, and frequency that nearly every American consumes today. We evolved to consume carbohydrates in small quantities for maybe two or three months per year when the plants were in season. We have misaligned with nature. World renowned archaeologist, Dr. Bill Schindler, explains in his book Eat Like A Human, that even ancestral humans living in tropical jungles only had access to fruit during limited months of the year. Fruit did not grow in the year-round abundance that we often imagine in the jungle. It was seasonal. Plus there was great competition with other species for fruit, and the plants laced the fruits with many toxins (that humans have now partially removed) to prevent overconsumption. Prior to the agricultural revolution and depending on latitude, the human body generally had 6-10 months per year when it could recover from limited carbohydrate consumption during the non plant-producing season. Agriculture has only existed for about 10,000-12,000 years which is not long enough for evolution to respond to high dose carbohydrate consumption and processing. It's really only been about 150 years that we have had such worldwide access to extremely high doses of very dense carbohydrate foods at high frequency, so there is absolutely no chance that evolution has kept up with the speed of that change. We simply have misaligned with nature. With this abundance of high dose dense carbohydrates surrounding us all day long every day in every aspect of our life we have literally drowned our cells in insulin. High concentrations of insulin do two things. First, insulin tries to force glucose into cells that are already maxed out with too much glucose, so the cells begin to retract their insulin receptors because they can't store any more glucose. Insulin resistance begins and blood glucose levels may slowly begin to creep up. Second, and more disastrous, is the chemical damage that excessive insulin causes to mitochondria. Excessive insulin, which did not occur in humans prior to our year-round high carbohydrate diets, triggers a large increase in ceramides which are waxy signaling lipids in the cell membrane lipid bilayer. These increased ceramides, through a series of steps, lead to a large increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS). These ROS free radicals strip electrons from the electron transport chain (ETC) in the mitochondria. The natural result of a properly functioning ETC will be the production of ATP which eventually assists in transcription/translation of DNA/RNA into functioning proteins needed for life, but high levels of insulin impair this process. The result is mitochondria that are so damaged that they cannot properly build a cell, repair the cell, and they cannot properly produce ATP for energy. Furthermore, dense cholesterol-rich islands of phospholipids in the cell membrane bilayer, called rafts, become damaged from the increase in ceramides. These rafts contain the insulin receptors which themselves become damaged and as a result cannot properly signal the cell to allow glucose to enter the cell. This is a chronic disease nightmare.
This is NOT medical advice. Consult your doctor for medical advice.
The chemistry in the mitochondria is vast and complicated. Many things can impair the chemical system. Take, for example, deuterium which is an isotope of hydrogen, often called heavy hydrogen, and it is present in many plants like kale. It can have a negative affect on the chemical processes of mitochondria. When consumed in summer these negative effects of deuterium in plants are neutralized by the sun. Our ancestors were able to safely consume plants like this in the summer during its short growing season as a result. In today's modern world, however, plants are consumed year round and often in large quantities. In order for the ETC to properly function in mitochondria there must be an established hydrogen concentration gradient. But when heavy hydrogen (deuterium) is present it is much more difficult to establish this gradient as deuterium has twice the weight of the more common protium isotope of hydrogen that is the preferred isotope for use by the mitochondria in the ETC. This heavier form of hydrogen impairs the ability of mitochondria to produce ATP and functional proteins. There are many other examples of how mitochondrial function can be impaired by modern life. This is of particular importance to those people suffering from chronic disease due to energy loss.
So, now, the child graduates from college primed for chronic disease with a devastated microbiome, severely damaged mitochondria, and insulin resistance. Their immune system is activated and inflammation is on the rise, but they may not yet exhibit any symptoms of chronic disease. On a daily basis they are exposing themselves to very harmful blue light and non-native EMF while avoiding very necessary natural sunlight. They've consumed high concentrations of seed oils and vegetable oils much of their life, so cell membranes and mitochondrial membranes are damaged and chemically unstable leading to the release of large amounts of cytokines. Red blood cells lose their malleable structure making it difficult to squeeze through very tiny capillaries resulting in a hypoxic state of the intended cells and the release of cytokines to signal capillaries to grow more quickly. More inflammation results but is not detected by standard-of-care medicine. Doctors simply are not trained to detect this. Then some life event occurs that pushes the primed system over the threshold of disaster. The child, who is now an adult, loses a loved one, or enters an abusive relationship, or has extreme job stress, or goes through a divorce, or gets bit by a tick carrying the Lyme bacteria, or takes a job at a technology firm that exposes them to high amounts of blue light and non-native EMF, or gets a Covid mRNA vaccine, or visits an overly polluted city and acquires mercury poisoning, or moves into an apartment with mold resulting in mycotoxicity. Some life event occurs, stress mounts, the immune system fully activates, and this pushes the biological system over the cliff. The brain must now present symptoms to slow down the body to conserve energy so it can survive. Sufficient energy is not available for the body to function, and the brain gives us fatigue, pain, brain fog, nerve impairment, nausea, etc, to force us to slow down so we don't die. The microbiome is so dysfunctional that the corrupt bacteria, fungi, parasites, and archaea are producing massive doses of alcohol, lipopolysaccharides, methane, and other biotoxins which further poison the brain, the cells, and the mitochondria every minute of the day. In addition, these corrupt microbes in the upper gut, where they do not belong, begin fermenting carbohydrates which results in lactic acid that further inhibits mitochondria. The stomach loses acidity allowing invading microbes to survive a less acidic environment when they enter from the mouth, and we become more susceptible to destructive microbial overgrowth in the upper gut. The now inefficient mitochondria upregulate the lactic acid cycle to try to make-up for lost energy which results in more lactic acid. Vitamin B1 gets quickly depleted in the body which results in more lactic acid. The body slows down more and more and more. All of this can present as dysautonomia, chronic fatigue syndrome, myalgic encephalitis, fibromyalgia, diabetes, knee/hip/shoulder pain, heart disease, cancer, PCOS, POTS, Alzheimers, chronic kidney disease, hypothyroidism, autoimmune disease, depression, anxiety, and dozens of other chronic illnesses.
Enter the liver. In a healthy human the liver (combined with the spleen) uses about 27% of the energy in the entire body at basal metabolic rate. But in a person dealing with all the toxins discussed above the liver may steal up to 40-50% of the body's energy to process toxins. This is less energy available for healing and living. When the body encounters high stress the adrenals tell the liver to quickly employ gluconeogenesis to make sugar. But then the beta cells of the pancreas release insulin which tells the liver to stop making sugar. The liver gets confused with the contradicting signals. The adrenal glands ultimately win out because evolution programmed our fight/flight response as the number one immediate priority. This chronically stressful state keeps the blood sugar high while the pancreas constantly creates more insulin further damaging the mitochondria. It is an endless feedback loop of despair unless changes are made. A person who is genetically predisposed to hyperglycemia now faces a higher risk of heart disease (diabesogenic), while a person who is genetically predisposed to hyperinsulinemia now faces a higher risk of cancer (obesogenic). The NIH Library and PubMed databases have over 49,000 studies linking insulin to cancer, and over 116,000 studies linking hyperglycemia to heart disease. But our standard-of-care medical community does not know how to properly diagnose either condition in the early stages. According to the American Diabetes Association, HbA1c misses 60-70% of pre-diabetes and diabetes cases. Yes, you read that correctly. HbA1c fails to diagnose 60-70% of pre-diabetes and diabetes cases according to the ADA, but doctors don't know this. Fasting glucose misses 50% of pre-diabetes and diabetes cases according to the ADA. It is only properly diagnosed with an OGTT paired with insulin sensitivity, but doctors rarely order this test. Over 50% of Americans have pre-diabetes, and most people don't even know they have it. Data derived from NHANES 2009-2016 shows that 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. Another study looked at NHANES data from 1999-2018 and found that 93% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. This is easily diagnosed with a fasting insulin blood test. Fasting insulin should be below 5uIU/mL. If there was only one blood test that could be performed to detect the potential of chronic disease, in my opinion, that test is fasting insulin. But physicians don't order it. Everyone in my family has had theirs tested. Standard-of-care medicine says that insulin is not used for diagnosis because it is not standardized. Who gives a shit if it's not standardized. It's a great predictor disease. And, if insulin is measured at a young age then a baseline is established for that individual before chronic disease sets in. It can then easily be monitored on an annual or semi-annual basis. It's only a $7 blood test. If HbA1c is measured it must be below 5.2% to largely rule out hyperglycemia.
So, now, the child graduates from college primed for chronic disease with a devastated microbiome, severely damaged mitochondria, and insulin resistance. Their immune system is activated and inflammation is on the rise, but they may not yet exhibit any symptoms of chronic disease. On a daily basis they are exposing themselves to very harmful blue light and non-native EMF while avoiding very necessary natural sunlight. They've consumed high concentrations of seed oils and vegetable oils much of their life, so cell membranes and mitochondrial membranes are damaged and chemically unstable leading to the release of large amounts of cytokines. Red blood cells lose their malleable structure making it difficult to squeeze through very tiny capillaries resulting in a hypoxic state of the intended cells and the release of cytokines to signal capillaries to grow more quickly. More inflammation results but is not detected by standard-of-care medicine. Doctors simply are not trained to detect this. Then some life event occurs that pushes the primed system over the threshold of disaster. The child, who is now an adult, loses a loved one, or enters an abusive relationship, or has extreme job stress, or goes through a divorce, or gets bit by a tick carrying the Lyme bacteria, or takes a job at a technology firm that exposes them to high amounts of blue light and non-native EMF, or gets a Covid mRNA vaccine, or visits an overly polluted city and acquires mercury poisoning, or moves into an apartment with mold resulting in mycotoxicity. Some life event occurs, stress mounts, the immune system fully activates, and this pushes the biological system over the cliff. The brain must now present symptoms to slow down the body to conserve energy so it can survive. Sufficient energy is not available for the body to function, and the brain gives us fatigue, pain, brain fog, nerve impairment, nausea, etc, to force us to slow down so we don't die. The microbiome is so dysfunctional that the corrupt bacteria, fungi, parasites, and archaea are producing massive doses of alcohol, lipopolysaccharides, methane, and other biotoxins which further poison the brain, the cells, and the mitochondria every minute of the day. In addition, these corrupt microbes in the upper gut, where they do not belong, begin fermenting carbohydrates which results in lactic acid that further inhibits mitochondria. The stomach loses acidity allowing invading microbes to survive a less acidic environment when they enter from the mouth, and we become more susceptible to destructive microbial overgrowth in the upper gut. The now inefficient mitochondria upregulate the lactic acid cycle to try to make-up for lost energy which results in more lactic acid. Vitamin B1 gets quickly depleted in the body which results in more lactic acid. The body slows down more and more and more. All of this can present as dysautonomia, chronic fatigue syndrome, myalgic encephalitis, fibromyalgia, diabetes, knee/hip/shoulder pain, heart disease, cancer, PCOS, POTS, Alzheimers, chronic kidney disease, hypothyroidism, autoimmune disease, depression, anxiety, and dozens of other chronic illnesses.
Enter the liver. In a healthy human the liver (combined with the spleen) uses about 27% of the energy in the entire body at basal metabolic rate. But in a person dealing with all the toxins discussed above the liver may steal up to 40-50% of the body's energy to process toxins. This is less energy available for healing and living. When the body encounters high stress the adrenals tell the liver to quickly employ gluconeogenesis to make sugar. But then the beta cells of the pancreas release insulin which tells the liver to stop making sugar. The liver gets confused with the contradicting signals. The adrenal glands ultimately win out because evolution programmed our fight/flight response as the number one immediate priority. This chronically stressful state keeps the blood sugar high while the pancreas constantly creates more insulin further damaging the mitochondria. It is an endless feedback loop of despair unless changes are made. A person who is genetically predisposed to hyperglycemia now faces a higher risk of heart disease (diabesogenic), while a person who is genetically predisposed to hyperinsulinemia now faces a higher risk of cancer (obesogenic). The NIH Library and PubMed databases have over 49,000 studies linking insulin to cancer, and over 116,000 studies linking hyperglycemia to heart disease. But our standard-of-care medical community does not know how to properly diagnose either condition in the early stages. According to the American Diabetes Association, HbA1c misses 60-70% of pre-diabetes and diabetes cases. Yes, you read that correctly. HbA1c fails to diagnose 60-70% of pre-diabetes and diabetes cases according to the ADA, but doctors don't know this. Fasting glucose misses 50% of pre-diabetes and diabetes cases according to the ADA. It is only properly diagnosed with an OGTT paired with insulin sensitivity, but doctors rarely order this test. Over 50% of Americans have pre-diabetes, and most people don't even know they have it. Data derived from NHANES 2009-2016 shows that 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. Another study looked at NHANES data from 1999-2018 and found that 93% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. This is easily diagnosed with a fasting insulin blood test. Fasting insulin should be below 5uIU/mL. If there was only one blood test that could be performed to detect the potential of chronic disease, in my opinion, that test is fasting insulin. But physicians don't order it. Everyone in my family has had theirs tested. Standard-of-care medicine says that insulin is not used for diagnosis because it is not standardized. Who gives a shit if it's not standardized. It's a great predictor disease. And, if insulin is measured at a young age then a baseline is established for that individual before chronic disease sets in. It can then easily be monitored on an annual or semi-annual basis. It's only a $7 blood test. If HbA1c is measured it must be below 5.2% to largely rule out hyperglycemia.
After this long, depressing story there is GOOD NEWS! This debilitating cascade of physiological and biochemical events is usually reversible. There are two main steps: 1.) Repairing the gut microbiome, and 2.) Repairing the mitochondria. By actively repairing these two complex yet foundational systems the body can begin the healing process. Without repairing these systems, the body cannot achieve a complete recovery. What I mean is that you might use all kinds of fancy functional medicine innovations and therapies, but if you don't repair the gut microbiome and cell mitochondria then you can't fully recover. Maybe some of the innovations and therapies will help you feel better temporarily, but if the problems are not fixed then pathological symptoms will come back. What do we need to do? We need to remove destructive microbes from locations where they are not meant to exist, reduce the overall numbers of destructive microbes, increase the number of productive microbes, remove the substrates that are supporting destructive microbes, increase the substrates that are supporting productive microbes, lower insulin and lactic acid to reduce further mitochondrial damage, remove toxins that are damaging mitochondria, add proper sunlight exposure that runs mitochondrial processes, remove blue light and non-native EMF that destroys mitochondrial function, remove deuterium, add electrons, and rebuild the mitochondria.
There are several steps that we actively must take. This is where we will challenge many of the views we have held about nutrition for our entire lives. The first, and one of the most important, is that we must understand that the human body requires exactly zero consumed carbohydrates for optimal health. Our body can make all the carbohydrates it requires, and our microbiome needs no fiber for food as it thrives eating amino acids. That does not mean that we shouldn't eat any carbohydrates at all, but it means that we do not require the consumption of carbohydrates for optimal health. What it also means is that healthy people must limit carbohydrate intake to an amount that keeps the fasting insulin under 5uIU/mL, while chronically ill patients need to temporarily limit or eliminate (for 6-24 months) carbohydrate consumption to a point that allows the body to enter a state of nutritional therapeutic ketosis as they become fat adapted. That generally means less than 20-25grams of carbohydrates per day. This accomplishes several things. First, it deprives destructive microbes in the upper gut of the fuel they require for survival. These destructive microbes will begin to die off. This immediately reduces the alcohols, lactic acid and toxins that these microbes are producing which are largely contributing to our chronic disease. Second, it lowers insulin which gives mitochondria the opportunity to begin healing, or at least stop some of the damage that is occurring. Third, by default, it removes most plants from our diet which are mega contributors of natural toxins. This goes against many of the views we have held about nutrition. It has taken me a long time to accept this. Large doses of plants in high concentrations and high frequency consumed without proper processing is very, very unhealthy for humans. It is disabling for chronically diseased patients. Some plants can be consumed, but they must be processed properly. Nature did not intend for humans to consume plants year round in unnaturally high concentrations and doses like we do in modern life. We must realign with nature.
When ancestral humans did eat plants during a few months of the year when they were in season, they were wise enough to process them properly to remove the toxins. Here is an example. Some of our ancestors, like the Toltec, developed very specific ways of processing maize so that it was not toxic. The way we consume corn today is very toxic. Corn is full of toxic lectins, and corn is not digestible by the human gut which means that no nutrients are accessible when we eat it. It serves only as a toxin. But the Toltec developed a process called nixtamalization. It is a 5-step process where the corn is 1.) soaked in water for 3-5 days, 2.) cooked in wood ash for many hours, 3.) dried over several days, 4.) stone ground, and 5.) cooked in animal fat. When the corn is processed in this way it becomes an accessible form of nutrients and it reduces most toxins to a level that is less harmful to humans. The process, however, is very time expensive, and the limited calories and nutrition it provided our ancestors means that it only constituted a limited percentage of the Toltec calories. Most ancestral cultures that consumed carbohydrates learned to process most plants to reduce their toxicity. We don't do that in modern culture, and we made it even worse. Through industrialization we consume highly concentrated forms of toxic plants in doses that were never available in nature. For example, some people like to use pea protein powder in their shakes. If a person were to consume whole peas with dinner once a week maybe they would eat 40 peas at a sitting. But in order to extract enough protein to make one concentrated serving of pea protein powder it takes about 2,000 peas. Peas, and all plants, contain toxins. Peas are high in arsenic and lead. Forty whole peas at dinner once a week during a 2 month ancestral growing season will not toxify the body in a pathological way as the body has 10 months to get rid of the toxins before the next growing season. But the arsenic and lead from 2,000 peas concentrated in one serving of powder and consumed every day of the week in a protein shake at lunch for 365 days per year means that the person is getting 350 times more arsenic and lead than eating whole peas (2000 divided by 40, times 7 days per week), and they're getting that every day without a 10 month break. It's a chronic disease catastrophe. Now instead of peas, think of how many toxins are consumed in highly concentrated soy products, spinach/kale shakes, nut butter, vegetable oils, pasta, gluten, etc, in modern life. This is not aligned with nature. Nature never allowed us to eat these plants in highly concentrated forms until humans invented high-tech innovations.
I recently heard a lecture by a professor at a prestigious university speaking about cancer treatment who said that modern plants have 10,000 times more carcinogens, by weight, than the synthetic pesticides they are treated with. I thought this guy must be smoking crack or something, so I looked it up to verify the data and found this to be the brilliant work of Bruce N. Ames of the University of California Berkeley in his 1985 paper called Man-Made and Natural Carcinogens: Putting The Risks In Perspective. At the peak of his career, Bruce Ames was one of the most quoted scientists on the planet. Even if the reality was just a fraction of those carcinogen levels, the human body cannot manage any level of toxicity while dealing with a chronic disease. If a healthy person consumes a small amount of plants during a couple seasonal months per year the way our ancestors did then there is limited toxicity that a healthy body can keep up with. But when we concentrate plant doses into boxes and bags with barcodes in every aisle of the grocery store, and consume them at high frequency, then we set our body up for disaster. Even fresh produce is consumed at rates and doses too high for chronically ill bodies to process. Our healthy ancestors never had access to such abundantly available plants all year long with no long breaks in between. A chronically ill person has no chance of keeping up with these toxins. We can process some plants at home in a way that can reduce some toxins through processes like fermenting and pressure cooking. However, it is very time consuming, it does not remove all toxins, and the resulting product does not provide a large amount of calories and nutrients for the body. Here's a personal example of plant toxicity. In March of 2022, I cleaned up my diet by getting rid of all processed foods and replacing them with "healthier" whole foods like spinach, beets, beet greens, chard, almonds, almonds butter, peanuts, peanut butter, cashews, cashew butter, sweet potatoes, chia seed, 95% dark chocolate, kiwi, raspberries, turmeric, and more. Sounds "healthy", right? What I did not know was that all of these foods are very high in oxalates. I didn't even know what the hell an oxalate was, but I was unknowingly eating thousands of milligrams of these toxic anti-nutrients every day. Well, it turns out that if you eat more than about 150mg of oxalates per day then the kidneys cannot keep up with detoxification and some people start to store these jagged crystals in the body in places like glands, ligaments, eyes, bones, tendons, etc. They can cause much discomfort. I complained to my urologist that my prostate hurt. They stuck cameras and other tools up my body parts and found nothing, so they called it idiopathic non-bacterial chronic prostatitis, which means they had no freaking idea what it was. Then in May of 2023 I had a routine ultrasound of my kidneys to monitor small cysts on my left kidney. They found a kidney stone, and they told me to go on an oxalate-free diet. So I did. But then my whole abdomen began to hurt. I sometimes had grainy, sandy, liquid diarrhea. My eyes felt like there was something stuck in them every morning when I woke up. I had to urinate frequently, and I had mild dizziness and headaches. This was the result of my body dumping these toxic oxalates now that it recognized I wasn't bringing oxalates into the body any longer. When you stop eating oxalates the body says "finally I can get rid of these toxic things now that they're not coming into the body anymore." But it made me feel terrible. I turned to the scientific literature once again, and I found that when these dumping symptoms get bad you have to add a small amount of oxalates back into the diet to slow down the dumping. The symptoms resolve as the oxalate dumping slows down. In this way one can manage the speed at which these poisons are released. After further research I found a book called Toxic Superfoods by Sally K. Norton, MPH. She cites over 520 studies to help explain the science, causes, symptoms, and cure for oxalate poisoning. It has helped me. My urologist thinks I'm crazy, but he has admittedly not read the studies.
The other way we can properly consume plants is by letting animals eat the plants first, and then we consume the animal. Cows, for instance, have the equivalent of a fermenting large intestine (rumen) at the beginning of their digestive tract. The cow chews the grass, seemingly forever, and then the grass enters the rumen where it ferments. It is then regurgitated back into the mouth where it is further chewed and mixed with enzymes. Once processed properly through fermentation it enters the remainder of the digestive system. The cow is technically not actually eating grass. The bacteria in the cows digestive tract are eating the grass and making protein and fat from it, and the cow is eating the bacteria with the protein and fat. Humans then consume the cow in a safe way that allows them to extract the nutrients, that the grass ultimately provided, without any toxins. The duck eats grains which sit in the crop and soak and ferment for many, many hours. These grains sit there so long that they begin to sprout in the crop. Once they are properly soaked, fermented and sprouted in the crop they then pass into the gizzard where they are ground up by little stones that the duck consumes. Humans can then eat the duck in a way that allows them to extract the nutrients that the grains have provided without consuming the toxins that the duck efficiently filters. But unless humans process grains externally in a way similar to the way a duck processes grains internally, we are eating food that will ultimately contribute to or worsen chronic disease. Homemade, sprouted, fermented sourdough bread is an example of a way humans can properly process a grain and safely consume in small quantities if they are otherwise healthy.
Today, when we walk into a grocery store, in my estimation, more than 99% percent of the food we see is the result of human innovation through inventions like selective breeding, nutrient extraction, genetic modifications, milling, etc. It never existed before we created it. Even the fresh plants and fresh meats are the result of human innovation, not nature. Plants and animals were selectively bred through human innovation over hundreds and hundreds of years. The only food I can think of in a grocery store that is not the result of human innovation and intervention is wild caught seafood. Perhaps there are others. Animals were selectively bred so that they didn't run away and so they were less aggressive (more domesticated). Plants were selectively bred mostly to remove toxins and taste better. For example, about ten wild almonds can kill a person due to the cyanide, but modern almonds won't kill us in normal doses. Almonds are, however, still toxic and can cause harm. Humans learned how to breed plants to reduce these toxins, but we did a terrible job. We didn't go far enough, and very harmful quantities of these toxins still remain. Any amount of cyanide is damaging. In the process of this selective breeding we destroyed the plants own ability to defend itself and to express strong immune function, so we had to develop harmful pesticides, antibiotics, and fertilizers to compensate. The consequences are hideous. Every species on Earth evolved to eat one very specific diet, and all members of that species eat only that one very specific diet. All lions eat the same food. All hummingbirds eat the same food. And all humans evolved to consume the same diet at their given latitude, but we messed it up. Nature evolved so that there is one proper diet that is optimal for humans at their latitude, and this diet includes few plants especially at higher latitudes. Our hubris fooled us into thinking that we are smarter than nature. We have misaligned with nature.
