Knowing what some potential problems are can enable people to connect the dots to their own behavior and circumstances so that they can do something
about it. We won't be talking much about specific manifestations of a weak and malfunctioning inner healing capacity. We will be talking about the problems that cause a
weak and malfunctioning inner healing capacity.
Inflammation in excess is the immediate cause of probably all chronic systemic diseases. It is another word
for free radical damage. Reduce the inflammation, and everything gets better. The body uses inflammation to kill bugs, but beyond that, health scientists of all
sorts are all in agreement that most if not all diseases of modern life are caused by excess inflammation, like cancer, diabetes2, heart disease, MS, etc. etc. etc.
But we here don't go after the
symptoms of excess inflammation. We go after the causes. Why bother with expensive medical visits and tests when it is easy to determine if you have
excess inflammation. You can easily feel it. And if you are over 45 years old in the modern world, you almost certainly have inflammation unless you are
already doing something about it.
Inflammation is a sign that you are doing something wrong with your diet and/or lifestyle. The practices presented in this website are part of my successful campaign to
reduce inflammation, without pharmaceuticals.
Implied here is that you don't want to use pharmaceutical drugs to reduce inflammation because you will most certainly reduce the "good" inflammation that is a
weapon for the immune system. Such drugs cannot help but reduce your immune strength. A smarter strategy is to stop doing what you are doing that causes the
inflammation in the first place, like no exercise or eating junk food or too many carbs, etc.
Nutritional Deficiencies are so common that people hardly need to be reminded of them. Most people
probably think that deficiencies are the whole problem. The causes of nutrient deficiencies are many: depleted and poisoned soil, eating junk food, physiological damage
(such that nutrients can't be absorbed and/or utilized), poor diet choices beyond eating junk food, etc. etc. etc.
I do have a few thoughts though:
Vitamin D3
Vitamin D3 deficiencies are very rampant because our genes were selected from the deep time of hundreds of millions of years ago to 10,000 years ago when
we started building houses, wearing clothes, and wandering far from the high plains of equatorial East Africa, with the emphasis on the words "high" and
"equatorial". All of these unchangeable facts of modern living reduce the amount of sunlight that we get, and sunlight is essential for the skin to create vitamin D3.
In general, darker skinned folks need more than lighter skinned people to supplement (or sunbathe) with vitamin D3, depending upon how dark their skin is, just as
white folks need to wear a hat to protect themselves from sunburn when they are in the tropics.
Because the medical profession is so diligently ANTI-NATURAL and pro sub-natural drugs, ALL of our standards for nutrients are too low. This is undoubtedly
the cause of the misery and early deaths of millions of people every year.
Iodine, selenium, boron, and many other minerals
Countless minerals are missing or deficient in our diet because they are missing in our foods because farmers insist upon winning
the short race even if we all lose the long race. Plants can't biologically transmute elements the last time I checked.
Sulfur in particular is a super-massive problem since it is not even recognized by our society as being essential. I have experienced and have seen far too
many other people make super-massive health gains from supplementing with MSM. The 'S' in MSM stands for sulfur or one of its many molecules.
Functional deficiencies
Because of genetic or epigenetic factors and past trauma, a person may need to take very large amounts of a vitamin or other nutrient. I have to take more
than 1000 times the RDA (Recommended Daily Amount) of vitamin B1 or else the intense pain of peripheral neuropathy returns. I have tested this hypothesis
countless times accidentally by forgetting to take my B1 vitamins, so it is a painful fact for me, one I may not ever be able to rise above.
These conditions are called functional deficiencies; mine was caused by my previous experience with diabetes2.
Electrolytes
Electrolytes are a tricky deficiency that I was just recently surprised about. I started taking 3 grams of salt every morning, and my recovery time went
from 3 days to 3 hours. I also do potassium and MSM. This can happen when people switch to a ketogenic or carnivorous diet.
Macro-nutrient Imbalances Nutrient deficiencies are not the only problem with ingredients and fake/processed foods.
The ratio of fat to carb to protein also matters, a lot. It actually can be the difference between life and death, between suicide and living happy, strong, and healthy.
All carbs turn into glucose except fiber. All, including the good, the bad, and the ugly (sugar). High levels of glucose in the blood spike insulin.
