These are the first four chapters of Fuck Portion Control, offered as a sampling for what the book is like.
Those who are prudish or homophobic WILL NOT like the content of this book. Available in paperback (500 pages), or eBook.

Introduction

After a debilitating struggle with health and approaching death, unaided by doctors and abandoned by most people in my life I was forced to find my own solutions to health in order to not die. I was lucky to find such answers. But I also discovered answers to health problems which have plagued man for generations and I began excitedly sharing them with everyone on whose ear I could impose. Unfortunately I was still very sick, fat, and unhappy, and although I knew of what I was speaking not a single person listened. I watched in frustration as those around me fell into the same health traps as had complicated my own life, as the majority of people cannot see past their own nose let alone understand what the hell nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide is and why they should exhaust spare brainpower about it, for life these days does demand far more brainpower than it used to. Eventually I gave up trying to help those around me. One day I felt inexplicably compelled to start a blog to defer the substantial number of requests for insight I was beginning to receive from internet strangers. I had previously attempted my hand at writing and was a little disheartened realizing my life was probably destined to spread boring health information rather than exciting tales of adventure and romance. After all, most people’s eyes glazed over mere moments into discussing thyroid disease or the importance of coconut oil. 

Soon however I found the unintended style of my personal experience paired with unmatched insight into health was relished by others suffering just as I had. The title of my book and blog, Fuck Portion Control, was the only title that popped into mind and it stayed there with as much persistence as the inspiration to start. These words originate from my great joy in realizing the error of everyone who ever promoted self-deprivation as a way to health and wellness which had instead led me headlong into so much unnecessary pain and suffering. The proper way to health and wellness it seemed was not in starvation, overexertion, and fanaticism of diet and lifestyle but from an almost hedonist approach. More and more my work continued to impress upon me the new realization that life trends not toward death and decay but to life and health, and the way there is always rooted in reason and common sense. 

Part of the irreverent nature of my writing also required readers to remove preconceived entertainments which handicap not just pathways to good health but also to commonality among our fellow brothers and sisters, which the lack thereof is a very real impediment to physical health due to stress of conflict, separation, bias, economic inequality, and misunderstanding which weighs heavily upon the endocrine system. As well, more interesting than truth to us is often what we wish to be true. Even when facing death, confirmation bias is far more comforting to a person than healing. Given a choice to survive cancer or an ideology which contributes to its development most people will choose the ideology and die, which just so happens to be the reason a cure has not yet been achieved as scientists and medical researchers charge down boulevards of discovery in every direction but the correct, as biases of yesterday turn the compass point of research today. Take for instance the great hormone serotonin. Considered for decades to be the so-called ‘happiness hormone’ it has spurred countless studies, drugs, and reshaped the course of medical history, yet depression, anxiety, and other such diseases persist unchecked. Influenced by the bias that serotonin is “good,” authors of new studies on the hormone take for granted that those assumed characteristics might not in fact be correct. What if serotonin isn’t as has been described? It would mean that all studies on serotonin which assume its characteristics to be of a healing nature are flawed. This would certainly account for some of the failure of this particular arc of research to cure depression. Serotonin, as it turns out and as some studies are finally revealing, is not at all involved in happiness but is in fact a hormone of torpor, which means it slows things down. The mistaken characterization of it came from the apparent calming effect it had during experiments on the severely ill, who prior to treatment were excitable and erratic. By lowering the metabolic rate serotonin caused an appearance of therapy, which seemed to validate what was still entirely hypothetical. To the dismay of both patients and practitioners serotonin based medications often failed to heal these debilitating diseases in spite of much promise, and worsened things for countless others with side effects of such drugs as suicide and other mental deterioration. How could the hormone of happiness possibly carry a risk of suicide?

Ironically the very studies used to support such theories do contain valuable information, if you know how to look for it. I found answers and solutions to my own health problems from these studies, among others, because I learned how to read the information to find the evidence I was searching for. Thankfully there seems to be a growing motivation, in part from the backlash against the medical professions for failing to protect the health of the public, but also from increased awareness through social media and community organization to more willingly revisit accepted practices.

What I want to be true is that I am young and healthy again and have no problems whatsoever. Unfortunately there are and will always be limits to mortality that we must submit, but recognizing the bias of wanting something to be true helped me arrive at such accomplishments as what is in these pages, which stem from a new and comprehensive understanding of why diseases happen to the body and how to fix such conditions. 

After being failed by institutions I sought to discover practical and accessible ways in which healing could be accomplished, so that barriers to good health might be more easily overcome by anyone. It’s a good idea when reading this book to keep a notepad and paper handy to write down specific things which may be relevant to you.

This book was not professionally edited, so you must excuse my mistakes. Since some chapters are updated articles from my blog, information may be repetitious. Hopefully that will only serve to reinforce important information. Do not make the mistake of thinking that because you don’t identify with some of the chapters that you can afford not to read them—you, your friends, parents, siblings, and children are all human and subject to the same environmental factors which cause all disorders, and if you skip, say, the chapter on alcoholism you will miss very important information about the human body which can serve you in other capacities. Generally this book should be read from beginning to end, not skipping around at will as information is generally built upon and reliant on earlier chapters. And again, a paper and pencil are going to be your best tools in reading this book because you will not remember particular things due to the vast amount of information and will need to write down what you must do to improve your own condition.

Remember, like any worthwhile activity in life being healthy is not a destination, it is a practice. A journey. It is almost never too late to improve health, and you will be surprised how much healing the body is capable, if you only give it the chance. 

Good luck.

CHAPTER 1
The Staff of Life

There is a small town in northern Utah which encircles a United States Air Force base, once maudlin farmland spattered by a few small cloned tract-home developments now as dense as a Los Angeles suburb with as many or more shopping malls and certainly more malcontent, middle-class religionists. But when I was eight the town had yet to reach its adolescence, and the only destinations of note were the Triple Stop gas station at the entrance to our dirty little hillside neighborhood, the first place I ever ventured without the watchful eye of a parent, or the immense trash incinerator complex next door where in its scattered cooling ponds I and my brother and our friends would collect tadpoles into empty paint buckets and sentence them to an unintended yet ignominious death by asphyxiation in the ribbed garage of our unfinished suburban-American rambler. As I was only eight, a dearth of amenities was not so high on my list of concerns, but that this void of a place where rocket-powered fighter planes shook our neighborhood with frightening regularity was the most idyllic place my parents could find to raise their burgeoning young family was perplexing even at that age. Previous to this one-traffic-light seed of urban sprawl we had lived a few peaceful and joyous years on the island of Oahu, where the air is a weighted blanket scented with flowers and saltwater, playing under the burning sun and eating fresh road-side fruit after a long day of boogie-boarding in the kiddie surf, where I and my siblings possessed all the glee of naive, young island children and enjoyed the company of a diverse set of friends. 

Before Hawaii too we lived in Newport Beach, California, though our time there well preceded the invasion of the rich obtuse, a small aluminum washing bin for our pool was more enchanting than any fancy, olympic-sized luxury, minutes from the ocean and secure in the swaddling arms of the Southern Californian economy. Yet as well my birth, which had transpired a year previous to Newport occurred just outside of Phoenix, Arizona where my architect father and beauty-queen mother had begun their union after finding Los Angeles a little too hot-blooded for their conservative sentiments, where after winning the title of Miss Arizona in 1972 and achieving tenth most beautiful in the Miss America pageant my mother effortlessly segued into Hollywood as one of the original Barker’s Beauties on The Price is Right, a scene in the television show CHiPs, and a contract as an Orange Crush Soda spokesmodel till my suave, red-meat-and-potatoes and cream-on-his-cereal architect father seduced her away from a wealthy surgeon and the glitzy lights of fame and fortune with promises of a quiet life of six children, financial uncertainty, and forty years traipsing across the western half of the United States. I don’t blame her—If I met a man like my father, even knowing what my future held, I would make the exact same decision. But moderately cosmopolitain couple they were, living in such a small town did prove suffocating, so trips to Europe or Mexico were frequent, my siblings and I distracted from our regular abandonment by the lavishing of small prizes won from adventures far and exotic. Asked later why they carted us off from an island paradise my parents said they had grown tired of constantly good weather. In reality my Dad had been offered a lucrative involvement in a real estate development scheme, which unfortunately never materialized. My father did love skiing though, at a level resembling religious devotion, and as Oahu has no ski resorts I can see how the call of the Rocky Mountains might also have won out. So rather than basking in the heat of Phoenix, partying on the shores Orange County, or surfing the tranquil tides of Oahu it was in this dreary, sullen Northern Utah town I one day found myself at eight-years of age dancing in my underwear atop spare carpet squares in an unfinished concrete basement to Whitney Houston’s ‘I Want to Dance With Somebody.’ 

Yes! I thought with all the naivety of an eight-year-old, how great that would be to dance with somebody. That’s all I need to be happy. The song was full of pining joy, an uninhibited lust for life, and no less than a very angel of heaven was confirming that the hopes and wishes being instilled within me as a child would bear out unfettered through a life of inclusion and togetherness, and that my deepest wish fulfilled merely required its utterance.

In such a crowded house, as all five of my siblings had now been born, it was indeed a rare moment to be alone. As the soaring vocals punched through the cold basement air my limbs bounced and twirled with all the delight a child like me could summon. At the height of this party for one, in the midst of a blissfully ignorant celebration of life the strange and unexpected thought occurred to me that I was perhaps enjoying this song a lot more than might other boys. The horror that they would outright despise it was a thought to be banished! For a moment I felt embarrassed, but also perplexed as to why my lovely time was so suddenly spoiled with what I would later come to know as shame. In a moment I knew for the first time that I was different, though not a soul had yet to tell me so. Perhaps I simply knew by instinct that dancing to Whitney Houston in his underwear was not something my very male father would do, the man I so much wanted to be like. A satisfying resolution to my dilemma was not forthcoming, so I did not stop dancing. But there was a little less enthusiasm, a little less innocence. My childhood naivety had sprung its first leak.

In that dry, empty cul-de-sac there were three other boys my age. Sean, who lived in the house to our left was missing one hand and forearm, retaining only a few inches of limb past his elbow which ended in a blunt but perfectly smooth stump save for a button of skin at the end which was tied like the knot of a balloon. Sean was kind and fun and anticipated that others might consider him differently at seeing his lost arm and immediately offered an explanation for the absence of it the first time I met him (he was born that way). Cody, who lived to my right was a specimen of a young man—brazen, hot-headed, and handsome as the devil. I could never quite decide if I loved or feared Cody, trying my best to keep up with his feverish athleticism and determination I more often found myself stymied by an inability to match his inexhaustible energy and aggressiveness, which only served to inflame my obsession which of course I had no understanding of, as I was only eight. Brian, who lived far up the hill, was a different story. Less complex, I found ease in relating to him. Brian and I played together constantly. We seemed to be the same kind of boy, finding refuge with each other from those unspecified characteristics possessed of other boys. That he had a brother the same age as my own made us four a common sight roaming the dusty hilltop neighborhood. 

One bright spring day I bounded up to Brian’s house and knocked on the door. His mother answered, as she always did, and directed me to the basement to join my friends. Like our house the Smith’s basement was also unfinished, but where our stairs were carpeted and walls painted theirs was entirely a bare skeleton of construction lumber and makeshift storage. Stepping into the dim, muted light was like descending into the abandoned lair of a mad scientist—perfect for a handful of small-town American boys. While it wasn’t unusual for us to lack some clothing in the hot, dry summers, all of my friends were in various stages of total undress. The air was quiet, stiff with an unfamiliar expectation. “What are you doing?” I asked, immediately infected by the energy which seemed to jump from one boy to another. 

“Playing,” said Brian. 

“Guess what?” said our friend Jeff.

“What?”

“Michael can do the naked boogie dance.” 

“The what?” I replied, giggling at the word naked, my curiosity immediately piqued since I had never heard of such a dance. Michael smiled nervously, but unhesitatingly removed his underwear, buck naked on the bare concrete in all his glory and began to swing his wiener around and around in what we grown men later learn is properly called a helicopter. “HA!” I shouted, suddenly feeling nervous but also excited. I had never seen another person be so free with their own body. I was not supposed to get naked with other people, my mother had said. Well, specifically she had warned us against touching privates, not so much being naked, so technically I was not yet in violation of her expectations. The other boys laughed too, no doubt confused by similarly strange new feelings which began to tumble around inside my stomach. I was smart enough to know this would not pass muster, and keen to obey my parents, but it really did not seem like a dangerous situation, and I loved my friends and had many questions roaming my mind about the human body which had yet to be addressed by anyone. The thought of twirling my own wiener in such a manner seemed like something that really would be quite fun, and harmless. Our neighbor friend and Brian’s brother joined in too, little boy wieners twirling everywhere though I could not muster the courage to remove my own clothes, as the conflict between what I wanted to do and what I had been told had not yet come to a consensus.

“Want to play a game?” said Brian, segueing into a new idea as if twirling our penises was the most normal thing in the world, which for boys our age actually is if they don’t grow up in body-shaming communities. I didn’t reply, as my mouth had sealed up from anticipation. “It’s called Mommy-cow, baby-cow,” he explained before gathering together two old barstools in the corner of the room. He placed them methodically about a foot apart, and laid across both to let his wiener hang down between them. My excitement fully shifted to panic as Michael got on his knees beneath Brian and put his mouth where I never expected a mouth could be put.