I've struggled with this finding for many months now. My whole life I believed I should eat plenty of plants. It's been very difficult for me to change. Industrial and governmental propaganda constantly tells us to eat more plants. To come to terms with the reality, I've now studied anthropology, archaeology, industry, law, court proceedings against industry, domestic politics, international politics, economics, science, medicine, climate change, and I've personally communicated with over 1,000 chronically ill people to come to the conclusion that plants have been pushed on us by big industry (mainly food, agriculture, and pharma) so that big industry can make more money while they fully know that consumption of high doses of these plants and carbohydrates at high frequency intervals is very toxic to humans. Court documents prove that these big companies know that they are harming people. In my opinion, the food industry that is pushing plant-based diets is more nefarious than big tobacco was in the 1970's and 1980's. Their goal is to put every local farmer out of business around the world so that they can further expand mass laboratory and factory based plant production. They know this is toxic for humans, and they try to convince us that we must feel virtuous about it. The big money is in new innovative ways of industrially manufacturing plants, not healthy regenerative farming of animals and plants. I used to believe it was better for the planet if we consumed plants. I spent some time looking at the United Nations climate models to see how plant versus animal consumption impacts global warming. The way we consume plants is far worse for our planet than consuming properly raised animals. The process for growing plants requires mining of fossil fuel to make plant fertilizer and produces large amounts of nitrous oxide which is 300 times more potent as a greenhouse gas compared to carbon dioxide. The production of sugar beets to make sugar results in billions of pounds of beet greens rotting in fields and emitting large amounts of methane which is 6 times more potent as a greenhouse gas compared to carbon dioxide. These numbers are much, much larger than the numbers for properly raised animals. But that pales in comparison to the greenhouse gas contributions created by the healthcare industry that is treating the chronic disease epidemic which is largely due to the overconsumption of plant carbohydrates and plant toxins in high doses and at high frequencies. When we eat plants today we are literally eating petroleum. Literally. Agriculture stripped the land of topsoil which contained finite amounts nitrogen, carbon, phosphorus and potassium necessary for annual plants to grow. Think of the dust bowl when the soil was so depleted in South Dakota in just a few decades that ships in the Atlantic ocean had poor visibility due to the blowing dust. This lost topsoil cannot be replaced so it has been substituted with petroleum in the form of fertilizer. When you eat these plants you are literally eating petroleum. About 50% of the plant material you put in your mouth is literally petroleum product. When we run out of fossil fuel we won't be able to grow these plants. It's not a sustainable model. The Earth is being raped and pillaged by plant agriculture. But if we reintroduce perennial grasses to the land, in place of growing annual plants, and give those grasses access to large numbers of ruminant animals then nature will support itself and become self-sustaining once again. The bacteria and enzymes from the ruminant animals literally give life to the grasses as evolution intended. The roots of the grasses dive ten feet deep holding the earth together and bringing water and minerals to the surface. The animals deposit manure and resupply the fertilization. The grasses extract further nitrogen and carbon from the air and the process becomes self-sustaining. Net carbon is removed from the atmosphere. If we did this with 75% of land which is now agricultural plant-based land we could sequester all the carbon dioxide that humans have emitted since the beginning of industrialization. Nature begins to function properly again. We harvest the animals for food and beauty and balance is restored to the system. We realign with nature.
I have similarly struggled with dietary fat consumption. For over 4 decades I thought we were supposed to eat a low fat diet. And I thought we were supposed to eat polyunsaturated fat instead of saturated fat. I was completely wrong again. Fat cells in the human body can grow in two ways: hypertrophy or hyperplasia. In hyperplasia the fat cells grow by dividing and making new fat cells. This is the healthy way, and healthy women eating saturated fat predominantly add fat to their body in this way before menopause because estrogen promotes this way. Hypertrophy, however, means that fat cells just get bigger, pushing themselves farther away from capillaries and resulting in lack of blood delivery. Hypoxia ensues. The fat cell begins to emit cytokines to signal blood vessels to grow so the cell can get oxygen. The cytokines create much inflammation. Hypertrophy is more prominent in men and postmenopausal women. But polyunsaturated fats strongly promote hypertrophy in everyone, including premenopausal women, thereby creating much inflammation through the mechanism just explained. These polyunsaturated fats are also very chemically unstable. They become oxidized very easily due to the many double bonds in their chemical structure which turns them into free radicals. Again, much inflammation is created. Saturated fats on the other hand are very stable. Saturated fats heal and rebuild damaged nerves, and they properly construct our hormones. Higher consumption of total fat, mostly in the form of saturated fat, is required to properly heal chronic disease. For most of my life I believed the opposite based on false information. Our ancestors never had access to high doses of polyunsaturated fats. It didn't exist. They were forced to align with nature and to live healthy.
There are several steps that we actively must take. This is where we will challenge many of the views we have held about nutrition for our entire lives. The first, and one of the most important, is that we must understand that the human body requires exactly zero consumed carbohydrates for optimal health. Our body can make all the carbohydrates it requires, and our microbiome needs no fiber for food as it thrives eating amino acids. That does not mean that we shouldn't eat any carbohydrates at all, but it means that we do not require the consumption of carbohydrates for optimal health. What it also means is that healthy people must limit carbohydrate intake to an amount that keeps the fasting insulin under 5uIU/mL, while chronically ill patients need to temporarily limit or eliminate (for 6-24 months) carbohydrate consumption to a point that allows the body to enter a state of nutritional therapeutic ketosis as they become fat adapted. That generally means less than 20-25grams of carbohydrates per day. This accomplishes several things. First, it deprives destructive microbes in the upper gut of the fuel they require for survival. These destructive microbes will begin to die off. This immediately reduces the alcohols, lactic acid and toxins that these microbes are producing which are largely contributing to our chronic disease. Second, it lowers insulin which gives mitochondria the opportunity to begin healing, or at least stop some of the damage that is occurring. Third, by default, it removes most plants from our diet which are mega contributors of natural toxins. This goes against many of the views we have held about nutrition. It has taken me a long time to accept this. Large doses of plants in high concentrations and high frequency consumed without proper processing is very, very unhealthy for humans. It is disabling for chronically diseased patients. Some plants can be consumed, but they must be processed properly. Nature did not intend for humans to consume plants year round in unnaturally high concentrations and doses like we do in modern life. We must realign with nature.
When ancestral humans did eat plants during a few months of the year when they were in season, they were wise enough to process them properly to remove the toxins. Here is an example. Some of our ancestors, like the Toltec, developed very specific ways of processing maize so that it was not toxic. The way we consume corn today is very toxic. Corn is full of toxic lectins, and corn is not digestible by the human gut which means that no nutrients are accessible when we eat it. It serves only as a toxin. But the Toltec developed a process called nixtamalization. It is a 5-step process where the corn is 1.) soaked in water for 3-5 days, 2.) cooked in wood ash for many hours, 3.) dried over several days, 4.) stone ground, and 5.) cooked in animal fat. When the corn is processed in this way it becomes an accessible form of nutrients and it reduces most toxins to a level that is less harmful to humans. The process, however, is very time expensive, and the limited calories and nutrition it provided our ancestors means that it only constituted a limited percentage of the Toltec calories. Most ancestral cultures that consumed carbohydrates learned to process most plants to reduce their toxicity. We don't do that in modern culture, and we made it even worse. Through industrialization we consume highly concentrated forms of toxic plants in doses that were never available in nature. For example, some people like to use pea protein powder in their shakes. If a person were to consume whole peas with dinner once a week maybe they would eat 40 peas at a sitting. But in order to extract enough protein to make one concentrated serving of pea protein powder it takes about 2,000 peas. Peas, and all plants, contain toxins. Peas are high in arsenic and lead. Forty whole peas at dinner once a week during a 2 month ancestral growing season will not toxify the body in a pathological way as the body has 10 months to get rid of the toxins before the next growing season. But the arsenic and lead from 2,000 peas concentrated in one serving of powder and consumed every day of the week in a protein shake at lunch for 365 days per year means that the person is getting 350 times more arsenic and lead than eating whole peas (2000 divided by 40, times 7 days per week), and they're getting that every day without a 10 month break. It's a chronic disease catastrophe. Now instead of peas, think of how many toxins are consumed in highly concentrated soy products, spinach/kale shakes, nut butter, vegetable oils, pasta, gluten, etc, in modern life. This is not aligned with nature. Nature never allowed us to eat these plants in highly concentrated forms until humans invented high-tech innovations.
I recently heard a lecture by a professor at a prestigious university speaking about cancer treatment who said that modern plants have 10,000 times more carcinogens, by weight, than the synthetic pesticides they are treated with. I thought this guy must be smoking crack or something, so I looked it up to verify the data and found this to be the brilliant work of Bruce N. Ames of the University of California Berkeley in his 1985 paper called Man-Made and Natural Carcinogens: Putting The Risks In Perspective. At the peak of his career, Bruce Ames was one of the most quoted scientists on the planet. Even if the reality was just a fraction of those carcinogen levels, the human body cannot manage any level of toxicity while dealing with a chronic disease. If a healthy person consumes a small amount of plants during a couple seasonal months per year the way our ancestors did then there is limited toxicity that a healthy body can keep up with. But when we concentrate plant doses into boxes and bags with barcodes in every aisle of the grocery store, and consume them at high frequency, then we set our body up for disaster. Even fresh produce is consumed at rates and doses too high for chronically ill bodies to process. Our healthy ancestors never had access to such abundantly available plants all year long with no long breaks in between. A chronically ill person has no chance of keeping up with these toxins. We can process some plants at home in a way that can reduce some toxins through processes like fermenting and pressure cooking. However, it is very time consuming, it does not remove all toxins, and the resulting product does not provide a large amount of calories and nutrients for the body. Here's a personal example of plant toxicity. In March of 2022, I cleaned up my diet by getting rid of all processed foods and replacing them with "healthier" whole foods like spinach, beets, beet greens, chard, almonds, almonds butter, peanuts, peanut butter, cashews, cashew butter, sweet potatoes, chia seed, 95% dark chocolate, kiwi, raspberries, turmeric, and more. Sounds "healthy", right? What I did not know was that all of these foods are very high in oxalates. I didn't even know what the hell an oxalate was, but I was unknowingly eating thousands of milligrams of these toxic anti-nutrients every day. Well, it turns out that if you eat more than about 150mg of oxalates per day then the kidneys cannot keep up with detoxification and some people start to store these jagged crystals in the body in places like glands, ligaments, eyes, bones, tendons, etc. They can cause much discomfort. I complained to my urologist that my prostate hurt. They stuck cameras and other tools up my body parts and found nothing, so they called it idiopathic non-bacterial chronic prostatitis, which means they had no freaking idea what it was. Then in May of 2023 I had a routine ultrasound of my kidneys to monitor small cysts on my left kidney. They found a kidney stone, and they told me to go on an oxalate-free diet. So I did. But then my whole abdomen began to hurt. I sometimes had grainy, sandy, liquid diarrhea. My eyes felt like there was something stuck in them every morning when I woke up. I had to urinate frequently, and I had mild dizziness and headaches. This was the result of my body dumping these toxic oxalates now that it recognized I wasn't bringing oxalates into the body any longer. When you stop eating oxalates the body says "finally I can get rid of these toxic things now that they're not coming into the body anymore." But it made me feel terrible. I turned to the scientific literature once again, and I found that when these dumping symptoms get bad you have to add a small amount of oxalates back into the diet to slow down the dumping. The symptoms resolve as the oxalate dumping slows down. In this way one can manage the speed at which these poisons are released. After further research I found a book called Toxic Superfoods by Sally K. Norton, MPH. She cites over 520 studies to help explain the science, causes, symptoms, and cure for oxalate poisoning. It has helped me. My urologist thinks I'm crazy, but he has admittedly not read the studies.
The other way we can properly consume plants is by letting animals eat the plants first, and then we consume the animal. Cows, for instance, have the equivalent of a fermenting large intestine (rumen) at the beginning of their digestive tract. The cow chews the grass, seemingly forever, and then the grass enters the rumen where it ferments. It is then regurgitated back into the mouth where it is further chewed and mixed with enzymes. Once processed properly through fermentation it enters the remainder of the digestive system. The cow is technically not actually eating grass. The bacteria in the cows digestive tract are eating the grass and making protein and fat from it, and the cow is eating the bacteria with the protein and fat. Humans then consume the cow in a safe way that allows them to extract the nutrients, that the grass ultimately provided, without any toxins. The duck eats grains which sit in the crop and soak and ferment for many, many hours. These grains sit there so long that they begin to sprout in the crop. Once they are properly soaked, fermented and sprouted in the crop they then pass into the gizzard where they are ground up by little stones that the duck consumes. Humans can then eat the duck in a way that allows them to extract the nutrients that the grains have provided without consuming the toxins that the duck efficiently filters. But unless humans process grains externally in a way similar to the way a duck processes grains internally, we are eating food that will ultimately contribute to or worsen chronic disease. Homemade, sprouted, fermented sourdough bread is an example of a way humans can properly process a grain and safely consume in small quantities if they are otherwise healthy.
Today, when we walk into a grocery store, in my estimation, more than 99% percent of the food we see is the result of human innovation through inventions like selective breeding, nutrient extraction, genetic modifications, milling, etc. It never existed before we created it. Even the fresh plants and fresh meats are the result of human innovation, not nature. Plants and animals were selectively bred through human innovation over hundreds and hundreds of years. The only food I can think of in a grocery store that is not the result of human innovation and intervention is wild caught seafood. Perhaps there are others. Animals were selectively bred so that they didn't run away and so they were less aggressive (more domesticated). Plants were selectively bred mostly to remove toxins and taste better. For example, about ten wild almonds can kill a person due to the cyanide, but modern almonds won't kill us in normal doses. Almonds are, however, still toxic and can cause harm. Humans learned how to breed plants to reduce these toxins, but we did a terrible job. We didn't go far enough, and very harmful quantities of these toxins still remain. Any amount of cyanide is damaging. In the process of this selective breeding we destroyed the plants own ability to defend itself and to express strong immune function, so we had to develop harmful pesticides, antibiotics, and fertilizers to compensate. The consequences are hideous. Every species on Earth evolved to eat one very specific diet, and all members of that species eat only that one very specific diet. All lions eat the same food. All hummingbirds eat the same food. And all humans evolved to consume the same diet at their given latitude, but we messed it up. Nature evolved so that there is one proper diet that is optimal for humans at their latitude, and this diet includes few plants especially at higher latitudes. Our hubris fooled us into thinking that we are smarter than nature. We have misaligned with nature.
I've struggled with this finding for many months now. My whole life I believed I should eat plenty of plants. It's been very difficult for me to change. Industrial and governmental propaganda constantly tells us to eat more plants. To come to terms with the reality, I've now studied anthropology, archaeology, industry, law, court proceedings against industry, domestic politics, international politics, economics, science, medicine, climate change, and I've personally communicated with over 1,000 chronically ill people to come to the conclusion that plants have been pushed on us by big industry (mainly food, agriculture, and pharma) so that big industry can make more money while they fully know that consumption of high doses of these plants and carbohydrates at high frequency intervals is very toxic to humans. Court documents prove that these big companies know that they are harming people. In my opinion, the food industry that is pushing plant-based diets is more nefarious than big tobacco was in the 1970's and 1980's. Their goal is to put every local farmer out of business around the world so that they can further expand mass laboratory and factory based plant production. They know this is toxic for humans, and they try to convince us that we must feel virtuous about it. The big money is in new innovative ways of industrially manufacturing plants, not healthy regenerative farming of animals and plants. I used to believe it was better for the planet if we consumed plants. I spent some time looking at the United Nations climate models to see how plant versus animal consumption impacts global warming. The way we consume plants is far worse for our planet than consuming properly raised animals. The process for growing plants requires mining of fossil fuel to make plant fertilizer and produces large amounts of nitrous oxide which is 300 times more potent as a greenhouse gas compared to carbon dioxide. The production of sugar beets to make sugar results in billions of pounds of beet greens rotting in fields and emitting large amounts of methane which is 6 times more potent as a greenhouse gas compared to carbon dioxide. These numbers are much, much larger than the numbers for properly raised animals. But that pales in comparison to the greenhouse gas contributions created by the healthcare industry that is treating the chronic disease epidemic which is largely due to the overconsumption of plant carbohydrates and plant toxins in high doses and at high frequencies. When we eat plants today we are literally eating petroleum. Literally. Agriculture stripped the land of topsoil which contained finite amounts nitrogen, carbon, phosphorus and potassium necessary for annual plants to grow. Think of the dust bowl when the soil was so depleted in South Dakota in just a few decades that ships in the Atlantic ocean had poor visibility due to the blowing dust. This lost topsoil cannot be replaced so it has been substituted with petroleum in the form of fertilizer. When you eat these plants you are literally eating petroleum. About 50% of the plant material you put in your mouth is literally petroleum product. When we run out of fossil fuel we won't be able to grow these plants. It's not a sustainable model. The Earth is being raped and pillaged by plant agriculture. But if we reintroduce perennial grasses to the land, in place of growing annual plants, and give those grasses access to large numbers of ruminant animals then nature will support itself and become self-sustaining once again. The bacteria and enzymes from the ruminant animals literally give life to the grasses as evolution intended. The roots of the grasses dive ten feet deep holding the earth together and bringing water and minerals to the surface. The animals deposit manure and resupply the fertilization. The grasses extract further nitrogen and carbon from the air and the process becomes self-sustaining. Net carbon is removed from the atmosphere. If we did this with 75% of land which is now agricultural plant-based land we could sequester all the carbon dioxide that humans have emitted since the beginning of industrialization. Nature begins to function properly again. We harvest the animals for food and beauty and balance is restored to the system. We realign with nature.
I have similarly struggled with dietary fat consumption. For over 4 decades I thought we were supposed to eat a low fat diet. And I thought we were supposed to eat polyunsaturated fat instead of saturated fat. I was completely wrong again. Fat cells in the human body can grow in two ways: hypertrophy or hyperplasia. In hyperplasia the fat cells grow by dividing and making new fat cells. This is the healthy way, and healthy women eating saturated fat predominantly add fat to their body in this way before menopause because estrogen promotes this way. Hypertrophy, however, means that fat cells just get bigger, pushing themselves farther away from capillaries and resulting in lack of blood delivery. Hypoxia ensues. The fat cell begins to emit cytokines to signal blood vessels to grow so the cell can get oxygen. The cytokines create much inflammation. Hypertrophy is more prominent in men and postmenopausal women. But polyunsaturated fats strongly promote hypertrophy in everyone, including premenopausal women, thereby creating much inflammation through the mechanism just explained. These polyunsaturated fats are also very chemically unstable. They become oxidized very easily due to the many double bonds in their chemical structure which turns them into free radicals. Again, much inflammation is created. Saturated fats on the other hand are very stable. Saturated fats heal and rebuild damaged nerves, and they properly construct our hormones. Higher consumption of total fat, mostly in the form of saturated fat, is required to properly heal chronic disease. For most of my life I believed the opposite based on false information. Our ancestors never had access to high doses of polyunsaturated fats. It didn't exist. They were forced to align with nature and to live healthy.
So, how do we practically align a food nutritional healing protocol with nature, and how do we keep our nutrition aligned with nature after we heal? When designing a meal I still use the model I created many years ago which is: 1.) healthy protein, 2.) healthy fat, 3.) fibrous carbohydrate, 4.) starchy carbohydrate. It's just a simple, convenient way to quickly think about what goes on the plate when meal prepping. But I have modified the percentages and types of macronutrients in order to more closely align with nature. For example, healthy fat now means mostly saturated animal fat, and the percentage of fat during the healing stage of chronic disease will likely be over 70% of total calories. During the healing stage of chronic disease the starchy carbohydrate percentage will be near zero, and the fibrous carbohydrate percentage (vegetables) will be low. After healing, then the nutrition would seasonally align with nature. In the winter months the nutrition would put us in deep ketosis with no consumption of plants. In June and July we would include some strawberries and blueberries as long as our fasting insulin stays under 5uIU/mL. Maybe a small amount of homemade nixtamalized corn will be consumed in August. In September and October maybe we eat some squash. Then back into ketosis in December, like our ancestors did, while eating no plants. The Weston A. Price Foundation is a wonderful organization to help you find regenerative and organic farms in your area. Go to this webpage and click on your state. Then email the local chapters nearest to you, and they will send you a list of farms in your area. While you are on the website I strongly suggest you read a little history about Dr. Weston Price. He made significant contributions to the world with his research on nutrition.
I would strongly caution against jumping right into a ketogenic diet and this ancestral way of eating. It needs to be eased into over a couple months. In this modern age we are all victims of substance abuse. Carbohydrate addiction withdrawal symptoms can be nearly as severe as withdrawal from alcohol and drugs for some people. It's no joke. Gradual reduction of carbohydrates is needed to achieve the desired results in a healthy way. There are a lot of keto nuances that need to be learned in order to rehabilitate our metabolism and to eat the way nature intended. I'm nearly 100% carnivore now, but it took me six months to get here once I started a ketogenic diet. I think it can safely be done in two to three months if a person has guidance from someone with experience. A good place to start learning about this ancestral way of eating is with the medical textbook called Ketogenic: The Science of Therapeutic Carbohydrate Restriction in Human Health. While this textbook is used for university instruction and medical reference it is written in a way that can be understood by most people. The book cites 3,485 scientific studies and papers.
To conclude this section, nutritional therapeutic ketosis is the first step to repair the gut microbiome and mitochondria.
I would strongly caution against jumping right into a ketogenic diet and this ancestral way of eating. It needs to be eased into over a couple months. In this modern age we are all victims of substance abuse. Carbohydrate addiction withdrawal symptoms can be nearly as severe as withdrawal from alcohol and drugs for some people. It's no joke. Gradual reduction of carbohydrates is needed to achieve the desired results in a healthy way. There are a lot of keto nuances that need to be learned in order to rehabilitate our metabolism and to eat the way nature intended. I'm nearly 100% carnivore now, but it took me six months to get here once I started a ketogenic diet. I think it can safely be done in two to three months if a person has guidance from someone with experience. A good place to start learning about this ancestral way of eating is with the medical textbook called Ketogenic: The Science of Therapeutic Carbohydrate Restriction in Human Health. While this textbook is used for university instruction and medical reference it is written in a way that can be understood by most people. The book cites 3,485 scientific studies and papers.
To conclude this section, nutritional therapeutic ketosis is the first step to repair the gut microbiome and mitochondria.
This article does NOT constitute medical advice. Consult with your physician before making any changes to your medical plan.
The next step is food timing. Humans are not evolved to eat three big meals every day plus snacks. The frequency is too often, and this keeps insulin perpetually elevated while damaging mitochondria all day long. Instead, we should work toward eating only two meals per day, and no snacks, with a 16-18 hour fast each day. For the last year I've been eating at 1pm and 6pm with no snacks. This gives the body a long break from insulin, and it gives our gut a long rest each day. There are a couple anthropologists and nutritionists that I follow who regularly visit ancestral tribes that still exist today in places like Greenland, the Amazon, the arctic circle of Norway, and parts of Africa and Australia. These are remote tribes that can only be reached by one to two weeks of travel by dogsled or by foot because the tribes are located so far away from roads. They visit these tribes to study their health, their ancestral way of eating, their lifestyle, and more. It is fascinating to read these papers and learn the extent to which these tribes are aligned with nature. They generally only eat once or twice per day. They have zero chronic disease. They awaken with the sunlight and go to sleep shortly after sunset. They mostly sleep on the ground. They are nearly always barefoot in the warmer locations. In the arctic of Norway nearly everything they have comes from reindeer. Their clothing, their tools, their shelter, their food. All of these tribes eat mostly animals, and they eat nose to tail. Plants are eaten seasonally in calorically small amounts compared to animals. When consuming animals they typically drink the blood first. Then they eat the fat with the organs. The meat provides the least amount of nutrients, so they only eat the meat after all members of the tribe/family have gotten adequate nutrients from the blood, fat, and organs. Some tribes consume fairly large amounts of insects seasonally. There is very low stress, and the people are perpetually happy.
Once we are on a nutritionally therapeutic ketogenic diet that lowers our consumption of carbohydrates and plant toxins we can then work on direct ways to repair the gut microbiome and cell mitochondria. We have stopped much of the immediate damage, and we can focus on healing. We will be eating mostly grass-fed ruminant meat, wild caught seafood, pasture raised eggs, fermented goat dairy, select organic fruits and vegetables, and added fats like grass-fed ghee, tallow, suet, lard, and maybe a little olive oil. There will be a small number of chronically ill patients who temporarily have autoimmune reactions to seafood, aged meat, eggs, dairy, and all plants, so they may need a fresh meat, fat, and salt only diet until they heal. With this elimination diet our gut microbiome will begin to recover on its own within 3 days, but it may be a slow and long road to full recovery. How can we help it recover faster? We can push out destructive bacteria and support productive bacteria by fermenting goat milk at home with high concentrations of microbes that are known to displace harmful bacteria located in the wrong place. This is a human innovation worth employing. Goat milk is the preferred liquid to ferment because it has low levels of casein and lactose compared to cow milk. The fermentation process will remove most of the remaining casein and lactose that many people are sensitive to before they have healed their chronic disease. All we need to do is select the microbes we want to cultivate, mix up the proper yogurt culture, and let it sit in a yogurt warmer at the proper temperature for 36 hours. Fermenting goat milk at home for 36 hours allows the microbes to increase in number by thousands of times more than what is available in grocery store products that only ferment for 3-4 hours. A therapeutic effect on the microbiome is the result. A book called Super Gut, by William Davis, MD, is a good resource with over 285 studies referenced in the writing.
