So I think there are 3 parallel tracks going on when I eat, the sugars, the fats, and everything else.

I have a fairly small capacity for sugar (carbs in general), and once my sugar capacity fills up to 100%, I start feeling sick and bloated and tired and I get unhealthy. In parallel, I have a capacity for consuming fat, and once that capacity is filled to 100%, I feel full, rejuvenated, and there’s a sense of satisfaction. At the same time, there’s a third track that consists of everything else, which doesn’t seem to affect my body to the same degree as sugars and fats. In the end, every meal is a race between the three tracks. If the meal has too much sugar, I will loose my appetite for what I’m eating and will feel gross. If the meal doesn’t have enough fat, I will never feel full and will keep on eating whatever it is, until my sugar capacity fills and I need to stop eating. It’s not a rule that’s strictly black and white but it’s a rough pattern, so it’s not always the case but usually can be used as a rough guide.

What I’ve discovered is that the average meal when eating out is way overloaded with carbs and has almost no fat (they keep cutting out and throwing away the fatty juicy morsels of meat!). So I’m never truly satisfied but I’ve overloaded my body with carbs. When I eat a proportion that’s more carbs and less fat, I start to gain unhealthy weight. When I’m eating lots of fat, I never need to resort to eating more, and end up much healthier. For me, a meal that’s extremely high in all sorts of fatty meat and cholesterol and basically no carbs seems to be what my body is made to eat (with possibly a little fruit). But I’m more on one end of the spectrum, and everyone’s body has evolved to eat a different breakdown to be at its healthiest, and may operate with a different pattern and have different tracks. E.g. Some have a strong need for their sugar track and that’s what keeps them healthy, and other people seem to really hate eating fatty things, etc.

I think there may actually be a good number of people who are on my end of the spectrum, and it seems like in a lot of Asian countries where people don’t purposely go for low-fat diets, people are ridiculously skinny. Especially when they eat fatty intestines and liver etc. Of course that may not be the cause, but seems like an interesting coincidence to keep in mind .

I think everyone you should figure out your own eating patterns too!

Furthermore, the number of motile sperm has also dipped. Importantly, the sperm count has not declined in the less polluted areas of the world during the same time period.

From: http://www2.oakland.edu/biology/lindemann/spermfacts.htm

Here’s the food pyramid as we were taught in elementary/middle/high school:

Government food pyramid

We believed this food pyramid without questions when we were kids, but let’s take a chance to really think about its contents. The most important error in this pyramid is what was put at its base, the “breads and cereals”. Instead of going through all the details here, there’s an article that explains it better than I ever can (so read this before continuing to the rest of this article) : http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/09/19/paleo-diet-solution/#more-3109 (The author of Four Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferris, posted an excerpt from Robb Wolf’s book “The Paleo Solution“). Basically, all grains (wheat, rice, corn, and many others), have evolved chemicals that discourage animals from eating them, and since we as humans did not start eating them until 6000 years ago, we’ve never evolved to tolerate those poisons. The grains bore holes through the human intestinal lining, as well as triggering the immune system to start attacking itself, ending up in various diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, infertility, alzheimer’s, lupus, depression, and many more.

Interestingly, legumes (peanuts, soy, peas) and dairy (milk, cheese, yogurt) have the same effect, though to a lesser extent. Therefore, take out the portion of diary from the pyramid too. Candy and cake in the sweets on the top? The body isn’t adapted to the extreme amounts of carbohydrates either, so the top triangle should not exist either.

In recent years, many health “experts” have proposed revised food pyramids, such as this one:

Revised pyramid

Again, the grains are put as the staple, at the detriment of our health. Some legumes and and grains such as peanuts, soy, and corn are oddly bundled up with olive oil and added to the base of the pyramid as well. Legumes appears once again in the middle of the pyramid, somehow grouped with nuts. And calcium supplements are recommended at even larger quantities than meat. It should be immediately clear that man-made supplements taken at a larger quantity than natural foods eaten by humans for hundreds of thousands of years, should raise some alarms.