I would not see the remainder of this scenario since I was suddenly outside and running breathless down the hill toward home. Halfway I immediately knew I regretted this decision, being both brave and a coward in the same moment, and that somehow I would regret it for the rest of my life. I almost turned around to go back, but then I would have felt embarrassed for running away. I was missing out on something important, something that would bring me closer to my friends but which I didn’t have the perspective to fully understand. The fear of my parents was stronger than my desire to belong, already knowing I was different, a doubling of my efforts to conform would be needed in order to survive. So I continued home, missing out on the first of many coming of age experiences.

Boys have been playing with each other since the dawn of man (and for that matter boys and girls, and girls and girls). A very thoughtful perspective from author Jane Ward considers that straight males engage in sexual contact with each other as children and young adults to confirm their heterosexuality. By experiencing intimacy with other men their attraction to women, which is many degrees greater, is made more obvious by comparison and thus cements their sexual identity. This is devastating to us homosexual boys who fall in love with them at these intersections of growing up only to find those boys veer off toward women when they begin adolescence, something we do not comprehend. Indeed the many gay men I know who had sexual contact with peers now partnered with women shows how men as boys find out that they are attracted to one sex or the other by comparing the degree of response to interactions with each (not all sexual) but which contact also brings inclusion and acceptance and love with their fellows as well. For young gay boys such as I, these encounters are our first foray into the sexual contact of our different orientation (although I would not even kiss another person until I was nineteen), and we enter into adulthood and find contact with our own sex the overwhelming satisfaction. This lack of inhibition in children toward one another is in fact one of the reasons why sexual abuse by adults is so traumatic to them, because the adult who is by definition not a peer and by exploiting this characteristic of children is not an appropriate object of the child’s psychological curiosity, and so their actions destroy this part of development in their victims. That fateful day as an eight-year-old boy where I chose to obey my parents at the price of my own wellbeing may be described by those with a prudish attitude as a moment in which I turned away from temptation. But sexual abuse can occur without any physical contact whatsoever, when cultures expose children to excessive and inappropriate discussions about sex and private parts, especially when accompanied by shame, which may even be motivated from an adult’s own experience of abuse but which is actually disruptive to a child’s normal development. What actually occurred that day in my friends basement was a severance of my ability to relate to others, both male and female, in order to comply with perceived expectations, to act on fear rather than courage because of inappropriate conditioning, and was the beginning of a life sentenced to psychological and emotional isolation, never learning the talent of drawing close to others, a debility which would compound the long, harsh decline of of my physical and mental health over the next thirty years and which would eventually nearly cost me my life not once, but twice.

A few weeks later my Dad came home one day with bikes for us four older children, all of which except mine had training wheels. “Don’t I need training wheels?” I asked as he steadied the little blue Husky brand bike while I fiddled with the black, velcro strapped pad wrapped round the crossbar between the handles. “I’m pretty sure I need training wheels.”

“You don’t need training wheels,” chided my father. “Riding a bike is easy.”

“But Dad—” I protested. I knew I needed to be tough, like Cody, especially since he might well be watching from his front windows and might only be interested in being friends with someone who was tough like he was, or so I thought. I also knew I didn’t know how to ride a bike, and training wheels were supposed to help one learn. “I think I should start with training wheels.”

“Training wheels are for wimps,” said my Dad. “I’ll keep it steady.”

His assurance was nothing of the sort, but having accepted responsibility for my wellbeing and seeing that he was my father after all and I was supposed to trust him, I climbed on the bike which wobbled under my weight, but his strong hands, dwarfing the handlebars, kept it upright. “Alright,” said my Dad as he began to slowly advance me down the driveway toward my siblings, who joyfully and naively careened around the cul-de-sac, training wheels scraping loudly on the hot asphalt. I envied their immediate indulgence in this activity, naive to the fear and anticipation required for mine. “Start pedaling,” he said. “I’ll give you a push.”

“What?” I shouted. “Don’t let go!” 

“You’ll do fine—” the reply was curt, unconcerned at an unacceptable level. He began to push harder. “No, Dad!” I started to protest, but he was so big the bike kept moving forward. “You’ll be fine” he repeated, pushing faster. “NO!” I yelled again, my shoulders shoved up under my ears, hands welded to the plastic handles from which blue plastic streamers fluttered gaily in the summer breeze, seeming only to taunt me. The fixed-gear pedals moved my feet, not the other way around as the bike moved faster and faster. The hard asphalt ground flew past as I cut through the group of my siblings through the cul-de-sac. “Pedal!” shouted my Dad, whose voice was now far behind me. I was alone. 

He had let go. 

The bike was inexplicably upright, held by some ghostly and unreliable mechanism, yet the curb on the other side was fast approaching like a tsunami of concrete, and dried tumble weeds in the empty lot beyond promised a swift and painful death. “Turn!” shouted my Dad, “turn the handlebars!” His voice was distant, mocking. But I could not turn. No one had taught me. The information was not in my brain and would not be by the time death arrived. If I moved the handle bars the bike would surely plant me into the asphalt, which on account of things was definitely worse than the relatively softer, dry brush. It did not matter anyway since it seemed I had lost control of my body entirely. The volume at which he shouted did nothing to help my little brain scramble for instructions to save myself. How could he not see all of this? Stop shouting! 

The bike’s front tire smashed into the end of the street and I let out what was surely neither a brave nor manly scream as I went over the handlebars. As I watched the weeds pass beneath my soaring body the fear of dying was immediately supplanted by a hatred for my father. I had put my trust with him, my very life into his hands, and over my own intelligent protests had condemned me to an embarrassing end to a very short and uneventful life. If I lived beyond this moment, which I surely would not, I would never trust him again.

The ground hit me hard, tumbleweeds ripping my face, arms, and ears. I suddenly found myself staring into the sky as the bike fell into the dirt next to me, a moment later flooded by a delayed onset of pain that was really more psychological that physical. Even so, I could not subdue my tears, especially not as my father wrested me from the ground and began to smack the dust from my clothes. I did not want to cry but I could not stop it. My Dad laughed a nervous, ungainly laugh which is laughed by men who have failed at the only job that truly matters but who are too proud to say they are sorry. Of course, being that age I only heard laughing, and through a torrent of furious sobs swore that I would never get on that bike again until it had training wheels, and ran into the house. 

Later that night my mother likely made us grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner, because if my childhood had a theme that theme is wheat and melted cheese, as it was these two ingredients which formed the foundation of almost all our nutrition. No doubt I was smiling and happy again by dinnertime, presented with the sight of gooey grilled cheese sandwiches or macaroni swimming in cheese sauce accompanied by slices of hot-dog, or perhaps what my mother\called cheese crisps, which were large flour tortillas topped with cheddar cheese and broiled under the broiler until blistering and crispy, dripping with delicious cheese-oil and served with tomato soup. Even meals already composed of wheat like macaroni or other pasta, bread and butter was a regular actor, although butter at this time was not actually butter but that obscene imposter, margarine. Not quite the behemoth I would become I nonetheless resented the size of the macaroni box, which when distributed evenly among six children and two adults hardly served to satisfy the hedonist portions of which all macaroni and cheese should be enjoyed. 

Like most middle-class suburban families during the closing years of the twentieth century, variety was not a priority because it was also not an option. We were, however, lucky to be indulged by my father’s culinary talents on weekends and holidays, when dinners consisted of roasts, or chicken fettuccini, or even Kalua Pig which had come with us from our time on Oahu as a cherished family tradition, all of which came with bread and butter margarine. Other variations on bread were of course delicious peanut butter and jelly or honey sandwiches, that blessed smell which wafts from a freshly opened lunchbox at noon of crystallized honey and the melding of bread and peanuts still invades my memory on quiet days.

One night when my father was away my infant sister would not stop crying. I had never been truly scared before, and seeing the look of fear in my mother’s face terrified me to my core. The pain was so severe my little sister passed out, though by that time I had thankfully gone to bed. I can’t imagine my own mother’s pain at experiencing something like that. Eventually she made it to the emergency room and it was discovered that my sister had a severe ear infection (and also that it is not uncommon for children to cry so hard they actually pass out). The doctor made her well with antibiotics, but infections plagued her for years until the age of four when she underwent an uncomfortable operation to install plastic tubes in her ear canal to keep them open. As a result she could not swim during most of her childhood, because the tubes made water entry into the ear dangerous, and the whole experience was rather traumatic for her. 

It turns out this condition, and many like it such as that I would soon suffer, is actually caused by wheat. Though wheat has traditionally been a cornerstone of western civilization, enshrined even in scripture, it was adulterated around 1960 when a well-meaning man named Norman Borlaug worked to make a breed of wheat which was more robust and hearty and could survive in more climates around the world and feed more hungry people (which it did). The problem was that novel artificial fertilizers which made it possible to grow crops in arid, poor quality soil also made wheat grow too tall and thin, and a strong wind would come along and easily destroy an entire year’s crop. So he hybridized a version of wheat which was stouter and sturdier, and in so doing helped stabilize food resources in many parts of the world and helped to spare countless people from hunger. His intentions were noble, and he rightly received a Nobel Prize for his work. 

But the resulting wheat, which makes up most wheat and wheat products available to consumers today, because of the characteristics which make it hardier also makes it much harder to digest, and rougher on our physiology than previous varieties, although some were already more difficult anyway through previous agricultural hybridization. Over the intervening decades more and more people have become aware of the difficulty of digesting this wheat, which is what has led to the increase in gluten allergies and gluten free trends but which is a very real impediment to not only digestive health but that of the body as a whole. Proteins and peptides (which are fragments of protein) have signaling effects within the human body, and undigested gluten acts like an over-excited kid in a high-rise elevator, pressing all sorts of unhelpful buttons. It creates massive inflammation and discomfort in the gut and the body, causing or contributing to everything from migraines to shutting down the immune system and even promoting cancer.

Because of the hardiness of youthful digestive systems, which enviously seem to get away with murder, adults take many years before they are forced to accept the limited ability of our system to dismantle certain foods. By then it often seems a mystery as to what exactly has caused the accursed wretchedness which becomes the eventual state of the human gut. Contrary to long held belief, there is not a single thing in all of creation that is intended to be food aside from fruit and milk (and honey and pollen if you’re getting technical). Potatoes, oats, lettuce, broccoli, chicken, beef, and fish all do not want to be eaten and nature has done its damnedest not only to dissuade consumption of these organisms by others but in some cases has also developed methods for actually surviving or impairing digestion. Most plants contain astringent and sour traits, not to build character but because they are chemical deterrents to being eaten or to protect their own nutritional resources. Our tongue senses these anti-nutritive chemicals as a warning not that this unpalatable thing will make us lean and healthy but that it has something in it which disagrees with our physiology, because the role of the tongue is to do just this—prompt us to what is good and what is not. Some of these properties of plants are truly toxic, such as the solanine toxins in the family of nightshades, although the varieties we consume as food have been skillfully bred by our ancestors to reduce the amount of toxin they contain, which also addresses the little known fact that almost none of the plants we consume from the grocery store appear as they did in nature, but have been coaxed and prodded by generations of farmers to become what they are now. Gluten is not a part of wheat so that bread will rise—it is there to enable the wheat plant to grow robustly from the seed, to survive harsh conditions until it germinates, and to help store energy and nutrients. Indeed it is the tougher gluten which allows wheat to grow in the harsh conditions of different climates under the influence of artificial fertilizers, but which then makes it less digestible to the very people who created it. The efforts to make wheat hardy to the environment have also made it hardy to digestion. Cynical voices deride the trends for gluten-free, but people don’t often do things just for the hell of it. It takes too much energy to do so. There has been a growing recognition that the long gastrointestinal suffering of many millions of people is rooted in wheat for this very reason.

Another characteristic of all grains, as well as legumes and most plants, is the presence of a compound called phytic acid, which is a molecule designed by nature to prevent leaching of nutrients out of the plant when it gets wet. If the plant did not have phytic acid when it came into contact with water, precious calcium, magnesium, zinc, sulfur, and other nutrients would leach out of the plant and thus rob it of the nutrients needed to survive. Unfortunately in the last few decades it has become commonly thought that eating whole and unrefined grains is healthier, because our parents and grandparents were apparently lazy and indulgent with all their peeling and threshing and refining and all that. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our parents prepared food the way they did not because refined flour is more palatable (although it is, remember that the tongue’s job is to detect what is edible) but because our ancestors intuitively discovered that preparing food in such a way improved health and outcomes of mortality. They recognized the apparent skill of the tongue as an organ, and used its guidance to find out what things we could eat and which we cannot (although there was some trial and error too). Peeling a plant food such as potatoes or carrots removes the part which contains what is generally referred to as anti-nutrients, not for the plant, but for us, and can be anything from a rather benign compound to ones which are outright toxic. Solanine in nightshades such as the potato is contained mostly in the skin (but also in any green parts), so failing to remove the skin puts a potent toxin into our food. The role of solanine and related glycoalkaloids is to protect plants like potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers from nematodes. The toxin overstimulates the parasympathetic nervous system of nematodes, which are quite tiny, which then kills them through neurological poisoning. Because we are so large the small amounts of solanine aren’t very harmful to us, but with repeated exposure it still can and does cause neurological damage which results in agitation, restlessness, insomnia, and even diseases like alcoholism and drug addiction. It is no coincidence that when my family decided to stop peeling potatoes because we had heard it was “healthy” we also experienced some of our most emotionally turbulent years. Similarly, phytic acid is contained mostly in skins or the outer coverings in many vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains, which is why the unrefined grain tastes less pleasant to us than the refined portion, because the tongue senses the presence of phytic acid, and is why our ancestors intuitively evolved technology to refine, peel, process, remove, or separate those parts which are undesirable and other methods of treating food for our safe consumption such as the sprouting, soaking, and fermenting of grains, seeds, and nuts which thusly inactivates phytic acid. Failure to remove phytic acid from the diet means that it binds all calcium, magnesium, and other important nutrients in the digestive tract and thus entirely prevents their absorption. Whole grain diets can actually cause catastrophic tooth loss, insomnia, and bone disorders because of the inhibitory effect phytic acid has on calcium. When it comes to grains, unless they are the heirloom or ancient types which have not been excessively hybridized into undigestible varieties and have been properly prepared by soaking, sprouting, fermenting, or traditionally refined it is absolutely inedible and chronic consumption will only cause and contribute to all sorts of metabolic diseases from simply annoying things like indigestion to life threatening ones like cancer, because by robing the body of nutrients or causing inflammation and disrupting metabolic pathways these anti-nutrients and phytotoxins effectively lower the metabolic rate and thus the overall state of health, and no major commercial brands nor common grocery store breads, pastas, and other grain products are prepared this way, let alone all the others made from other cereals like corn, rice, beans, etc. 