Glyphosate is a major cause of gut problems. Glyphosate is the chemical ingredient in Round-Up. It is used on crops as an herbicide, but it is patented as an antibiotic. Glyphosate functions by inhibiting an enzyme in the Shikimate pathway of plants and microbes called EPSP synthase. How does it inhibit the enzyme? It inhibits the enzyme by pulling out the copper atom of the enzyme that is required for function. Glyphosate chelates copper 1 billion times more than it chelates magnesium, and it chelates copper a thousands times more than zinc. There are thousands of copper-dependent enzymes in the human body that are all being disrupted by glyphosate. The FDA tells us that glyphosate is safe for humans because humans do not have a Shikimate pathway. But, as we've discussed, humans depends on 100 trillion bacteria in our gut to give us health. Glyphosate comes into the human body through the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the water we drink. Some crops, like Round-Up Ready Corn, are genetically modified to produce higher levels of EPSP synthase so that glyphosate can be sprayed directly on the corn to kill surrounding weeds and microbes but not kill the corn that genetically has been given more EPSP synthase. Glyphosate is sprayed directly on wheat as a desiccant to dry the wheat quickly so it doesn't mold. You then eat the glyphosate. Glyphosate is linked to many chronic diseases including autism by disrupting the microbiome. Hundreds of studies have done performed showing the unending effects of glyphosate. I have read many studies by Stephanie Seneff on this topic that you may want to look at. The glyphosate molecule looks very similar to the amino acid glycine. In fact, glyphosate is so similar to glycine that it can takes its place in protein structures. This has profound effects on the body, especially in collagen where every third amino acid is supposed to be glycine. When glyphosate replaces glycine in collagen then signaling throughout the body is damaged.
Repairing the mitochondria is slightly more complicated. Dr. Mark Hyman, MD is often considered the father of modern functional medicine. He started the Center for Functional Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic as well as the Ultrawellness Center in Massachusetts. Mark recommends these supplements to repair mitochondria: acetyl-L-carnitine, alpha lipoic acid, coenzyme Q10 (as ubiquinol, the active form), n-acetyl-cysteine, NADH, d-ribose, resveratrol, magnesium. Another factor which is even more important is to repair the phospholipids in the cell membrane of the cell and in the membrane of the mitochondria. I've learned this by studying natural cancer treatment, but the functional medicine doctors do not seem to know about it. First, you need to stop damaging these cell membranes by eliminating all seed oils and vegetable oils. Then you need to implement Membrane Lipid Replacement by supplementing with healthy phospholipids for a few months. So far I've reviewed 11 peer-reviewed studies on this. There appears to be no side effects. It's just natural lipids. And you don't have to do it forever....just a few months, and then maybe do it for one month per year after that for maintenance if you want. I've actually started a round of this therapy for myself. It's just a powder that you take once a day in water. Here are the studies:
The next step is food timing. Humans are not evolved to eat three big meals every day plus snacks. The frequency is too often, and this keeps insulin perpetually elevated while damaging mitochondria all day long. Instead, we should work toward eating only two meals per day, and no snacks, with a 16-18 hour fast each day. For the last year I've been eating at 1pm and 6pm with no snacks. This gives the body a long break from insulin, and it gives our gut a long rest each day. There are a couple anthropologists and nutritionists that I follow who regularly visit ancestral tribes that still exist today in places like Greenland, the Amazon, the arctic circle of Norway, and parts of Africa and Australia. These are remote tribes that can only be reached by one to two weeks of travel by dogsled or by foot because the tribes are located so far away from roads. They visit these tribes to study their health, their ancestral way of eating, their lifestyle, and more. It is fascinating to read these papers and learn the extent to which these tribes are aligned with nature. They generally only eat once or twice per day. They have zero chronic disease. They awaken with the sunlight and go to sleep shortly after sunset. They mostly sleep on the ground. They are nearly always barefoot in the warmer locations. In the arctic of Norway nearly everything they have comes from reindeer. Their clothing, their tools, their shelter, their food. All of these tribes eat mostly animals, and they eat nose to tail. Plants are eaten seasonally in calorically small amounts compared to animals. When consuming animals they typically drink the blood first. Then they eat the fat with the organs. The meat provides the least amount of nutrients, so they only eat the meat after all members of the tribe/family have gotten adequate nutrients from the blood, fat, and organs. Some tribes consume fairly large amounts of insects seasonally. There is very low stress, and the people are perpetually happy.
Once we are on a nutritionally therapeutic ketogenic diet that lowers our consumption of carbohydrates and plant toxins we can then work on direct ways to repair the gut microbiome and cell mitochondria. We have stopped much of the immediate damage, and we can focus on healing. We will be eating mostly grass-fed ruminant meat, wild caught seafood, pasture raised eggs, fermented goat dairy, select organic fruits and vegetables, and added fats like grass-fed ghee, tallow, suet, lard, and maybe a little olive oil. There will be a small number of chronically ill patients who temporarily have autoimmune reactions to seafood, aged meat, eggs, dairy, and all plants, so they may need a fresh meat, fat, and salt only diet until they heal. With this elimination diet our gut microbiome will begin to recover on its own within 3 days, but it may be a slow and long road to full recovery. How can we help it recover faster? We can push out destructive bacteria and support productive bacteria by fermenting goat milk at home with high concentrations of microbes that are known to displace harmful bacteria located in the wrong place. This is a human innovation worth employing. Goat milk is the preferred liquid to ferment because it has low levels of casein and lactose compared to cow milk. The fermentation process will remove most of the remaining casein and lactose that many people are sensitive to before they have healed their chronic disease. All we need to do is select the microbes we want to cultivate, mix up the proper yogurt culture, and let it sit in a yogurt warmer at the proper temperature for 36 hours. Fermenting goat milk at home for 36 hours allows the microbes to increase in number by thousands of times more than what is available in grocery store products that only ferment for 3-4 hours. A therapeutic effect on the microbiome is the result. A book called Super Gut, by William Davis, MD, is a good resource with over 285 studies referenced in the writing.
Glyphosate is a major cause of gut problems. Glyphosate is the chemical ingredient in Round-Up. It is used on crops as an herbicide, but it is patented as an antibiotic. Glyphosate functions by inhibiting an enzyme in the Shikimate pathway of plants and microbes called EPSP synthase. How does it inhibit the enzyme? It inhibits the enzyme by pulling out the copper atom of the enzyme that is required for function. Glyphosate chelates copper 1 billion times more than it chelates magnesium, and it chelates copper a thousands times more than zinc. There are thousands of copper-dependent enzymes in the human body that are all being disrupted by glyphosate. The FDA tells us that glyphosate is safe for humans because humans do not have a Shikimate pathway. But, as we've discussed, humans depends on 100 trillion bacteria in our gut to give us health. Glyphosate comes into the human body through the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the water we drink. Some crops, like Round-Up Ready Corn, are genetically modified to produce higher levels of EPSP synthase so that glyphosate can be sprayed directly on the corn to kill surrounding weeds and microbes but not kill the corn that genetically has been given more EPSP synthase. Glyphosate is sprayed directly on wheat as a desiccant to dry the wheat quickly so it doesn't mold. You then eat the glyphosate. Glyphosate is linked to many chronic diseases including autism by disrupting the microbiome. Hundreds of studies have done performed showing the unending effects of glyphosate. I have read many studies by Stephanie Seneff on this topic that you may want to look at. The glyphosate molecule looks very similar to the amino acid glycine. In fact, glyphosate is so similar to glycine that it can takes its place in protein structures. This has profound effects on the body, especially in collagen where every third amino acid is supposed to be glycine. When glyphosate replaces glycine in collagen then signaling throughout the body is damaged.
Repairing the mitochondria is slightly more complicated. Dr. Mark Hyman, MD is often considered the father of modern functional medicine. He started the Center for Functional Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic as well as the Ultrawellness Center in Massachusetts. Mark recommends these supplements to repair mitochondria: acetyl-L-carnitine, alpha lipoic acid, coenzyme Q10 (as ubiquinol, the active form), n-acetyl-cysteine, NADH, d-ribose, resveratrol, magnesium. Another factor which is even more important is to repair the phospholipids in the cell membrane of the cell and in the membrane of the mitochondria. I've learned this by studying natural cancer treatment, but the functional medicine doctors do not seem to know about it. First, you need to stop damaging these cell membranes by eliminating all seed oils and vegetable oils. Then you need to implement Membrane Lipid Replacement by supplementing with healthy phospholipids for a few months. So far I've reviewed 11 peer-reviewed studies on this. There appears to be no side effects. It's just natural lipids. And you don't have to do it forever....just a few months, and then maybe do it for one month per year after that for maintenance if you want. I've actually started a round of this therapy for myself. It's just a powder that you take once a day in water. Here are the studies:
- Seidman MD, Khan MJ, Tang WX, Quirk WS. Influence of lecithin on mitochondrial DNA and age-related hearing loss. Otolaryngology--Head and Neck Surgery 2002; 127: 138-144.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1067/mhn.2002.127627 - Nicolson GL.Membrane Lipid Replacement: clinical studies using a natural medicine approach to restoring membrane function and improving health. International Journal of Clinical Medicine 2016; 7: 133-143.
http://www.scirp.org/Journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=63602 - Nicolson GL, Ash ME.Membrane Lipid Replacement for chronic illnesses, aging and cancer using oral glycerolphospholipid formulations with fructooligosaccharides to restore phospholipid function in cellular membranes, organelles, cells and tissues. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta Biomembranes 2017; 1859: 1704-1724.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bbamem.2017.04.013 - Küllenberg D, Taylor LA, Schneider M. MassingU. Health effects of dietary phospholipids. Lipids in Health and Disease 2012; 11: article e3.
https://lipidworld.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1476-511X-11-3 - Nicolson GL. An answer to the most common medical complaint, fatigue.Explore 2011; 19: 1-4.
http://www.immed.org/Fatigue Illness/10.01.11update/Nicolson Fatigue PHA2011.pdf - Ellithorpe RR, Settineri R. Nicolson GL. Reduction of fatigue by use of a dietary supplement containing glycophospholipids. Journal of the American Nutraceutical Association 2003; 6(1): 23-28.
http://www.immed.org/illness/treatment_considerations.html - Agadjanyan M, Vasilevko V, Ghochikyan A, Berns P, Kesslak P, Settineri R, Nicolson GL. Nutritional supplement (NTFactor) restores mitochondrial function and reduces moderately severe fatigue in aged subjects.Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome 2003; 11(3): 23-36.
http://www.immed.org/treatment considerations/06.16.12/AgadjanyanNicolsonJCFS.pdf - Nicolson GL, Ellithorpe R.Lipid replacement and antioxidant nutritional therapy for restoring mitochondrial function and reducing fatigue in chronic fatigue syndrome and other fatiguing illnesses. Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome 2006; 13(1), 57-68.
http://www.immed.org/illness/treatment_considerations.html - Nicolson GL, Settineri R, Ferreira G, Breeding P.Reduction of pain, fatigue, gastrointestinal and other symptoms and improvement in quality of life indicators in fibromyalgia patients with Membrane Lipid Replacement glycerolphospholipids and controlled-release caffeine. International Journal of Clinical Medicine 2018; 9: 560-579.
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=86236 - Settineri R, Ji J, Shields ZP, Shirvani T, McLaren CE, Nicolson GL. The effects of Membrane Lipid Replacement with NTFactor® Lipids on increasing the bioavailability of three test nutrients. Bioactive Compounds in Health & Disease 2022, 5(5): 106-116.
https://doi.org/10.31989/bchd.v5i5.936 - Nicolson GL, Breeding PC. Membrane Lipid Replacement with glycerolphospholipids slowly reduces self-reported symptom severities in chemically exposed Gulf War veterans. International Journal of Translational Medicine 2022; 2(2): 164-173.
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-8937/2/2/14
There are two companies I have found that offer these lipid membrane therapies. One is called Body Bio and can be found here. The other company is called Nutritional Therapeutics and can be found here. I have no affiliation or relationship with either of these companies, but I selected Nutritional Therapeutics for my personal use. I am using their product called NT Factor Lipids Powder. This is the basic supplement needed for membrane repair without many added vitamins and minerals. If you are looking for added vitamins and minerals they have other products for that, but I personally get my vitamins and minerals from whole food sources.
Now that the foundation of healing has been laid the body is now powered to do much of the remaining healing on its own if we keep it free of toxins. We've talked about food toxins a little. Buying organic certified foods helps a little. Calling and visiting local farms is the best way. We can ask them exactly what they feed their animals, and how they treat their plants. We can see the space that is available for the plants and animals if we visit. In this way we get a better picture of the toxins we may be eating. But environmental toxins are equally important. Fluoride and bromide are everywhere. These elements push iodine out of our body. Iodine is essential for most cells. It is one of the most necessary supplements for us to consume so that we can push out the fluoride and bromide. If we avoid fluoride and bromide and then sufficiently supplement with iodine we can tip the scales in the proper direction to help recover from chronic disease. Dr. David Brownstein, M.D. has a great book about iodine called Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can't Live Without It. Here is a powerpoint presentation by Dr. David Brownstein that is helpful. There is a laboratory called Hakala Labs that provides iodine testing. I have heard many nutritionists recommend this lab. Hakala Labs has many studies on their website showing the safety and benefits of iodine testing and supplementation. I recently listened to a podcast that interviewed Charles Hakala, owner of Hakala Labs, where he said that 90% of people who test through their lab are iodine deficient unless they are supplementing with iodine. Unfortunately, these tests are not available in New York or California. While many iodine clinics and nutritionists are recommending 25-50mg (25,000-50,000mcg) per day, I think this amount is too high and that the guidance of a qualified doctor should be utilized if taking more than 1-2mg (1,000mcg) per day. We can further reduce environmental toxin exposure by replacing polyester clothing with cotton, replacing disposable dishcloths with cotton, replacing non-stick pans with cast iron, using natural dish and laundry soap, using vinegar solutions instead of other cleaning products, and avoiding the use of soap on our body except when absolutely necessary. There are many other things as well. We must rethink nearly every product in our modern life if we are to align with nature. We've become so accustomed to toxin exposure that it is difficult to recognize them.
Light, Electrons, and Water: This section on light, electrons, and water ideally should have been at the beginning of this article. Why did I put it here? Remember at the beginning when I said that the view of nutrition in this article will severely challenge many of the views we have held about nutrition for our entire lives? Well, the story of light and water is so mind blowingly challenging that if I had put it at the beginning you probably would not have read the rest of the article after dismissing me as crazy. I had to build some credibility with you before introducing the monumental significance of light, electrons, and water in the human body.
What if I told you that the human body is a giant semi-conductor that runs phenomenally well on electrons but gets sick on protons and deuterium? What if I told you that these electrons disappear from one location in the mitochondria and reappear in another location in the mitochondria, kind of like Harry Potter apparates, in order to produce ATP and ultraviolet light that is stronger than the sun. You may have stopped reading right there thinking that I'm a mad man. The mitochondria are producing UV light that is stronger than the sun, and electrons are apparating??? Not only is this true, but it is absolutely vital to healing chronic disease, and moderns humans are doing everything exactly WRONG. When I was earning my BS degrees in Physics and Chemistry 30 years ago at the University at Buffalo I never thought I would be applying quantum mechanics to healing chronic disease, but that is exactly what I've been doing for the past few years.
Think of light (and electrons) as a nutrient like food. Good food heals you and bad food makes you sick. Likewise is the case with light. Good light heals you and bad light makes you sick. We have four surfaces that are exposed to the environment. These are the eyes, the skin, the gut, and the lungs. These four surfaces contain large amounts of a molecule called proopiomelanocortin, or POMC. POMC is a polypeptide that is coded by the POMC gene. A polypeptide is a long chain of amino acids that has the potential to make functional proteins. But POMC requires an additional ingredient to make very important functional proteins that allow our body to operate without chronic disease. What is that additional ingredient? That additional ingredient is sunlight. As sunlight hits the photoreceptors of our eyes and skin POMC gets cut into different length proteins depending on the dominant wavelengths of light from that time of day. So if a human only receives sunlight at, say, 11am then they will be making the proteins from those dominant wavelengths of light. They will be deficient in the necessary proteins made by other wavelengths of light during different times of the day. Modern humans have moved indoors and this has really messed up our health. These proteins made by POMC control many extremely important parts of our bodily functions, and if they are deficient then we get chronic disease.
Our subcutaneous fat cells, which are the fat cells that lie underneath the skin, produce an important hormone called leptin. Leptin travels through the blood and docks with neurons in the brain that are packed with POMC. This leptin helps to facilitate the chopping of POMC into important proteins, but sunlight must be present to activate the POMC. People with chronic diseases often develop leptin resistance. When this happens their leptin is not able to chop POMC as it should. One of those important proteins that results from POMC is called alpha-MSH, and it is a hormone that makes melanin. Melanin is a semiconductor, and it can capture all wavelengths of light. A semiconductor is a material that can absorb one frequency of light, convert it to an electric current, and then convert that electric current into a different frequency of light and emit that new light. You notice melanin as your skin darkens with a sun tan, but it is also present in the brain in very large amounts and other parts of the body. Melanin is very important in order to charge separate water into H+ and oxygen and electrons. These electrons are used in the electron transport chain (ETC) of the mitochondria to create ATP that can be used to repair the cell. If that process is deficient due to lack of sunlight then you can imagine how this lack of energy (ATP) and the resulting lack of cell repair could lead to chronic disease. It can progress quickly because mitochondria have their own DNA (mtDNA) that randomly mutates sometimes and must be repaired. Cumulative unrepaired mutations resulting in less mitochondrial efficiency is referred to as mitochondrial heteroplasmy. If the process is not functioning optimally then the mitochondria cannot repair these mutations fast enough and this can lead to deterioration of the mitochondria and further slowing of ATP synthesis over time. The problem gets worse and worse until the person becomes very sick with mutated mtDNA and poor ATP production. Melanin cleans up free radicals like ROS that we talked about earlier, and it cleans up heavy metals. This is just one small example of how sunlight impacts one pathway of our health. There are many, many other sunlight-driven pathways that are vital to our health. Light and dark are absolutely paramount to human health. The human eye is more of a clock than a camera.
In the winter time we have less exposure to sunlight. You notice that your tan skin goes away in winter. Why? It is because your body is pulling the melanin inside your body. Our mitochondria make UV light, that is stronger than UV light from the sun, from the light energy that is stored in electrons. We need that melanin inside the body to absorb that UV light that the mitochondria are making. One of the reasons it does this is to help chop POMC into necessary proteins when sunlight is less available. The melanin is pulled away from the surface of the skin deeper into the body where it can absorb this UV light that the mitochondria are producing. Cold exposure, like winter, increases the production of this UV light by mitochondria which is why some health advocates recommend ice baths and cold thermogenesis therapy. Modern life has forced people indoors in winter and they do not receive the necessary amount of cold exposure to prevent chronic disease. Cold exposure pushes mitochondria away from coupling and toward uncoupling. Coupled mitochondria means that the flow of electrons is coupled to ATP production. Uncoupled mitochondria means that some of the flow of electrons becomes uncoupled from ATP production and is instead used to produce UV light and heat to keep you warm during winter by use of a set of uncoupling proteins in the mitochondria. People whose ancestors evolved near the equator are not adapted as well to colder climates and cannot produce this endogenous UV light as well as people whose ancestors evolved at higher latitudes. These people whose ancestors evolved near the equator will face higher rates of chronic disease if they live farther from the equator now. These inequities are not racist as politicians would have us believe, but, rather, they are biological. When we eat food what we are really eating is electrons that have light stored in them. Yes, our food stores light in electrons. The spin of the light determines the spin of the electron. Fats have the most electrons, and then protein. Carbohydrates have far fewer electrons making them a much poorer choice. This this is why ancestral humans instinctively consumed a low carb ketogenic carnivore diet much of the year as dictated by their latitude. It is essential that we eat light that was stored in electrons at the same latitude and season that we currently inhabit when we consume it. In other words, eat only locally raised and grown foods and only in season. Why? Our mitochondrial function is dictated by the current sunlight, and when we eat food that comes from a different latitude (different stored sunlight) than we currently inhabit or during a season that we are not currently experiencing then our mitochondria cannot properly process that stored light in the electrons of the food that we are eating. Some of these electrons then escape the electron transport chain and form reactive oxygen species. The proteins in mitochondria that facilitate the ETC begin to spread out as a result, and when this happens then electrons cannot quantum tunnel (apparate) as well. The mitochondria lose energy and trend toward heteroplasmy. So you must eat foods that are raised and grown at the same latitude where you reside, and you must eat them only when they are in season if you want to heal and prevent chronic disease. If you eat a banana in December at 43 degrees north latitude, like in Buffalo, NY where I live, then you are creating damage in your mitochondria. If you only did this one time then you will recover, but if you chronically consume foods at the wrong latitude and in the wrong season you will develop chronic disease over time by delivering mismatched electrons to your mitochondria with the wrong spin. The food simply has the wrong electromagnetic code to work with the sunlight signals that your mitochondria are living under.
Guess what severely inhibits much of the POMC pathway? Raw blue light. When POMC is inhibited then you can't make proper hormones and chemicals necessary for mitochondrial function and repair, and you get chronic disease. You can't make melanin adequately. You can't make melatonin adequately. You can't make beta-endorphin and subsequently dopamine adequately. You can't make adrenocorticotroic hormone adequately. You can't make ATP and deuterium depleted metabolic water adequately (which is very different than regular water). Where are we exposed to raw blue light in modern life? Computer screens, phone screens, laptops, TV screens, and LED lightbulbs just to name a few. You MUST drastically limit blue light exposure to heal from chronic disease. Every screen must have a blue light filter installed on the outside of the screen. Every computer setting must be changed to "night time" mode that reduces blue light. Use night-time mode all day long. And you must additionally wear blue light glasses every time you look at any one of those screens. This is a must unless you are looking at a screen outdoors. Get rid of all LED lightbulbs in your house, and replace them with incandescent bulbs. LED bulbs are making you sick with blue light toxicity. Hurry though because the U.S.A. intends to ban all incandescent bulbs by 2028. I purchased 100 incandescent bulbs of 2100k color temperature to keep in storage until we can repeal legislation that outlaws these bulbs. Australia has already banned them. When you walk into a store, school, office, or gym that uses LED lighting (which is all of them) be sure to always wear blue light glasses and a baseball hat to block as much of this toxic light as possible. These lights are poisoning you by turning off POMC and important electron functions in the mitochondria.
What are some of the specific negative health effects of blue light? Depression is a major one. Blue light inhibits the production of beta-endorphin through the POMC pathway. The result is suppression of dopamine. Depression is a disease of low dopamine. If you or anyone you know suffers from depression immediately perform an analysis of blue light exposure time. Obesity is also caused by blue light exposure. Blue light damages the electron transport chain in the mitochondria resulting in less ATP, more deuterium, and less deuterium depleted water. The mitochondria lose their ability to appropriately build and repair insulin receptors. When insulin cannot properly act then glucose stays in the blood, so then the liver makes more and more insulin to try to remove the glucose. Insulin is a storage hormone, so the end result is mass storage of fat and obesity as the body continues to store energy instead of burning it. In addition, raw blue by itself repeatedly over-stimulates the part of POMC that makes adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). This over-production of ACTH produces lots of cortisol that stimulates the liver to make sugar through gluconeogenesis thereby contributing to the obesity issue. The ACTH is further cleaved into corticotropin-like intermediate peptide (CLIP) which acts as a secretagogue in the pancreas to produce large amounts of insulin that will lead to hyperinsulinemia. For these reasons, blue light by itself must be avoided. If you or anyone you know suffers from obesity immediately perform an analysis of blue light exposure time. The obesity crisis of our modern youth is largely due to tech abuse.
The history of this is quite interesting. In the late 1940's an American gangster named Moe Dalitz got the idea to build a little town in the middle of the Nevada desert called Las Vegas. As they developed their gambling casinos over the ensuing years he and his mafia friends found that people spent a lot more money and stayed a lot longer when they put thousands of blue light emitting machines in front of them. The CIA was carefully monitoring their activities and noticed the blue light phenomenon as well. So the CIA decided to scientifically study the effects of blue light through an operation called MK Ultra that was already studying biological and chemical effects on the human brain. They found that blue light had major effects on the human brain which they shared with DARPA. DARPA had created the precursor to the internet called DARPAnet, and they had built a sophisticated algorithm for a search engine. DARPA shared the search engine and blue light science with two guys named Sergey Brin and Larry Page. In exchange, Brin and Page were required to participate in a special part of the MK Ultra program called the Marshmallow Experiment. You know Brin and Page as the founders and leaders of Google. You can easily search and find that Google owns hundreds and hundreds of patents securing blue light technology across the tech industry. No other wavelengths of light, just blue. They know, as the mafia and CIA knew, that blue light is biochemically addictive and keeps you coming back for more. Do they know that it is poisoning you and your family? I'll let you decide. But, I can tell you that computer screens can easily be made with NO BLUE LIGHT. Just look at Daylight Computer Company.
