The Secret

Posted on June 14, 2010 by Josh

The Secret to your woes is not your body. It’s not the shape of your body. You may think it is, but you’re wrong.

It’s not your level of physical fitness. It’s not your athleticism, or lack thereof.

It’s not what kind of car you drive, or how much money you make, or what kinds of things you own.

The secret is your culture. It’s what you surround yourself with every day. It’s what gives deepest meaning and fulfillment, support and recognition, love and energy to your life.

That’s the secret.

Manipulation
I’ll use this word here, not in the commonly used negative connotation of the term, but in the various ways it’s defined by Merriam Webster:

1 : to treat or operate with or as if with the hands or by mechanical means especially in a skillful manner
2 a : to manage or utilize skillfully b : to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one’s own advantage
3 : to change by artful or unfair means so as to serve one’s purpose

Everyone is always being manipulated.

Your culture is your biggest source of manipulation. From the second you are born, people are talking to you. When they do, they are imparting their ideas about the world onto you. You absorb those ideas, and, over time, begin to resemble them in small and not-so-small ways.

Beyond that immediate source of change is your community. Your community shapes what you see. Your family will live among, but more importantly, associate with, families with similar values to theirs.

Your friends, for the most part, will have a similar socio-economic status to yours. They will value similar things to those that you do. They will think similarly about the world – look through a similar cultural lens.

Another step out is the larger culture you live with – your society. The society you live within has its own guidelines, it’s own rules and agendas.

Everyone always has an agenda.

Society’s agenda may or may not be aligned with your own, or that of your community. You may find your complaints go unheard in society at large. You may alternately find that you have no complaints, because you’ve accepted “the way it is.”

Further, your own agenda may not be aligned with your own! This is the most difficult piece to figure out, and the place where many people experience the greatest suffering in their lives. You have deep, sometimes hidden, feelings, desires, and needs, but outwardly live in accordance with your culture. The degree of difference between your internal feelings, desires, and needs, and the way you’re living, is the precise degree to which you suffer in life.

Support
If your community and family support you, if they form a solid base, a safety net, a place of love, security, and comfort, you will live a long and happy life.

If not, you will struggle. You will seek that base, that comfort, in other things, and never find it. It can be anything – drugs, sex, work, religion, hobbies – anything that gives the appearance of those most-fundamental needs.

Ultimately, though, you will not feel what you were looking for, and you will leave, turn to another path – or drown yourself in the pursuit.

Physical Fitness
Physical fitness is meaningless without a purpose for that fitness. Many people go to the gym and workout day in and day out. They may get into excellent physical condition, simply to go sit at a computer, or drive a truck, or stand behind a counter.

Their fitness is purposeless, which is why it cannot be the ultimate fulfillment they seek. If they have community, if they have support, they workout from that base. If not, they seek that base in fitness activities, or see fitness as a “counterbalance” to the activities they are seeking their base in.

Physiology
People in Western culture generally live to be 75-85 years of age – regardless – or in spite of – of their level of physical fitness, their diets, or their communities.

However, the people who feel fulfilled, and who are functional late into life, will be the ones who were happiest. The ones who had deep congruence with their community, or who found it somewhere.

If your physiology is in a negative state due to stress/bad mood/no love/etc., it doesn’t matter how good your diet is. Your food won’t be digested well, first. What is processed will be used inefficiently. Waste excretion will be poor.

Until you get out of that bad physiological state, the energy that is consumed will largely be used to further that state. That’s how the body works.

Longevity
So what is the key to longevity? The book “The Blue Zones” says it’s several things:
Family – Family is put ahead of other concerns.
No Smoking – Centenarians do not typically smoke.
Plant-based diet – The majority of food consumed is derived from plants.
Constant moderate physical activity – Moderate physical activity is an inseparable part of life.
Social engagement – People of all ages are socially active and integrated into their communities.
Legumes – Legumes are commonly consumed.

But I would put community, or culture – living in a familiar, safe, supportive, caring community – first among them. Everything after that is gravy. Because, really, if you have that, it doesn’t matter how long you live…

Of course, there’s also something to be said for sheer grit

What’s Eating at You – Diet?

Posted on February 7, 2010 by Josh

My recent post on the Paleo diet raised some great questions and comments from various sources.

I want to say something about diet here.

A “healthy” diet varies by region, by geography. YOU ARE NOT SEPARATE FROM YOUR ENVIRONMENT.

: Fukuoka. He was continuous with his environment…

Your physiology is determined to a great degree by your environment. The type of terrain you have to navigate, and how you navigate it. How frequently you have to move through that terrain, similarly, and what types of tasks you need to accomplish in what type of frequency, will also determine your physiology.