My generation was the first to be subjugated to the hastily borne craze of whole wheat bread and grain products, to say nothing of the toxic and allergenic additives that are in commercial bread. It was no coincidence that my sister began developing ear problems at the same time my mother began feeding her the first tastes of solid foods, which as most parents know includes soft pieces of bread. Historically, bread has been healthy. But certain species of gut bacteria also feed more voraciously on grains, especially those which are undigested, and produce outsized amounts of toxic metabolic byproducts which then overwhelm our body’s detoxification organs. Over time (or immediately in those more sensitive) this causes tissues to swell, and the swelling causes a loss of robust metabolic function in what is generally referred to as inflammation, further causing or contributing to degenerative illnesses. For my young sister it meant her body could not fight nor repair the bacterial infection in the ear canal, nor prevent the swelling which shrank them, and so a chronic condition developed which would have cleared naturally if the offending food been simply identified and removed. Even so, parents of children with conditions knowingly exacerbated by gluten still feed it to their children, too comfortable with their routine to bother making the healthy choice which would not only spare their children, but themselves as well, persisting even with debilitating stomachaches and other metabolic diseases directly related to consumption of common wheat. It has also rightly been implicated as a contributing factor to the symptoms of those who are autistic, and it is not as common as it should be for families to notice this and to rethink their diets. But this does not mean that only gluten allergic types have issues with wheat. Every human has difficulty digesting the hardier gluten strains. It is only that some bodies are healthy enough to overcome the fallout more easily than others. Every time a heavy meal of pasta, pizza, or a sandwich results in fatigue, stomachaches, or indigestion, it is evidence that gluten or similarly incompatible foods are tearing apart your gut and thus your metabolic health. Less obviously, connections of sleep troubles, difficulty staying lean, building muscle, and even problems like erectile dysfunction or depression are all also related to such inflammatory dietary factors, and surprisingly resolved quickly when the offending food is simply replaced with a better option. 

One day when discussing her children’s health issues I recommended a mother serve fruit and cheese for lunches instead of sandwiches, to alleviate the stressful mood swings exhibited by her high-strung young ones. She retorted that making sandwiches was easier, and would not change. In a way she is right, change is difficult. But putting a pile of cheese and apple slices on a plate is arguably a less demanding task than preparing sandwiches. If you also factor the relief which comes from calmer, less ill children the benefit would add up even more. But mentally it is easier to cling to our traditions, to what we know, even if it is harmful.

When I was twenty-six and still spreading my wings in the great city of Los Angeles, I one day realized I hadn’t been able to breathe through both nostrils simultaneously for some time. My health had improved somewhat since moving to the Mediterranean climate of Southern California, but now I frustratingly struggled to clear my sinuses at any moment of the day. I used nasal sprays, antihistamines, or exercised more to clear the passages but was soon driven mad by constant blockage. Even after trying prescription decongestant the condition soon worsened into a full-blown sinus infection. I thought antibiotics would fix the problem. The infection cleared but my sinuses continued to tango with each other, and before a month was over I got another sinus infection. Another round of antibiotics also failed to clear the passageways, and before I knew it was going on a year bouncing from one sinus infection to the next about once a month. My doctor suggested I have surgery on my nose. It was the first serious physical health complication that I would endure, but I didn’t understand why surgery would fix a problem obviously caused by germs, and I am not as eager to go under the knife as other people might be. I also had developed sleep issues, though not as severe as they would become, and problems with my emotional health had accompanied me for so long I was now taking them as the condition of my life. Because my father and so many other adults were plagued with chronic stomach problems I assumed that gut-tearing pain was a normal condition of adulthood, and accepted my miserable fate as something to be endured.

One day I went on a date with a handsome nurse. We went to lunch and during our conversation I mentioned my sinus issues. “You’re probably allergic to gluten,” he said after I explained my obvious congestion. “What’s gluten?”\I asked. Actually, I knew what gluten was. I’d been cooking for some time and liked to even make my own breads occasionally, especially as pizza. I had also tried going without meat or dairy in an attempt to cure myself, and been consuming meat-free alternatives which are often made from gluten. He explained how gluten can cause allergic reactions, that most aren’t aware of it because it takes up to a full day or more for food to transit to the lower intestine which is where the allergic reaction takes place, and many people erroneously identify other foods as the source of their complaint. True to this misidentification I had assumed dairy might be the problem, even though long-term abstinence did nothing to improve my condition, nor a vegetarian diet. Desperate for some relief I immediately stopped eating all sources of gluten—wheat, barley, even oats. A week later both of my sinuses suddenly opened at once. It was an epiphany heralded by the triumphant return of fresh air flowing freely through my head for the first time in more than a year. I didn’t need any more convincing that wheat was causing my health problems, but the disappearance of those debilitating stomachaches, sometimes so severe I would have to call in sick to work, and a notable increase in my energy levels two weeks later seemed to show that wheat had been a lot more of a liability than I ever could have imagined.

Excited by my discovery I right away told my Mom and Dad, who had experienced similar although less debilitating symptoms over the years. “But wheat is the staff of life,” said my mother. She said it not so much in rebuttal, but I think in coming to terms with newly contradicting information. It took more than ten years to get them to even cut back on wheat, even with the obviousness of its burden to their own health, and still do not entirely avoid and willingly persisting with the same health problems they have endured for decades. Our dietary traditions are sometimes so entrenched in emotion and family sentiment we are unable to step back and objectively analyze the situation for what it is. The resistance comes in the fear of change, of newness, but the results from improving diet can mean less stress and suffering over the long term and resolution of health problems not only of a metabolic nature but also those which are aesthetic. If my parents had known that the myriad of physical challenges suffered by their children were rooted in diet, those terrifying nights with my little sister, and my life-long health issues which were all rooted in the presence of this undigestible allergen would never have happened. Sadly what was meant to help the world has instead contributed to disease and discomfort. Many of us are no longer dying from hunger, but we are still dying. 

Initially my experience with gluten was one of necessary total abstinence, because I did not yet know the intricacies of food chemistry. Even when I went for years without having even a single bit of wheat a slip-up would send my health crashing. I have since discovered there is a very appropriate relevance for bread in the human diet, but which is more on account of the beneficial yeasts which break down the grains and increase vitamins rather than grain itself, and the chapter Good Bread talks about which kinds of grains can be safely consumed. Some heirloom grains, especially when properly prepared, can be a healthful and common part of the diet, and when making changes and improving dietary practices it is not simply the miserable elimination of problem foods which is helpful. The thought of giving up pizza and pasta is rightly a depressing one. But my journey has been nothing if not one to confirm the joys of living, and eating the way which promotes health is not one of deprivation nor of limitation, but rather replacement. Exchanging allergic and problematic foods for those which are equally satisfying and indulgent is the best approach to achieving success with such dietary changes. Instead of making pancakes from conventional flour I enjoy spelt, yeast-risen pancakes every weekend, slathered in heaping amounts of delicious, organic grass-fed butter and indulgent maple syrup, or occasionally sprouted oats cooked in milk to improve digestibility since sprouting inactivates a good portion of phytic acid and cooking in milk helps further to break apart the grain (on account of the high calcium content). I have probably only had three or four stomachaches over the last ten years of my life, where before they were daily and debilitating, and not only are these foods not hurting my health, they are actually healing and often more tasty than the options which are harmful to begin with. Replacing foods which contribute to illness is not an arduous, joyless process. Quite the opposite the diet becomes one which is more satisfying, tastier, and indulgent. It only requires knowledge and a little careful planning.

When visiting my late grandparents shortly after my gluten discovery I mentioned to my Nana that I had given up bread and found great relief by doing so, thinking I might enlighten her since her own children seemed to suffer the same condition. “Oh yes,” she replied. “I haven’t had a piece of bread since 1974. It gave me stomachaches.”

Thanks Nana.

CHAPTER 2
The Truth About Fat

By the time I was twelve-years old we had relocated to Salt Lake City. The move had been difficult, but I was finally developing into a young man, already over six feet in height, and the crowds of people and things to do in a real city made life much more exciting than that drab little town in Northern Utah. 

One bright summer day I bounded up the brand new polished oak staircase of the second-floor addition to our new home my father had spent the last six months building. With no open land in the city on which to develop homes my father had taken to restoring old and dilapidated properties, usually while we lived in them. My whole family was gathered on my parents huge master bed, laughing and chatting and playing games. The sight of my loving family gathered in such joy and harmony filled me with a sense of peace and serenity.

“You’re getting fat,” said my Dad as I stood at the top of the staircase. What? I thought, the smile instantly gone from my face, replaced by the red-hot flush of shame. I instinctively sucked in my gut, peering down at my torso in shame, less to inspect my own figure than to escape their judgmental gaze. My shirt was tucked into my jeans, which made it impossible to hide the gut spilling over them. Suddenly I was an outcast, an awkward teenager, stuck between the shelter of childhood enjoyed even at that moment by my ignorant siblings yet unable to escape the temperamental whims of those two adults who ran this house but who kept me continually at arms length. “You need to go on a diet,” Mom agreed. 

“You should workout,” said Dad. “Yes,” said Mom. “Women like big chest muscles.”

Both of them smiled as she pet my Father’s chest, as if they had imparted valuable insight for which I should be grateful. But I turned around and fled downstairs before the tears could give away my vulnerability. In the bathroom, tears streaming down my face, I looked at my stomach in the mirror. Was I really fat? It did seem to extend outward a little. I sucked it in again, and it disappeared entirely. It was an acceptable fix for now, but what was a diet? What was working out? I had never done any of these things. Even if I had known what diet to do, my parents were the food providers for the family. I wasn’t the one shopping or preparing food, nor could I even if I wanted to. At the time neither of my parents exercised, and I had never been to a gym or even knew that people ran on treadmills or lifted weights in order to be thin and fit. I spent every day that summer and the following school year insecure and sucking in my gut, terrified of being perceived as fat, but my parents never mentioned the words diet or workout to me again. 

In reality my twelve-year-old body was perfect. It was preparing to shoot me through puberty, and indeed I grew a great deal shortly after, reaching almost six-foot-seven by the time I turned nineteen. Most children do gain weight right before this period in their lives, because it’s the body’s way of preparing for a demanding growth process to come, and while all children should be on a healthy diet, no child should ever go on a diet.

Too many people are terrorized by inappropriate conceptions of fat, health, and diet, shamed by misguided and manipulative ideas of physical wellness. The word gluttony does not actually mean\that someone eats too much and gains weight—It means to eat in excess while others go hungry.\Gluttony was a Santa Claus type guilt trip which was meant to address food inequality,\to enlighten the well-off of their ignorance to those who suffer, to encourage them to help their fellow man. Its meaning has been corrupted to avail those with wealth and abundance, to relieve them of the responsibility of sharing, to absolve them of their selfishness and instead shame those who have difficulty with weight as if having such problems is amoral rather than the refusal to help those who are in need. 

And yet many still go hungry while those more fortunate choose to give up food voluntarily, not to help others but in attempts to achieve the self-centered satisfaction of vanity. If you really believe calorie deprivation makes good aesthetics, switch socioeconomic classes. You’ll never have enough to eat.

But poor people are often overweight, even when they go hungry. I once heard some asshole claim that poor minorities with obesity drank too much orange juice. As if they could afford it.

Fat as macronutrient is the densest source of calories we can eat. At 5% cow milk has about the same saturated fat content as human milk, though store bought whole cow milk has less fat than human milk, having had some cream removed to sell as a separate product and to make butter, which is why there are also milk products like 2%, 1%, and skim milk, which are marketed to ignorant consumers as a health product and not, in fact, actually an opportunistic industry trying to sell waste products to consumers.

Fats come in three different chemical types—saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated. The term saturation is a reference to the frequency of chemical bonds on a fatty acid molecule. Fully saturated fats have no shared bonds, where monounsaturated (mono means one) share one bond, and polyunsaturated (poly means many) share more than one bond. Saturated fats, which occurs in high percentages in foods like butter, cream, and milk, is claimed to be the root of much disease and obesity. This is why more than three quarters of all infants are considered obese. 

Are you paying attention? Babies aren’t considered obese. If saturated fat causes obesity, why are babies not obese? Why aren’t they dying of heart disease at alarming rates, since it is the highly saturated fat of milk on which they feed entirely? If it was the case that saturated fats cause human illness then babies should be the prime reflection of those illnesses.\They are pretty slovenly after all. They can’t even wipe themselves. Harp seals, whose milk-fat is almost 50%\are even more lazy, sunning on ice flows all day, hardly spending much time in the freezing salt water to hunt.