Let's look at another negative health outcome. Parkinson's disease. It's a complicated disease, but there are many known truths. There are about 980,000 neurons in the substantia nigra, and each neuron has 2 million mitochondria per cell. The formal definition of Parkinson's disease is when two-thirds of those 2 million neurons are not functioning. It is known that low dopamine levels cause Parkinson's disease. POMC makes dopamine in the substantia nigra of the brain. Why is it called "nigra"? It's because the substantia nigra is dark colored due to melanin. How is melanin produced? Melanin is produced by POMC. What kills POMC? Blue light kills POMC. How? Through a quantum effect called ferroptosis in which the iron atom interacts with blue light. Blue light has a nonvisual photoreceptor called melanopsin that's located in our subcutaneous fat, our brain, our arteries, and many other places in the body. It's the most dominant chromophore in the body, and it reacts to blue light in the wavelength of 435-470nm. The term opsin means that it's bound to retinol (vitamin A). When blue light hits melanopsin retinol gets freed, but free retinol has to be recycled immediately because it's toxic and destroys photoreceptors if not fixed. Nature recycles retinol very quickly with red light from the sun, and then dopamine and melatonin fix the damaged photoreceptors that retinol caused. Red light is the antidote to blue light and they come packaged together in nature. A perfect natural system until you overdose on raw blue light from your computer, TV, and LED bulbs. When you overdose on raw blue light then POMC gets turned off due to unrepaired photoreceptors. POMC then does not make dopamine and does not make melanin, both of which are required for movement signals in the brain. Without movement signaling you get Parkinson's. Nature made it perfect and humans messed it up with technology. So if you have Parkinson's get the blue light out of your life and get out in the natural sunlight as described in this article. And be very careful with your copper/iron relationship. Iron accumulates in the substantia nigra where it causes ceruloplasmin to rust resulting in the inability of copper to facilitate enzymatic reactions in that massive amount of mitochondria.
Guess what else directly damages our mitochondria? Non-native EMF. That means all man-made electromagnetic frequency. A researcher from SUNY Syracuse named Robert O. Becker was hired by the U.S Navy in 1973 under an operation called Sanguine, and later by NYS Governor Hugh Carey, to research the effects of non-native EMF on human biology. Becker was nominated for the Nobel Prize twice. He was a brilliant researcher. Becker found that non-native EMF is very dangerous to human cells, but the U.S. Navy and NYS hid his findings for many years because it was an inconvenient truth that interrupted their agenda. EMF severely interrupts the first complex of the ETC in mitochondria. When this happens then the complexes spread farther apart making it difficult for electrons to quantum tunnel. Eventually this leads to mitochondrial heteroplasmy. You must reduce your use of all technology that emits EMF. This means reducing exposure to WiFi, microwave ovens, power lines, computers, cell phones, ear pods, Blue Tooth, photo voltaic cells, and more. Turn your WiFi off every night or when not in use. Turn off all printers, modems, and routers every night or when not in use. Additionally, put your router and modem inside Faraday cages to minimize the EMF exposure while using them. Also put a Faraday cage around your smart electric meter that the electric company forced upon you. I use a CPAP machine at night for sleep apnea, but I removed the modem that transmits data to my doctor. The doctor doesn't like it, but that's too bad for her. It's my health, not hers. Do not drive an electric car. Do not live near a windmill. Do not install solar power for your house. Move if you currently live under large high voltage power lines. Move if you live near a windmill or in a house with solar power. Stop using microwaves ovens. These are poisoning your mitochondria. Modern humans have misaligned with nature. Limit your time, and when you are exposed to those devices you must get proper sunlight exposure as much as possible to help heal the damage that is being done. Sunlight heals. Wake up every morning at sunrise, and immediately look east with the naked eye for as long as you can. An hour is good. 90 minutes is better. Don't look directly into the sun, but, rather off to the side. I set my alarm clock 15 minutes prior to sunrise, and I'm outside within 3 minutes of that alarm. Then after a little while I come in and use the bathroom and do a couple things and go back outside for another 15 minutes. I come in, do a few more things, and go back out for an hour. Expose your skin as often as you can. Allow the photoreceptors of the eye and skin to absorb the UV-A and infrared-A light. This is essential for activating POMC. When the weather is warm I am outside much of the day nearly naked so that I can get sunlight. One of the many results of morning sunlight is the production of melatonin. Melatonin repairs damage done by blue light, but most people do not regularly expose themselves to early morning sunlight for long periods of time. It is essential for healing chronic disease. Even if it is cloudy you will still get the light. Even if you are in the shade you are still getting light. Even if it is cold outside you can still expose your skin for as long as you can safely tolerate the cold. This will help with healing many forms of chronic disease, including gut problems. The sunlight sculpts your microbiome. Expose your abdomen to sunlight so that the near-infrared light can penetrate. Near-infrared will penetrate 8-10cm into your abdomen to sculpt your microbiome. You must receive sunlight for proper healing. You can also supplement with light from an infrared panel like the one that I own. I have no affiliation with the company.
Non-native EMF has many negative health consequences as does blue light. The work of Becker showed this as discussed above. But what is the rest of the history? Did you ever wonder why Jonas Salk never won the Nobel Prize for the Polio vaccine? It's a long story, but extremely important to know. Enter the "Cutter Incident". After Jonas Salk formulated his Polio vaccine he distributed it to four pharmaceutical companies at the time. The companies reported to Salk that the vaccine was too difficult to grow. Salk went back to the drawing board and found that it could be grown more easily on the kidney cells of the African Green Monkey. What he did not know was that the African Green Monkey lived symbiotically with a virus called SV40 that causes cancer is most other mammals including humans. A company called Cutter Pharmaceuticals embraced and developed this new vaccine without knowing it contained SV40 because Watson and Crick had not yet discovered and released the details of DNA to identify it. At this time in history a medical researcher and Dean of Medical School and Dean of Surgery at Tulane University, named Alton Ochsner, was put in charge of the Polio vaccine by the CIA. Ochsner was a CIA asset and part of the MK Ultra program discussed above. He had a public reputation like the Anthony Fauci of his time. Cutter Pharmaceuticals, the CIA, and Ochsner worked closely together. When Ochsner thought the Polio vaccine was ready he called a meeting of prominent scientists, and he publicly injected his grandson and granddaughter in front of the crowd. A week later the grandson died and the granddaughter lost her leg due to the vaccine. This is known as the Cutter Incident, and this is why Jonas Salk never received a Nobel Prize for the Polio vaccine. Ochsner was dismissed from Tulane University as a result, and he then started a huge hospital system on his own to compete with Tulane through massive funding from right-wing leaders of Latin American countries. It was called the Ochsner Clinic. Ochsner and the CIA wanted to get to the bottom of this vaccine problem. They hired a woman named Bernice Eddy at the NIH to do the research. Watson and Crick, in the meantime, discovered and revealed DNA, and Eddie was able to use that DNA research to identify the SV40 virus in the Polio vaccine. She informed the CIA and Ochsner that the SV40 was causing cancer, but the vaccine with SV40 had already been released to the public. This is the known beginning of the War on Cancer. Hang in there as I tie this back into non-native EMF and your health. The CIA wanted Ochsner to fix the cancer problem so he hired the world's leading expert in virology and oncology named Dr. Sarah Stewart. Stewart partnered with colleague Dr. Mary Sherman who was an expert in bone cancer. The CIA provided a 100 million dollar linear accelerator to Ochsner Medical Center so that rodents with SV40 could be irradiated with radiation similar to cancer radiation treatments today. The problem was that the radiation (non-native EMF) made the cancer from SV40 stronger. The CIA decided to develop SV40 as a bioweapon, so they opened a small bioweapons lab on Magazine Street in New Orleans. The bioweapons lab was run by Judith Vary Baker, David Ferrie, and Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was a CIA agent who was supposed to deliver the SV40 to Fidel Castro to kill him, but it never happened. It appears that, instead, the CIA took out John F. Kennedy to fix the Cuba problem, according to the most recent documents released by the Whitehouse on the Kennedy assassination. Fast forward to 2024. There is a sudden surge in turbo cancer. A human genome project scientist named Kevin McKernan at MIT finds SV40 in the mRNA Covid vaccine. Phillips Buckhaults, a professor of molecular biology and genetics at the University of South Carolina, confirms the finding after hoping to disprove McKernan. What is the significance of this as it relates to non-native EMF and your health? It turns out that current sources of non-native EMF like WiFi, Bluetooth, microwaves ovens, cell phones, and others makes the cancer from SV40 stronger just like the EMF from the linear accelerator EMF made the cancer stronger. Non-native EMF is harmful in many ways, not just in exacerbating cancer. From Becker, to Stewart and Sherman, to McKernan and Buckhaults and many more, we have been shown over and over that non-native EMF causes serious biological problems. We should do everything we can to reduce exposure to it in our homes, schools, and work places.
Sunglasses worn while exposing the skin to sunlight is extremely confusing to the brain and damaging to the body and mitochondria. Do not wear sunglasses except when driving into bright sunlight or when spending several days on a glacier in the sun. Wearing sunglasses will contribute to chronic disease. With both the eyes and skin being photosensitive neuroendocrine organs the brain is getting mixed messages when we wear sunglasses while the skin is exposed to sun. Sun-shielded eyes tell the brain there is limited sun while the exposed skin tells the brain that it's bright and sunny. Hormone regulation becomes irregular and damaging. Mitochondria become dysfunctional. Sunglasses deprive POMC of the proper wavelengths of light it needs to produce necessary chemicals. Even regular eye glasses and contact lenses severely interrupt the POMC pathway. Take off your regular glasses and take out your contact lenses whenever possible. They are contributing to sickness.
We have really harmed our health in the modern world. Sleep should be very consistent and aligned with the sun as much as possible. That is how nature intended, and that is how we evolved. Our eyes are meant to receive red wavelength light in the morning, full spectrum wavelength light in the afternoon, and red again in the late afternoon and evening. When you sleep the room should be completely dark and at a comfortable temperature leaning toward the cooler side. Dark is as important as light for human health, so keep the bedroom DARK. When the sun goes down we should begin to turn off most lights in the house. I usually leave on just one or two dim red lights in the evening. Red Christmas tree lights can make it fun. At this time of day, especially when healing from chronic disease, it is absolutely essential to avoid screens, LED light, fluorescent light, blue light, and bright light. It is a good time of day for journaling under low levels of warm incandescent light, reading, stretching, talking, and listening to lectures or recorded books. Vintage incandescent warm lightbulbs that are in the 2000-2200K color temperature range offer less blue light and more red and purple. These bulbs use more energy to power, but they are far better for your health thereby saving energy and money in the long-run by reducing health care. I have replaced nearly every light bulb in my house except one in the bathroom that gives us brighter light for facial care and a couple in the basement. Here are the light bulbs I am using. I am using two different blue light glasses. This pair give a reddish tint for morning and evening, and this pair is clear for daytime use. I have several pair of each so that I can leave them in different locations. Don't forget to keep a pair in the car to use at stores, schools, offices, and gyms. Here is a blue light filter that I use on my computer and TV screens. If you do computer work move your office outside into the natural light whenever possible. I have a workstation on both my front and back porch.
Even just 15 minutes of sun exposure to the eyes first thing in the morning will help to begin resetting circadian rhythms that are important for healing from chronic disease. Longer is better, but any sunlight exposure first thing after waking is critical. Exposing the skin to sunlight is equally important for healing as both the skin and eyes are photosensitive neuroendocrine organs. The red light from the morning and evening sun helps to protect and repair the skin from the ultraviolet light of mid-day, however, the strong ultraviolet light of afternoon should be managed by use of shade as you build your solar callus. Dr. Max Gulhane of Australia explains much of this in his course called Circadian Reset. Additionally, the food we eat plays a role in sunburn. Just like doxycycline makes the skin very photosensitive, certain foods do the same thing leading to sunburn and possible cancer. You may be able to guess what type of food that would be based on previous discussion in this article. It is polyunsaturated seed and vegetable oil in the high concentrated doses of modern food. As explained above, these polyunsaturated fats are very chemically unstable. Chemical instability and exposure to high energy ultraviolet radiation is a bad combination. Our ancestors consumed little polyunsaturated seed/vegetable oils because they did not have the technology to extract these oils from seeds and vegetables. These chemically unstable fats get incorporated into the cell membranes of the skin cells. High energy ultraviolet light of mid-day hits those unstable fats of the skin cells and they can become oxidized. Eliminate seed and vegetable oils. Eat large amounts of saturated fat. Eating omega 3 foods like sardines and wild caught salmon can have a healing effect.
There are many studies available on these quantum biological processes in the NIH Library. Brilliant scientists have studied this over the last 100 years like Doug Wallace, Fritz-Albert Popp, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Albert, Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Nick Lane, Robert Becker, Roeland van Wijk, Jim Al-Khalili, and Andrew Marino. Look up their work, or click on some of the hyperlinks within this article to get yourself started. If you prefer learning by podcasts then start with Dr. Jack Kruse. Here are parts one, two, and three of an excellent podcast.
We are literally powered by light. Part of it is through the light in our food that is stored in electrons, but part of it is directly from the light itself. Take the actions of vitamin D for example. Vitamin D is made in our skin when UV light from the sun reaches our skin. But did you know that our mitochondria have vitamin D receptors (VDR's)? Why? Well, vitamin D docks with the VDR's of our mitochondria to purposely slow down the ETC. Why on Earth would the human body want the ETC to slow down and reduce ATP production? It's because the body knows that at the time of day when the skin is receiving UV light to make vitamin D that then the ATP synthase of the ETC is receiving enough red light from the sun that it can spin the top half of the ATP synthase from the red light and actually make ATP directly from the red light without using the rest of the ETC. In other words, the mitochondria use less of the citric acid cycle to make ATP and literally use the red light of the sun to make ATP at ATP synthase. And if you are regularly grounding with bare feet on earth then you will be absorbing electrons from the earth to help power the system in the absence of food. This is why you eat less in summer. You still need food to provide nutrients and create adequate ATP long-term, but in the short-term your body can slow production of ATP from food through the ETC if you are getting enough red light from the sun and you are getting enough electrons from grounding with the Earth. Be sure to spend as much time as possible with bare feet on earth. Grass, sand, dirt, and even unsealed concrete will allow you to gain electrons through your bare feet. I purchased a pair of grounding shoes that conduct electrons through the bottom of the foot when it's too cold to go barefoot. This is how humans are able to support such a large brain. It's not just food. It also is literally light and electrons that feed us. Now think back to the rise of Tesla's power grid in 1893 and the correlation to the massive chronic disease we now face in the modern world. We're receiving the wrong light. We're receiving light from our technological devices and not from the sun. It has made an entire planet sick except for those who have found a way to align with nature.
Now what about water? This is not about the water you drink. It is about the water that your mitochondria make. They are not the same water. Earlier in this article we talked about deuterium which is a heavy isotope of hydrogen compared to protium which has half the mass because is has no neutron. Water can be made from both deuterium and protium. The water you drink from your tap or from a spring contains both deuterium and protium water molecules. Remember from 8th grade science that mitochondria metabolize glucose (C6 H12 O6) into CO2 and H2O. The H2O that is produced by the mitochondria via the ETC is deuterium depleted water (DDW). That means it does not contain deuterium. The deuterium isotope of hydrogen is too large to fit through ATP synthase at the end of the ETC. The resulting DDW made by the mitochondria exists as a crystalline gel-like state (not a liquid, solid or gas state) when it is exposed to infrared light from the sun or grounding with the Earth. You can also use a red light/infrared therapy panel to help to induce this crystalline gel-like state. It is generally called Exclusion Zone (EZ) water or structured water. This gel-like state of DDW allows it to transmit signals between cells and molecules. Water becomes a semi-conductor. This signaling is absolutely vital for health. Every biological surface has an attraction to this gel-like structured water, and this water protects the biological surface from the environment. But, what happens when mitochondria slow down or become damaged like we described above? Well, they don't produce as much DDW and cells get dehydrated. Cells cannot communicate properly and damage occurs. This can result in tendon/ligament problems like in the knee or hip or shoulder, heart problems, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and many other forms of chronic disease. We want less deuterium in our mitochondria ETC. Where does our body acquire large amounts of deuterium? It acquires deuterium largely from carbohydrates. Yes, we've come full circle back to the low carb ketogenic carnivore diet. Eating fewer plants results in less deuterium in our mitochondria. We can then heal. If you want to speed up the healing process you can buy deuterium depleted water to drink, but it is very expensive. Sunlight can neutralize many of the negative effects of deuterium that we get from plants, but there is little sunlight in the winter, so do not eat plants in the winter. ONLY eat seasonally available locally grown organic plants if you choose to eat plants. Plants make glucose by combining water and carbon dioxide when sunlight is added. Mitochondria take that glucose and metabolize it back into water and carbon dioxide, and they emit ultra-violet light needed to power POMC. Mitochondrial respiration reverses photosynthesis. Ruminant animals filter out the deuterium for us. Eat ruminant animals. The fat and protein from ruminant animals provides lots of electrons and much less deuterium. Human mitochondria function much better on animal foods than plant foods especially at higher latitudes where there is less sun, and this functionality varies by season as well. The DDW made by the mitochondria creates the gel-like water that allows this UV signal to be transmitted throughout the body giving us life. Humans are superpowered by light. Humans have a Ferrari engine in their head, and it requires massive amounts of light compared to any other species.
You can read more about water in the book The Fourth Phase of Water by Gerald Pollack. Dr. Pollack built upon the work of Gilbert Ling.
Healing from chronic disease ultimately comes down to quantum physics. When the human body has more electrons, fewer protons, and less deuterium we have health. We excrete protons and deuterium in our breath, feces, and sweat, and we retain the electrons. When we have less electrons and more protons we have chronic disease. When we have less deuterium we have health, and when we have more deuterium we have chronic disease. When we eat less carbohydrates and more fat/protein we have less deuterium, more electrons, and less protons which equals health. When we get proper sunlight we stimulate electrons and we neutralize and remove deuterium. When we get less blue light and less non-native EMF we retain more electrons and retain fewer protons which equals health. This is quantum biology. With a reductionist mindset we can reduce all of health and healing of chronic disease to five factors that we can directly control in our daily lives by aligning with nature:
1. Light - Subject the naked eye and bare skin to natural sunlight between sunrise to sunset as much as possible with emphasis on the 10 minutes before and after sunrise and sunset. Restrict blue light and non-native EMF (which is a form of light) to the greatest extent possible throughout the day. Eat the light in food seasonally, and eat only food raised and grown from the latitude where you live.
2. Dark - Prioritize complete darkness immediately after sunset until sunrise. Let it be as dark as possible.
3. Thermogenesis - Subject your body to cold in proportion to the season. More cold during winter, less cold during summer. Subject your body to more cold anytime there is less sun.
4. Electrons - Ground your bare feet to the earth as much as possible all year long in order to gain electrons. Eat lots of saturated fat and moderate protein while restricting carbohydrates in order to gain electrons and lose protons.
5. Deuterium - Eat lots of saturated fat and moderate protein while restricting carbohydrates in order to reduce deuterium. Subject the naked eye and bare skin to natural sunlight between sunrise to sunset as much as possible with emphasis on the 10 minutes before and after sunrise and sunset in order to neutralize the negative effects of deuterium. Restrict blue light and non-native EMF (which is a form of light) to the greatest extent possible throughout the day in order to maintain a healthy ETC in mitochondria to manage deuterium depletion. Eat foods seasonally and only food raised and grown from the latitude where you live in order to maximize deuterium depletion.
Why does centralized allopathic standard-of-care medicine not embrace this type of quantum health treatment? There are three main reasons:
1.) Ancestral evolutionary quantum health is not taught in medical school. Living the way nature evolved is not part of medical school curriculum, so doctors don't even know that it is the way humans are meant to live. Why is it not taught in medical school? It is because medical school curriculum is written by the big pharmaceutical companies, and the pharmaceutical companies cannot make any money from people curing disease with natural light, natural electrons, and natural water. They would go out of business.
2.) If humans embraced quantum health to cure chronic disease and abandoned centralized allopathic standard-of-care medicine then the entire world economy would collapse and most of the world would starve to death. Why? It is because the medical industry through drugs, hospitals, doctors, and surgeries is one of the biggest industries in the world, and if we eliminate it all at once by healing chronic disease with quantum health practices we would destroy the global economy and send it to ruins far worse than the Great Depression. It will take decades of slowly educating the public before we can transition to living aligned with nature without sending the world into massive apocalyptic depression. But, as one person, you can make that transition now to rescue your own health.
3.) Most people are not willing to take the steps necessary to naturally cure chronic disease. Most people would rather take the route of drugs and surgeries for short-term ease. They are not willing to put in the effort to live the way our ancestors lived and as nature evolved. Only those who are willing to decentralize can heal the root cause of their diseases.
Here are some books on these topics with hundreds of studies:
- Going Somewhere: Truth About A Life In Science, by Andrew Marino
- The Body Electric, by Robert O. Becker
- Health and Light, by John Ott
- Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and The Meaning of Life, by Nick Lane
- Life On The Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology, by Jim Al-Khalili
- The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid, and Vapor, by Gerald H. Pollack
- Light In Shaping Life: Biophotons in Biology and Medicine, by Roeland Van Wijk
What if I told you that the human body is a giant semi-conductor that runs phenomenally well on electrons but gets sick on protons and deuterium? What if I told you that these electrons disappear from one location in the mitochondria and reappear in another location in the mitochondria, kind of like Harry Potter apparates, in order to produce ATP and ultraviolet light that is stronger than the sun. You may have stopped reading right there thinking that I'm a mad man. The mitochondria are producing UV light that is stronger than the sun, and electrons are apparating??? Not only is this true, but it is absolutely vital to healing chronic disease, and moderns humans are doing everything exactly WRONG. When I was earning my BS degrees in Physics and Chemistry 30 years ago at the University at Buffalo I never thought I would be applying quantum mechanics to healing chronic disease, but that is exactly what I've been doing for the past few years.
Think of light (and electrons) as a nutrient like food. Good food heals you and bad food makes you sick. Likewise is the case with light. Good light heals you and bad light makes you sick. We have four surfaces that are exposed to the environment. These are the eyes, the skin, the gut, and the lungs. These four surfaces contain large amounts of a molecule called proopiomelanocortin, or POMC. POMC is a polypeptide that is coded by the POMC gene. A polypeptide is a long chain of amino acids that has the potential to make functional proteins. But POMC requires an additional ingredient to make very important functional proteins that allow our body to operate without chronic disease. What is that additional ingredient? That additional ingredient is sunlight. As sunlight hits the photoreceptors of our eyes and skin POMC gets cut into different length proteins depending on the dominant wavelengths of light from that time of day. So if a human only receives sunlight at, say, 11am then they will be making the proteins from those dominant wavelengths of light. They will be deficient in the necessary proteins made by other wavelengths of light during different times of the day. Modern humans have moved indoors and this has really messed up our health. These proteins made by POMC control many extremely important parts of our bodily functions, and if they are deficient then we get chronic disease.
Our subcutaneous fat cells, which are the fat cells that lie underneath the skin, produce an important hormone called leptin. Leptin travels through the blood and docks with neurons in the brain that are packed with POMC. This leptin helps to facilitate the chopping of POMC into important proteins, but sunlight must be present to activate the POMC. People with chronic diseases often develop leptin resistance. When this happens their leptin is not able to chop POMC as it should. One of those important proteins that results from POMC is called alpha-MSH, and it is a hormone that makes melanin. Melanin is a semiconductor, and it can capture all wavelengths of light. A semiconductor is a material that can absorb one frequency of light, convert it to an electric current, and then convert that electric current into a different frequency of light and emit that new light. You notice melanin as your skin darkens with a sun tan, but it is also present in the brain in very large amounts and other parts of the body. Melanin is very important in order to charge separate water into H+ and oxygen and electrons. These electrons are used in the electron transport chain (ETC) of the mitochondria to create ATP that can be used to repair the cell. If that process is deficient due to lack of sunlight then you can imagine how this lack of energy (ATP) and the resulting lack of cell repair could lead to chronic disease. It can progress quickly because mitochondria have their own DNA (mtDNA) that randomly mutates sometimes and must be repaired. Cumulative unrepaired mutations resulting in less mitochondrial efficiency is referred to as mitochondrial heteroplasmy. If the process is not functioning optimally then the mitochondria cannot repair these mutations fast enough and this can lead to deterioration of the mitochondria and further slowing of ATP synthesis over time. The problem gets worse and worse until the person becomes very sick with mutated mtDNA and poor ATP production. Melanin cleans up free radicals like ROS that we talked about earlier, and it cleans up heavy metals. This is just one small example of how sunlight impacts one pathway of our health. There are many, many other sunlight-driven pathways that are vital to our health. Light and dark are absolutely paramount to human health. The human eye is more of a clock than a camera.