The weather in your geography – the barometric pressure in your area, the amount of rainfall every year, of sunlight – will determine how your body looks, feels, and can move.

The types of animals and plants available for consumption in your area represent natural energy that is in synchrony with the seasons your body is in. Eating outside of that synchrony (the old “I live in NYC, but eat strawberries from Brazil) creates metabolic discord in your system.

Yes, human beings need a certain amount of nutrients, but not as much as you’re told, or as you think, or from the sources you’ve been told (or think) that those nutrients are “supposed to” come from.

Before I go much further, consider the wide range of climates and geographies that human beings inhabit. From deserts to ice-packs, from coniferous and deciduous forests to rain forests, from tropics to temperate zones to the arctics.

In each of these places, human animals live just fine. They can, if times are good, live to the same ripe old ages that human animals in any other area live to (given the same good conditions).

It’s not about a specific diet.

: “Happiness, is a smile on a dog”

Consider This
Instead, I think it’s more important to consider the state of the physiology the diet is going into.

If you are happy, and feel safe and secure, things in your body tend to run smoothly. Homeostasis is achieved and maintained easily. Your body heals faster. Things correct themselves.

If you are unhappy, your body is constantly releasing stress-hormones that break things down. They tear your body up from the inside.

Don’t Worry, Be Happy
In the happy state, the food you ingest, whatever it is, will flow through that smooth-running system. Your body is miraculous in its ability to take what it needs and discard what it does not (as long as you’re moderate in consumption).

In the unhappy state, the food you ingest will not be processed well. Your body won’t be capable of digesting, it will be busy constantly preparing to defend itself. Things won’t go right. You’ll have gastro-intestinal disorders – ulcers, heartburn, acid reflux, poor digestion.

In that unhappy state, it doesn’t matter what you eat.

Not only that, but what does get absorbed will simply be put to use continuing the bad state. That sounds like hell.

Eat What’s In Season, Where You Live, Now
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t advocate eating McDonald’s. And I agree with Michael Pollan, to a point. Not every locale produces the same foodstuffs. Pollan’s dictum, to “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants,” is not actually how we evolved. Our brains got bigger from eating a lot of protein. Plants don’t have a lot of that. I have a different idea.

Eat as much organic, locally-grown food as possible. Reduce or eliminate processed foods (including breads) from your diet. Whatever is in season, is what is best for you at that point.

Part of the thing we Northern-European humans used to do was to rest more in the winter. It would be cold, it would snow. It wouldn’t be a good time to work. And there wouldn’t be much work to do. We could live off of dried goods for a while, till those ran out. Then we were stuck with whatever we could gather from the land. Pine needle tea. Hardy winter greens. Root vegetables. Animal meat.

It’s not hard to imagine.

: I can imagine that!

What Determines Your Happiness?
Your happiness is directly related to your feeling of safety and support in the world. A community of like-minded individuals, a “tribe” (a word/concept that’s catching on these days).

In the womb of the tribe, you are complete. Your worldview is reinforced and supported. You are cared for. You are able to do your work, and step back, without attachment.

You are able to be happy.

the exuberant animal tribe

The use and abuse of science

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Josh

Science is out of control. And it needs to be put in the corner for a time-out.

In many blog entries, I’ve discussed the lack of scientific (or common-sense) validation for running shoes.

Eyal Lederman wrote an excellent article recently regarding the similar lack of scientific validation for current ideas surrounding “core stability.”

But what spurred this blog entry was a presentation by Dr. Robert Mazzeo gave to my graduate class last week about his work studying mitochondria.

“Mitochondria = Longevity”

Mitochondria are the “powerhouses” of your cells. They convert glucose and/or pyruvate into ATP, the nucleotide your cells use to do work.

Essentially, researchers have found that mitochondrial density (the number of mitochondrion per area unit) increases when rats are put on a calorically-restricted (CR) diet.

Further, they’ve shown that certain of these rats (called “responders”) live up to 40% longer than “normal” rats.

Dr. Mazzeo is a specialist in the field of cellular metabolism. I trust him when he says that there is an increase in mitochondrial density resulting from calorically restricted diets in lab rats.

But I’m more than a little confused about the connection of the research to longevity, or implications for longevity research generally.

In the past century, average lifespan in humans has increased due to preventive/treatment methods, hygiene, etc., while maximal lifespan (that is, ultimately how long people can live) has not (Lanza, et. al, abstract).

According to the Lanza paper, this is related to mitochondria, mitochondrial density, and the metabolic load (specifically, on mitochondria) associated with caloric intake. While it may be true that increase in mitochondria occurs in concert with extended maximal lifespan (in some animals), does that imply causation, or even direct correlation?