If fat is bad then why is it in the food made by nature for our precious and fragile babies? Why do young people go through states of life where fat is a natural part of development? Why don’t baby harp seals have a heart attack the instant they drink mother’s half-fat milk?

Fat is not an unfortunate defect of life, but a reason for it. It saves the body from death. This is why the baby harp seal needs to be fat. Fat is what saves it from a harsh environment. Human baby fat saves them from death by cold as well, even though they don’t sit on ice flows. Fat insulates from heat loss, while also generating heat from its metabolism. If you don’t think fat saves a human adult from death by cold, you don’t understand thermodynamics. Heat constantly moves toward cold, from inside our bodies to out, and the reason we have metabolism is to generate energy and heat. It is this very heat which allows our life to function, enabling the generation of energy and the movement of biological pathways. Without heat we would not be mammals, nor alive, since mammals require high body temperatures in order for their metabolism to function, and the inside of our bodies is indeed very hot. Ninety-four degree weather (Fahrenheit) will make anyone wilt,\but if your internal body temperature ever dropped to ninety-four you would go into a coma and die. Fat helps prevents this. It is a safety measure to spare heat, both by insulation and by generation. But before the body resorts to fat storage of the type which we usually dislike it amps up stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline which can keep a person lean and which creates an illusion of good health or fast metabolism even when they are really running on stress, and a slowing metabolic rate that requires more and more exertion to be effective. As a calorie source, fat storage is a secondary purpose, metabolically expensive, unnecessary for well fed adults, and inferior to carbohydrate oxidation. 

Often people realize they have an insatiable appetite at the same time they struggle with their waistlines. This clues us into believing there is an association between the two, which there is but it is exactly the opposite of what most people think. Because the body begins to store fat when it is under stress it is using most of the food being eaten to store those calories. Not only does the body then need to have calories to synthesize and store fat, but it must also have enough calories to feed the rest of the body at the same time. When the metabolic rate declines, the body also actually resorts to backup modes of energy generation which are less efficient than healthy ones, and so each calorie actually produces less energy per calorie than it does when the metabolic rate is high. In addition, most metabolic disease also involves overgrowth of gastrointestinal microbes, which also consume our calories and nutrients. So the appetite increases and becomes nearly insatiable, because the body needs more calories for storage, to burn as fuel, and to overcompensate for terrible gas-mileage, all while competing with voracious gastrointestinal microbes. The absolute worst thing a person can do at this point is cut calories, which sends the body into an even more heightened state of alert, lowering the metabolism even further and sparing the use of calories and nutrients which have nearly been eliminated. Resuming from a diet a body frantically packs on even more pounds while stimulating an even greater appetite in order that the body might be adequately prepared for what it perceives to be intermittent famine. Fat is what helps us survive such stressors, so it cannot be rid of by the addition of more stress which in fact actively promotes more fat retention. Even when not actively storing fat a stressed body needs more nutrients and calories to overcome metabolic stress, and hunger impulses are the body’s way of attempting to acquire what it desperately needs. Good dietary fat in this case helps not only to provide ample resources for energy use but is also associated with a great majority of vital nutrients such as the fat soluble vitamins, cholesterol synthesis which then become useful steroids and hormones, and the actual remodeling of tissues because fat also serves a structural role within cells, as part of the scaffolding and internal machinery that make up the inner workings of every cell, and is more important for this purpose than its use as calorie storage.

Our cells are also designed to prioritize good fats for such structures, as well as a limited variety of unsaturated fats, and our cells also prefer these saturated fats for their own energy consumption rather than the more unsaturated ones. This happens because saturated fats like butter, cocoa butter, and coconut oil, as well as the types made within our own bodies are more stable in the high heat, high oxygen environments such as what exists inside our human physiology. Fish, who live in a veritable refrigerator, are not subject to the oxidative stresses of high-heat environments, and their fat composition is reflective of such. If fish were made out of the same fats that we are they would turn into a solid stick of fish-butter in the cold temperatures of their environment just as butter and coconut oil do when they are refrigerated, and the fish would be unable to transport fatty acids around and through their cells. Fish and other highly unsaturated fats oxidize and deteriorate rapidly when exposed to air or high heat, high oxygen environments such as the interior of our bodies, because those fats are not designed by nature to function in such environments. Saturated fats are resistant to oxidation in heat and oxygen rich environments and volatile bioenergetic processes. When deficient in saturated fats our cells break down and function poorly like a car with old motor oil, because inferior types of fat are not able to withstand the stresses of our internal environment, while saturated fats keep them running well.

Visible adult fat accumulation is entirely a reflection of health stress, as an adult in good health will have little extra body fat. Conversely this does not mean if we are skinny we are in good health. In fact, there is much evidence that adults who don’t gain fat during stress are more likely to die suddenly, because fat is a protective response to the body’s need to handle stress, to prevent death, and those who are lean who come under such stress are much more likely to have a severe and sudden health episode than those who have some extra weight. Fat retention is a reflection of other biological developments, and is not itself a disease or the cause of health problems, but is a response to those problems. Fat is our friend, and though you may have issues with self-worth and acceptance which seem to be caused by fat, we must be grateful for it as evidence that our body is actually protecting our health and taking care of us during times of stress.

Metabolic rate is also not defined as it is often mistaken as the ability to burn calories or whether or not there is fat on the body. Metabolism is rather a measure of cellular respiration. A body under stress with low metabolic rate actually burns many, many more calories than someone with a high metabolic rate, because the low rate of cellular respiration results in less efficient use of calories and an ironic increase in fatty acid metabolism. The benefit of a high metabolic rate does not come from a high rate of calorie burning but from the increased ability for the body to repair and restore tissues and more efficient use of nutritional substrates, which in turn results in a more youthful, healthy, and lean physique not at all achieved through calorie measuring. 

So if fat is protective for the body, how can we prevent its accumulation in a healthy way? Do we even want to? The short answer is to improve overall health. If we have unwanted body fat, even a little, it means we are doing something to reduce the efficiency of our cellular respiration or subject to stressors which are stimulating its deposition. This can occur from calorie deprivation, consumption of inappropriate foods, excessive exertion, gut bacteria imbalance or pathogenic microbial infection, emotional and environmental stress, deficient exposure to sunlight, and other factors like some types of prescription drugs.\There are many factors in which the body reacts with fat to protect us, but fat accumulation on the human adult is categorized into three different types of occurrence which are relevant for each person’s approach to health which are: nonexistent, simple, and persistent.

In an adult vulnerable to health crises from a lack of fat there are a few apparent and obvious signs. The first is very little visual fat, obviously, but which is accompanied by premature deterioration of the skin, because the glowing, youthful, supple types of healthy skin are made possible by fat. Fat allows the skin to have a high rate of metabolism, to make steroids and vitamin D, and to maintain healthy and youthful features. When stress is so severe that the skin begins to loose fat it is a sign of worrying deficits in fat intake and indication of high stress, and the skin is catabolizing its fat in order to meet the demands of increased stress and insufficient nutrient intake. Skin which is thin, ashen, and appears lacking in moisture, often accompanied by dark circles under the eyes, fatigue, or even hair loss, and lacking in any real weight gain is at real risk of having sudden health crises like heart attacks, strokes, or organ failure. The problem is that a person might find this state of leanness desirable, but this has occurred because of metabolic damage to the ability to store fat and runs a high risk of premature health problems. I have personally witnessed a handful of friends suffer such incidents, even death, because though lean and fit in appearance their body was under tremendous metabolic stress, nutritional or otherwise, and the absence of fat results in catastrophic failure of the metabolic rate because there is no reserve from which the body can acquire the needed materials to rescue itself during excessive stress. This is not only a problem of calories, although it is, but also that many processes in the body require fat for normal functioning such as the formation of steroids like pregnenolone and other hormones or the repair of nerve cells which cannot happen without the right types of fat available in abundance. It is important in this case to consume regular amounts of good fats such as butter, ice cream, coconut oil, grass-fed beef tallow, etc., as well as generous amounts of carbohydrates.

Simple weight gain marked by non-significant increases in visceral fat is remedied fairly easily, with improvements seen as soon as efforts and changes are made even if those changes aren’t the healthy way to do it (the healthy way is more permanent). This often looks like someone exercising and easily leaning out, or cutting out carbs for a bit and slimming down. The temptation is to then believe that doing things like fasting or low carb are healthy solutions, because of the misguided belief that leanness equals healthy, which it absolutely does not. But those methods are simply the superficial correlation of appearance with stress-based methods of achieving such results. When dietary and environmental stresses are resolved, a body does not gain weight even when caloric intake is indulgent, which is in fact also required to reduce metabolic stress. While stress method approaches to weight loss can produce results it will will always, eventually, promote a declining metabolic rate and loss of youthful features of the physical body, which also makes future weight loss efforts much more difficult as the body adapts to consistent stress by lowering the metabolic rate. Dieters who deprive themselves of even more food find rebounding fat stores to be even more rapid and more persistent, until eventually the ability to lose weight at all is entirely lost. Eating a good diet, sustaining blood sugar, going sober for a short time, and other truly healthful dietary behaviors should have responsive results in line with improvements in someone with simple fat deposition. The fat responds right away and there is not a significant struggle against it, with results appearing in mere days and resolving in a few weeks or months. This type of weight loss reflects a still youthful metabolism and is easy to sustain in perpetuity as long as a good diet and low-stress behaviors dominate.

If there is a significant struggle for weight loss or weight-gain accompanies normal or even indulgent eating habits then we have a persistent weight problem. This kind is characterized by rebounding fat stores no matter the effort or healthy changes made. These are people who see no real benefit or permanence from even dedicated diet and exercise, who continually feel frustrated in spite of Herculean efforts. The reason this kind of weight gain is a problem is not the weight itself, but instead that the severe metabolic problems which underlie and stimulate fat retention are dangerous to our overall wellbeing, and such fat retention reflects a metabolic response to those stresses. This kind of fat storage is primarily a problem of excess iron. Iron excess causes this kind of fat retention for two reasons—The first is that iron is unstable and oxidizes tissues and nutrients readily, and is difficult for the body to eliminate or control for a verity of reasons. Because iron is such a sensitive oxidizer, excess depresses the oxidative capacity of our cells, which means it suppresses the overall metabolic rate. Primarily, excess iron increases the activity of microorganisms like pathogenic bacteria, yeast, and viruses which require iron for their growth and virulence factors which facilitate access to our tissues, blood, and other nutrient-rich resources within our bodies. Then the body detects the presence of pathogens and responds by depositing lots of body fat in order to extend our lifespan, since historically and in context of the human as an animal infection with virulent microorganisms increases exhaustion of scarce nutritional resources and increases our chance of expiration. This association of iron and pathogenic organisms is why milk is so naturally low in iron, to prevent intestinal proliferation of pathogens in vulnerable infants and thus increase chances of survival. Iron excess occurs from such repeated stresses like chronic dieting, excess exercise, or severe emotional or environmental stress, because stress hormones and iron participate in growth and repair processes and stress hormones promote the excess uptake and retention of iron. Dieting manually depletes valuable nutrients like vitamins A and D and zinc which also regulate iron homeostasis, promoting iron storage in tissue rather than in circulation. Dieting, nutrient and caloric restriction, and chronically excessive physical exertion impairs the immune system which in turn reduces our ability to fight pathogens. Many foods like common wheat, rice, or even corn are also fortified with extra iron, which is really nothing more that iron shavings, which in turn promotes iron excess, especially during stress. 

Initially when I was exploring iron and weight loss it seemed very difficult to remove iron, and I was greatly focused on methods of chelation, which is the process by which metals are attached to molecules and removed from the body. Indeed the greater portion of health improvement through iron management is approached through such methods. But there is a reason why iron removal is difficult in metabolic disease states, and that is because the body anticipates the need for this iron when the disease resolves, to rebuild and restore the body, which is the entire purpose of those stress hormones which caused the condition in the first place. It is a response to shore up stores of this vital nutrient against perceived challenges to the acquisition of nutrients, since iron is traditionally difficult to obtain, especially during times of nutritional deficiency artificially replicated by dieting and calorie deprivation. For instance vitamin A is intimately involved in iron release from storage and its circulation in the blood, so a deficit of vitamin A can result in iron deficiency anemia not from a lack of absorption but from excessive sequestration into storage tissues. A protein deficiency and specifically a deficit of the animo acid tyrosine can also cause a deficiency in transferrin which participates in the transfer of iron from storage to usage sites. Rather than focusing on iron chelation it is instead helpful to focus on improving the metabolic rate and restoring a fully nutritious diet, especially those nutrients which promote and regulate normal iron homeostasis. When this happens the body naturally lowers the stress hormones which sequester and retain iron and will instead raise those hormones which promote its removal in favor of other nutrients like zinc. This will restore a more robust metabolism of organs, the gut, and the body as a whole, allowing it to restore cellular respiration and iron excess will naturally and easily be resolved. The chapter on iron covers this topic in more detail and how the use of nutrients like zinc may be used specifically to restrain iron excess and promote resolution of pathogenic infection and problems with weight gain. Any process of raising the metabolism through diet and not physical exercise will help remove iron from the body and thus reduce the oxidative and pathogenic burden on the body, and specifically addressing metabolic issues like thyroid function or microbial pathogenic burden in the chapters on gut health and vascular insufficiency will further promote natural and healthy weight loss as metabolic and pathogenic burdens are resolved.