In the winter time we have less exposure to sunlight. You notice that your tan skin goes away in winter. Why? It is because your body is pulling the melanin inside your body. Our mitochondria make UV light, that is stronger than UV light from the sun, from the light energy that is stored in electrons. We need that melanin inside the body to absorb that UV light that the mitochondria are making. One of the reasons it does this is to help chop POMC into necessary proteins when sunlight is less available. The melanin is pulled away from the surface of the skin deeper into the body where it can absorb this UV light that the mitochondria are producing. Cold exposure, like winter, increases the production of this UV light by mitochondria which is why some health advocates recommend ice baths and cold thermogenesis therapy. Modern life has forced people indoors in winter and they do not receive the necessary amount of cold exposure to prevent chronic disease. Cold exposure pushes mitochondria away from coupling and toward uncoupling. Coupled mitochondria means that the flow of electrons is coupled to ATP production. Uncoupled mitochondria means that some of the flow of electrons becomes uncoupled from ATP production and is instead used to produce UV light and heat to keep you warm during winter by use of a set of uncoupling proteins in the mitochondria. People whose ancestors evolved near the equator are not adapted as well to colder climates and cannot produce this endogenous UV light as well as people whose ancestors evolved at higher latitudes. These people whose ancestors evolved near the equator will face higher rates of chronic disease if they live farther from the equator now. These inequities are not racist as politicians would have us believe, but, rather, they are biological. When we eat food what we are really eating is electrons that have light stored in them. Yes, our food stores light in electrons. The spin of the light determines the spin of the electron. Fats have the most electrons, and then protein. Carbohydrates have far fewer electrons making them a much poorer choice. This this is why ancestral humans instinctively consumed a low carb ketogenic carnivore diet much of the year as dictated by their latitude. It is essential that we eat light that was stored in electrons at the same latitude and season that we currently inhabit when we consume it. In other words, eat only locally raised and grown foods and only in season. Why? Our mitochondrial function is dictated by the current sunlight, and when we eat food that comes from a different latitude (different stored sunlight) than we currently inhabit or during a season that we are not currently experiencing then our mitochondria cannot properly process that stored light in the electrons of the food that we are eating. Some of these electrons then escape the electron transport chain and form reactive oxygen species. The proteins in mitochondria that facilitate the ETC begin to spread out as a result, and when this happens then electrons cannot quantum tunnel (apparate) as well. The mitochondria lose energy and trend toward heteroplasmy. So you must eat foods that are raised and grown at the same latitude where you reside, and you must eat them only when they are in season if you want to heal and prevent chronic disease. If you eat a banana in December at 43 degrees north latitude, like in Buffalo, NY where I live, then you are creating damage in your mitochondria. If you only did this one time then you will recover, but if you chronically consume foods at the wrong latitude and in the wrong season you will develop chronic disease over time by delivering mismatched electrons to your mitochondria with the wrong spin. The food simply has the wrong electromagnetic code to work with the sunlight signals that your mitochondria are living under.
Guess what severely inhibits much of the POMC pathway? Raw blue light. When POMC is inhibited then you can't make proper hormones and chemicals necessary for mitochondrial function and repair, and you get chronic disease. You can't make melanin adequately. You can't make melatonin adequately. You can't make beta-endorphin and subsequently dopamine adequately. You can't make adrenocorticotroic hormone adequately. You can't make ATP and deuterium depleted metabolic water adequately (which is very different than regular water). Where are we exposed to raw blue light in modern life? Computer screens, phone screens, laptops, TV screens, and LED lightbulbs just to name a few. You MUST drastically limit blue light exposure to heal from chronic disease. Every screen must have a blue light filter installed on the outside of the screen. Every computer setting must be changed to "night time" mode that reduces blue light. Use night-time mode all day long. And you must additionally wear blue light glasses every time you look at any one of those screens. This is a must unless you are looking at a screen outdoors. Get rid of all LED lightbulbs in your house, and replace them with incandescent bulbs. LED bulbs are making you sick with blue light toxicity. Hurry though because the U.S.A. intends to ban all incandescent bulbs by 2028. I purchased 100 incandescent bulbs of 2100k color temperature to keep in storage until we can repeal legislation that outlaws these bulbs. Australia has already banned them. When you walk into a store, school, office, or gym that uses LED lighting (which is all of them) be sure to always wear blue light glasses and a baseball hat to block as much of this toxic light as possible. These lights are poisoning you by turning off POMC and important electron functions in the mitochondria.
What are some of the specific negative health effects of blue light? Depression is a major one. Blue light inhibits the production of beta-endorphin through the POMC pathway. The result is suppression of dopamine. Depression is a disease of low dopamine. If you or anyone you know suffers from depression immediately perform an analysis of blue light exposure time. Obesity is also caused by blue light exposure. Blue light damages the electron transport chain in the mitochondria resulting in less ATP, more deuterium, and less deuterium depleted water. The mitochondria lose their ability to appropriately build and repair insulin receptors. When insulin cannot properly act then glucose stays in the blood, so then the liver makes more and more insulin to try to remove the glucose. Insulin is a storage hormone, so the end result is mass storage of fat and obesity as the body continues to store energy instead of burning it. In addition, raw blue by itself repeatedly over-stimulates the part of POMC that makes adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). This over-production of ACTH produces lots of cortisol that stimulates the liver to make sugar through gluconeogenesis thereby contributing to the obesity issue. The ACTH is further cleaved into corticotropin-like intermediate peptide (CLIP) which acts as a secretagogue in the pancreas to produce large amounts of insulin that will lead to hyperinsulinemia. For these reasons, blue light by itself must be avoided. If you or anyone you know suffers from obesity immediately perform an analysis of blue light exposure time. The obesity crisis of our modern youth is largely due to tech abuse.
The history of this is quite interesting. In the late 1940's an American gangster named Moe Dalitz got the idea to build a little town in the middle of the Nevada desert called Las Vegas. As they developed their gambling casinos over the ensuing years he and his mafia friends found that people spent a lot more money and stayed a lot longer when they put thousands of blue light emitting machines in front of them. The CIA was carefully monitoring their activities and noticed the blue light phenomenon as well. So the CIA decided to scientifically study the effects of blue light through an operation called MK Ultra that was already studying biological and chemical effects on the human brain. They found that blue light had major effects on the human brain which they shared with DARPA. DARPA had created the precursor to the internet called DARPAnet, and they had built a sophisticated algorithm for a search engine. DARPA shared the search engine and blue light science with two guys named Sergey Brin and Larry Page. In exchange, Brin and Page were required to participate in a special part of the MK Ultra program called the Marshmallow Experiment. You know Brin and Page as the founders and leaders of Google. You can easily search and find that Google owns hundreds and hundreds of patents securing blue light technology across the tech industry. No other wavelengths of light, just blue. They know, as the mafia and CIA knew, that blue light is biochemically addictive and keeps you coming back for more. Do they know that it is poisoning you and your family? I'll let you decide. But, I can tell you that computer screens can easily be made with NO BLUE LIGHT. Just look at Daylight Computer Company.
Let's look at another negative health outcome. Parkinson's disease. It's a complicated disease, but there are many known truths. There are about 980,000 neurons in the substantia nigra, and each neuron has 2 million mitochondria per cell. The formal definition of Parkinson's disease is when two-thirds of those 2 million neurons are not functioning. It is known that low dopamine levels cause Parkinson's disease. POMC makes dopamine in the substantia nigra of the brain. Why is it called "nigra"? It's because the substantia nigra is dark colored due to melanin. How is melanin produced? Melanin is produced by POMC. What kills POMC? Blue light kills POMC. How? Through a quantum effect called ferroptosis in which the iron atom interacts with blue light. Blue light has a nonvisual photoreceptor called melanopsin that's located in our subcutaneous fat, our brain, our arteries, and many other places in the body. It's the most dominant chromophore in the body, and it reacts to blue light in the wavelength of 435-470nm. The term opsin means that it's bound to retinol (vitamin A). When blue light hits melanopsin retinol gets freed, but free retinol has to be recycled immediately because it's toxic and destroys photoreceptors if not fixed. Nature recycles retinol very quickly with red light from the sun, and then dopamine and melatonin fix the damaged photoreceptors that retinol caused. Red light is the antidote to blue light and they come packaged together in nature. A perfect natural system until you overdose on raw blue light from your computer, TV, and LED bulbs. When you overdose on raw blue light then POMC gets turned off due to unrepaired photoreceptors. POMC then does not make dopamine and does not make melanin, both of which are required for movement signals in the brain. Without movement signaling you get Parkinson's. Nature made it perfect and humans messed it up with technology. So if you have Parkinson's get the blue light out of your life and get out in the natural sunlight as described in this article. And be very careful with your copper/iron relationship. Iron accumulates in the substantia nigra where it causes ceruloplasmin to rust resulting in the inability of copper to facilitate enzymatic reactions in that massive amount of mitochondria.
Guess what else directly damages our mitochondria? Non-native EMF. That means all man-made electromagnetic frequency. A researcher from SUNY Syracuse named Robert O. Becker was hired by the U.S Navy in 1973 under an operation called Sanguine, and later by NYS Governor Hugh Carey, to research the effects of non-native EMF on human biology. Becker was nominated for the Nobel Prize twice. He was a brilliant researcher. Becker found that non-native EMF is very dangerous to human cells, but the U.S. Navy and NYS hid his findings for many years because it was an inconvenient truth that interrupted their agenda. EMF severely interrupts the first complex of the ETC in mitochondria. When this happens then the complexes spread farther apart making it difficult for electrons to quantum tunnel. Eventually this leads to mitochondrial heteroplasmy. You must reduce your use of all technology that emits EMF. This means reducing exposure to WiFi, microwave ovens, power lines, computers, cell phones, ear pods, Blue Tooth, photo voltaic cells, and more. Turn your WiFi off every night or when not in use. Turn off all printers, modems, and routers every night or when not in use. Additionally, put your router and modem inside Faraday cages to minimize the EMF exposure while using them. Also put a Faraday cage around your smart electric meter that the electric company forced upon you. I use a CPAP machine at night for sleep apnea, but I removed the modem that transmits data to my doctor. The doctor doesn't like it, but that's too bad for her. It's my health, not hers. Do not drive an electric car. Do not live near a windmill. Do not install solar power for your house. Move if you currently live under large high voltage power lines. Move if you live near a windmill or in a house with solar power. Stop using microwaves ovens. These are poisoning your mitochondria. Modern humans have misaligned with nature. Limit your time, and when you are exposed to those devices you must get proper sunlight exposure as much as possible to help heal the damage that is being done. Sunlight heals. Wake up every morning at sunrise, and immediately look east with the naked eye for as long as you can. An hour is good. 90 minutes is better. Don't look directly into the sun, but, rather off to the side. I set my alarm clock 15 minutes prior to sunrise, and I'm outside within 3 minutes of that alarm. Then after a little while I come in and use the bathroom and do a couple things and go back outside for another 15 minutes. I come in, do a few more things, and go back out for an hour. Expose your skin as often as you can. Allow the photoreceptors of the eye and skin to absorb the UV-A and infrared-A light. This is essential for activating POMC. When the weather is warm I am outside much of the day nearly naked so that I can get sunlight. One of the many results of morning sunlight is the production of melatonin. Melatonin repairs damage done by blue light, but most people do not regularly expose themselves to early morning sunlight for long periods of time. It is essential for healing chronic disease. Even if it is cloudy you will still get the light. Even if you are in the shade you are still getting light. Even if it is cold outside you can still expose your skin for as long as you can safely tolerate the cold. This will help with healing many forms of chronic disease, including gut problems. The sunlight sculpts your microbiome. Expose your abdomen to sunlight so that the near-infrared light can penetrate. Near-infrared will penetrate 8-10cm into your abdomen to sculpt your microbiome. You must receive sunlight for proper healing. You can also supplement with light from an infrared panel like the one that I own. I have no affiliation with the company.
Non-native EMF has many negative health consequences as does blue light. The work of Becker showed this as discussed above. But what is the rest of the history? Did you ever wonder why Jonas Salk never won the Nobel Prize for the Polio vaccine? It's a long story, but extremely important to know. Enter the "Cutter Incident". After Jonas Salk formulated his Polio vaccine he distributed it to four pharmaceutical companies at the time. The companies reported to Salk that the vaccine was too difficult to grow. Salk went back to the drawing board and found that it could be grown more easily on the kidney cells of the African Green Monkey. What he did not know was that the African Green Monkey lived symbiotically with a virus called SV40 that causes cancer is most other mammals including humans. A company called Cutter Pharmaceuticals embraced and developed this new vaccine without knowing it contained SV40 because Watson and Crick had not yet discovered and released the details of DNA to identify it. At this time in history a medical researcher and Dean of Medical School and Dean of Surgery at Tulane University, named Alton Ochsner, was put in charge of the Polio vaccine by the CIA. Ochsner was a CIA asset and part of the MK Ultra program discussed above. He had a public reputation like the Anthony Fauci of his time. Cutter Pharmaceuticals, the CIA, and Ochsner worked closely together. When Ochsner thought the Polio vaccine was ready he called a meeting of prominent scientists, and he publicly injected his grandson and granddaughter in front of the crowd. A week later the grandson died and the granddaughter lost her leg due to the vaccine. This is known as the Cutter Incident, and this is why Jonas Salk never received a Nobel Prize for the Polio vaccine. Ochsner was dismissed from Tulane University as a result, and he then started a huge hospital system on his own to compete with Tulane through massive funding from right-wing leaders of Latin American countries. It was called the Ochsner Clinic. Ochsner and the CIA wanted to get to the bottom of this vaccine problem. They hired a woman named Bernice Eddy at the NIH to do the research. Watson and Crick, in the meantime, discovered and revealed DNA, and Eddie was able to use that DNA research to identify the SV40 virus in the Polio vaccine. She informed the CIA and Ochsner that the SV40 was causing cancer, but the vaccine with SV40 had already been released to the public. This is the known beginning of the War on Cancer. Hang in there as I tie this back into non-native EMF and your health. The CIA wanted Ochsner to fix the cancer problem so he hired the world's leading expert in virology and oncology named Dr. Sarah Stewart. Stewart partnered with colleague Dr. Mary Sherman who was an expert in bone cancer. The CIA provided a 100 million dollar linear accelerator to Ochsner Medical Center so that rodents with SV40 could be irradiated with radiation similar to cancer radiation treatments today. The problem was that the radiation (non-native EMF) made the cancer from SV40 stronger. The CIA decided to develop SV40 as a bioweapon, so they opened a small bioweapons lab on Magazine Street in New Orleans. The bioweapons lab was run by Judith Vary Baker, David Ferrie, and Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was a CIA agent who was supposed to deliver the SV40 to Fidel Castro to kill him, but it never happened. It appears that, instead, the CIA took out John F. Kennedy to fix the Cuba problem, according to the most recent documents released by the Whitehouse on the Kennedy assassination. Fast forward to 2024. There is a sudden surge in turbo cancer. A human genome project scientist named Kevin McKernan at MIT finds SV40 in the mRNA Covid vaccine. Phillips Buckhaults, a professor of molecular biology and genetics at the University of South Carolina, confirms the finding after hoping to disprove McKernan. What is the significance of this as it relates to non-native EMF and your health? It turns out that current sources of non-native EMF like WiFi, Bluetooth, microwaves ovens, cell phones, and others makes the cancer from SV40 stronger just like the EMF from the linear accelerator EMF made the cancer stronger. Non-native EMF is harmful in many ways, not just in exacerbating cancer. From Becker, to Stewart and Sherman, to McKernan and Buckhaults and many more, we have been shown over and over that non-native EMF causes serious biological problems. We should do everything we can to reduce exposure to it in our homes, schools, and work places.
Sunglasses worn while exposing the skin to sunlight is extremely confusing to the brain and damaging to the body and mitochondria. Do not wear sunglasses except when driving into bright sunlight or when spending several days on a glacier in the sun. Wearing sunglasses will contribute to chronic disease. With both the eyes and skin being photosensitive neuroendocrine organs the brain is getting mixed messages when we wear sunglasses while the skin is exposed to sun. Sun-shielded eyes tell the brain there is limited sun while the exposed skin tells the brain that it's bright and sunny. Hormone regulation becomes irregular and damaging. Mitochondria become dysfunctional. Sunglasses deprive POMC of the proper wavelengths of light it needs to produce necessary chemicals. Even regular eye glasses and contact lenses severely interrupt the POMC pathway. Take off your regular glasses and take out your contact lenses whenever possible. They are contributing to sickness.
We have really harmed our health in the modern world. Sleep should be very consistent and aligned with the sun as much as possible. That is how nature intended, and that is how we evolved. Our eyes are meant to receive red wavelength light in the morning, full spectrum wavelength light in the afternoon, and red again in the late afternoon and evening. When you sleep the room should be completely dark and at a comfortable temperature leaning toward the cooler side. Dark is as important as light for human health, so keep the bedroom DARK. When the sun goes down we should begin to turn off most lights in the house. I usually leave on just one or two dim red lights in the evening. Red Christmas tree lights can make it fun. At this time of day, especially when healing from chronic disease, it is absolutely essential to avoid screens, LED light, fluorescent light, blue light, and bright light. It is a good time of day for journaling under low levels of warm incandescent light, reading, stretching, talking, and listening to lectures or recorded books. Vintage incandescent warm lightbulbs that are in the 2000-2200K color temperature range offer less blue light and more red and purple. These bulbs use more energy to power, but they are far better for your health thereby saving energy and money in the long-run by reducing health care. I have replaced nearly every light bulb in my house except one in the bathroom that gives us brighter light for facial care and a couple in the basement. Here are the light bulbs I am using. I am using two different blue light glasses. This pair give a reddish tint for morning and evening, and this pair is clear for daytime use. I have several pair of each so that I can leave them in different locations. Don't forget to keep a pair in the car to use at stores, schools, offices, and gyms. Here is a blue light filter that I use on my computer and TV screens. If you do computer work move your office outside into the natural light whenever possible. I have a workstation on both my front and back porch.
Even just 15 minutes of sun exposure to the eyes first thing in the morning will help to begin resetting circadian rhythms that are important for healing from chronic disease. Longer is better, but any sunlight exposure first thing after waking is critical. Exposing the skin to sunlight is equally important for healing as both the skin and eyes are photosensitive neuroendocrine organs. The red light from the morning and evening sun helps to protect and repair the skin from the ultraviolet light of mid-day, however, the strong ultraviolet light of afternoon should be managed by use of shade as you build your solar callus. Dr. Max Gulhane of Australia explains much of this in his course called Circadian Reset. Additionally, the food we eat plays a role in sunburn. Just like doxycycline makes the skin very photosensitive, certain foods do the same thing leading to sunburn and possible cancer. You may be able to guess what type of food that would be based on previous discussion in this article. It is polyunsaturated seed and vegetable oil in the high concentrated doses of modern food. As explained above, these polyunsaturated fats are very chemically unstable. Chemical instability and exposure to high energy ultraviolet radiation is a bad combination. Our ancestors consumed little polyunsaturated seed/vegetable oils because they did not have the technology to extract these oils from seeds and vegetables. These chemically unstable fats get incorporated into the cell membranes of the skin cells. High energy ultraviolet light of mid-day hits those unstable fats of the skin cells and they can become oxidized. Eliminate seed and vegetable oils. Eat large amounts of saturated fat. Eating omega 3 foods like sardines and wild caught salmon can have a healing effect.
There are many studies available on these quantum biological processes in the NIH Library. Brilliant scientists have studied this over the last 100 years like Doug Wallace, Fritz-Albert Popp, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Albert, Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Nick Lane, Robert Becker, Roeland van Wijk, Jim Al-Khalili, and Andrew Marino. Look up their work, or click on some of the hyperlinks within this article to get yourself started. If you prefer learning by podcasts then start with Dr. Jack Kruse. Here are parts one, two, and three of an excellent podcast.
We are literally powered by light. Part of it is through the light in our food that is stored in electrons, but part of it is directly from the light itself. Take the actions of vitamin D for example. Vitamin D is made in our skin when UV light from the sun reaches our skin. But did you know that our mitochondria have vitamin D receptors (VDR's)? Why? Well, vitamin D docks with the VDR's of our mitochondria to purposely slow down the ETC. Why on Earth would the human body want the ETC to slow down and reduce ATP production? It's because the body knows that at the time of day when the skin is receiving UV light to make vitamin D that then the ATP synthase of the ETC is receiving enough red light from the sun that it can spin the top half of the ATP synthase from the red light and actually make ATP directly from the red light without using the rest of the ETC. In other words, the mitochondria use less of the citric acid cycle to make ATP and literally use the red light of the sun to make ATP at ATP synthase. And if you are regularly grounding with bare feet on earth then you will be absorbing electrons from the earth to help power the system in the absence of food. This is why you eat less in summer. You still need food to provide nutrients and create adequate ATP long-term, but in the short-term your body can slow production of ATP from food through the ETC if you are getting enough red light from the sun and you are getting enough electrons from grounding with the Earth. Be sure to spend as much time as possible with bare feet on earth. Grass, sand, dirt, and even unsealed concrete will allow you to gain electrons through your bare feet. I purchased a pair of grounding shoes that conduct electrons through the bottom of the foot when it's too cold to go barefoot. This is how humans are able to support such a large brain. It's not just food. It also is literally light and electrons that feed us. Now think back to the rise of Tesla's power grid in 1893 and the correlation to the massive chronic disease we now face in the modern world. We're receiving the wrong light. We're receiving light from our technological devices and not from the sun. It has made an entire planet sick except for those who have found a way to align with nature.
Now what about water? This is not about the water you drink. It is about the water that your mitochondria make. They are not the same water. Earlier in this article we talked about deuterium which is a heavy isotope of hydrogen compared to protium which has half the mass because is has no neutron. Water can be made from both deuterium and protium. The water you drink from your tap or from a spring contains both deuterium and protium water molecules. Remember from 8th grade science that mitochondria metabolize glucose (C6 H12 O6) into CO2 and H2O. The H2O that is produced by the mitochondria via the ETC is deuterium depleted water (DDW). That means it does not contain deuterium. The deuterium isotope of hydrogen is too large to fit through ATP synthase at the end of the ETC. The resulting DDW made by the mitochondria exists as a crystalline gel-like state (not a liquid, solid or gas state) when it is exposed to infrared light from the sun or grounding with the Earth. You can also use a red light/infrared therapy panel to help to induce this crystalline gel-like state. It is generally called Exclusion Zone (EZ) water or structured water. This gel-like state of DDW allows it to transmit signals between cells and molecules. Water becomes a semi-conductor. This signaling is absolutely vital for health. Every biological surface has an attraction to this gel-like structured water, and this water protects the biological surface from the environment. But, what happens when mitochondria slow down or become damaged like we described above? Well, they don't produce as much DDW and cells get dehydrated. Cells cannot communicate properly and damage occurs. This can result in tendon/ligament problems like in the knee or hip or shoulder, heart problems, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and many other forms of chronic disease. We want less deuterium in our mitochondria ETC. Where does our body acquire large amounts of deuterium? It acquires deuterium largely from carbohydrates. Yes, we've come full circle back to the low carb ketogenic carnivore diet. Eating fewer plants results in less deuterium in our mitochondria. We can then heal. If you want to speed up the healing process you can buy deuterium depleted water to drink, but it is very expensive. Sunlight can neutralize many of the negative effects of deuterium that we get from plants, but there is little sunlight in the winter, so do not eat plants in the winter. ONLY eat seasonally available locally grown organic plants if you choose to eat plants. Plants make glucose by combining water and carbon dioxide when sunlight is added. Mitochondria take that glucose and metabolize it back into water and carbon dioxide, and they emit ultra-violet light needed to power POMC. Mitochondrial respiration reverses photosynthesis. Ruminant animals filter out the deuterium for us. Eat ruminant animals. The fat and protein from ruminant animals provides lots of electrons and much less deuterium. Human mitochondria function much better on animal foods than plant foods especially at higher latitudes where there is less sun, and this functionality varies by season as well. The DDW made by the mitochondria creates the gel-like water that allows this UV signal to be transmitted throughout the body giving us life. Humans are superpowered by light. Humans have a Ferrari engine in their head, and it requires massive amounts of light compared to any other species.
You can read more about water in the book The Fourth Phase of Water by Gerald Pollack. Dr. Pollack built upon the work of Gilbert Ling.
Healing from chronic disease ultimately comes down to quantum physics. When the human body has more electrons, fewer protons, and less deuterium we have health. We excrete protons and deuterium in our breath, feces, and sweat, and we retain the electrons. When we have less electrons and more protons we have chronic disease. When we have less deuterium we have health, and when we have more deuterium we have chronic disease. When we eat less carbohydrates and more fat/protein we have less deuterium, more electrons, and less protons which equals health. When we get proper sunlight we stimulate electrons and we neutralize and remove deuterium. When we get less blue light and less non-native EMF we retain more electrons and retain fewer protons which equals health. This is quantum biology. With a reductionist mindset we can reduce all of health and healing of chronic disease to five factors that we can directly control in our daily lives by aligning with nature:
1. Light - Subject the naked eye and bare skin to natural sunlight between sunrise to sunset as much as possible with emphasis on the 10 minutes before and after sunrise and sunset. Restrict blue light and non-native EMF (which is a form of light) to the greatest extent possible throughout the day. Eat the light in food seasonally, and eat only food raised and grown from the latitude where you live.