Constant high levels of insulin will harm you in the form of obesity, diabetes2, high blood pressure, depression, suicidal thoughts, etc. etc. etc. Most junk food is
primarily carbohydrates. So not only is junk food deficient in most all nutrients, it is also lethally unbalanced.
Comfort Addiction Everyone wants to be comfortable, but a little discomfort is necessary if we want to
stay healthy. Our genes demand some discomfort: cold, intense exertion, breath holding, huffing and puffing, sore muscles from lots of push-ups, etc.
Our gene expression (epigenome) requires some discomfort. There is of course a "too much" just as our usual pampered lifestyle is "too little".
There is a place for comfort, while one is socializing, while sleeping, and generally much of the time. But always is a disaster.
One of the biggest barriers to health building is the avoidance of discomfort. Very little can be accomplished if one is unwilling to step out of their
comfort zone.
In fact, there is NO healing without comfort, while healing. But there is no growth without discomfort. But in our prosperous society, there is only comfort and
no discomfort, so there is nothing to heal and therefore no growth.
Science and Certainty Everyone wants to be certain, so we turn to science. Science can be extremely helpful
for that. But, some people are fixated on the consensus of the scientific community as though that was science itself. But this in itself is
an unscientific attitude. But what happens when the scientific community or the guys in the white coats tell you that your problem has no cure and that you are just
going to get worse and worse and then die a painful death? What happens when you know that they are wrong? What happens when there is a scientific
revolution and some are saying "X" and others are saying not just "Y" but "anti-X". Then what? What happens if and when you find it necessary to look
outside of conventional scientific wisdom? Some of the scientific community and almost ALL of the guys in the white coats are a bought and paid-for
subsidiary of large corporations, especially the pharmaceutical companies. Their conclusions can often be bought just a like politicians can be bought. And to be completely
honest with myself and you, I might even be capable of allowing myself to be bought. (But here, you notice that I am not selling anything.)
You can still get a lot of certainty most of the time from the scientific community. Although a lot of science literature is indecipherable by most people, you can search
for scientists who speak ordinary English (like Dr. Andrew Huberman, Dr. Jason Fung, Dr. Shawn Baker, Dr. Rhonda Patrick, etc), and this can be very helpful. Even these
people cannot all be entirely trusted because we can't know everything. Finding people who translate science papers for us ordinary folk (like Sten Ekberg,
Mike Mutzel of High Intensity Health, Thomas DeLauer, etc. ) is helpful also. Then there are people with no credentials but who have been successful, like Wim Hof, me,
the dude at "Minus the Gym" on YouTube, etc., too numerous to mention.
You can get certainty by experimenting, with care, on yourself. Learning to feel your own level of inflammation is very, very valuable. Listen to your body.
Don't confuse the strain of hormesis with the pain of an actual injury. Like if you do push-ups to failure one day and the next day have muscle pain.
That pain is the feeling that you get when weakness leaves the body. (Weakness is literally toxic and can kill you, even if it is not concrete or tangible.)
This is where principles and the intuitive application of principles help us. For example, if something seems non-paleo, like seed oils (polyunsaturated oils),
that is an immediate red flag for us, because they could not exist without a lot of modern machinery. They did not exist 10,000 year ago, so you know that your genes are not
adapted to deal with such oils. If I tell you that being addicted to comfort is a cause for a lot of problems, you don't need a scientific study to prove that to be true.
It follows naturally and intuitively from paleo thinking.
FloodLight Effect is when we can't see a lit light bulb when it is in direct sunlight, or it seems so dim
as to be irrelevant. There is not enough contrast. This is the Floodlight Effect.
Intense exercise gives a good example. A person does intense exercise their whole life and gets into his/her 60's and gets cancer and asks the doctor what happened.
What probably happened is that the individual was so confident and successful with their intense exercise routine that they didn't feel it necessary to take advantage also
of cold showers, a ketogenic diet, fasting, or other holistic healing practices. Our modern culture is so antithetical to health (even if they say otherwise) that we always
have to keep an eye on making sure that we are not doing just "enough" but rather a lot for our health. The intense exercise worked so well for them that they didn't think
that they needed anything more. This happens a lot.