During disease the human body increases its synthesis of the most stable saturated fats, which has been used as evidence of the fallibility of biology rather than the admirable and capable endogenous efforts by the body to stem disease, which would make more sense considering that our body is designed to answer stress with effective coping strategies, else there would not be so many humans on the planet. The benefit of saturated fats can also be seen even in other natural instances, such as queen bees who live more than twice as long as their other family members, and queens have an almost exclusive saturated fat profile in their diet where drones and worker bees feed on far less of it. This is the same kinds of fat made by the bodies of mammalian mothers when nursing their young, because it is the most compatible with our biology, the most resistant to oxidation, and thus the most protective of all our health.

The first person to tell me about the health benefits of butter was a female personal trainer who had abs like I never will. She said she ate half a stick of butter a day. I liked the sound of that, but I hesitated to eat much of it as I still clung to old ideas of fat and negative concepts of body image. Thankfully butter is finally being recognized again as a health food, thanks to efforts of health conscious forward-thinking proponents and revisiting of problematic studies. Yet people still shrink from butter while eating copious amounts of inferior fats, mostly in pre-made and restaurant food, as if there are no consequences to that behavior. The fat profile of the diet is the number one way to guarantee health, or to doom it. Good fat is what makes us young and robust. Greatly increasing saturated fat in our diet can help restore youth, shrink waistlines, and heal metabolic diseases like insomnia, hair loss, fatigue, etc., or prevent any of it in the first place, because it is the most compatible fat for our physiology and the most robust under the oxidative stress of high oxygen and high heat which occurs within our body. Dairy is the only source of animal fat high enough in good fats to be absolutely reliable. One of the first improvements I found from once again eating butter was the disappearance of dry biscuit heels which had begun to crack painfully, and were replaced by far softer skin. It was also crucial in restoring my thyroid function. Beef, sheep, and other ruminant meat is usually good fat, especially if its grass-fed, because ruminants convert bad fats into good ones through intestinal bacteria—a probiotic for humans which did the same would prove to extend our own lifespan greatly, but sadly none yet exist. Pork and chicken contain high amounts of bad fats, and shouldn’t be used to increase fat consumption but are fine when prepared with complimentary saturated sources like butter, coconut oil, or tallow, and only then in moderation. Worst of all are inferior cooking oils like canola, corn, and soy. Unfortunately fish oil is absolutely not compatible with human health, as evidenced by a recent study which found consumption of fish oil to be associated with an increase in sudden death. Eggs too contain far too much polyunsaturated fat to be healthy in high quantities and should be relegated to indulgences rather than daily consumption. Coconut oil is almost entirely saturated, and there is much advice in this book on using coconut oil therapeutically. But my favorite example of the health benefits of saturated fats is the frequency by which centenarians cite chocolate as a reason for longevity. Chocolate is almost entirely saturated fat, and cocoa butter is one of the most stable fats found in nature. Jeanne Louise Calment, who lived to be 122 years in age, is one of those who regularly consumed chocolate in large amounts.

Fat is our friend, most especially the types appropriate for our biology. It has always been this way and will continue to be. Rather than fighting biology there is great empowerment from working with it, and doing so is delicious and satisfying anyway. Poor concepts of body image and equating metabolic health with self-worth which results from negative experiences of rejection and fear underlie our attitudes about fat, food, and motivate the behaviors which both cause and prevent resolution of health problems which in turn cause weight gain in the first place. In this case it is important to address attitudes about personal health and wellness, and to resolve the trauma and pain of past experiences surrounding body image which colors our perception of ourselves and our effectiveness in life as discussed throughout the remainder of this book. Fat is evidence that your body loves and cares for you, and that it’s working as it should. Be grateful for the body that promotes life, and the fat that protects us.  

CHAPTER 3
The Truth About Sugar

When I was thirty-two and struggling with my weight, though I was not yet fat, I began a strict low-carb diet in a misguided attempt at weight loss. Instead of the health and fitness it promised I triggered the worst insomnia,\physical discomfort, and weight gain of my life, which eventually led to full-blown thyroid cancer and metabolic disease which would prove impossible to escape for another several years. 

Many people malign sugar also as the source of their fat deposition, and spend great effort in its avoidance. The conflict between fat-promotes-fat and sugar-promotes-fat should clue people into the inconsistencies and subjective nature of dietary moralizing. It is true that our body can and does use carbohydrates to synthesize fat, but it is not true that sugar becomes fat simply because you eat it. The body stores fat when it is under metabolic stress, so if the body is free of metabolic stress it does not store sugar as fat either. 

But who actually eats that much sugar anyway? Most people who whine about sugar addiction actually avoid sugar on a pathological basis. Obese people tend only to drink diet sodas, and none of them regularly consume fruit.\Because of the shame associated with weight gain and indulgence surrounding my upbringing I avoided sugar as a general rule. I took pride in my ability to resist desserts, candy, and soda. I watched my boyfriends eat ice cream or friends regularly imbibing soda and always chose water or tea instead. I am part of the recovery community, and many members as well as those without it regard sugar with the same negativity as heroin, cocaine, and alcohol, yet I don’t know of anyone who wrecked their car while under the influence of coca cola, suffocated during their sleep from caramel abuse, or committed murder during an ice-cream deal gone wrong. Do you?

One night early in my recovery from thyroid cancer I had an extreme craving for watermelon. I couldn’t explain it. I just needed watermelon. Though it was one in the morning I put on my clothes and braved the night cold to head to a grocery store in downtown L.A. where I got the most satisfying watermelon of my life. I don’t know what it was about the watermelon that I was craving. Well, my conscious mind didn’t know, but my tongue did.\I had plenty of sugary foods in the house—apples, oranges, cane sugar, ice cream. But like a pregnant woman with a craving I just had to have watermelon. When I started eating it my brain confirmed that\yes, this is what I neeeeeeded.

The tongue’s job is to decide if what we are putting into our body is good for us or not.\Here is the trap that most people fall into—sugar tastes good, so it makes us feel good. So we put more into our body. We feel guilty for it and try harder not to eat it. Then we feel bad again. Sugar calls to us. We know if we eat it we will feel so good.\The more we abstain the stronger the craving. But we eat it again, and again we feel good. Do you see what’s going on here? The trap is not that sugar is bad for us. We have a problem with feeling good.\The trap is the social misinterpretations of rational biological functions and shame surrounding pleasure and satisfaction. Either the body—the tongue—is bad at its job and should be mistrusted and outsmarted, or it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to and the deficiency is instead our intellect.\

Some studies claim that sugar activates the same centers of the brain as controlled substances. Of course it does. People who abuse drugs and alcohol are attempting to alleviate some pretty serious physical suffering (this is explained in my chapter on Alcohol and Addiction). Sugar relieves suffering very well too, but does so without the behavioral and social consequences of drugs and alcohol because sugar is neither intoxicating nor disruptive of normal physiological processes.\But from the diabetes epidemic people have come to the observational but erroneous conclusion that abnormally elevated blood sugar equals high sugar diet equals fat. If this were the case we’d be right to avoid sugar.\I had often experienced fluctuations in my waist size relative to my observed sugar intake, so I used to believe this too, or at least wasn’t sure of an alternative explanation. Also nothing good comes without sacrifice, or so said every self-righteous person I’ve met/dated/was born to,\and there is no greater sacrifice than giving up a creamy mocha Frappuccino on a hot summer day. 

Herein lies the problem, that every cell in the human body runs on sugar. Some cells like parts of the brain\only run on sugar. To be clear, when I refer to sugar I am not glibly referring to cakes, cookies, and candy which are so asininely referred to collectively as “sugar.” Sugar is a technical term. Sugar is a chemical form of energy storage, and dietary forms of sugar are things like glucose, fructose and sucrose. Bread, whole grain, and pasta, contrary to what you have heard, are entirely sugar. The kind of sugar which they are composed is called starch, and it consists of many, many chains of the sugar glucose strung together. Once bread is digested it provides the same kind of sugar that is pure corn syrup.\Chemically they are the same substance. It’s why eating starchy foods feels so good and comforting, because it provides our bodies with a great deal of sugar, and because sugar provides energy, our cells use it for fuel, and extra fuel means a well running metabolism and lower stress hormones. Going on low-carb diets is quite misleading, because the body will still create sugar, even when it is absent from our diet. During carbohydrate starvation the body still needs sugar in order to not die, so it releases powerful stress hormones which catabolize the protein in muscles and internal organs and turns them into sugar. This is why dieting never works in the long-term, because dietary stress eviscerates lean muscle mass, and as muscles weaken the body responds by instead storing extra fat and lowering the metabolic rate which further increases fat storage by converting carbohydrates to fat instead of oxidizing them directly for energy. It is why low-carb and starvation is so difficult to accomplish because the pain and resistance it causes is the body’s way of telling you to stop what the fuck you’re doing right now and eat some goddamned carbs. Since we as humans have a tendency to ignore and distrust our bodies and misunderstand nature I will tell you why sugar is not only necessary only for life and health but more importantly our outward youth and good looks. And no, I did not just get those priorities mixed up since people will gleefully spend thousands and thousands of dollars on beauty treatments, cosmetics, and surgery, but tell them they can look ten years younger simply by giving up gluten and suddenly you’re forbidden from ever coming near their children again.

The tongue is no deceiver. In fact, it can taste things we aren’t aware of it tasting, which is why I had that inexplicable craving for watermelon.\Consciously we can recognize sweet, savory, salty, umami.\But the tongue can help us identify minerals and vitamins we need too, in addition to calorie sources.\We experience this as craving for certain foods which our body intuitively understands will contain whatever we are at that moment deficient. Because I listened to my body that night I was provided with relief and an increase in health and wellbeing. Cravings for “unhealthy” foods like carbohydrate rich pastas, sandwiches, or desserts comes simply because a person does not eat enough carbohydrates or calories in general, or cannot store enough glycogen in their body from years of nutritional abuse and neglect, glycogen being our mammalian equivalent to plant starch where carbohydrates are put into storage instead of converting them to fat. Blood sugar drops to the point of crisis which then triggers an increase in stress hormones which then causes us to feel poorly, anxious, and depressed, and starch-filled foods are the fastest way to rescue deficits of blood sugar. Stress hormones destroy the quality of skin and hair as the body eats itself to supply the missing nutrients. Fructose strongly reduces the expression of stress hormones, which is why we so strongly crave sweet foods. The tongue jumps for joy when greeted with sweet, sweet sugar and tasty starch because it knows this is going to help the body function better, and indeed we as primates run mostly on sugars for energy. Whining children don’t want sugar because they are brats—they are hurting, most likely because you yell too much or haven’t fed them properly, and they instinctively understand that sugar will relieve them of their suffering. 

How well our body utilizes sugar and whether it stores carbohydrates as glycogen or instead coverts it to fat storage is also a barometer for health as a whole. When sugar is converted into fat it is a sign our health and ability to oxidize sugar needs improvement, and not that sugar should be avoided, which will only end up exacerbating the problem since carbohydrate deficiency decreases the body’s ability to respond to stress and thus increases the severity of the effects of such stress upon organs and metabolic pathways. It is the ability to metabolize sugar, not the nature of sugar itself which is responsible for sugar-related health problems.

Non-diabetics often do a pseudo-diabetic dance, avoiding sugar/carbs but then indulging once the cravings become too strong to ignore. This is very dangerous behavior,\eliciting repeated exposure to high stress hormones unnecessarily which over time begin to destroy the body’s ability to store and oxidize sugar, eventually causing a host of more serious health conditions which result from a depressed metabolic rate specifically related to carbohydrate deficiencies, such as eczema, insomnia, weight gain, diabetes, and eventually cancer. This is exactly what happened to me in the development of my own health problems. Convinced that sugar was a cause of my problems I avoided it religiously, and still continued to develop health problems. I was so happy when I learned that it was the metabolism of sugar and not sugar itself which was contributing to my health problems, and I began to consume sugar in ever increasing amounts and for the first time in my life actually began to get well. The more sugar I had the better I felt, the more energy I had, and also the more weight I lost. In addition to all the other whole meals, chocolate, fruit, candy, and desserts I was already eating I at one point consumed four pounds of organic, unrefined sugar a week (mostly in protein shakes) and for the first time in my adult life not only lost weight without exercising but experienced an improvement in my health. Now that I have gotten better and my health is more stable I no longer need to sustain my blood sugar quite so vigorously, and consume about two pounds of unrefined sugar a week, though I also partake of generous amounts of fruit, desserts, maple syrup, and other carbohydrate rich foods while enjoying a nearly effortless ability to stay lean and retain muscle. Mentioning my nightly sugar consumption to friends or family who suffered insomnia they often replied,\«doesn’t it keep you awake?» From people with insomnia, who don’t eat sugar, to someone who eats sugar, who does not have insomnia. They asked that. Seriously. I mean. Do I need to again point out the discrepancy?

We go to great lengths to feed our pets and animals the diets that are appropriate for their biology. No one would feed bird-seed to a cat and expect the cat to live, let alone thrive, or likewise meat to a horse. But when it comes to ourselves we often don’t consider that there is most probably a proper human diet. It seems like a limitation on our potential and most people don’t want to believe we have those. But when it comes to diet we do have specific metabolic functions which require specific metabolic substrates, and when we eat the way we are meant as human animals we experience a thriving of health and metabolism, when we do the opposite we experience the reverse. Saying we are addicted to sugar is like saying we are addicted to air, or water. Our body can. not. run. without. sugar. Without sugar our pancreas, lungs, and brain will shut down and we die, as a friend of mine once found out the hard way during an alarming health crisis after a prolonged version of the Atkins diet when he one day found himself unable to breathe, and during the resulting and expensive emergency room trip was told he only needed to eat a piece of bread. 