2. Dark - Prioritize complete darkness immediately after sunset until sunrise. Let it be as dark as possible.
3. Thermogenesis - Subject your body to cold in proportion to the season. More cold during winter, less cold during summer. Subject your body to more cold anytime there is less sun.
4. Electrons - Ground your bare feet to the earth as much as possible all year long in order to gain electrons. Eat lots of saturated fat and moderate protein while restricting carbohydrates in order to gain electrons and lose protons.
5. Deuterium - Eat lots of saturated fat and moderate protein while restricting carbohydrates in order to reduce deuterium. Subject the naked eye and bare skin to natural sunlight between sunrise to sunset as much as possible with emphasis on the 10 minutes before and after sunrise and sunset in order to neutralize the negative effects of deuterium. Restrict blue light and non-native EMF (which is a form of light) to the greatest extent possible throughout the day in order to maintain a healthy ETC in mitochondria to manage deuterium depletion. Eat foods seasonally and only food raised and grown from the latitude where you live in order to maximize deuterium depletion.
Why does centralized allopathic standard-of-care medicine not embrace this type of quantum health treatment? There are three main reasons:
1.) Ancestral evolutionary quantum health is not taught in medical school. Living the way nature evolved is not part of medical school curriculum, so doctors don't even know that it is the way humans are meant to live. Why is it not taught in medical school? It is because medical school curriculum is written by the big pharmaceutical companies, and the pharmaceutical companies cannot make any money from people curing disease with natural light, natural electrons, and natural water. They would go out of business.
2.) If humans embraced quantum health to cure chronic disease and abandoned centralized allopathic standard-of-care medicine then the entire world economy would collapse and most of the world would starve to death. Why? It is because the medical industry through drugs, hospitals, doctors, and surgeries is one of the biggest industries in the world, and if we eliminate it all at once by healing chronic disease with quantum health practices we would destroy the global economy and send it to ruins far worse than the Great Depression. It will take decades of slowly educating the public before we can transition to living aligned with nature without sending the world into massive apocalyptic depression. But, as one person, you can make that transition now to rescue your own health.
3.) Most people are not willing to take the steps necessary to naturally cure chronic disease. Most people would rather take the route of drugs and surgeries for short-term ease. They are not willing to put in the effort to live the way our ancestors lived and as nature evolved. Only those who are willing to decentralize can heal the root cause of their diseases.
Here are some books on these topics with hundreds of studies:
- Going Somewhere: Truth About A Life In Science, by Andrew Marino
- The Body Electric, by Robert O. Becker
- Health and Light, by John Ott
- Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and The Meaning of Life, by Nick Lane
- Life On The Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology, by Jim Al-Khalili
- The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid, and Vapor, by Gerald H. Pollack
- Light In Shaping Life: Biophotons in Biology and Medicine, by Roeland Van Wijk
A Few Other Thoughts: In the 1950's we were sold a lie which hypothesized that polyunsaturated fats (that were never available to our ancestors in high doses) are healthier than saturated fats. I've read most of those studies from the 1950's, which were mostly driven by Ancel Keys and his big industry connections. The abstracts and conclusions of those studies say something totally different than what the data within the studies reveal. Those studies actually proved that saturated fats are healthier, but the abstracts and conclusions were manipulated to say the opposite. It is misleading. The same can be said about cholesterol. As a person with total cholesterol well over 400mg/dL I took it upon myself to understand the truth about fat and cholesterol. Here is an article I wrote called Understanding Cholesterol where I compiled the science about fat and cholesterol. It just scratches the surface, but it's a good starting place.
Interpreting Bloodwork: Many of the accepted bloodwork ranges that you see next to your lab results are just plain wrong. It is important to understand why they are wrong and what the correct ranges are for your bloodwork. To understand this let's look at an example by examining ALT (Alanine Aminotransferase). ALT is a liver enzyme that you see on your Comprehensive Metabolic Panel (CMP). Elevated levels generally mean there is inflammation in the liver. This can be caused by several factors, but in today's modern society it is very often caused by the over-consumption of fructose and carbohydrates resulting in fat on the liver. Fructose is found in table sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and many processed foods. When I login to my personal medical chart and look at my bloodwork results it says that ALT should be between 7 - 52 U/L. How do they arrive at that range? Well, they take the results of thousands of blood tests processed at the lab and they plot them as a normal distribution (bell curve) on a graph. Then they take two standard deviations from the mean and that gives them the range of 7 - 52 U/L for ALT. The issue is that in 1975 the normal distribution of ALT resulted in a curve which produced a range of 7 - 25 U/L because people did not have access to fructose and carbohydrates in high concentrations at every corner store, cafeteria, vending machine, grocery store, hospital cafeteria, and school lunch room. The average person did not consume as much fructose and concentrated carbohydrates in 1975, so ALT levels were much lower and healthier on average. This is the problem. The true healthy range for ALT is 7 - 25 U/L like it was in 1975. But in 2024 the majority of people have sick livers. Anything above 25 U/L means there is probably harmful inflammation and fat in the liver, yet your lab and doctor are telling you that ALT levels as high as 52 U/L are normal. It is only normal if we consider sickness to be normal.
What blood tests are needed and what are the optimal ranges for metabolic health and chronic disease? There is no single medical resource I have found to accurately address this question, however, there is a good medical group called Levels that has interviewed several world renowned doctors for their views on bloodwork. Levels has a webpage that lists their top 12 blood tests that they understand to be necessary, and each blood test is explained by those doctors. I do NOT agree with all of the interpretations, and you will see why, but it is a good place to start. Take a moment to look at that webpage, and then I will go through it in more detail below.
This is NOT medical advice. Consult your doctor for medical advice.
Blood tests below can provide great insight into your metabolic health which is extremely important in curing chronic disease. As we know from the discussion above, if your metabolism is not functioning properly that means your mitochondria and gut microbiome have probably been damaged. Pay close attention to the following markers:
Triglycerides: Your triglycerides should be under 80mg/dL. The accepted standard-of-care range goes as high as 150mg/dL, but this is way too high for health. If your TG's are over 80mg/dL it generally means that you are eating too many carbohydrates which the liver is converting to fat, and an unhealthy amount of that fat is remaining in the blood. It means that fat is being delivered to the fat cells from the liver, rather than the healthier alternative where fat is being taken away from the fat cells for use as energy in other tissues of the body. It's the opposite of what you want. Keep this number under 80mg/dL.
HDL-C: This number should be over 60mg/dL. The accepted standard-of-care ranges say that HDL-C should be over 40mg/dL for men and over 50mg/dL for women. This range is too low.
TG/HDL-C Ratio: This is calculated by simply dividing your TG by your HDL-C. The ratio should be less than one. For example, if your TG's are 65mg/dL and you HDL-C is 70mg/dL, then the ratio is 65/70 = 0.93. The resulting ratio is less than one. As was seen in the Helsinki Heart Study, people with normal TG's and HDL-C, and LDL-C over 175mg/dL, showed far fewer heart attacks than people with high triglycerides and low HDL-C.
VLDL: This number is not always listed on a standard lipid panel, but you can calculate it yourself. Simply take the total cholesterol and subtract the LDL-C and HDL-C. For example, if your TC is 250mg/dL, LDL-C is 168mg/dL, HDL-C is 70mg/dL, then your VLDL is 250 - 168 - 70 = 12mg/dL. This number should be under 15mg/dL.
Fasting Insulin: Many studies reveal that blood glucose and metabolic syndrome are related to plaque in the arteries. Table 1 of this study from Science Direct is a good example. Fasting insulin affects blood glucose which is one of the five factors of metabolic syndrome. Your blood glucose may appear normal, but the reason it may appear normal may be because the beta cells of your pancreas are producing way too much insulin with a condition known as hyperinsulinemia. If the pancreas produces too much insulin then the cells of your body resist the insulin as discussed above, eventually allowing glucose to remain in the blood, and this can cause Type 2 Diabetes. Type 2 Diabetes is the biggest risk factor for heart disease according to this study from JAMA Cardiology. Keep your fasting insulin below 5 uIU/mL.
HbA1c: This gives an indication of your average blood glucose over the past 3-4 months, measured by the fact that red blood cells become glycated over time. Anything over 5.2% is too high. Work to reduce your HbA1c below 5.2%. This marker has greater benefit if tracked at home a couple times per month. If tracked only a couple times per year at your doctor visit it has less value because, as the American Diabetes Association has published, approximately 60-70% of diabetes cases are missed when screening by HbA1c. Your HbA1c may be falsely low if you are consuming plants, or falsely high if you eat no plants. This is due to plant phytosterols which are basically plant cholesterols. The chemical structure of phytosterol is very similar to the structure of human cholesterol, and it can be substituted for cholesterol in some human cells. Humans can only absorb and use about 1% of consumed plant phytosterols for use in our own cells, but human red blood cells incorporate plant phytosterols more than other human cells. It makes these red blood cells very fragile. They often burst and die when incorporating phytosterols into their cell membranes thereby shortening their lifespan significantly. With such a short lifespan these red blood cells have little time to become glycated before they die, and, therefore, HbA1c may appear falsely low. Conversely, people who do not eat plants will have red blood cells that live much longer giving the red blood cells a much longer time to become glycated. These people may have HbA1c that will appear falsely high. This can be confirmed by measuring reticulocytes in the blood which are immature red blood cells. If reticulocyte numbers are high then it could mean your red blood cells are dying early due to phytosterols being incorporated into the cell membrane suggesting that the HbA1c may be falsely low. The converse would suggest red blood cells are living a long time and HbA1c may be falsely high. A continuous glucose monitor can be useful in weeding out these false HbA1c readings.
Fasting Glucose: Keep fasting blood glucose below 85mg/dL. This marker has great benefit if tracked at home several times per day. You may even consider employing a continuous glucose monitor. If tracked only a couple times per year at your doctor visit it has less value because, as the American Diabetes Association has published, approximately 50% of diabetes cases are missed when screening by fasting glucose. A continuous glucose monitor can be useful to know your glucose levels all day long.
Post-Meal Glucose: Keep post-meal blood glucose below 110mg/dL.
HOMA-IR: This is a measure of insulin resistance. Keep this below 1.
ALT and AST: As discussed in the example above, ALT is a liver enzyme. AST is an enzyme found in the liver and in other tissues. Values for both of these enzymes should be below 25 U/L. Anything above 25 U/L indicates that something is not right in the liver. The most common liver abnormality is the result of consuming too much fructose and concentrated carbohydrate resulting in fat and inflammation in the liver. Most people consuming high fructose also consume large amounts of glucose. If you recall from discussion above, 88-93% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy, so perhaps it is high blood glucose and/or high insulin that is partly responsible for metabolic dysfunction.
Gamma Glutamal Transferase (GGT): This becomes elevated when the body makes a lot of glutathione which can again reflect inflammation in the liver. This number should be below 25U/L, but 10 is ideal. If ALT, AST, and/or GGT are over 25U/L then it is likely that you are consuming too many carbohydrates and are creating fat in the liver. Compare this with triglycerides mentioned above. If triglycerides are over 80mg/dL and either ALT, AST, and/or GGT are over 25U/L then you are likely eating too many carbohydrates for healthy metabolism. Also compare these markers with VLDL. If VLDL is over 12-15mg/dL then you are probably eating too many carbohydrates for metabolic health. All of these blood markers are tied together. If insulin is over 5uIU/mL then you are probably eating too many carbohydrates.
Alkaline Phosphatase: This also gives an indication of inflammation in the liver. A number in the 50's U/L or lower means low inflammation.
C-Reative Protein (CRP): This is a marker of inflammation in the whole body. This should be less than 1mg/L, but 0.7 is better.
Ferritin: This is a marker of intracellular inflammation. Ideally this should be less than 100ng/mL.
Protein: Determining how much protein you should be eating can be gauged and guided by three blood markers. BUN, Creatinine, and Uric Acid. BUN should generally be between 16-22mg/dL. More than that could indicate you are eating too much protein or not enough fat. Less could indicate not enough protein or that you are still sugar dominant and you don't need sugar from protein conversion. This is a guide and not a hard rule because other things can affect BUN. Creatinine should be below 0.9mg/dL. More than that may indicate you are eating too much protein. A number of 0.7mg/dL is even better for optimization. Uric acid should ideally be below 5.5mg/dL. If BUN is low and uric acid is high it could mean that your body is doing a lot of autophagy in which case you are breaking down muscle protein for use in other places thereby allowing protein to spill out uric acid.
Thyroid: The thyroid can get complicated, but let's keep it simple for purposes of basic metabolism. TSH is produced in the pituitary gland, and it stimulates the production of hormones in the thyroid. In overly simplified terms, TSH stimulates the production of T4 which gets converted to T3, and Free T3 is the useable form. If TSH is high that generally means that the thyroid is not responding very well to TSH so the brain keeps making more and more TSH. If Free T3 is low that generally means that the amount of TSH being made is not enough to stimulate the end result of adequate Free T3 or that the thyroid is otherwise sick. A basic guideline is that TSH should be below 3uIU/mL, but between 1-2uIU/mL is optimal (these units are equivalent to mIU/L). And Free T3 should be between 2.5-4.0pg/mL with the optimal level being 3.0-3.5pg/mL. When TSH and Free T3 are viewed together in this way it can be a useful tool in determining metabolic health and thyroid sensitivity. Reverse T3 (rT3) can be useful as well. An elevated rT3 can indicate stress on the body. Normal levels of rT3 are between 10-24ng/dL. But this is complicated stuff and should be considered in the context of everything else under the guidance of a professional metabolic specialist.
Coronary Artery Calcium (CAC): This is a scan of the arteries in the chest to look at calcification which relates to plaque and atherosclerosis. Ideally your CAC score should be zero, but do not panic if the score is above zero. Contact a professional metabolic specialist and work in conjunction with your cardiologist.
LDL-C: There is much debate and concern about LDL cholesterol. I'm putting this at the bottom of this list because it must be viewed in the context of all the other markers above. If all the markers above are in range then LDL-C will likely be safe between 120-300mg/dL, but for confirmation of plaque or no plaque in the arteries it is important to have a CAC, CT Angiogram, and/or Coronary Intima Media Thickness Ultrasound.
What blood tests are needed and what are the optimal ranges for metabolic health and chronic disease? There is no single medical resource I have found to accurately address this question, however, there is a good medical group called Levels that has interviewed several world renowned doctors for their views on bloodwork. Levels has a webpage that lists their top 12 blood tests that they understand to be necessary, and each blood test is explained by those doctors. I do NOT agree with all of the interpretations, and you will see why, but it is a good place to start. Take a moment to look at that webpage, and then I will go through it in more detail below.
This is NOT medical advice. Consult your doctor for medical advice.
Blood tests below can provide great insight into your metabolic health which is extremely important in curing chronic disease. As we know from the discussion above, if your metabolism is not functioning properly that means your mitochondria and gut microbiome have probably been damaged. Pay close attention to the following markers:
Triglycerides: Your triglycerides should be under 80mg/dL. The accepted standard-of-care range goes as high as 150mg/dL, but this is way too high for health. If your TG's are over 80mg/dL it generally means that you are eating too many carbohydrates which the liver is converting to fat, and an unhealthy amount of that fat is remaining in the blood. It means that fat is being delivered to the fat cells from the liver, rather than the healthier alternative where fat is being taken away from the fat cells for use as energy in other tissues of the body. It's the opposite of what you want. Keep this number under 80mg/dL.
HDL-C: This number should be over 60mg/dL. The accepted standard-of-care ranges say that HDL-C should be over 40mg/dL for men and over 50mg/dL for women. This range is too low.
TG/HDL-C Ratio: This is calculated by simply dividing your TG by your HDL-C. The ratio should be less than one. For example, if your TG's are 65mg/dL and you HDL-C is 70mg/dL, then the ratio is 65/70 = 0.93. The resulting ratio is less than one. As was seen in the Helsinki Heart Study, people with normal TG's and HDL-C, and LDL-C over 175mg/dL, showed far fewer heart attacks than people with high triglycerides and low HDL-C.
VLDL: This number is not always listed on a standard lipid panel, but you can calculate it yourself. Simply take the total cholesterol and subtract the LDL-C and HDL-C. For example, if your TC is 250mg/dL, LDL-C is 168mg/dL, HDL-C is 70mg/dL, then your VLDL is 250 - 168 - 70 = 12mg/dL. This number should be under 15mg/dL.
Fasting Insulin: Many studies reveal that blood glucose and metabolic syndrome are related to plaque in the arteries. Table 1 of this study from Science Direct is a good example. Fasting insulin affects blood glucose which is one of the five factors of metabolic syndrome. Your blood glucose may appear normal, but the reason it may appear normal may be because the beta cells of your pancreas are producing way too much insulin with a condition known as hyperinsulinemia. If the pancreas produces too much insulin then the cells of your body resist the insulin as discussed above, eventually allowing glucose to remain in the blood, and this can cause Type 2 Diabetes. Type 2 Diabetes is the biggest risk factor for heart disease according to this study from JAMA Cardiology. Keep your fasting insulin below 5 uIU/mL.
HbA1c: This gives an indication of your average blood glucose over the past 3-4 months, measured by the fact that red blood cells become glycated over time. Anything over 5.2% is too high. Work to reduce your HbA1c below 5.2%. This marker has greater benefit if tracked at home a couple times per month. If tracked only a couple times per year at your doctor visit it has less value because, as the American Diabetes Association has published, approximately 60-70% of diabetes cases are missed when screening by HbA1c. Your HbA1c may be falsely low if you are consuming plants, or falsely high if you eat no plants. This is due to plant phytosterols which are basically plant cholesterols. The chemical structure of phytosterol is very similar to the structure of human cholesterol, and it can be substituted for cholesterol in some human cells. Humans can only absorb and use about 1% of consumed plant phytosterols for use in our own cells, but human red blood cells incorporate plant phytosterols more than other human cells. It makes these red blood cells very fragile. They often burst and die when incorporating phytosterols into their cell membranes thereby shortening their lifespan significantly. With such a short lifespan these red blood cells have little time to become glycated before they die, and, therefore, HbA1c may appear falsely low. Conversely, people who do not eat plants will have red blood cells that live much longer giving the red blood cells a much longer time to become glycated. These people may have HbA1c that will appear falsely high. This can be confirmed by measuring reticulocytes in the blood which are immature red blood cells. If reticulocyte numbers are high then it could mean your red blood cells are dying early due to phytosterols being incorporated into the cell membrane suggesting that the HbA1c may be falsely low. The converse would suggest red blood cells are living a long time and HbA1c may be falsely high. A continuous glucose monitor can be useful in weeding out these false HbA1c readings.
Fasting Glucose: Keep fasting blood glucose below 85mg/dL. This marker has great benefit if tracked at home several times per day. You may even consider employing a continuous glucose monitor. If tracked only a couple times per year at your doctor visit it has less value because, as the American Diabetes Association has published, approximately 50% of diabetes cases are missed when screening by fasting glucose. A continuous glucose monitor can be useful to know your glucose levels all day long.
Post-Meal Glucose: Keep post-meal blood glucose below 110mg/dL.
HOMA-IR: This is a measure of insulin resistance. Keep this below 1.
ALT and AST: As discussed in the example above, ALT is a liver enzyme. AST is an enzyme found in the liver and in other tissues. Values for both of these enzymes should be below 25 U/L. Anything above 25 U/L indicates that something is not right in the liver. The most common liver abnormality is the result of consuming too much fructose and concentrated carbohydrate resulting in fat and inflammation in the liver. Most people consuming high fructose also consume large amounts of glucose. If you recall from discussion above, 88-93% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy, so perhaps it is high blood glucose and/or high insulin that is partly responsible for metabolic dysfunction.
Gamma Glutamal Transferase (GGT): This becomes elevated when the body makes a lot of glutathione which can again reflect inflammation in the liver. This number should be below 25U/L, but 10 is ideal. If ALT, AST, and/or GGT are over 25U/L then it is likely that you are consuming too many carbohydrates and are creating fat in the liver. Compare this with triglycerides mentioned above. If triglycerides are over 80mg/dL and either ALT, AST, and/or GGT are over 25U/L then you are likely eating too many carbohydrates for healthy metabolism. Also compare these markers with VLDL. If VLDL is over 12-15mg/dL then you are probably eating too many carbohydrates for metabolic health. All of these blood markers are tied together. If insulin is over 5uIU/mL then you are probably eating too many carbohydrates.
Alkaline Phosphatase: This also gives an indication of inflammation in the liver. A number in the 50's U/L or lower means low inflammation.
C-Reative Protein (CRP): This is a marker of inflammation in the whole body. This should be less than 1mg/L, but 0.7 is better.
Ferritin: This is a marker of intracellular inflammation. Ideally this should be less than 100ng/mL.
Protein: Determining how much protein you should be eating can be gauged and guided by three blood markers. BUN, Creatinine, and Uric Acid. BUN should generally be between 16-22mg/dL. More than that could indicate you are eating too much protein or not enough fat. Less could indicate not enough protein or that you are still sugar dominant and you don't need sugar from protein conversion. This is a guide and not a hard rule because other things can affect BUN. Creatinine should be below 0.9mg/dL. More than that may indicate you are eating too much protein. A number of 0.7mg/dL is even better for optimization. Uric acid should ideally be below 5.5mg/dL. If BUN is low and uric acid is high it could mean that your body is doing a lot of autophagy in which case you are breaking down muscle protein for use in other places thereby allowing protein to spill out uric acid.
Thyroid: The thyroid can get complicated, but let's keep it simple for purposes of basic metabolism. TSH is produced in the pituitary gland, and it stimulates the production of hormones in the thyroid. In overly simplified terms, TSH stimulates the production of T4 which gets converted to T3, and Free T3 is the useable form. If TSH is high that generally means that the thyroid is not responding very well to TSH so the brain keeps making more and more TSH. If Free T3 is low that generally means that the amount of TSH being made is not enough to stimulate the end result of adequate Free T3 or that the thyroid is otherwise sick. A basic guideline is that TSH should be below 3uIU/mL, but between 1-2uIU/mL is optimal (these units are equivalent to mIU/L). And Free T3 should be between 2.5-4.0pg/mL with the optimal level being 3.0-3.5pg/mL. When TSH and Free T3 are viewed together in this way it can be a useful tool in determining metabolic health and thyroid sensitivity. Reverse T3 (rT3) can be useful as well. An elevated rT3 can indicate stress on the body. Normal levels of rT3 are between 10-24ng/dL. But this is complicated stuff and should be considered in the context of everything else under the guidance of a professional metabolic specialist.
Coronary Artery Calcium (CAC): This is a scan of the arteries in the chest to look at calcification which relates to plaque and atherosclerosis. Ideally your CAC score should be zero, but do not panic if the score is above zero. Contact a professional metabolic specialist and work in conjunction with your cardiologist.
LDL-C: There is much debate and concern about LDL cholesterol. I'm putting this at the bottom of this list because it must be viewed in the context of all the other markers above. If all the markers above are in range then LDL-C will likely be safe between 120-300mg/dL, but for confirmation of plaque or no plaque in the arteries it is important to have a CAC, CT Angiogram, and/or Coronary Intima Media Thickness Ultrasound.
Here is a full list of the blood tests that my personal metabolic specialist ordered for me.
This items with the "x" are the tests that were specifically ordered for me. Females and individuals
with specific concerns may benefit from the additional blood tests listed. The list includes the codes for
both Quest and LabCorp, and you can use it as a guide as you work with your doctor.
This items with the "x" are the tests that were specifically ordered for me. Females and individuals
with specific concerns may benefit from the additional blood tests listed. The list includes the codes for
both Quest and LabCorp, and you can use it as a guide as you work with your doctor.
Note: If a person is on a ketogenic diet then the optimal ranges of some blood tests may be outside the scope of understanding of most doctors. Most doctors simply do not know how to interpret blood work correctly for a person in ketosis, so a professional metabolic specialist may be needed.
My Personal Testimony: While I would not consider myself to have had severe chronic disease, I certainly have experienced many minor chronic illnesses over the past few decades. Since adopting a ketogenic lifestyle and carnivore diet I have fixed most of these problems. Here is a list of health issues I have personally fixed with nutrition:
1.) Premature Ventricular Contractions (PVC's): For several years I experienced these heart palpitations. Without medication it was extremely uncomfortable and created much anxiety as my heart felt like it was pounding intensely and would pound even harder as it often skipped beats. I opted to take beta blockers for several years which helped with symptoms but not the root cause. Since adopting a ketogenic diet I no longer take any medications for anything. I believe I balanced the adrenal glands by fixing my metabolism with a proper ketogenic diet. This is probably due to lower levels of insulin, higher consumption of saturated fat, and the resulting overall hormone balance.