First, what about the non-responder rats? Are they “not normal?” In the studies that have been performed, non-responder rats are from a different genetic “strain” of rat.

Then, what about the rats that get “averaged out” in statistical analysis?

Why does the effect occur only when CR is introduced at a very early age in the lifespan? In all of the studies, maximal lifespan only increases when CR is introduced within the first few weeks of the rat’s life and then maintained from there.

There seem to be differences between mitochondria created in response to caloric restriction and those created in response to physical activity, and hopefully Dr. Mazzeo’s research will shed light on that question. But, again, does that mitochondrial increase (happening, simultaneous to increased maximal lifespan) imply causation? And does it transfer to human animals?

What are the other physical/metabolic structures/processes that differ between these two classes of stimulus?

The complexity of natural organism function needs to be considered when making claims like this.

To quote Booth and Laye (2009) – “Normal physiological processes are dynamic, integrated, periodic, and therefore, it is difficult to define normal physiological function by looking at a single time point or single process in a non-stressed subject” (abstract). It, I think, is far too simplistic to point at a single cellular function and make the claim that it (alone) increases maximal lifespan.

Another issue has to do with what the true maximal lifespan or caloric intake of rats is.

Human beings have been known to live as long as 122 years (as far as we’ve recorded), and people throughout history have been known regularly to live well into their 80’s. We might suppose that human “maximal lifespan” is somewhere around 125 years, given optimal genetics, environment, etc., throughout that lifespan.

There are a few populations (specifically, centenarian populations) around the world that exhibit unusual consistency in long lifespan, supposedly due precisely to “optimal conditions” (that include such a diversity of “causes” as: family, absence of smoking, largely plant-based diets usually including legumes, constant and moderate physical activity, and social engagement and the accompanying structures – see the book “Blue Zones” by Dan Buettner for his analysis of these populations).

Perhaps the researchers in rat studies have not increased the maximal lifespan of these lab rats, they’ve merely found what the maximal lifespan is for (a select strain of, “responder”) rats when those animals are isolated in ideal conditions (for lengthy lifespan).

Further, what is “caloric restriction” for rats? Animals with less “self-regulatory” mechanism frequently (naturally/evolutionarily) take advantage of large stores of calories whenever they find them. “Feast or famine” is programmed into many animals (human beings included). In these studies, are the researchers really “restricting” calories below what is “optimal” for the rats, or are they actually feeding the rats an optimal level of calories. That is, these rats are fed diets that appear to be calorically restricted based on a human understanding/analysis of “normal” rats whose natural instinct might be to eat well beyond what a human “normal” when opportunity provides for excess in a “natural” (non-lab) setting.

On a final, philosophico-theoretical note, I’m interested in what the implications would be if mitochondrial density due to caloric restriction were found to increase maximal lifespan in human beings. Why increase maximal life span? To what end? What is the quality of that lifespan? Especially with regard to increasing levels of disease in the population at large due to ever-rising pollutant/toxicity levels in everything from the air to the food we eat. Perhaps we should focus first on quality, and then on quantity. In fact, if we focus on quality, quantity might naturally follow, as found (again) in centenarian populations scattered throughout the world.

The biggest issue I have, though, has little to do with any of that.

Rather, it’s about scientists and other “authority figures” in our society presenting sentences like “caloric restriction leads to increased longevity.”

It’s not true. It’s not clear. It’s not responsible.

Very few people in our society have been given the “critical thinking” classes they’d need in order to hear news like this and use it the way they should (which is, not at all).

Again, this type of talk (authority/consumer) supports our basic ideas too, that common sense is not good enough, that the lessons of your elders are meaningless, that science (or authority in general) holds all the answers, that you can’t do it on your own.

You can. You should. And, ultimately, you do whether you believe “they” are helping you or not.

References
Booth, F.W., Laye, M.J. (2009). Lack of adequate appreciation of physical exercise’s complexitiescan pre-empt appropriate design and interpretation in scientific discovery. Journal of Physiology, Ahead of Print.

Buettner, D. (2009). The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest. Washington DC: National Geographic Books.

Lanza, I.R., Nair, S. (2009). Mitochondrial function as a determinant of life span. European Journal of Physiology, Ahead of Print.

Grandma

Posted on March 17, 2009 by Josh

Two weeks ago I headed out to Michigan to see my grandma. She’s recently been diagnosed with colon cancer. That being said, she seemed absolutely the same as ever. Cheerful, optimistic, happy.

My grandma has a couple of habits that I thought I’d share with you. The first is this – every day, when she wakes up, she says “Happy day, happy day! Thank you God for another day!” She told me that she does this, and said she’s been doing it for years.