It is impossible to be addicted to sugar. We cannot be addicted to things we naturally need for health and wellness, and what is usually defined as addiction is in reality the body simply trying to motivate the resolution of deficiencies. Of course, since sugar also relieves suffering it can feel good to eat it because it enables the body’s ability to overcome stress, but because of our negative opinions of life and the human body we are suspicious of cravings rather than sympathetic. The craving for sugar is a sign of metabolic insufficiency rather than addiction, and requires more attention to blood sugar maintenance and carbohydrate metabolism rather than abstinence from it, which anyone knows from experience will only serve to cause intensified cravings, suffering, and futile exercises in self-will.

Sugar cravings often result from the inappropriate metabolism of sugar once it’s digested. Sugar ideally should be directed first toward storage as glycogen and then slowly released for oxidation and the production of energy. If proper glycogen storage and sugar metabolism is occurring, sugar and carbs are not craved as long as a person eats regularly. Glycogen is designed to constantly release small amounts of glucose into the blood stream between meals to sustain blood sugar, and is a mechanism to prevent the full quantity of glucose from a meal being delivered all at once and overwhelming cells. In metabolically compromised people the ability to store glycogen is greatly diminished, and carbohydrate is instead shuttled to fat for storage. But then the release of fat signals to the body that it is under metabolic stress, and this in turn causes a reduction in metabolic rate to reduce the use of nutritional resources and calories. In people with deranged sugar metabolism, other health problems are also usually present such as weight gain, insomnia, anxiety or emotional problems, gut dysfunction, and thyroid disease because the proper pathways for sugar metabolism have been upset, especially in severe cases such as hypothyroidism and diabetes and even cancer. Sometimes too there are pathogenic microbes in our gut which make it seem like sugar is causing weight gain, but like I mentioned in the previous chapter the presence of these microbes is what actually interrupts our metabolic health through their own opportunistic biological mechanisms. Inferior fats like the kind in canola, soy, or fish oil are some primary causes of problems with sugar metabolism, because they directly cause systemic oxidative destruction of mitochondria, which are the energy centers of the cell, which primarily oxidize carbohydrate for energy. Chronic loss of mitochondria due to consumption of such fats then eliminates the ability to oxidize carbohydrate at all, which then triggers backup fat storage and fatty acid oxidation to which the body responds by reducing the metabolic rate. Vitamin deficiencies also interrupt normal carbohydrate metabolism, such as deficiencies in riboflavin or thiamine, which are used in enzymes which store glycogen and process sugar. A deficiency of short-chain fatty acids due to gut dysbiosis actively directs the metabolism to purposefully redirect sugar from oxidation into fat storage and fatty acid metabolism, since this occurs from loss of commensal gut microbial species to which the body responds by decreasing its metabolic rate in order to survive invasion by unhelpful microbiological pathogens. Drug and alcohol use (including prescription drugs) can also interfere with hormonal and chemical pathways which regulate sugar metabolism. Some foods like yogurts or sauerkraut, because they contain lactic acid which stops proper sugar metabolism, can also contribute to the derangement of the metabolic rate by inhibiting sugar metabolism. There are so many factors which interrupt normal and healthy sugar metabolism that have nothing to do with sugar itself the fact that anyone thinks sugar is bad for us shows just how misguided its vilification has been and how ignorant the gatekeepers of health and wellness research and treatment.

Cutting out poor fats is the first step to restoring proper sugar oxidation. The presence of these fats are shown in studies to directly inhibit the kynurenine pathway, which is the pathway that creates niacin and niacin promotes the proper metabolism of sugar. Getting generous amounts of B vitamins helps promote the proper metabolism of sugar, since many B vitamins are involved in the enzymatic processes which run cellular respiration, and a deficiency of the important ones can interrupt the process. Normally our bodies obtain B vitamins not so much from the diet but from the helpful bacteria in our digestive system. In the case of those who suffer metabolic decline the balance of gut bacteria is compromised, and invasive species of bacteria both suppress those which create our B vitamins or also steal those vitamins for their own pathogenic growth, and restoration of the gut microbiome as discussed later in this book can help to restore normal and effortless supplies of B vitamins. Until gut integrity is restored it is helpful for normal sugar metabolism to obtain supplements of thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacinamide (B3), and biotin (B7). I’m a big fan of brewers or nutritional yeast because it natural has large amounts of B vitamins, which are more effective than the synthetic variety. But because raising the metabolic rate often requires the use of extra carbohydrates it sometimes becomes necessary to use a supplement of extra individual B vitamins to facilitate normal carbohydrate metabolism and prevent a lot of the problems which can come from the disruption of carbohydrate metabolism, which includes weight gain from carbohydrate consumption, depression, fatigue, insomnia, etc. Thiamine deficiency is probably the most significant problem of normal sugar metabolism, since without thiamine the body reverts to anaerobic metabolism rather than aerobic, and sugar is metabolized into lactic acid rather than CO2, and since lactic acid lowers the metabolic rate it triggers the chain of events which lead to metabolic decline and a shift to fatty acid metabolism.

The primary reason our bodies crave sugar as it occurs in desserts and cane sugar is because these forms contain the molecule fructose. Fructose gets its name for being the predominant sugar in ripened fruit, not because it’s part of high-fructose corn syrup. Cane or beet sugar, which is chemically sucrose, is made of one molecule of glucose and one fructose. High-fructose corn syrup is corn syrup, which is normally only glucose, enzymatically treated to convert some of the glucose in to fructose so it tastes sweeter, and fructose does not taste sweeter to us because it is a confectionary temptation but because our brain recognizes the molecule as something valuable to be acquired, rather than spat out. Fruit was (and still should be) a primary food source for humans, because we are primates and require fructose in many metabolic pathways, and fruit also provides many of the other nutrients we require as human beings. Part of the reason we don’t synthesize vitamin C, which most animals can do, is because our evolutionary diet consisted of high-vitamin C foods like fruit and was no longer necessary for us to synthesize it ourselves. But vitamin C stimulates a robust metabolic rate, as discussed throughout the entirety of this book, and as such our biology relies on the availability of nutrition from foods like fruit to regulate metabolic rate, so that it naturally falls during times of scarcity like winter, when vitamin C and other nutrition is unavailable, to slow the metabolic rate and thus the expenditure of spare nutrients, and rises when vitamin C again becomes available, a process which is manually replicated by deprivation diets and avoidance of healthful foods like sugar and fruit. The metabolic requirement for fructose is also why fruit tastes so good to us. Have you ever tried to feed an orange to a dog or a cat? They turn their nose up at it. Because they aren’t primates and didn’t evolve on fruit and can synthesize their own vitamin C. We did, and thence our biology runs, partly, on fructose. 

Healthy bodies can actually synthesize some fructose, but in compromised metabolisms the ability to synthesize fructose is rapidly impaired, which is why regular fructose consumption is necessary for the protection or restoration of health. For this reason is it not only pleasurable to consume fructose but much the way a cat suffers ill-health on a protein deficient diet so do humans suffer one which is fructose deficient. Before the medical community discovered insulin therapy to treat diabetes, sucrose was actually a standard treatment because fructose assist the body in using glucose. Unlike glucose, insulin is not needed to process fructose. Fructose is also the primary reason why fruitarians (a diet I strongly oppose) have such a high metabolic rate, in part because fructose increases the metabolic rate, which in fruitarians is too high. Our cravings for sugar and fructose do not thus occur because the body is a trickster that wants us to suffer and fail—but because fructose is a primary driver of our metabolic health, involved in all sorts of necessary metabolic processes. If fructose caused metabolic disease then fruitarians would be fat and diabetic, but they are overly lean and not diabetic.\Not only can we use fructose to feel good, we can use it to help restore health. In case you are one of those enterprising individuals who thinks they will rush out and buy purified fructose, please be reminded that I advocate whole food and broad diets, not limiting, isolated solutions. In order to be helpful fructose must be digested with glucose as it is in food. Fructose in isolation does not have the same effect. Even sodas with high-fructose corn syrup still contain generous amounts of glucose, and high-fructose corn syrup is not healthy for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with its sugar content. Whole food such as fruit and unrefined cane sugar also contain countless vitamins, minerals, and other biologically active components which benefit health as well which cannot be replicated by supplements. 

When children protest certain foods like broccoli and brussels sprouts it is not because they are undisciplined and willful but because such foods contain anti-nutritive compounds like phytic acid and goitrogens which can harm the metabolism and interfere with digestion. Children are super-attuned to foods to prevent them from accidentally ingesting harmful substances. If LEGOS tasted like raw broccoli no child would ever accidentally swallow them again. For this same reason children also respond to sweet foods because those foods are the safest and most easily digested and most compatible with their physiology. Parents who let their children have plenty of healthy desserts, ice cream, and high-quality sweets along with a focus on fruit consumption have children who sleep through the night, are generally happier and easy going, and are rarely ill. Parents who feel a moral obligation to withhold sugar from their children and instead feed them grain-based foods, raw or underprepared vegetables, or make their children go hungry when upset and tired have children who wake frequently during the night, get sick often and easily, and are quick to fall apart emotionally, who will also develop early and severe metabolic diseases. As much as these people would like it to be true the body does not live on morals, discipline, or conjecture. It lives on sugar, protein, and fat.\Jeanne Calment was also reported to have a dessert with every meal. It was only after generously reintroducing sugar and improving my body’s ability to metabolize it that I was finally able to experience a restoration of my general health. Sometimes I don’t follow my own advice, and when I regained some weight during my recovery I had stopped my usual sugar consumption. My liver could now store enough glycogen to keep me going without constant refueling, but since my sugar consumption dropped dramatically it began to elevate sugar-deficiency related stress hormones like cortisol, my waist expanded, and some of my health problems started to hurt again (insomnia, irritability,\and body aches), which were all resolved by resuming generous consumption of sugary foods.

When we eat sugar we feel happy. Want to feel happy all day long? Go ahead. Eat sugar. Obviously we need vitamins and minerals to properly utilize sugar, so the use of less refined and organic sugar as an adjunct to a normal diet can increase happiness, energy, and healing. I really can’t think of any good reasons to avoid that.

Undiscerning people often refer to baked goods like cake and cookies when discussing sugar. But baked goods are often made of many things besides sugar. Wheat gluten, bad fats, preservatives, and unhealthy additives are all things that are not good for us which are in baked goods and candies which are not sugar but which promote the failure of healthy cellular respiration as well as other adverse metabolic effects. Improperly prepared, industrial grains can cause inflammation when eaten,\and the explosive amount of glucose from grain starch can overwhelm cells by exhausting fructose stores, especially if a person is at all diabetic or has compromised metabolic function. High-fructose corn syrup can be harmful not for the fructose but for everything else that’s in it, including starch residues and industrial enzymes, weed-killer, pesticides, and heavy metals. I do advocate the consumption of sodas with HFCS as long as they are balanced by other healthy foods in the diet, especially adequate calcium, and do not contain toxic additives and preservatives (most do). There’s no sense in cutting out all dietary enjoyment, and in fact I think it’s emotionally harmful to do so. If a food manufacturer can’t make their product with healthy ingredients for you, you shouldn’t be eating it and they don’t deserve your money. Almost none of the candy or desserts in famous stores like Trader Joe’s are made without these kind of potentially allergenic gums, binders, or toxic preservatives.\Even most chocolate brands at Whole Foods use soy in their products—since when did soy become an ingredient in chocolate? If you buy something pre-made, you must read the label to avoid these potentially harmful food additives which have absolutely nothing to do with sugar.

Fructose, it just so happens, can also be used as a natural medication, because it is necessary for specific enzymes which run our most robust metabolic pathways. When supplied to the body consistently it raises the metabolic rate without the assistance of other substances, but its benefit can be extended with the concomitant use of niacinamide, aspirin, coffee, taurine, generous calories, or along with Niacin Therapy as discussed in that chapter. Together these compounds help to normalize metabolic function and restore cellular respiration, as long as the diet is also a good one with good fats and avoidance of the bad ones, then when foods are eaten those foods are used by the body as they should be and not the deficient wasting as happens during metabolic decline. Whenever anyone asks me about remedies to fall asleep I always tell them to put some sugar in warm milk and unless their insomnia is extremely severe they fall asleep immediately. Fructose can also be an aid for anyone who does not feel sufficient hunger impulses, who might find themselves under-eating, as fructose stimulates the overall metabolic rate, which in turn will stimulate hunger impulses, and starting each day with vitamin C and sugar can turn on the metabolic rate and start the daily process of metabolic healing. Consuming fruit smoothies with added organic, unrefined sugar can further supply fructose in the company of many other nutrients. On consumption of fructose-containing sugar some immediate effects will be an increase in heart-rate, body temperature, a depressurizing of sinus and ear canals if there is chronic inflammation, mood will increase, posture will improve, and tension will subside. These are all signs that it is doing good for us. Keep it up. Over the long term it can help support the repair and rebuilding of tissues and systems which are suffering such as the thyroid, adrenals, gonads, fixing erectile dysfunction, age-related cognitive decline, hair restoration, and more. Should any increase in sugar or carbohydrate be accompanied by weight gain, bloating, or digestive or metabolic symptoms it is a definitive sign of invasive pathogenic microorganisms as discussed in upcoming chapters.

Fat is supposed to be on our body. It is part of what defines us as humans and makes us aesthetically the way we are. If we gain weight it is not a sign that we need to stop eating but that our body is under metabolic stress.\Sugar is what our body wants in order to thrive, and if we put in the right kind of fuel we get the right kind of benefits. Besides,\you know you want to. Consider this your permission. Just don’t keep stuffing your face with cheap restaurant chips or processed food and blame sugar when you get fat. Your body is simply protecting you from yourself. Only when you begin to treat it right will it do what you want.