2.) High Blood Pressure: I had high blood pressure since my late twenties. The main root cause of high blood pressure is sugar and total carbohydrate consumption, not salt as we've been led to believe. There are many mechanisms involved. I no longer take blood pressure medication, and my blood pressure is now normal.
3.) Insulin Resistance: As discussed above, when insulin levels are chronically high and/or when mitochondria become damaged then insulin is not effective. The body makes more insulin, as a result, to try to compensate, but then the cells just become more insulin resistant. I was insulin resistant, but when I adopted the ketogenic lifestyle my insulin levels came down below 5uIU/mL.
4.) Kidney Stones: A year ago I went to the urologist for a routine ultrasound of several small cysts on my kidney. In the process they found kidney stones. I immediately jump into the scientific literature, and guess what I found is the fix for kidney stones? Yes, the ketogenic diet. I recently had a follow up ultrasound and the kidney stones are gone.
5.) Kidney Cysts: As just noted, I've had small cysts on my kidney for many years. However, they have now slightly reduced in size. This may just be coincidence as the size of cysts can fluctuate between measurements, but I fully expect them to be gone in a few years.
6.) Thyroid: For the last couple of years my thyroid numbers have not been optimal. The thyroid system was likely broken. But, a few months on a ketogenic diet plus some iodine supplementation and my thyroid numbers are optimal. My body temperature was much warmer during the most recent cold season.
7.) Anxiety and Depression: I struggled with this since my late twenties. For about a decade I was on medication, but it made me feel terrible. I learned to manage it without medication for another decade. Then a few years ago I cleaned my diet up a bit and my anxiety and depression improved somewhat. After adopting a ketogenic lifestyle I no longer experience any anxiety and depression.
8.) Constipation: For a year and a half I had great frustration and discomfort from constipation. I tried adding fiber to my diet, drinking more water, taking probiotics and prebiotics, drinking coffee, eliminating coffee, taking laxatives, removing certain foods, drinking prune juice, and taking magnesium citrate. Nothing worked. I spent several months with a Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist. It did not help. Then I started a ketogenic diet and removed ALL fiber from my diet. Within 3 days the constipation went away. It has not come back. The scientific literature shows that removing plants and fiber from the diet cures most constipation. I wish I would have read the scientific literature 18 months earlier.
9.) High Triglycerides: My triglycerides were too high since my late twenties. It's usually due to too many carbohydrates. Fixed it! I no longer take any medication for triglycerides.
10.) Low HDL Cholesterol: Having high levels of HDL-C is very important for proper clearance of cholesterol in the blood. Mine was always too low until I got rid of carbohydrates and started eating more protein and animal fat. Problem solved!
11.) Melatonin: I used to require 3mg of melatonin before bed in order to fall asleep. Not anymore. Now I fall asleep naturally in just a few minutes.
12.) Body Temperature: For my entire windsurfing career my hands were intolerably cold in air temperatures below 45 degrees fahrenheit even with the best gear available. I just could not go windsurfing under 45 degrees. But now my hands are no longer cold at this temperature. I recently had a great windsurfing session with 39 degree air temperatures. My entire body is warmer. While I sleep, during winter months, I now need only one blanket instead of three with the thermostat set exactly the same as before. This is likely a result of fixing the thyroid and employing a ketogenic diet. The mitochondria produce more heat on a ketogenic diet. It's a result of evolution. In winter, most of our ancestors had near zero carbohydrate intake, so they were in ketosis by default all winter. In this way, nature evolved for mammals to produce more heat while in ketosis during winter. Evolution works!
13.) Body Odor: I don't stink anymore, which means I don't require deodorant anymore. So that means less toxins that I have to put on my body now that I don't need deodorant. I use soap on my privates and underarms when I shower, but that's it.
14.) Distance Vision: My distance vision is now 20/20 without corrective lenses.
15.) Calf Size: For most of my adult life my right calf was noticeably smaller than my left calf. My orthopedic specialist said this was probably due to damaged nerve structure leading to the right calf, and there was nothing that could be done. But I've read many reports of patients with dysautonomia completely rebuilding their nerves, as measured by their physicians, by using a high saturated fat ketogenic diet. The high saturated fat provides the necessary structures to rebuild injured nerve cells. In the last few months both of my calves are now the same size. I don't know the exact reason, but I suspect it is the high saturated fat in my diet.
16.) Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome (CPPS): Also known as non-bacterial prostatitis, is an idiopathic disease defined by symptoms of pain in the prostate area, bladder, hips, pelvic floor, and lower back. This was discussed in this article earlier. The cause is said to be unknown by standard-of-care medicine. In fact, there are many different known causes. I suffered from this for about a decade. I had many tests that looked for the cause, including a recent CT scan of the pelvis and abdomen. All tests were negative. The pain would come and go, but for most of 2023 it was full on. Around the end of 2023 I figured out what was probably causing this for me. It was oxalate toxicity from eating toxic "superfoods" like spinach, almonds, chia seeds, turmeric, sweet potatoes, dark chocolate, beets, beet greens, chard, raspberries, kiwi, and many more foods. We've been led to believe these are healthy, but any health benefits may be canceled by the toxicity. Thankfully, therapeutic ketosis and elimination of nearly all plants has helped me to begin healing from this disease. I currently do not have CPPS symptoms, although I am carefully monitoring.
17.) Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS): Another idiopathic disease, this time characterized by a mix of diarrhea, bloating, constipation, gas, and abdominal pain. This affected me for more than two decades. It has now been mostly gone since the last of my constipation disappeared a few months ago. A bit of diarrhea occurs in what I believe is oxalate dumping, but it appears that the root cause has been addressed. I will continue to evaluate the success in this area.
18.) Breath Methane and Hydrogen: Large populations of destructive microbes in the upper gut produce methane and hydrogen gas. Additional chemicals that these microbes produce can cause significant problems such as brain fog, gut issues, skin problems, and much more as discussed earlier in this article. I purchased a device that measures both methane and hydrogen in the breath. Over a three month period my numbers went from consistently being in the very high range to consistently being in the very low range. This indicates that both methane producing archaea and hydrogen producing bacteria have now been reduced to healthy levels. This likely plays into the improved IBS symptoms, particularly the constipation to which methane is a big contributor.
20.) Teeth Sensitivity: For many years my teeth were extremely sensitive to cold. I actually had to rinse the toothpaste out of my mouth with warm water. That sensitivity is now gone. I don't notice any sensitivity at all with the coldest ice water.
21.) Waist Size: After just a couple months on a ketogenic diet my waist size shrank by an inch and a half. I believe this is mostly the result of less bloating through gut repair. While my body fat dropped by a few percentage points it would not be the equivalent of an inch and a half of waist circumference.
22.) Muscle Definition: As mentioned in #21 above, my body fat dropped by a few percentage points. This allowed the muscle definition in my abs, chest and legs to really pop.
23.) Sense of Smell: After a few months of a ketogenic diet I noticed that my sense of smell was much more sensitive. I noticed aromas and odors that I never noticed before. Not sure how this is explained, but it is very interesting.
Next on the list: I am very confident that my current approach to nutrition will eventually and permanently get rid of the cysts on my kidney, the skin tags on my body, and my sleep apnea. It's amazing what can be accomplished when we are properly aligned with nature.
1.) Premature Ventricular Contractions (PVC's): For several years I experienced these heart palpitations. Without medication it was extremely uncomfortable and created much anxiety as my heart felt like it was pounding intensely and would pound even harder as it often skipped beats. I opted to take beta blockers for several years which helped with symptoms but not the root cause. Since adopting a ketogenic diet I no longer take any medications for anything. I believe I balanced the adrenal glands by fixing my metabolism with a proper ketogenic diet. This is probably due to lower levels of insulin, higher consumption of saturated fat, and the resulting overall hormone balance.
2.) High Blood Pressure: I had high blood pressure since my late twenties. The main root cause of high blood pressure is sugar and total carbohydrate consumption, not salt as we've been led to believe. There are many mechanisms involved. I no longer take blood pressure medication, and my blood pressure is now normal.
3.) Insulin Resistance: As discussed above, when insulin levels are chronically high and/or when mitochondria become damaged then insulin is not effective. The body makes more insulin, as a result, to try to compensate, but then the cells just become more insulin resistant. I was insulin resistant, but when I adopted the ketogenic lifestyle my insulin levels came down below 5uIU/mL.
4.) Kidney Stones: A year ago I went to the urologist for a routine ultrasound of several small cysts on my kidney. In the process they found kidney stones. I immediately jump into the scientific literature, and guess what I found is the fix for kidney stones? Yes, the ketogenic diet. I recently had a follow up ultrasound and the kidney stones are gone.
5.) Kidney Cysts: As just noted, I've had small cysts on my kidney for many years. However, they have now slightly reduced in size. This may just be coincidence as the size of cysts can fluctuate between measurements, but I fully expect them to be gone in a few years.
6.) Thyroid: For the last couple of years my thyroid numbers have not been optimal. The thyroid system was likely broken. But, a few months on a ketogenic diet plus some iodine supplementation and my thyroid numbers are optimal. My body temperature was much warmer during the most recent cold season.
7.) Anxiety and Depression: I struggled with this since my late twenties. For about a decade I was on medication, but it made me feel terrible. I learned to manage it without medication for another decade. Then a few years ago I cleaned my diet up a bit and my anxiety and depression improved somewhat. After adopting a ketogenic lifestyle I no longer experience any anxiety and depression.
8.) Constipation: For a year and a half I had great frustration and discomfort from constipation. I tried adding fiber to my diet, drinking more water, taking probiotics and prebiotics, drinking coffee, eliminating coffee, taking laxatives, removing certain foods, drinking prune juice, and taking magnesium citrate. Nothing worked. I spent several months with a Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist. It did not help. Then I started a ketogenic diet and removed ALL fiber from my diet. Within 3 days the constipation went away. It has not come back. The scientific literature shows that removing plants and fiber from the diet cures most constipation. I wish I would have read the scientific literature 18 months earlier.
9.) High Triglycerides: My triglycerides were too high since my late twenties. It's usually due to too many carbohydrates. Fixed it! I no longer take any medication for triglycerides.
10.) Low HDL Cholesterol: Having high levels of HDL-C is very important for proper clearance of cholesterol in the blood. Mine was always too low until I got rid of carbohydrates and started eating more protein and animal fat. Problem solved!
11.) Melatonin: I used to require 3mg of melatonin before bed in order to fall asleep. Not anymore. Now I fall asleep naturally in just a few minutes.
12.) Body Temperature: For my entire windsurfing career my hands were intolerably cold in air temperatures below 45 degrees fahrenheit even with the best gear available. I just could not go windsurfing under 45 degrees. But now my hands are no longer cold at this temperature. I recently had a great windsurfing session with 39 degree air temperatures. My entire body is warmer. While I sleep, during winter months, I now need only one blanket instead of three with the thermostat set exactly the same as before. This is likely a result of fixing the thyroid and employing a ketogenic diet. The mitochondria produce more heat on a ketogenic diet. It's a result of evolution. In winter, most of our ancestors had near zero carbohydrate intake, so they were in ketosis by default all winter. In this way, nature evolved for mammals to produce more heat while in ketosis during winter. Evolution works!
13.) Body Odor: I don't stink anymore, which means I don't require deodorant anymore. So that means less toxins that I have to put on my body now that I don't need deodorant. I use soap on my privates and underarms when I shower, but that's it.
14.) Distance Vision: My distance vision is now 20/20 without corrective lenses.
15.) Calf Size: For most of my adult life my right calf was noticeably smaller than my left calf. My orthopedic specialist said this was probably due to damaged nerve structure leading to the right calf, and there was nothing that could be done. But I've read many reports of patients with dysautonomia completely rebuilding their nerves, as measured by their physicians, by using a high saturated fat ketogenic diet. The high saturated fat provides the necessary structures to rebuild injured nerve cells. In the last few months both of my calves are now the same size. I don't know the exact reason, but I suspect it is the high saturated fat in my diet.
16.) Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome (CPPS): Also known as non-bacterial prostatitis, is an idiopathic disease defined by symptoms of pain in the prostate area, bladder, hips, pelvic floor, and lower back. This was discussed in this article earlier. The cause is said to be unknown by standard-of-care medicine. In fact, there are many different known causes. I suffered from this for about a decade. I had many tests that looked for the cause, including a recent CT scan of the pelvis and abdomen. All tests were negative. The pain would come and go, but for most of 2023 it was full on. Around the end of 2023 I figured out what was probably causing this for me. It was oxalate toxicity from eating toxic "superfoods" like spinach, almonds, chia seeds, turmeric, sweet potatoes, dark chocolate, beets, beet greens, chard, raspberries, kiwi, and many more foods. We've been led to believe these are healthy, but any health benefits may be canceled by the toxicity. Thankfully, therapeutic ketosis and elimination of nearly all plants has helped me to begin healing from this disease. I currently do not have CPPS symptoms, although I am carefully monitoring.
17.) Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS): Another idiopathic disease, this time characterized by a mix of diarrhea, bloating, constipation, gas, and abdominal pain. This affected me for more than two decades. It has now been mostly gone since the last of my constipation disappeared a few months ago. A bit of diarrhea occurs in what I believe is oxalate dumping, but it appears that the root cause has been addressed. I will continue to evaluate the success in this area.
18.) Breath Methane and Hydrogen: Large populations of destructive microbes in the upper gut produce methane and hydrogen gas. Additional chemicals that these microbes produce can cause significant problems such as brain fog, gut issues, skin problems, and much more as discussed earlier in this article. I purchased a device that measures both methane and hydrogen in the breath. Over a three month period my numbers went from consistently being in the very high range to consistently being in the very low range. This indicates that both methane producing archaea and hydrogen producing bacteria have now been reduced to healthy levels. This likely plays into the improved IBS symptoms, particularly the constipation to which methane is a big contributor.
20.) Teeth Sensitivity: For many years my teeth were extremely sensitive to cold. I actually had to rinse the toothpaste out of my mouth with warm water. That sensitivity is now gone. I don't notice any sensitivity at all with the coldest ice water.
21.) Waist Size: After just a couple months on a ketogenic diet my waist size shrank by an inch and a half. I believe this is mostly the result of less bloating through gut repair. While my body fat dropped by a few percentage points it would not be the equivalent of an inch and a half of waist circumference.
22.) Muscle Definition: As mentioned in #21 above, my body fat dropped by a few percentage points. This allowed the muscle definition in my abs, chest and legs to really pop.
23.) Sense of Smell: After a few months of a ketogenic diet I noticed that my sense of smell was much more sensitive. I noticed aromas and odors that I never noticed before. Not sure how this is explained, but it is very interesting.
Next on the list: I am very confident that my current approach to nutrition will eventually and permanently get rid of the cysts on my kidney, the skin tags on my body, and my sleep apnea. It's amazing what can be accomplished when we are properly aligned with nature.
Summary To This Point: Here are the main points to fix chronic disease.
1.) Stop injuring the mitochondria.
2.) Stop assisting destructive microbes.
3.) Start repairing the mitochondria.
4.) Start assisting beneficial microbes.
5.) Use bloodwork and diagnostics as a guide.
6.) Learn the nuances for your personal disease.
The functional medicine field has done a good job with #'s 3-6, but it is my finding that they have not adequately addressed #'s 1-2, which require the implementation of nutritional therapeutic ketosis. In the past 6-12 months I have noticed a more open-minded approach by the functional medicine field to explore nutritional therapeutic ketosis as a necessary means of treatment for #'s 1-2. I hope this continues and that they move toward implementation of ketosis in their practice. Now let's look at #6 in more detail.
1.) Stop injuring the mitochondria.
2.) Stop assisting destructive microbes.
3.) Start repairing the mitochondria.
4.) Start assisting beneficial microbes.
5.) Use bloodwork and diagnostics as a guide.
6.) Learn the nuances for your personal disease.
The functional medicine field has done a good job with #'s 3-6, but it is my finding that they have not adequately addressed #'s 1-2, which require the implementation of nutritional therapeutic ketosis. In the past 6-12 months I have noticed a more open-minded approach by the functional medicine field to explore nutritional therapeutic ketosis as a necessary means of treatment for #'s 1-2. I hope this continues and that they move toward implementation of ketosis in their practice. Now let's look at #6 in more detail.
Nuances For Your Personal Disease: This topic is vast and complicated, and I won't be able to cover it all in the detail it deserves in just this article. A great place to start getting more information is with the book Gut and Physiology Snydrome by Natasha Campbell-McBride.
The discussion up to this point explains the foundation upon which most chronic diseases form. A lot of people, however, currently have damaged mitochrondria and damaged microbiomes but do not yet exhibit symptoms. Something often pushes them over the edge. Here are some of the things that should be discussed with a good functional medicine doctor: Lyme disease, mold toxicity, histamine intolerance, intestinal methanogen (archaea) overgrowth. small intestine fungal overgrowth (SIFO), small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), leaky gut, heavy metal toxicity, oxalate poisoning, lectin toxicity, general anti-nutrient toxicity, Epstein Barr, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, chronic kidney disease, thyroid disfunction, inflammatory bowel disease, other autoimmune diseases, other co-infections, vaccinations, EMF exposure, circadian rhythm, chronic high stress. The nuances around each one of these contributors should be explored with a good functional medicine doctor.
The discussion up to this point explains the foundation upon which most chronic diseases form. A lot of people, however, currently have damaged mitochrondria and damaged microbiomes but do not yet exhibit symptoms. Something often pushes them over the edge. Here are some of the things that should be discussed with a good functional medicine doctor: Lyme disease, mold toxicity, histamine intolerance, intestinal methanogen (archaea) overgrowth. small intestine fungal overgrowth (SIFO), small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), leaky gut, heavy metal toxicity, oxalate poisoning, lectin toxicity, general anti-nutrient toxicity, Epstein Barr, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, chronic kidney disease, thyroid disfunction, inflammatory bowel disease, other autoimmune diseases, other co-infections, vaccinations, EMF exposure, circadian rhythm, chronic high stress. The nuances around each one of these contributors should be explored with a good functional medicine doctor.
Understanding Veganism and Vegetarianism: This is a topic that requires a close look at biochemistry. Remember the physiology goal we are aiming for. The goal is to heal from chronic disease. It is likely that plants may be the main cause of your chronic disease, or a partial cause of your chronic disease, or a contributing factor to your chronic disease. If so, then some specific plants, or perhaps even all plants, may need to be removed from your diet for a period of time in order to facilitate healing. This can be difficult for a vegan to accept at first. Be patient with yourself. Albert Einstein is often credited with the quote "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that was used to create them." Change may be required, at least temporarily, in order to get the necessary nutrients needed and toxins removed for healing. It may be necessary to temporarily set aside ideology and look closely at the biochemistry of the human body if you want to cure your chronic disease. It is a choice, albeit a discordant one. Veganism is a direct cause of chronic disease, all by itself, without any other co-factors. Not every vegan has chronic disease as it usually takes 5-20 years of veganism to develop chronic disease as a result of veganism alone. Studies show that there are 5-times as many ex-vegans and ex-vegetarians as there are current vegans and vegetarians. 84% of vegans leave veganism after just one year. It is nutritionally difficult for humans to sustain health on a vegan diet. This is mostly due to nutritional deficiencies and plant toxicities that lead to things like sarcopenia, depression, anxiety, gout, bone fractures, disc degeneration, joint inflammation, arthritis, osteopenia, osteoporosis, anemia, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, eating disorders, pregnancy complications, kidney stones, cancer, autoimmunity, hypothyroidism, and more. A 2023 study called The Impact of a Vegan Diet on Many Aspects of Health: The Overlooked Side of Veganism looked at some of this. I have personally talked with over 100 vegans through various health forums and communities, and I've found that their common vegan deficiencies include, but are not limited to, vitamins B12, B2, B1, D, A, K1, K2, thiamine, niacin, iron, iodine, zinc, copper, selenium, DHA, EPA, calcium, magnesium, choline, methionine, lysine, leucine, tryptophan, carnitine, taurine, creatine, saturated fat, cholesterol, melatonin, coenzyme Q10, heme iron, and others. Common vegan toxicities include, but are not limited to oxalates, lectins, fructans, phytates, salicylates, cyanide, tannins, glucosinolates, saponins, proteinase inhibitors, arsenic, lead, cadmium, deuterium, starchy carbohydrates, fermentable carbohydrates, polyols, and others. The W.H.O. has started to acknowledge the danger of plant toxins in our food on their webpage called Natural Toxins In Food. As stated earlier in this article, Bruce Ames pointed out that modern plants have 10,000 times more carcinogens, by weight, than the synthetic pesticides they are treated with. This does not mean you shouldn't eat any plants. What it means is that, if you want to heal from chronic disease, you need to know exactly which plants are making you sick, in what dosage, and at what frequency. This, however, can take years or even decades to figure out given the extremely large number of different combinations of nutritional deficiencies and toxicities resulting from plants that may be causing your chronic disease. It could be thousands of different combinations that are affecting your health. This makes it difficult to test all the combinations. But, let's say for example that after years of experimentation you are able to finally figure out that oxalates, gluten, and other lectins are causing your chronic disease. That means you cannot eat most grains, potatoes, beans, rice, nightshades, and much more. What is left for you to eat to sustain energy and nutrients? Not much. You may have suffered for years while trying to figure out what plants were causing you trouble, and your findings may now mean that you cannot live on plants alone because there are not enough plants available that your body can tolerate to sustain your required calories without being sick. Instead, as an alternative, you could simply implement an elimination diet that eliminates all plants and your chronic disease is very likely to be improved in 3-12 months. So, it really depends how sick you are as to which path you may want to take, and how important a vegan diet is to your ideologies. If the goal is healing from chronic disease then a vegan diet may not be a biochemically appropriate choice for a period of time.
If you do attempt to heal on a vegan or vegetarian diet then be sure you verify that you are actually healing by using the extensive bloodwork discussed above plus a more extensive diagnostic workup specifically designed around vegan deficiencies and toxicities. Just because you feel better does NOT mean you have fixed the chronic disease. The problems could be getting worse and worse without you knowing it if you don't use bloodwork and diagnostics to evaluate. Let me illustrate this by discussing the typical steps employed when healing chronic disease:
1.) Eliminate all processed foods (including seed and vegetable oils).
2.) Eliminate all grains, beans, and lactose.
3.) Eliminate triggers such as nightshades, FODMAPs, fructans, oxalates, phytates, and salicylates.
4.) Reduce carbohydrates (starches and sugars) below 25g per day.
5.) Eliminate all plants.
So, if a person is sick with a chronic illness they may decide to go on a whole food vegan diet, and let's say they do Step 1 and eliminate all processed foods. Eliminating processed foods is possible for a vegan, and it may be enough to help them feel better temporarily, and so they may consider themselves cured. But what they are omitting is the high likelihood, for example, that they feel better from reducing something like high-dose gluten that was in the processed foods and was causing leaky gut. Now when they go on this whole food vegan diet they may temporarily feel better from coincidently reducing gluten, but they unknowingly end up consuming higher total carbohydrates from potatoes, rice, oats, quinoa, soy and corn with their new vegan diet. In a year or two they feel sick again, but this time from insulin resistance due to the high carbohydrate diet, and they don't understand why. However, if they had used the proper bloodwork and diagnostics upfront they would have known that they would be very likely to get insulin resistance by switching to this whole food high carbohydrate vegan diet. As another example, consider my personal experience with oxalate poisoning that I described earlier. I had no idea that I was poisoning myself by eating foods that I was told were super healthy foods. All the while these jagged crystals were building up in my prostate, thyroid, joints, abdomen, tendons, ligaments, and who knows where else. It was very difficult to change my mindset about eating plants as I was quite emotionally attached to the high-plant diet at that time. I had embraced plant-foods as important my whole life. I needed to emotionally detach myself from plants. Change was necessary. Plants can hinder optimal biochemical function in just a short time. Consider the results of a recent study by lead author Isabella D. Cooper called Ketosis Suppression and Ageing: The Effects of Suppressing Ketosis in Long Term Keto-Adapted Non-Athletic Females. In this study they took women who had been on a very low carbohydrate diet for many years, and they switched them to eating a much higher carbohydrate diet for 21 days. They analyzed dozens of blood tests before and after and found that all women had progression toward disease after just 21 days on the higher carbohydrate diet. Then they put them back on their original very low carbohydrate diet and all the blood tests progressed away from disease and returned to optimal healthy levels. This type of blood work analysis is very useful for your own personal evaluation.