Another example of this is when a person finds something that actually works for them; they want to tell everyone else about it and convert everyone to their way of thinking,
not realizing that there may be much better practices. For example, vegans give up junk food and think that their new plant-based diet is awesome, not realizing that people
who switched to a ketogenic diet and who gave up junk food in general are doing much better than they are.
The Placebo/Nocebo Effect "Placebo" is the well-known effect that happens when we let wishful thinking get in the
way of our clear thinking. A really good example is Percival Lowell who had a major impact on culture and literature
with his three books about his seeing canals on Mars and hypothesizing that they were proof that he was seeing intelligent life. Since we have sent numerous probes to Mars, we
now know that he wasn't seeing intelligent life. He was seeing what he wanted to see. This is called the "placebo effect".
The opposite of the placebo effect is the nocebo effect, denying that there is something there when there IS something there. Both effects are basically the same effect,
allowing one's mindset, desires, and wishes to get in the way of clear and unbiased observation and thinking. An experienced holistic self-healer is aware of this
and compensates for it.
Greed Always be suspicious of people's motivation, no matter who they are. This doesn't mean that you can't trust them at all.
It means that you have dole your trust out prudently. Often the desire or need for money can manipulate the honesty of sources of information. Even people I trust,
like Sten Ekberg and Eric Berg, get a nervous look in their eyes when they have to advertise, fearing that their credibility is on the line. And they declare openly
if they are receiving any money from any corporations. We, all of us holistic health people, know that money has poisoned the medical profession into being nothing more
than shills for the pharmaceutical company. Even scientists can be bought as easily as a politician. So we all know how damaging the bribe can be.
Fortunately I am such a small fish that I don't count in the eyes of the pharmaceutical companies.
Chronic Stress is a very underrated problem because most people don't understand what it does
to people and even pets and other animals. Even people who are under chronic stress don't realize how bad it is. It switches your autonomic nervous
system to "fight, flight, freeze, or faun", chronically. This is called the sympathetic nervous system, which is not very sympathetic.
It involves different actual nerves than the parasympathetic nervous system, the one where your body can heal, or the "rest and digest" nervous system.
Imagine that you are running from a pack of hyenas. Your body is not going to be interested in healing, but rather simply surviving.
Once you free yourself from that stressor, then you can heal. But if it is your mortgage or your angry employer, your stress could be chronic and keep you from healing.
If you grew-up in a stressful home then your autonomic nervous system could be habituated to being in "fight, flight, freeze, or faun" sympathetic nervous system mode.
That is when things get really shitty. PTSD could put you in "fight or flight" mode constantly.
Much of holistic healing involves reducing chronic stress. Do not confuse chronic stress with temporary stress, which is generally a good thing, because it
stimulates hormesis (see above). Doing push-ups to failure is very stressful, temporarily, and can be positively celebratory when one is finished. And for
the next day or so your muscles may hurt but they will thank you with growth and better metabolic health. But if you push-uped to failure 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, your
muscles would atrophy and eventually you would die young because you didn't get a chance to heal.
Disconnection from Nature is ubiquitous. We evolved in natural settings that are usually very soothing. If you don't
believe me, look at what those people of means do with their living space, homes, yards, etc.; they make it as natural and as artistic as possible.
Soothing is not something trivial. It relaxes us toward the parasympathetic state where healing is possible. And hectic, unnatural environments push us towards the
sympathetic state, where healing does not happen.
One surprising example of the benefit with living closer to nature is the draining of excess electrical charge, which is called grounding or earthing.
But we don't have to live like our ancestors did to accomplish this. Sleeping on a conductive sheet that is grounded will do the trick. I was absolute astonished
when I started sleeping on a grounded conductive sheet. It was like the difference between day and night with my inflammation.
But we here don't go after the
symptoms of excess inflammation. We go after the causes. Why bother with expensive medical visits and tests when it is easy to determine if you have
excess inflammation. You can easily feel it. And if you are over 45 years old in the modern world, you almost certainly have inflammation unless you are
already doing something about it.
system to "fight, flight, freeze, or faun", chronically. This is called the sympathetic nervous system, which is not very sympathetic.
It involves different actual nerves than the parasympathetic nervous system, the one where your body can heal, or the "rest and digest" nervous system.
Imagine that you are running from a pack of hyenas. Your body is not going to be interested in healing, but rather simply surviving.