CHAPTER 4
Misleading Science

My alarm blared in the early morning darkness. It was 5:30 a.m. and, remembering why the alarm was set this early in the first place, was overcome with more than the usual Monday morning dread. 

“Good luck today,” said my sleepy Mother as she dropped me in front of Mountain Ridge Junior High in total darkness. “Thanks,” I smiled weakly, fear growing inside me to the point I began to shake. 

Our school had been built only a few years before, so the huge gymnasium floor was shiny and free of wear, the bleachers new and nice, and the walls clean and white except for a large, vibrant Husky Dog logo. I hesitantly joined the other boys already stretching and warming on the court for ninth-grade basketball tryouts. They were numerous, but varied widely in height, build, and skill. Among us were those obvious choices for the team, who would get a spot simply because of their gifted athleticism, boys the rest of us secretly envied who already sported uncanny, incredible pectorals and washboard abs or whom could run for hours without tiring and dodge and weave and leap around the court as if they actually possessed a set of wings. Most of them were my friends, but I took great pains to hide my lust for a few that I desired by keeping a set of less attractive, safe friends who presented no such conflict of interest. One of these friends was nearly my height, and for the last few months had been sizing me up in the hallways during school. “I’m taller than you,” he would insist. In no mood to entertain this competition I pushed passed him, but he stepped closer, pushing me out my stance with his weight and raising himself on his toes to exaggerate his height. “I’m taller.” He repeated. “You’re cheating,” I replied. 

“Alright! Gather around!” shouted our coach, Mr. Hansen, who was a revered figure at the school, older but healthy and fit and unlike stereotypical gym teachers was kind, supportive, and inspiring. I could feel his eyes on me, the tallest kid for twenty miles, a guaranteed secret weapon in spite of my wanting skill and passive demeanor. 

Tryouts started with drills and though I had the longest legs in school I was not the fastest runner. Now that things had started I was feeling more relaxed and confident, and surprised at how well I was actually doing. The truth was I hated basketball. Ever since my father realized I was going to be tall he had thrust me, forcefully into the sport. But all the long, unpleasant work with him over the summer and playing in a club league finally seemed to be paying off. I made shot after shot, and started to feel like I might actually justify a place on the team. Maybe even a chance to become one of the jocks of the school, and though unlikely a possible reprieve from my Dad’s constant berating of my performance and lack of enthusiasm for his favorite sport.

Near the end of tryouts we were separated into teams of three to play a few games of scrimmage. My friend happened to be on the opposing team from me, and while we were handily beating them decided to use his weight advantage once more and rammed unexpectedly into me as he went up for a shot, which he missed, but the force of his charge knocked me over. As I fell his legs trapped my feet and the first thing to hit the floor was my right kneecap. 

The pain was sharp for a moment, stars briefly flashing in my vision, which was immediately followed by a dull, seeping feeling of shock which began to spread from my knee and washed over my whole body. My first thought after how painful it was feeling my kneecap snap off was followed by the strangely comforting realization that I would never have to play basketball again. 

“Are you okay?” asked my friend as he helped me up. I avoided his gaze, afraid I might go off and unleash all my frustration at his behavior at once. But he clearly regretted his behavior, so I forgave him immediately.“No,” I muttered, trying to hold back tears. They helped me to the bench but with each step my knee responded with pain that felt as if someone was sticking a needle in it. The coach, worried, approached me. “I think I tore something,” I said. 

Coach helped me to his office and I dialed home. 

“Hello?” 

“Dad, I got hurt at tryouts.”

“That’s too bad,” he replied. 

“I need you to come get me.”

There was a moment of silence. “Walk it off, you’re fine.”

“Dad, it’s serious. I think I—”

“Toughen up and walk it off.”

I began to feel ashamed, my face flushing in frustration. Perhaps if I could entreat him to understand the seriousness of the injury, which even now only a few minutes after was beginning to swell noticeably. “No, Dad,” I said, “I think tore something—”

“I’m not coming to get you,” he said, interrupting me angrily. Tears forced themselves out, my throat choking with sadness and anger. Not only had I failed tryouts, I was now having to convince my own father to take care of me, in front of my coach, and publicly reveal the misery which I had to deal on a daily basis. “Put Mom on the phone!” I cried in desperation.

A few hours later I was at a clinic having my now melon-sized knee drained of blood and fluid. The doctor suggested I wait a few weeks to check up on it, but my Mother was not happy and instead found a renowned local surgeon to inspect me with an MRI. A few days later I went into to surgery to repair a torn medial patellofemoral ligament. 

It was a nice surprise as I recovered at home to find out that I made first cuts for the varsity team, while my assailant did not, but it was going to be many long months until I could walk again, let alone run, and with that my basketball career was officially over as fast as it had begun. It was the first crossroads of my young life, freed from the suffocating expectations of my parents I realized I could now choose what I wanted to do, or to even do anything at all (aside from running of course). When summer came I found myself healed enough to be active again, and swimming had always been fun. The added bonus of being nearly naked while competing if I were to join a team was an alluring perk, a fantasy kept closely guarded from my conservative family, and toward the end of the summer I finally got the courage to suggest, with pretended indifference, that in light of the fact that I could no longer run swimming might be a good option. My parents didn’t object and a few days later I walked onto the deck of the pool at the American Fork Recreation Center, the sun blinding as it glanced off the choppy water full of raucous, joyful teenagers, and extended my hand to the coach. “Hi,” I said, swallowing my nerves. “You’re the swimming coach?”

“Mr. Harris,” he replied. He appeared to be in his thirties, a great big smile plastered across his face, a whistle hung around his neck and a clipboard in hand. He did not look like a swimmer, dressed in a full shirt and shorts, his skin pale, with extra weight about his midsection. “I’m Nathan,” I said.

“Good to meet you.” He replied, looking me up and down. “Boy you’re tall.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” I smiled. “I was thinking about joining the team.”

“We’d love to have you. Have you swum before?”

“I used to play basketball, but I hurt my knee trying out for the team last year. I’ve been taking a few lessons but I’ve never been on a team.”

There was an easy, joyful inspiration about Mr. Harris that I never saw in coaches of other sports. In spite of my nerves it seemed this was going to be fun for many reasons. I looked around at the barely clad guys my age and felt a thrill of excitement at the possibility of being one of them. Mr. Harris explained that I would need a suit, goggles, and a cap if I wanted but which wasn’t necessary. It was the least amount of equipment for any sport I’d ever played. The next day my Mom reluctantly took me to a sporting goods store in a larger nearby town. “Can’t you wear a normal swimsuit?” She asked, picking a speedo off the rack with only two fingers as if holding a dirty diaper. “No—“ I said sharply, imagining the horror of walking onto the pool deck in board shorts. “Do you want me to look stupid?” I said. “I’d be the only one on the team not wearing a speedo. It’s the equipment for the sport.” She grimaced but dropped her protest, much to my relief. I strolled up and down the aisle of speedos, doubling my efforts to disguise my gawking at the photos of beautiful grown men which graced the cover of each package, each promising the achievement of manhood simply through its purchase. Some speedos were clearly too sexy to get away with, like one which had barely an inch of material at the sides and was a bright fuchsia color. I settled on a plain racing suit and another with a creative green pattern across the top which still had a bit of style but was also masculine enough to buy in the presence of my mother, and suppressed my impatience as the cashier rang up the long line of customers. When we arrived home I immediately went to the bathroom to try on my new equipment. Standing in front of the mirror I was suddenly no longer a boy, my head nearly passing out of view ever since I had grown taller than all the mirrors in our house. Of course I was quite skinny, but the speedo was a symbol of passing beyond the divide which separated my childhood dependency and blind trust in parents from the oncoming autonomy of adulthood, and I was filled with the excitement of finally getting to do something I had decided for myself.

On the first day of practice an older, insecure boy made fun of my first dive from the blocks. But the other members, the real athletes of the team, told me not to pay him any mind and so I didn’t. I had never been so integrated into a group of peers. They showed me how to turn, how to have proper hand position, and how to defog my goggles. They also showed me how to laugh and joke but also how to work hard and to support each other. I had finally found my place. 

The idea that there might be other boys in the world just like me never entered my mind. Certainly they were not on my swimming team, racing up and down the lanes right next to me, or standing nearby in the warm water of the locker room showers, longing for me as I did for them, and the ones passing by the showers who stared were just comparing sizes, I thought. Since I was so tall I was never subject to harassment, which I learned later was frequent for the other gay boys on the team. I was unlucky to pass my whole High School career without ever having an impetus to confront my sexual orientation such as an encounter with another boy, or learning anyone else harbored the same kinds of feelings for me, never looked at with longing, averting my eyes in the locker room for fear of getting caught, for disrespecting other boys which might not appreciate it, and so I spent the entirety of my early swimming career in constant fear.

I did catch on to swimming like a fish, however. By the end of the first year I had put on fifty-pounds of muscle, and was on the relay team with older boys who had been swimming all their life. I was destined to be a swimmer, it seemed, and the excitement that infected our team at the completion of our State Finals seemed to promise my life was actually going to turn out alright. 

But something changed the following summer. Our coach became unhinged, as if some monster from a classic horror film had bitten him and taken possession of his body. “Nobody talks to the the football coach like that!” he screamed one day at a boy who had ditched practice and ran from the pool deck crying when he followed it up with, “you’re off the team!” Swimming became exhausting. Emboldened by our new potential our coach added morning practice in addition to our afternoon ones, and instead of swimming during the allotted school hour we lifted weights in the school gym and then went to the pool for another workout afterward. On slow days we were in the pool for two and a half hours, working out a total of four on the hard days. I had never pushed myself like this, and my body rebelled quickly. One day during swimming practice, when our coach had us hooked up to long lengths of surgical tubing which would tighten before we reached the other side and was a drill to improve our strength, while throwing my newly massive arms forward in butterfly stroke my muscles suddenly felt as if they popped. It was a strange feeling, one I had never had before. Something was wrong, but I wrote it off as simple fatigue from that workout. I sank in the water, letting the rubber bands haul me back to the other end, floating on my back as I stared at the white bubble dome which was erected every winter and blocked all sunlight and sequestered chlorine in the air. The rest of the practice I pretended to work hard, too exhausted to push myself any more.

The next morning I missed practice. Coach was angry, but being one of his star swimmers he muted his frustration. Little did the break help my situation. My times began to plateau. One young swimmer who used to idolize me suddenly beat me in a race that was usually mine and rubbed it in my face. Normally it would have been fun camaraderie, but the feeling that I was fighting a losing battle made me all the more worried. I tried to put more effort into training, more determination, pulling harder and turning faster and tighter. My times would not budge. I felt exhausted. Worse, I began to feel even more depressed than usual. My mind ruminated continually on my sexual orientation, stolen glances at the boys in school on which I crushed but followed by guilt and shame and hatred for who I was. I redoubled efforts to suppress such fantasies, which merely fueled the desires more until they became too overpowering to resist. My newfound love for swimming had suddenly rotted away into fear and anxiety, that old thrill before each practice and the prickling anticipation of the water sliding over my dry skin replaced by anxiety and dread of more failure. 

I would take a break, I thought one day. That’s all I need. Just don’t let anyone know you’re weak. 

I made an excuse for needing to miss a length of practices and a meet, but my coach was furious. He ran into the locker room after me and screamed that I attend or get off the team. I didn’t know what to do. If kept it up I felt like I was going to die. 

“We’re proud of you,” said my parents on telling them of my decision to quit. I veiled the shame of my assumed weakness in pretended apathy and boredom for the sport, since I could not ask them for help with any of the kinds of problems I was having. They could have stopped there and things would have been great, but then my Mother said, “We didn’t think you were going stick with it as long as you did anyway.”

The long needed rest which came brought life back to my soul. My attention returned to school and other friends, and my mind and body began to heal somewhat. My grades improved as did my social life. I made some different friends and began to do normal things like go to the movies, skip class for the first time, attend school plays, football games, and dances. But when the next summer came I found myself missing the pool, my teammates, the rush of water past my body, the thrill of winning, and felt I had regained the strength to try again. It was my Senior year, after all, and my last chance. I gathered my courage, swallowed my pride and asked the coach if I could rejoin the team. He seemed to bury his excitement in a reprimanding scowl. 

There was still some summer weather remaining, and the winter bubble had yet to be installed over the pool. Lap after lap seemed to welcome me back to my true home, the rotisserie of swimming under the summer sun once more gave my skin that impeccably even tan of a swimmer. I put on even more muscle than the year before. During a family lake trip as I lay spread across the seats of our ski boat a girl who had graduated the previous year and was about to start college said I “had a good body,” which was the first time anyone had ever complimented it. I went skinny dipping for the first time and realized that men could be near each other and not be afraid of intimacy. The season began on a high note. I was elected co-captain. I walked the school halls for the first time in my life not feeling small and insignificant, but my true height, for the first time a confident, proud, and capable boy fast becoming a man. 

But soon the bubble went back on the pool and shortly after my fatigue returned, and this time not only did my speed plateau, it plummeted. I also finally told the first person about my secret desires for other boys. It was not my mother or father, not even a close friend. I told our bishop, the man to whom everyone in a Mormon congregation is expected to confess their sins. I had never kissed another person, never engaged in any sexual activity. I had seen pornography for the first time that year, and was both frightened and thrilled by the feelings which an aroused, naked man evoked within me. I told the bishop I knew I was gay. But instead of reassuring me that others existed who were just like me, that God loved me and I should do the same, he counseled me that being around other boys in speedos was not good for my spiritual health, and that I needed to stop masturbating and quit the swimming team.