Now this is the ideal food pyramid that I, and a lot of researchers are proposing:

Paleo food pyramid

Notice how only natural foods are represented; nothing from cereal and bread companies promoting their products, nothing from man-made supplements. The key principle of this diet and lifestyle is based off evolutionary fundamentals. Basically, the body of homo sapiens has evolved over a million years during its history to consume a certain set of nutrients and operates best when the balance is what is expected. However, in modern history we’ve invented many foods that are absolutely unnatural and upset the balance of what our bodies expect to digest and use. Ten thousand years ago, people did not have calcium supplements, and they did not need calcium supplements. Instead, the magnesium found in the natural diet of meat and vegetables efficiently directed extra calcium out of the blood vessels (too much calcium in blood vessels causes heart disease and high blood pressure) and into the bones (improving bone density and preventing Osteoporosis and other bone diseases). This is only one example of how the Paleolithic diet helped us stay healthier. When the many systems of the body all get the rich blend of nutrients that we’ve evolved to eat, the complex processes in the body begin to align and develop amazing health.

I suggest that you give this topic a little more research to learn more about how it can benefit you. Also, it doesn’t hurt to give this diet a try, and stop believing so much in the old food pyramids that base their recommendations on studies that do not take into effect the fundamental mechanisms that govern how the body works as a complete system.

A recent “miracle” of modern science and medicine was recently (enthusiastically) described to me by a friend in the medical industry. An elderly woman came to the hospital complaining of long term diarrhea, which was soon diagnosed to be Clostridium difficile, a bacteria that normally lives in the body but can be toxic if growth is no longer checked by the good bacteria in the body. The bacteria had grown to a large population and led to Pseudomembranous colitis, basically diarrhea caused by over-use of antibiotics. Doctors analyzed the situation and decided that the elderly woman would be given antibiotics to treat the Clostridium difficile. After a period of time, it was determined that the antibiotics were not working, at which point the doctors decided that the woman would need a colectomy (have her colon removed), otherwise, she would die. After the colectomy, the woman recovered, and although she needed to plug a bag into her anal cavity at all times so that digested food articles would drop into the bag where her large intestine would have been, she was grateful for modern science to have saved her where she would have certainly died otherwise.

Let’s analyze what went wrong and what some possible alternatives would have been. Ignoring the fundamental definition of the bacteria, “can be toxic if growth is no longer checked by the good bacteria in the body”, and the first line of the definition of Pseudomembranous colitis on Wikipedia which says, ”also known as antibiotic-associated diarrhoea (AAD)”, the doctors decided to use antibiotics to treat the condition. Intestinal health is the balance of good bacteria to bad bacteria to complete the intestinal flora, where if the good bacteria wins in population growth, the colon (intestine) is healthy. The doctors’ treatment fundamentally misses half of the equation, by only focussing on killing the bad bacteria, and completely overlooking that if any treatment is to sustain its effects, the good bacteria must grow and sustain its population. There was a good chance that prescribing probiotics (foods and supplements that contain good bacteria), such as two servings of yogurt a day, in addition to a diet that supports good bacteria (garlic, broccoli, etc), would have solved the woman’s problem completely. Even if it does not fully solve the problem, it should at least have been attempted as support. After twenty minutes of hearing this story and thinking about it, I asked the doctor/friend, did the doctors consider giving her probiotics to solve the problem? She said, “it probably would have solved the problem, but you know, probiotics aren’t FDA approved, so whatever quantity it says on the bottle, it’s not absolutely guaranteed to have that quantity”.

It’s sad to think that the elderly woman could have kept her colon if she only changed her diet, took some probiotics such as yogurt, and did not listen to the doctors. In fact her bacterial infection of the colon only developed as a result of earlier decisions made by doctors to give her antibiotics for long-term use, and kept spiraling into bigger and bigger problems. No doubt, the lack of a colon and risky surgery could give her further complications in the future as well. What’s even more sad is that the woman was grateful for all the treatment that these doctors have done to her, having never been educated on the truth of the medical industry. In addition, this is not an isolated incident. The treatment decisions were made were by experienced doctors, and my friend was simply a medical student put into position to learn from these doctors as part of medical school. Generations of doctors are being trained to think a certain way, a limited way, instead of trying to understand how the human body works as a system and as a living creature.

An infection from an acanthamoeba, a tiny parasite living in the cornea, if left untreated, may cause a patient to lose their eye in a matter of days.

Opthalmologist Dr. Kenneth Maverick says, “you ask a patient what their degree of pain is, and an acanthamoeba is a 10 out of 10. And that’s because it actually nibbles on some of the nerves in the eye.”