If you do attempt to heal on a vegan or vegetarian diet then be sure you verify that you are actually healing by using the extensive bloodwork discussed above plus a more extensive diagnostic workup specifically designed around vegan deficiencies and toxicities. Just because you feel better does NOT mean you have fixed the chronic disease. The problems could be getting worse and worse without you knowing it if you don't use bloodwork and diagnostics to evaluate. Let me illustrate this by discussing the typical steps employed when healing chronic disease:
1.) Eliminate all processed foods (including seed and vegetable oils).
2.) Eliminate all grains, beans, and lactose.
3.) Eliminate triggers such as nightshades, FODMAPs, fructans, oxalates, phytates, and salicylates.
4.) Reduce carbohydrates (starches and sugars) below 25g per day.
5.) Eliminate all plants.
So, if a person is sick with a chronic illness they may decide to go on a whole food vegan diet, and let's say they do Step 1 and eliminate all processed foods. Eliminating processed foods is possible for a vegan, and it may be enough to help them feel better temporarily, and so they may consider themselves cured. But what they are omitting is the high likelihood, for example, that they feel better from reducing something like high-dose gluten that was in the processed foods and was causing leaky gut. Now when they go on this whole food vegan diet they may temporarily feel better from coincidently reducing gluten, but they unknowingly end up consuming higher total carbohydrates from potatoes, rice, oats, quinoa, soy and corn with their new vegan diet. In a year or two they feel sick again, but this time from insulin resistance due to the high carbohydrate diet, and they don't understand why. However, if they had used the proper bloodwork and diagnostics upfront they would have known that they would be very likely to get insulin resistance by switching to this whole food high carbohydrate vegan diet. As another example, consider my personal experience with oxalate poisoning that I described earlier. I had no idea that I was poisoning myself by eating foods that I was told were super healthy foods. All the while these jagged crystals were building up in my prostate, thyroid, joints, abdomen, tendons, ligaments, and who knows where else. It was very difficult to change my mindset about eating plants as I was quite emotionally attached to the high-plant diet at that time. I had embraced plant-foods as important my whole life. I needed to emotionally detach myself from plants. Change was necessary. Plants can hinder optimal biochemical function in just a short time. Consider the results of a recent study by lead author Isabella D. Cooper called Ketosis Suppression and Ageing: The Effects of Suppressing Ketosis in Long Term Keto-Adapted Non-Athletic Females. In this study they took women who had been on a very low carbohydrate diet for many years, and they switched them to eating a much higher carbohydrate diet for 21 days. They analyzed dozens of blood tests before and after and found that all women had progression toward disease after just 21 days on the higher carbohydrate diet. Then they put them back on their original very low carbohydrate diet and all the blood tests progressed away from disease and returned to optimal healthy levels. This type of blood work analysis is very useful for your own personal evaluation.
Vegans often need encouragement and support in order to transition to a diet that will heal their disease but that they see as contrary to their ideologies. We can help vegans through this and show them that plant-based eating and animal-based eating have the same values and beliefs. We all want health for our bodies, health for the planet, and happiness for animals. The animal-based diet model achieves all three of these values to a much greater extent than a plant-based diet model. We've already talked about health for our bodies. Earlier in this article we talked a little bit about health for the planet, but let's expand on that more. Imagine we have a plot of land, and we can do two different things with that land. In the first scenario, we cut down all the trees, bushes, and shrubs. We bring in excavators to dig up all the roots. We kill or displace all the animals, insects, and worms. We displace all the butterflies and bees. We poison all the bacteria, fungi, archaea, and other microbes with antibiotics (glyphosate, aka Round-Up) as we prepare the land for a crop. We commit the ultimate biocide with this biological cleansing as we destroy the piece of land and completely halt evolution. Then, after killing everything, we plant one acre of wheat, but, in order to grow, the wheat requires that we apply fossil fuels to the land to provide the nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium (NPK) which has long been eliminated from the soil as we raped the earth. The wheat will not grow without the unnatural application of this fossil fuel. This unnatural extraction of fossil fuel is used by the wheat and ultimately ends up in the atmosphere in enormously unnatural quantities of the greenhouse gases nitrous oxide and methane that nature never previously expelled on its own in such large quantities. Nitrous oxide is 300 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Once the wheat is finished growing we harvest it, and we kill 15 mice per hectare as they instinctively freeze when the noisy machine comes through. Hundreds of other small animals and trillions of life forms are killed as well. Then we drive the wheat to a factory, in vehicles that require fossil fuels, where more fossil fuels will be used at the factory to process the wheat into whatever products it is used for. The wheat is shipped to stores or other factories in vehicles that require more fossil fuels. You then use more fossil fuel to drive your car to the store to buy the product. This process is then done for the dozens and dozens of other agricultural plant products you consume and the nutritional supplements you take to avoid deficiencies. Now let's look at a second option with that same piece of land. Let's allow natural grasses to grow as we introduce ruminant animals to the land. The ruminants provide the necessary enzymes and bacteria from their mouth and manure that the grasses require for life. The naturally grass fed, non-grain fed, ruminants burp a small amount of methane gas which rises into the atmosphere, gets converted to carbon dioxide, and that entire equivalent amount of carbon dioxide is used by the grasses for respiration as nature intended. It's a perfect system aligned with nature. The grass roots dive ten feet deep to bring up water and minerals. Small animals proliferate. Bugs, worms and microbes flourish. Butterflies and bees return. The ruminants are happy. They are slaughtered when ready, and you drive to that farm which is a short distance from your home and you buy a whole cow. That one cow provides all the nutrition you need for an entire year with no other foods or supplements needed. You use a little gas to make one trip to the farm once per year and you use a little energy to run your freezer at home for a year. Can vegans make one trip per year to one single farm to get all of their food for that entire year? Probably not. The grasses and land, nurtured by the ruminants, pull copious amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, so much that if we did this with 75% of land which is now agricultural plant-based land we could sequester all the carbon dioxide that humans have emitted since the beginning of industrialization. This second option regenerates the land, saves the planet, makes animals happy, and humanely kills only one animal compared to killing hundreds of animals and trillions of other lifeforms with the first option. The second option requires no nutritional supplements which means an entire fossil fuel burning industry can be eliminated thereby reducing impact on the planet. Veganism requires massive supplementation because the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients in plants are scarce, are not bioavailable, and are removed from the body by plant toxins. Take calcium for example. The RDA for calcium is 1200mg per day. A vegan needs to get at least that 1200mg and probably more. But a person eating only beef generally needs just 25-80mg per day. Veganism depletes the body of minerals like calcium because anti-nutrients in plants, like oxalates and phytates, bind to calcium and excrete it from the body. This is common with many nutrients on a vegan diet.
Here you can see that White Oak Pastures, a well-known farm that raises grassfed beef, actually emits negative carbon.
That means net carbon is being taken out of the atmosphere by their farm.
That means net carbon is being taken out of the atmosphere by their farm.
This discussion can help a vegan to save their health, save the planet, kill fewer animals, and give animals a happy life. For vegans who need encouragement I recommend that you read the inspiring book by Lierre Keith called The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability. Lierre suffered from severe chronic disease that directly resulted from 20 years of veganism. It was very difficult for her to transition to an animal-based diet, but it was necessary for her to heal from chronic disease. Lierre now spends most of her time trying to help other vegans make their way to health. Another book, by author Jayne Buxton, called The Great Plant-Based Con explains much of the science that exposes the vegan myth. Scientific studies that make veganism look attractive have many flaws. These studies often try to discredit the consumption of beef. When you read the studies you typically see that the beef consumers consist of mostly smokers while the non-beef consumers consist of mostly non-smokers. Tricks like this are commonly used for deception. Studies in mice may show that high protein consumption increases cancer. But when you read the study you notice that only one amino acid is administered and it is administered in very unnaturally high doses. This does not exist in nature, so it's no surprise that it may cause cancer. It is not evidence that protein in proper human food causes cancer in the human body. It is a trick employed by industry-funded institutions. Large scale observational studies often like to show that large populations of people do better on low-protein high-plant diets. They give participants a survey and ask them to recall what they ate over the last year. This is not science. Can you remember what you ate for breakfast two days ago, let alone every meal for the last year? This is propaganda, not science. Let's look at a specific example with the highly publicized 2023 study led by well-known plant-based advocate and scientist Walter C. Willett at the Harvard University Chan School of public health called Red meat intake and risk of type 2 diabetes in a prospective cohort study of United States females and males. Go to the methods section and what do you see in Table 1? Well, you see that the quintiles of higher red meat eaters, compared to lower red meat eaters, consisted of greater numbers of smokers, greater number of alcohol consumers, higher BMI roughly indicating obesity levels, greater total calorie consumption likely coming in the form of soda consumed with burgers and buns, higher amounts of processed meat which are known to be unhealthy, much lower amounts of physical activity, lower amounts of multivitamin use, and lower amounts of fruit likely being replace with junk food. Obviously this group of people would be at higher risk of diabetes. Nearly every TV network in the nation displayed this study through media channels trying to push the narrative that red meat is bad, but the methods section alone shows that it is clearly not red meat that is bad. Rather, the coincidental poor lifestyle choices associated with those participants is bad. The conclusion of the study states "Our study supports current dietary recommendations for limiting consumption of red meat intake and emphasizes the importance of different alternative sources of protein for T2D prevention". This is unethical deception, and it happens all the time in fraudulent science. What about conflict of interest in industry? Bayer, the drug company, owns Monsanto, the food and agriculture company. The sicker they make people with poor quality food the more money they make with pharmaceuticals. Same with the Nestle food company who is now selling diabetes drugs. They make more money if they keep you sick with bad food. This type of conversation can help vegans shift from modern man-made agricultural plant-based diets of the last 10,000 years to evolutionary ancestral animal-based diets of the last 2.5 million years upon which our genetics are based.
Some people choose to eat organic plants. I was one of those people. We have been lead to believe that organic plants are less harmful to the planet because they don't use fossil fuel fertilizers. Do you know where organic crops get their fertilizer? The USDA prohibits the use of chemical fertilizers (fossil fuel based fertilizers) on organic crops. The fertilizer on your organic plants typically comes from manure of factory farmed cows located in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO). You can read the USDA regulations here. Section 205.203(b) says "The producer must manage crop nutrients and soil fertility through rotations, cover crops, and the application of plant and animal materials". A keyword being "must". Then in Section 205.203(c) they define "Animal and plant materials" which includes "Raw animal manure". Call around or visit organic farms and ask them where they get their animal manure. They cannot get the manure from the farms of regenerative pasture raised happy cows because that manure is being used on those specific farms to naturally re-fertilize the grasslands of those regeneratively raised ruminants to support the natural carbon sequestration of that land as describe above. So the organic plants you are eating typically employ the manure of factory farmed animals to fertilize their crops because it is easy and inexpensive to collect that manure from the concrete floor of an animal factory, and it has the correct balance of NPK's to grow the plants. Call the farms of each plant you consume and specifically ask them exactly where they get their manure. Most people are likely supporting the factory farming of animals without knowing it. Call every supplement company from which you purchase organic plant-based supplements and ask them what farms they get the plants from to make the supplements you use, and then call each of those farms to find out where they get the manure to grow their plants. Do the same for each company you buy spices and herbs from. Call the companies and farms of every organic plant-based burger you eat and every organic restaurant you visit. Again, you are probably supporting the factory farming of animals without knowing it. Humans cannot survive without ruminant animals. It is a necessary part of our existence. Without ruminant animals humans will go extinct. But, in my opinion, factory farming of animals is an unacceptable inhumane approach. I do not think it is worth supporting.
Some people choose to eat organic plants. I was one of those people. We have been lead to believe that organic plants are less harmful to the planet because they don't use fossil fuel fertilizers. Do you know where organic crops get their fertilizer? The USDA prohibits the use of chemical fertilizers (fossil fuel based fertilizers) on organic crops. The fertilizer on your organic plants typically comes from manure of factory farmed cows located in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO). You can read the USDA regulations here. Section 205.203(b) says "The producer must manage crop nutrients and soil fertility through rotations, cover crops, and the application of plant and animal materials". A keyword being "must". Then in Section 205.203(c) they define "Animal and plant materials" which includes "Raw animal manure". Call around or visit organic farms and ask them where they get their animal manure. They cannot get the manure from the farms of regenerative pasture raised happy cows because that manure is being used on those specific farms to naturally re-fertilize the grasslands of those regeneratively raised ruminants to support the natural carbon sequestration of that land as describe above. So the organic plants you are eating typically employ the manure of factory farmed animals to fertilize their crops because it is easy and inexpensive to collect that manure from the concrete floor of an animal factory, and it has the correct balance of NPK's to grow the plants. Call the farms of each plant you consume and specifically ask them exactly where they get their manure. Most people are likely supporting the factory farming of animals without knowing it. Call every supplement company from which you purchase organic plant-based supplements and ask them what farms they get the plants from to make the supplements you use, and then call each of those farms to find out where they get the manure to grow their plants. Do the same for each company you buy spices and herbs from. Call the companies and farms of every organic plant-based burger you eat and every organic restaurant you visit. Again, you are probably supporting the factory farming of animals without knowing it. Humans cannot survive without ruminant animals. It is a necessary part of our existence. Without ruminant animals humans will go extinct. But, in my opinion, factory farming of animals is an unacceptable inhumane approach. I do not think it is worth supporting.
The role of national economics and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) plays a large role in the adoption of a plant-based mentality within a society. I have personally spent 25 years working in the field of financial planning where I took many courses on economics and money. I've now been able to apply that economic knowledge to its impact on nutrition as it relates to economics and GDP. It is profound! Allow me to explain. Let's first define GDP. In simple terms, GDP is a measure of products made and services rendered by providers in a country. It is the amount of stuff a country makes and sells to consumers, plus the amount of services provided to consumers. Now let's look at the way nutrition led by grass-fed ruminant animal-based diets compares with nutrition led by agricultural plant-based diets. I'll save you the suspense of the outcome. The outcome is that agricultural plant-based diets are massively greater contributors to GDP than grass-fed ruminant animal-based diets, but this comes at the price of massive destruction of our planet. Think about our discussion above. The raising of grass-fed ruminant animals, when done correctly, is mostly self-sustaining. The animals provide the enzymes, bacteria, and nutrients that the grasslands require for survival, the grasslands provide the nutrition that the ruminants need for survival, and the atmosphere provides the water. A perfect symbiotic ecosystem. The ranchers manage the ecosystem to keep it functioning as efficiently as possible. They utilize some fossil fuel to slaughter the meat, and the consumer uses some fossil fuel to drive to the farm once per year and to run their freezer for the year. The ranchers minimize interference in the ecosystem as much as possible. Agricultural crops, on the other hand, require fossil fuel, equipment and employees to run the bulldozers that tear down the shrubs and trees; fossil fuel, equipment and employees to till the land; fossil fuel, equipment and employees to run the pumps that spray the antibiotics; fossil fuel, equipment and employees to run the pumps that irrigate crops; fossil fuel, equipment and employees to run the machines that harvest crops; fossil fuel, equipment and employees to power the trucks that drive the harvest to the factories; fossil fuel, equipment and employees to run the factories that mill the harvest; fossil fuel, equipment and employees to turn that milled harvest into a product; fossil fuel, equipment and employees to manufacture the bags and boxes that package the product; fossil fuel, equipment and employees to drive those products to the grocery stores; fossil fuel, equipment and employees to manage and operate the grocery stores; and fossil fuel for the consumer to drive to the grocery stores once per week. Hundreds and hundreds of contributing industries are created along that line to support the agricultural plant-based model in this process. Millions and millions of people are employed by implementation of the agricultural plant-based diet model. Clearly, the agricultural plant-based diet is an enormously greater contributor to GDP than grass-fed ruminant animal-based diets. But the price for that is massive destruction to our planet. Grass-fed ruminant animal-based diets are very gentle on our planet, but governments do not like that because it contributes very, very little to GDP. Ranchers are employed, but few additional industries and jobs are created when people eat grass-fed ruminant animal-based diets compared to agricultural plant-based diets. Governments push an agricultural plant-based diet because it massively fuels the economy, and they manipulate virtue signaling to make it look like it is saving the planet. This is the sad outcome. The government agenda of an agricultural plant-based diet is to fuel the economy and fuel industry, not save the planet. We have been lied to about saving the planet so that economies can continue to grow by exploiting the Earth.
Plant agriculture has been counter productive for humans in many ways. About 2.5 to 3 millions years ago humans transitioned from mostly eating insects to developing tools that allowed us to widely consume animals, and as a result our brains grew enormously fast through evolution with the high density nutrition. But the archaeological record shows that once the agricultural revolution began around 10,000-12,000 years ago humans got shorter, our teeth began to rot and get crooked, our brain shrunk by 10%, our dental arches shrank, our bones became more brittle, and our joints got weak. Plant-based eating did not serve us well. Plant agriculture also required the construction of settlements and cities to protect and tend to crops. When the weather did not cooperate and crops failed this led to mass famine. Mass famine led to one city stealing from another city. This led to the establishment of armies to protect themselves from others. Armies led to wars. Wars led to conquering for the gain of agricultural land. More agricultural land led to slavery, suppression of women, and unsustainably large families. Large families have led to over-population of the planet. And the cascade goes on and on. Humans are destroying themselves by focusing on plant agriculture. For many reasons, one in four males are currently infertile, and one in three females are infertile. Nature is beginning to manage our population problem, but we can help manage it as well. Studies show that if we simply teach girls to read around the world then the population would stop growing as girls make different reproduction choices based on their education. Imagine how different the world would be today if we had instead focused on raising happy, thriving, ruminant animals through natural regenerative self-sustaining ways that were nurturing to the planet and the animals. Imagine how much healthier the planet would be. Imagine how much lower the population would be. Imagine how much disease and how many wars we would have avoided. I cannot find any scientific evidence of any person experiencing a heart attack prior to the year 1900. But, then in the early to mid 1900's there was an explosion of heart attacks as people reduced meat and animal fat consumption and began eating large quantities vegetable oils along with increased plant consumption. I usually do not accept correlation of this type as dependable evidence unless confounders do not exist or can be discredited. I'll leave you to come to your own conclusion on this as you consider confounders.
Additional Resources:
I have spent two years learning about chronic disease. During that time I have read hundreds and hundreds of studies, books and articles, and I've listened to countless lectures, discussions, and debates. Some of these are shared as links within this article. I'd like to conclude by leaving you with a list of a few easy resources as a starting place for those of you that want to learn more. Best of luck on your journey!
Books:
- Gut and Physiology Syndrome, by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, MD. She cites over 950 studies in her quest to educate the public on the root causes of chronic disease and the cure.
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Myalgic Encephalitis, by Dr. Sarah Myhill. She takes us through an easy to understand explanation of chronic disease and the cures. While she focuses on chronic fatigue syndrome and myalgic encephalitis, her explanation and treatment protocols can be applied to many chronic illnesses.
- Ketogenic: The Science of Therapeutic Carbohydrate Restriction in Human Health, edited by Nutrition Network. This is a medical textbook that addresses all aspects of ketogenic nutrition. With 3,485 studies, this book serves as a great reference.
- Vegetarianism Explained, by Natasha Campbell-McBride, MD. 397 studies cited in a discussion about science and nutrition.
- Super Gut, by William Davis, MD. With over 285 studies, this book will you heal your gut.
- Iodine: Why You Need it, Why You Can't Live Without It, by Dr. David Brownstein, MD. Iodine is necessary for life and 90% of us are very deficient.
- Toxic Superfoods, by Sally K. Norton, MPH. This book specifically addresses oxalate toxicity. With over 520 studies this is an excellent resource.
- The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability, by Lierre Keith. This book will blow your mind. We are raping the Earth with plants and we are killing millions of animals and other creatures.
- The Great Plant-Based Con, by Jayne Buxton. Take a close look at the science that exposes the vegan myth.
Podcasts: This is an easy way to get started.
- A Journey of Healing: Letting Food Be Medicine (Mary Ruddick)
- A Radical and Controversial Approach To Starving Cancer (Thomas Seyfried)
- Starving Cancer: Breaking Down Thomas Seyfriend's Radical and Controversial Protocol (Dhru Purohit)
- Blue Zone Lies: What They Really Eat (Mary Ruddick)
- The "Cholesterol Hypothesis": 10 Key Ideas That The Diet Dictators Have Hidden (Tim Noakes)
- Hiding Unhealthy Heart Outcomes in Low-Fat Diet Trials (Tim Noakes)
- What Does Metabolic Health Look Like (Robert Cywes)
- Super Size Me By Eating Well (Robert Cywes)
- How The Body Reacts To A Sugar Load (Robert Cywes)
- Exposing The Vegetarian Myth! (Anthony Chaffee)
- The Great Plant-Based Con (Anthony Chaffee & Jayne Buxton)
- Rise In Obesity and Disease (Dhru Purohit & Ben Bickman)
Courses: More expensive, but sometimes easier to understand that scientific literature.
- Circadian Reset, by Dr. Max Gulhane. An inciteful course explaining the importance of natural light.
- Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, FMCA trains and certifies functional medicine health coaches.
- Trinity School of Natural Health, This program focuses on transforming your life and transforming the world.
- Master Blood Chem With Em, Learn to analyze functional blood chemistry with Emily Morrow.
- Nutrition Network, Changing Healthcare One Practitioner at a Time.
- GAPS Training, GAPS Nutritional Protocol Training.
Research and Support: Advice, research, and daily support.
- Hippocrates Research Foundation, Free natural cancer healing.
Food: Find regeneratively raised animals and organic farms.
- The Weston A. Price Foundation, click "Find Food/Local Chapters" to find farms near you.
I have spent two years learning about chronic disease. During that time I have read hundreds and hundreds of studies, books and articles, and I've listened to countless lectures, discussions, and debates. Some of these are shared as links within this article. I'd like to conclude by leaving you with a list of a few easy resources as a starting place for those of you that want to learn more. Best of luck on your journey!
Books:
- Gut and Physiology Syndrome, by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, MD. She cites over 950 studies in her quest to educate the public on the root causes of chronic disease and the cure.
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Myalgic Encephalitis, by Dr. Sarah Myhill. She takes us through an easy to understand explanation of chronic disease and the cures. While she focuses on chronic fatigue syndrome and myalgic encephalitis, her explanation and treatment protocols can be applied to many chronic illnesses.
- Ketogenic: The Science of Therapeutic Carbohydrate Restriction in Human Health, edited by Nutrition Network. This is a medical textbook that addresses all aspects of ketogenic nutrition. With 3,485 studies, this book serves as a great reference.
- Vegetarianism Explained, by Natasha Campbell-McBride, MD. 397 studies cited in a discussion about science and nutrition.
- Super Gut, by William Davis, MD. With over 285 studies, this book will you heal your gut.
- Iodine: Why You Need it, Why You Can't Live Without It, by Dr. David Brownstein, MD. Iodine is necessary for life and 90% of us are very deficient.
- Toxic Superfoods, by Sally K. Norton, MPH. This book specifically addresses oxalate toxicity. With over 520 studies this is an excellent resource.
- The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability, by Lierre Keith. This book will blow your mind. We are raping the Earth with plants and we are killing millions of animals and other creatures.
- The Great Plant-Based Con, by Jayne Buxton. Take a close look at the science that exposes the vegan myth.
Podcasts: This is an easy way to get started.
- A Journey of Healing: Letting Food Be Medicine (Mary Ruddick)
- A Radical and Controversial Approach To Starving Cancer (Thomas Seyfried)
- Starving Cancer: Breaking Down Thomas Seyfriend's Radical and Controversial Protocol (Dhru Purohit)
- Blue Zone Lies: What They Really Eat (Mary Ruddick)
- The "Cholesterol Hypothesis": 10 Key Ideas That The Diet Dictators Have Hidden (Tim Noakes)
- Hiding Unhealthy Heart Outcomes in Low-Fat Diet Trials (Tim Noakes)
- What Does Metabolic Health Look Like (Robert Cywes)
- Super Size Me By Eating Well (Robert Cywes)
- How The Body Reacts To A Sugar Load (Robert Cywes)
- Exposing The Vegetarian Myth! (Anthony Chaffee)
- The Great Plant-Based Con (Anthony Chaffee & Jayne Buxton)
- Rise In Obesity and Disease (Dhru Purohit & Ben Bickman)
Courses: More expensive, but sometimes easier to understand that scientific literature.
- Circadian Reset, by Dr. Max Gulhane. An inciteful course explaining the importance of natural light.
- Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, FMCA trains and certifies functional medicine health coaches.
- Trinity School of Natural Health, This program focuses on transforming your life and transforming the world.
- Master Blood Chem With Em, Learn to analyze functional blood chemistry with Emily Morrow.
- Nutrition Network, Changing Healthcare One Practitioner at a Time.
- GAPS Training, GAPS Nutritional Protocol Training.
Research and Support: Advice, research, and daily support.
- Hippocrates Research Foundation, Free natural cancer healing.
Food: Find regeneratively raised animals and organic farms.
- The Weston A. Price Foundation, click "Find Food/Local Chapters" to find farms near you.
This article does NOT constitute medical advice. Consult with your physician before making any changes to your medical plan.
