READERS SUMMARY: 1. To discover the unknown we must use the known to guide our thoughts to see the future. 2. How should we think about evolution and health now? Counterintuitive is an axiomatic cognitive ability required for neurosurgical residency training and that is why I chose to tackle this problem in this fashion. 3. [...]
READERS SUMMARY: HOW CAN A LEAKY GUT CAUSE ADRENAL FATIGUE? CAN OTHER THINGS COMPLICATE THIS LIKE A VIRAL INFECTION? CAN WE TREAT IT? HOW DO WE TREAT IT? CAN YOU HOPE FOR IMPROVEMENT TOO? A PATIENT TESTIMONIAL AFTER JUST 4 MONTHS OF TREATMENT We have talked at length on my forum about how a leaky [...]
The readers of my forum asked for a FAQ's on CT and I decided it would be a good idea to make a short blog about this. They picked their top 25 questions and I decided to answer them for this blog. If you have any others, just ask in the comments section. I answer them all when I have time.
READERS SUMMARY: WHY IS IRON IMPORTANT? HOW DOES IT AFFECT LIFE AT A 30ft LEVEL MICROSCOPICALLY HOW DOES IT AFFECT LIFE AT A 30,000 ft LEVEL IN OUR OCEANS HOW DID EVOLUTION USE IRON TO PROTECT US AND OUR SPECIES? HOW DID A PROTECTIVE EFFECT BECOME A DEADLY DISEASE IN 50 YEARS RIGHT UNDER OUR [...]
Well, it has been a very interesting last few days but I am not the kind of person who looks in the rear view mirror to run my race. What happened happened and it will all come out in the wash eventually. I am a person who runs their own race by looking forward via the windshield as I step on the accelerator pedal to live my life. If we focus on the past we lose sight of where we are headed and the road to Optimal. A reader of mine, Dan K, sent this gem to me, "I heard the Dalai Lama once say in a lecture that our worst enemies are your greatest teachers because they allow you to examine the emotions of anger and revenge and then to transcend them. They give you the exact tools you need to elevate yourself to the spiritual energies that eliminate problems and provide solutions." So today, I am moving toward the Paleo template and away from the "Paleo Radical Insurgency" who is steering the community into an abyss. There are too many people who need help and not the surrounding drama. The time has come to become, Epi-paleo, a term I mentioned at my Paleo fx speech, and that is what I will be building here on my blog and forum from here on out. An event that appears to be a tragedy to one, might reveal the seeds of unlimited opportunity for another. On the Low Carb cruise I was going to present some of the things that happened in my mind at the base of Michelangelo's David in help me realize that the missing piece to the obesity and insulin resistant story was the "off switch" in how we make fat and how we continue to make fat cells. Gary Taubes was scheduled to be the featured speaker for the cruise, but he could not attend, so Jimmy Moore asked me to step in his role. Gary wrote a book called, "Why we get Fat" but I clearly am not Gary Taubes, and I was not here to tell them why we get fat…I was going to tell you how to reverse being fat and insulin resistant…because unlike, Mr. Taubes, I have done it myself and pretty successfully. Obese humans have a difficult life to live. I know the life they live because I was one of them for close to decade. It is very hard to take advice from someone who has never had obesity. To understand the mindset one has to have walked in the shoes. Most of the people giving out advice however have not had a successful track history of losing the weight and keeping it off. The reason for this is they are prisoners to modern dogma of fatness.
Today, I want to introduce you to someone who is a true 'Paleo leader' by stepping up to the the challenge I put to our community at PaleoFx conference recently held in Austin, Tx. Kevin Cottrell is one of the co founders of Paleo Fx. The leaders of Paleo fx have to be commended because the conference they were able to put on in 150 days of prep time was nothing short of remarkable. The conference exceeded all my expectations and the reviews of many attendees have been stellar. The future of this community is tied to clinical application of what the science continues to show in the literature. For assimilation of the Ancestral Lifestyle to become mainstream we need to have more clinical conferences like Paleo fx, and we need to take them globally. Today, I am breaking new ground and presenting to you my first guest blog written by Mr. Kevin Cottrell, who has agreed to share his personal story and personal medical history with all of you so that he may help you in some way. I think what he has agreed to do here is the most noble and worthy things to do to help our community and mankind. I am indebted to him for this chance to publish his story for you to consider. The following post is written by Kevin, in his words, to share with you and yours, to help open your eyes and challenge your "own dogma and current intuition' to help you reach for optimal health.