With a confocal microscope, eye specialists can see the tiny living organisms in real time that create dark circles on a scan. Powerful eye drops, made from the same chemicals as pool cleaner, kill the parasites.

The amoeba often come from pools, hot tubs, and even well water. Proper handling of contact lenses, as well as using new contact lens cases every month can help protect patients from infection.

“Just general common sense. And if you have a contaminated contact, throw it out,” Dr. Maverick said. “It’s better than losing your eye.”

Acanthamoeba infections are most common in the south where the weather is warmer. Overall, the risk of contracting the disease is about 1 in 10,000 for contact lens wearers.

Moral of the story: Be careful to use clean contact lens cases replaced every month, and don’t skimp on the contact lens fluid when cleaning your lenses. I know several of you have a habit of trying to save contact lens fluid and use as little as possible, I won’t name names now, but stop being  cheap and don’t become blind.

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/soy-milk-dangers.html

There are some benefits of soy that you usually hear about too:

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/soy-good-or-bad.html

You’re going to have to decide for yourself whether the benefits outweigh the risks, since everyone has different risk factors (e.g. someone who is allergic to dairy and has heart disease may lean more towards eating more soy, versus someone fine with dairy and fine on heart health and protein intake). Here’s a good article I found that tells the whole story:

http://www.quantumbalancing.com/news/soy%20dangers.htm

It’s a very insightful look into the history of soy and what it does to the body. And understanding the traditional Asian diet, I think I’d agree with the article’s claim that Asians don’t actually eat that much soy. In my family we’d have a tofu dish every couple of weeks. There hasn’t really been a time when people gorged on soy like in the current American health-conscious market.

The reason that I’ve gathered all this information and am inclined to believe it, is that I just drank a cup of Silk soymilk (probably 6-8 ounces, vanilla flavored if that’s relevant), and after about five minutes had some stomach pains, and after another few minutes started to have trouble breathing as well, and sneezing. This fit in pretty well with what I believe to be allergy symptoms to soy:

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/soy-allergy-symptoms.html

The odd thing is that I can eat tofu and soybeans fine, though soymilk always gives me this reaction. I never explored whether this could be an allergic symptom, but today I finally discovered an article that shows others have indeed experienced this as well. I’m curious whether this happens with soymilk buy not tofu is due to different processing to create soymilk, or if it’s a difference in cooking process.

All in all though, I would suggest doing some research before consuming soy products beyond the occasional tofu dish.

Just moments ago, sitting on the toilet, I realized its implications (it’s truly amazing how many of our greatest ideas come either when we’re in the shower, sleeping, or on the toilet). It all started last night, while taking a late-night jog through the streets of North San Jose. I’ve experimented with not wearing corrective lenses while jogging in hopes of making my eyes adapt to naturally focusing into the distance and improving my near-sightedness. Joanne (the optometrist in training) was running with us and revealed this fact to me.

For example, my left eye has myopia with a prescription of -4.00. My right eye is at -3.75. To make it easier to calculate, let’s take my left eye as an example. The number 1, divided by 4.00, equals 1/4th meter. That means when objects are more than 1/4th meter away from my eyes, they are not as clear as they should be.

I have a suspicion that the muscles that focus the eye are at an equilibrium state when focusing on objects at their focal length. E.g. when I relax my left eye, it is focused on 1/4th meter away. Now the only way to bring a healthy 20/20 (1 divided by 0 prescription gives a focal length of infinity) eye’s balanced state to the distance of 1/4th meter probably took a lot of exercise of the eye’s squeezing muscles (ciliary). That much exercise meant that the eye must have focused on objects averaging around 1/4th meter away (probably multiplied by some constant factor). In short, your focal length is determined by the average distance of the objects that you look at. (1)

This could have profound implications on how we treat our eyes in our daily routine. If your focal length is determined by the average distance of the object that you look at, then you would be able to change your focal length by simply looking at objects that average a different distance from you. By its definition, changing your focal length changes your prescription. That means, if your prescription is -4.00, but you would like it to change to -2.00, you would simply need to change your focal length from 1/4th meter to 1/2 meter. Instead of looking at objects averaging 1/4th meter away, look at objects averaging 1/2 meter away. Stop reading with your eyes next to your book, no matter how intense Harry Potter’s next adventure may be. Try not to slouch into the computer monitor. Get outside every so often to avoid staring at walls at a close distance. It may be hard to do, especially for students and certain professions, but could have amazing effects.