The other habit my grandma has is to comment on how wonderful things are. After breakfast at Colonial Kitchen (like a Denny’s for you non-midwesterners out there) she said, ”Well wasn’t that wonderful?!”

Well, I wouldn’t have called it “wonderful.” But when she said it, I thought, “why not?!” So I said “YES! It was wonderful!”

Some people see this type of behavior as silly, or unrealistic. I see it as imposing the power of positive thinking on your life.

This approach also puts you in control of your life. Truly, you can’t change external events, you can only change your response to them. Take this attitude versus diet books, the news, advertising/marketing – whose message is always the same – you don’t know what’s best for you, and we do.

Another thing I like about my grandma’s approach is that it favors simplicity over complexity. While this may not be apparent at first glance, take a closer look at what’s going on. When she says “Wasn’t that wonderful?!” about a breakfast, she’s saying “you know what, I can enjoy even the most simple things…and in fact, those things are most wonderful!”

This is the same attitude my friends over at GarageStrength take. Read their post about dietary fiber, and transfer that to any pharmaceutical cure versus the natural healing powers of the body (when given time and space to perform). Simple solutions are best. Get your fiber and nutrients from your diet, and you don’t have to worry about whether or not you took your pill today. This is also the central theme of Egoscue therapy, which I’m more and more impressed with on a daily basis – surgery versus functional correction. Simple is always better, but our culture is obsessed with/possessed by complexity.

The thing I like most about grandma’s attitude, if you couldn’t tell, is that it encapsulates what’s known as “Positive Mental Attitude.” PMA is a choice. And it’s a muscle. Use it or lose it!

Back to Nature

Posted on December 6, 2008 by Josh

Aside from being part of the title of one of my favorite books, the heading for this post represents something that I think we all need to start considering and working toward as individuals, communities, and nations.

While this post may be a little far-reaching in scope, and is not dedicated strictly to exercise, I feel personally that this topic represents the root cause of all of the “evils” we experience in our modern world.

What is “nature?” I define nature as the living ecosystem that is the Earth, minus the creations of humankind. Martin Heidegger made what I believe to be a wonderful distinction between the World (man-made environment), and the Earth (the living substrate, the planet itself).

Agriculture and animal husbandry, in its early stages, represented a very close connection with nature, and a deep understanding of our place in it. As our civilizations have become more abstracted from that ground, the ills of mankind have erupted.

Disease, as the result of poor diet, lack of exercise, or overcrowding, rarely happens in nature. Granted, there are diseases (viruses, pathogens, poisons, etc.) that effect any animal, but our created environment as separate from the natural world has given birth to most of the diseases that plague humanity (heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, cancers, etc.).

Our recent (and ongoing) economic catastrophe has no other ultimate cause than the complete disconnection of our value-system from nature. Value is now ethereal. The US Treasury can (and does, and will continue to) print paper money that has no real representation in the physical realm. Our financial woes will continue until our greed is outweighed by our wisdom, and we return our basis for trade on physical things that are capable of actually being traded.

The disconnection from nature extends to agriculture as well, which is horribly sad, where computer-run combines and harvesters automatically plow and till, reap and sow. They turn up the soil, exposing the delicate balance of micronutrients and microorganisms within it to oxygen and sunlight, thereby killing them, making the soil into dust. They can then justify the use of more petro-chemicals, to “replenish” the soil. To “make it better.”

Our own bodies, our minds and our lives, suffer from this disconnection as well. We live in boxes composed of smooth planar surfaces that rob us of tactile and visual stimulation. We sit on formulaic chairs, benches, and sofas, that put us in the same position all the time. We walk on similarly-constructed smooth planes, in feet encased in pillows. Our soles get no input from our environment, and our souls are bereft because of it. Our ankles receive no stimulus, and we get severe sprains just stepping off a curb. Our bodies begin to conform to the environments we force them into, and are soon unable to move effectively and efficiently.

In the meantime, our new God, science, tells us how to incorporate nature back into our lives – but on the terms of science, of course.

Need more micronutrients? Take a pill. Need more macronutrients? Here’s a liquid meal. Want beautiful veggies? Fertilize, insecticize. Want to be more fit? Take a jog on the treadmill, walk on a pad made to resemble a riverbed, sit on a stability ball, do more woodchops on a cable resistance machine.

Meanwhile, the folks who still eat vegetables pulled straight from the earth, who still eat a little fertile black soil accidentally now and then, who still walk on the riverbed to get to their neighbor’s or loved-one’s homes, who still do “woodchops” by actually chopping wood outdoors in fresh clean air, who get their vitamin D from a daily exposure to sunlight, and who mitigate their financial worries by growing what they need and living simply – the ones who live in harmony with nature…

they live the longest.