You must become aware of the high cost of low living by cheap thinking. In biology, we often get what we deserve when we forget this. Today’s CPC will illustrate that point for you. Wasting your time doing things that do not get you to Optimal is losing opportunity to improve yourself. Today.......and every day from here become very aware of time. Be wise in the use of time. The question for living an Optimal life is never how much time do I really have...it is in how you use the time you have. And when you realize that…….you can begin to reverse the errors you made in that time. There is a great lesson here for those willing to think. I hope the sharpness of this message strikes you in the correct fashion. When you think average you get average. Reject mediocre...demand optimal from me, your loved ones, and most importantly yourself. When you get this lesson.........you will understand why there is much harm in wasting your most valuable asset. TIME The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of your life, the clearer we should see through it. If you continue to think the way you do your life's hour glass will remain opaque. Think, adapt, learn, become what you can only envision now through the actions those thoughts bring to you.
Whatever you hold in your mind will tend to occur in your life. If you continue to believe as you have always believed, you will continue to act as you have always acted. If you continue to act as you have always acted, you will continue to get what you have always gotten. If you want different results in your life or your work, all you have to do is change your mind. We do not need an intelligent mind that speaks, but a patient heart that listens. Make your choices and you create your life. It has been often said that the best lifestyle is the one based upon moderation. Do you really believe that? How do you define moderation? I think each person has their own idea of what moderation really means. I do not agree with this cliche at all. Why? Too many people use moderation as an excuse not to do their best for others. Why? Because it is safe for them to do so. Conventional medical advice often advocates the mantra, "everything in moderation" as its safety net. Even as a kid that cliche bothered me deeply inside. Should a 350 pound man that eats 4 dozen chocolates at night believe this is "moderately" better than eating 6 dozen a night? Is it OK for a drug addict to be pleased when they only take 5 oxycontin instead of the usual dozen? Is it OK for the person with mental illness to only take their medications 5 days a week over 7 days a week? Is it OK for an alcoholic to drink five shots on a Friday night instead of the usual ten?
Many of you may not know this, but I was asked to do to a speech in Nashville in March of 2012. I have to say with about 6 days to prepare it was rushed, but it was a lot of fun. I want to publicly say thank you to Misty Williams and Michael Hart for making this happen. In my talk, I told 1,200 people live on stage about the three thought experiments I came up with after reading, “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari”. I actually conceptualized the Ancient Pathway soon after the reading was done but where the thought experiments came to me, was at the foot of Michelangelo's David in Florence, when I was looking at him from behind. I realized that the major difference between him and I, was the world we both were living had radically changed in 500 years. From this insight I realized that circadian biology was the the major difference in David’s perfection and my obesity. From this spark of wisdom, I realized that obesity was an inflammatory brain condition. Because it was so, I could then reconstruct a signaling sequence to confuse my hypothalamus using signals from my vagus nerve and from the foods I ate using timing. Learning how the brain rewired in neural deafness using a cochlea implant made this easy game for me as a neurosurgeon.
Radical Theory #1: If our brains can rewire, then Einstein’s theories predict our biochemistry should be able to as well. My Leptin Rx and the modern cochlea implant definitively prove this in modern humans. Radical Theory #2: Considering that 90{a7b724a0454d92c70890dedf5ec22a026af4df067c7b55aa6009b4d34d5da3c6} of the earth’s current biome lives in extreme conditions on our own planet today still, we might need to consider that what we think is “our normal environment” is not so normal for most of life on our planet or our evolutionary history. Life on Earth evolved in an environment much like we see on Titan today; in a deep ocean frozen solid at its surface with the capability of life buried deep with in it. The only escape was due to ejectants of water vapor from super heated water from underwater volcanoes. All these things are present today on Earth’s crust too. There is one major difference now between the two. We are a lot warmer today than when life began. There are others, but when one looks at Titan we see a frozen giant moon with a monstrous ocean beneath it. All life on our planet came from the oceans first. We know this to be true as well. And because of this, studying extremophile forms of life here on earth today might explain the complexities of how biochemistry allows for life to exist at all in a thermoplastic environment. What the bio-astrophysics found on Titan with the Cassini Solstice mission, may be a huge clue that life first adapted to extreme environments and then was naturally selected and adapted to a cyclic warming trend on our planet's crust over time.