Notes:

(1). I don’t yet have concrete experimental proof of this. Right now it’s a suspicion, and was logically deduced from what I currently know about eyes. As I learn more about them I will definitely search with all my ability for experimental proof of this.

So I had walnut allergies, which was a new discovery, but not quite as profound as the one that came right after. At this point my eyes were bulging, feeling like a balloon filled with a little too much air. But what startled me was that I could see everything in my room with stunning clearness, and could distinguish tiny details in all the objects in my sight. I normally am near-sighted, so anything further than about a foot away should start to blur a bit without glasses or contacts, but last night I wasn’t wearing any. And this, I believe, was the last piece of the puzzle that finally came together, in my contemplations about eyesight.

If you’ve ever had near-sightedness, and most people have it to some degree, then you know the standard speech that optometrists give you. Usually near-sightedness comes when you are young, gets progressively worse during the teenage years, and as you get older it slows down and stabilizes. There is no way to reverse it. Please, try on these new glasses and contact lenses, and if putting them on everyday is too much trouble for your daily routine, you should get Lasik surgery. Near-sightedness is caused by the eye ball changing shape, so that the front of the eye is further away from the back of the eye than it should be. The front of the eye ball, acting as a lens, no longer focuses light correctly onto the back of the eye. That’s why you need to get the front of your eye cut with a laser to adjust its curvature for the new shape of your eye, says the friendly neighborhood optometrist.

Forming around the lens of the eye, there’s an elastic ring of ligaments that pushes outwards called the “zonula” (for focusing far), as well as a ring of “ciliary” muscle that contracts to squeeze the eye ball to be longer front to back (for focusing near)(1). As with any muscle, the more exercise it gets, the stronger the muscle becomes. For most people with near-sightedness, their ciliary muscle is a hunk of beefed up machine that never turns off. With ciliary muscles exerting much stronger force than the zonula that tries to balance them, what you end up with is the inability to focus on far-away objects anymore. Several burning questions follow: Why would this happen to so many people? What did people do before the invention of glasses? Are there lions in the Serengeti that can’t see too far, and aren’t they disadvantaged in terms of ability to hunt? Well, following the mechanics of the eye’s focusing described above, near-sightedness would not have been a problem until fairly recently in human history. In recent centuries, our lifestyle has increasingly resulted in our eyes looking at closer and closer objects. We started with an outdoor lifestyle, and moved to one of houses with walls enclosing us on all sides, of reading tiny words printed on paper, of writing on friend’s walls… on Facebook. These close activities have a huge effect on our ability to focus on the far away (2). Our eyes almost never get a chance to relax and focus on objects further away, when everywhere we go there’s something a foot in front of us to look at.

My understanding is that if you don’t use a muscle, it gradually weakens. Relaxing the eye for long periods of time, by looking off into the sky, or at distant trees, can stop near-sightedness. And eventually reverse it. It’s my strong suspicion that if you were to quit your job and go sightseeing in open meadows and hills for six months, when you come back your eyes will be much less near-sighted. All that time looking at far away objects relaxes the ciliary muscles and lets them slowly degenerate, weakening to a state where the zonula can resume its effect on pushing the eye back into shape for focusing on far away objects. I still have a lot to research concerning this subject, but I’m very surprised that no optometrist I’ve seen has ever been able to explain this to me, that a whole industry has sprouted to correct the symptoms of something while ignoring the guiding principles behind its workings.

For those of you who would like to do something about it, I would recommend reading these two books listed at the end of the article. Although I am proud to have made this discovery through my own random experiences (and through my sister’s science experiment, thank you Cara!), over ninety years ago Dr. William Bates first published his findings on the principles I’ve glossed over. The first book is a re-publication of the original book by William Bates, while the second book is a modern expansion of the Bates method, with steps on how to improve your eyesight through exercises. I will be getting these books and following the exercises in them, and I can update you all on the results as things progress.

The Bates Method for Better Eyesight Without Glasses
Relearning to See: Improve Your Eyesight — Naturally!

References:
(1) http://www.pc.ibm.com/ww/healthycomputing/vdt13eyeb.html
(2) http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1059711