How could I do that? Swimming was going to get me a scholarship. It was how I was going to attend college and propel the rest of my life. It was my identity. At the beginning of the year I had been one of the fastest in the state. The humiliation of having revealed my desires was too much. I could feel the exhaustion infecting me again. It was too much to bear. So once more I failed, leaving behind the sport and people I loved, and there were no more chances.

A few years after I moved to Los Angeles, and with few friends to show for the years I had been in this enormous city I missed the scent and feel of the pool and the camaraderie of a team. Insufferably insecure I had avoided joining the gay team because I had gone on a date with one of the swimmers which had not gone well and feared seeing him again. It was ridiculous, I realized. I put in some time jogging away a few extra pounds and once more gathered my courage and joined a team. It was terrifying wearing a speedo among other gay men, who are often more cruel to each other than straight people are to us on account of growing up constantly fearing for our own safety. But once I got in the pool I felt at home right away. I felt like a teenager again, speeding through the water, the feel of my own strength and power recharging my bare-level confidence. Within a few weeks my strength and skill as a swimmer quickly found me leading the lanes with the other faster swimmers and won me the adoration of my teammates, my figure quickly becoming once more fit and tight. Again I was an athlete, and best of all acquiring that even coat of tan so easily got by Southern California swimmers who never have to swim in a bubble.

But my depression did not lift, and once more I began to find myself sullen and anxious outside of the pool. Worse, I began to have increasing insomnia which had fluctuated in severity over the years. I had long been interested in discovering the root of my physical and emotional adversities, and now the pain was too severe to put off any longer. I began to investigate, but this time instead of a psychologist I went to a psychiatrist. I got on Lexapro. I wasted no time taking it, but dismay set in immediately when, although altering my mental state, it failed not only to relieve my depression and anxiety but also robbed me of clarity of thought and the ability to orgasm. A coach on my new team also became sexually aggressive and crossed boundaries, and being timid and once more overwhelmed I stopped showing up to practice.

Around that time I met a wonderful boy with whom I promptly fell in love and hid away from the world for a year, but toward the end I found myself wearing size thirty-eight jeans instead of thirty-six and my new love avoiding my kisses. I resolved to leave him and change my heavy drinking and hapless eating habits. I would return to swimming and get my life back on track. I confronted the problem coach and asked him not to talk about my body or touch me when I returned to practice. Even though I spilled out of my racing suit and received some underhanded ridicule by some of the assholes on the team, I was overjoyed to be back in the pool. I changed therapists and quit Lexapro, tired of the castration it made me feel, and began to look for natural means of relief. Articles I found were usually from news sources or self-help books. Most of the consensus supported by ‘exciting studies’ were about things I’d never heard of like St. John’s Wort, 5-HTP, and resveratrol. I ordered them and immediately felt a change, less dramatic and specific than the prescription had been but definitely a difference. I dropped weight faster than I ever had in my whole life, and for the first time saw the clear outlines of abdominals and hip bones (which was actually not a good thing). 

Then one day during practice my heart skipped a beat. Not metaphorically for any of my handsome teammates. It literally skipped a beat. My lungs terrifyingly emptied of air. I had to stop mid practice and stand up in the middle of the lane in order not to drown, trying not to appear as panicked as I was, as if I was having a heart attack, which I thought I was. The episode abated quickly, but my muscles felt weak and tired. I left early, thinking some rest and food would help me recover, yet again unable to ask for help for the deafening voice of shame within me. Consequent practices continued to render me fatigued and terrified, as heart palpitations set in with regularity. Though the supplements helped give me the leanest physique of my life, I stopped them altogether. My heart returned to normal within a week, and I began to take practices with a little more leisure.

Two years later I met someone new and fell in love once more. I idolized him. He was ballsy and tough and funny and we had similar backgrounds from oppressively conservative and abusive childhoods. He was the first man to whom I ever committed sharing closet space. Later we decided to move to Palm Springs, for a change of pace and a chance to focus on artistic pursuits, he a writer and me in search of a mentor trailing him like a puppy dog. It would also be a chance to get my health under control. Since my partner did not drink, I could also drink less. Living in a resort town near a grocery store I could cook healthy meals and exercise under the sun to my heart’s content without worrying about crowded gyms and my paranoia of judgmental glares. 

But in spite of my efforts to remain fit my waist began to expand. Having been in thirty-four-waist jeans I once again found myself at thirty-six and rising. I got a gym membership, joined a cross-fit group, and went occasionally to the public pool to swim alone, in addition to jogging through the neighborhoods. My insomnia had worsened over the last year and soon became debilitating, and I was too exhausted to workout with any resemblance of my former athletic self. Swimming also now seemed to make me irritated, like someone plugged me into a high-powered electric socket and flipped on the switch. In spite of hitting the gym and a cross-fit group three times a week my waist went up to thirty-eight. My partner began to withdraw, and make comments about my appearance. “Yeah,” he said one day during a conversation about what I don’t remember, “because you don’t want to get any fatter.” I was floored, not that he would say something like that since he had long shown himself to be rather cruel, but because I was an athlete. Fat wasn’t who I was as a person. That was other people. I could not get fat.

But of course I could.\And I did. Growing more frustrated by this free-fall into fatigue and frumpiness I began to search for other answers, reading papers, news articles, and books and blogs by doctors, weight-loss experts, and nutritionists. Among the samplings I read during that time was a book on liver health. I followed its protocol. It failed as well. Other leading doctors and nutritionists, personalities with sprawling websites peppered with advertisements for every kind of health product outlined tips for weight loss and improving health with general sweeping statements such as “sugar is bad,” and “leptin resistance causes weight gain,” hocking supplements which I bought and diet manipulations that sounded scientific yet lacked any convincing effects on my life. 

Despite all this nothing changed, my energy slowly draining like water from a partly clogged sink. One day while walking my dogs I ran into a neighbor and mentioned that losing weight was proving unsuccessful and frustrating. She was a nurse practitioner, she said, and worked for a successful and expensive weight loss clinic. “I have a program for you,” she said. “Men lose weight so fast on it.” “Really?” I asked, feeling hope once again. As she described the program I could see the sense behind it, although the rigor and deprivation gave me some pause as it seemed to simply be calorie deprivation and portion control which had so far only ever served to add suffering, not weight-loss, to my weight-loss efforts. But the difficulty paid off. By the third day I had lost eight pounds! Not only would I be lean again,\my boyfriend would probably stop dropping backhanded compliments about my appearance.\In retrospect I actually still looked hot. There is a video of me from this time standing out in the rain by the pool, with huge muscles and a bright smile on my face. But my health was already like a commuter bus in the Peruvian Andes—much too close to the edge. Contrary to my hope of hopes I did not keep losing eight pounds every few days. Instead, the weight loss stalled at ten pounds, though I was nearly starving myself. Two weeks of this hell resulted in no more weight loss, and my insomnia suddenly worsened from the usual one or two in the morning to three or four, and now with a new irritating sensation which seemed like someone was scraping my spine with a fork. I abandoned the diet, much to the dismay of my disdainful partner, and resigned to investigate other options. Meanwhile, the stress of my relationship and life was proving more than I was able to handle, and unconscious of this at the time, began to drink more. Unable to extract myself from ill-health and loneliness, my physical health began to decline at a steady pace until one day I finally found myself so ill I could not walk around the block with my dogs without my extremities swelling, literally gasping for air as if oxygen itself was being sucked from the earth.

I don’t remember exactly how I came upon the writings of the biologist whose work would change my life, but suddenly I found myself on the website of a Dr. Raymond Peat whose articles discuss hormones and women’s health but include a vast and thorough understanding of cellular biology. His writing was detailed, and though meandering I was suddenly reading information that fit not only exactly with the science I already knew but also my lived experiences. For the first time in my search for answers I was reading work which correctly characterized the nature of molecules and cellular processes in the context of diet, and what was more valuable was that this science fit exactly in line with the causes and consequences of my own experience. He talked about how nutritional deficiencies, stress, and even excess physical exercise could wrought harmful effects on the body. He talked about chlorine and it’s antagonism to thyroid health and how hypothyroid disease contributes to weight gain and depression. He mentioned 5-HT, St. John’s Wort, and resveratrol as substances which promote stress and torpor not in generalities but specific hormonal effects. His insight into energy and nutrition and how both contribute to specific outcomes and metabolic conditions such as insomnia correlated exactly with what I had experienced in my descent into ill-health. Things I had tried which resulted in failure were described exactly as they had occurred, like some psychic retelling of my past, but on a metabolic, biological level. It was actual science, where others use dubious, nebulous abstractions from situational observation infected by cultural bias. Dr. Peat was very specific about how nutrients behave in context, in the body, chemically, and how those relationships with cells fluctuate and change based on the composition of the tissues, hormones, the diet, and environment. 

I began to implement some of the things his articles talked about, but they were filtered through forums and amateur health advocates who didn’t entirely understand, as well as the complications of bias from my own life, and Dr. Peat’s writing is better at pointing out problems but less effective in presenting solutions. The most effective tool I learned from him was a method of monitoring temperature and pulse as an indicator of metabolic health (which I discuss in the chapter on self therapy). I was alarmed to find my body temperature far below what it should be, but it was a revelation because it was the first time I could see the state of my health reflected in a measurable, objective way. Beginning some of the concepts advocated by his papers I found brief relief, but not knowing enough yet I made some mistakes, but which still continued to improve my health. At this same time I finally found a competent doctor, after having visited many who insisted there was nothing wrong with me though my tests had for the last four or five years consistently returned a high white blood cell count. This doctor had the insight to image my thyroid gland, and she found it was enlarged and infected with five nodes, two of which were tumor size and likely cancerous.

But already my health began to improve, enlightened by the work of Dr. Peat, though my partner couldn’t see it and he left. I lost my health coverage and could not pursue cancer treatment. I was abandoned to my own devices, but my keenness for science and the information from Dr. Peat finally allowed me to connect the dots of cause and consequence in my own health. I saw the flaws in the books, articles, and medical studies which had led me to adopt devastating dietary behaviors like starvation, fasting, and carbohydrate deprivation, or taking supplements like 5-HTP and resveratrol which had entirely contributed to my physical downfall. It soon became apparent that most of the health information I had heard through all my life was utter bullshit. I began to see the body for what it truly is—not a decrepit, weak vessel for the soul which must be shaped and molded in the forge of self discipline but a competent, amazing, logical construct of nature which does not trend toward death but to life and health.\I also saw the vast majority of health advice for what it was—tent poles to prop up the canopy of wishful thinking. We go to great lengths to convince ourselves of things we want to be true—that we are safe, that we are wanted, that we are fine people, even when events show the contrary. Most medical and nutritional information is exactly this, with biases infecting studies, research, and practice to the point of leading astray even those who are intelligent and open minded. I once saw a study on dialysis patients which charted their sodium levels in relation to the rate of death during dialysis. Those with the lowest sodium levels lived longer on dialysis than those with the most sodium. The conclusion of the authors was that high sodium caused early death while on dialysis, because they like many others have long believed sodium to be antagonistic to good health. But if one is being truly objective and scientific there is an equal, opposite conclusion in that very same study, which is that those with high sodium were more likely to die from dialysis. This is the more logical conclusion from such data, given that the dialysis process removes sodium from the body, and thus kills those with an apparent need for extra sodium as reflected by the action of their own physiology.

Similarly, research into resveratrol has made it appear to be a healthy supplement. On the contrary, resveratrol raises cortisol by a large margin, by blocking carbohydrate metabolism. This is taken as a good thing by proponents of the supplement, but cortisol is a stress hormone and excessively chronic levels of cortisol has a debilitating effect on human physiology. In myself it triggered unhealthy muscle loss, stretch marks, cardiovascular issues, and contributed to insomnia, irritability, and restlessness. 5-HTP too is converted to serotonin which is regarded as the happiness hormone, but serotonin is actually a hormone of torpor and in excess it slows the metabolism of the heart. St. John’s Wort does similar things, as does Lexapro. In studies and medical research the failure to ask ‘is this a good thing?’ often goes unaddressed, or is informed by previous bias rather than clinical confirmation. Some studies show increases in testosterone from calorie deprivation and excessive exercise, but fail to consider if that rise in testosterone is a stress response, to protect the body against the damage which is being done, which would eventually lead to a failure of testosterone production, or worse.

The basic foundation of Dr. Peat’s work is the understanding that energy begets structure. This means that human cells, when functioning properly with proper food and nutrition can produce sufficient energy to arrange themselves and their constituent parts to in turn achieve best physiological structure which in turn achieves best health outcomes. This promotes youth and energy, and interruptions which reduce the ability for cells to produce energy, through environmental, nutritional, and developmental challenges cause the reverse,\the disordered assembly of cells and their various parts, a decline in structure and thus health. I would like to point out, however, that my own views diverge from Dr. Peat’s, so while much of this work is informed by and includes information learned from him, this work should not be taken as a direct interpretation or endorsement. In addition to the nature of energy production and its effects on human health, the emphasis of my work focuses on the natural systems of the human animal which exploit the nutritional and other resources of our environment, and how those systems are interrupted or promoted to the benefit or detriment of the human animal.

Studies like one which found an association between a known carcinogen called acrylamide and barbecued food caused a worldwide panic in the nutritional community and a subsequent brouhaha to avoid charred and barbecued food, food which we have been eating since man first discovered fire. Before the 1900’s food was always cooked with open flame, fired by wood or charcoal. The fact that we cook food is the reason we are so advanced as a species, because heat breaks down chemical substances into elemental parts, destroying inedible barriers to nutrition and allowing easier and greater absorption of a higher quantity of nutrients. Tremendous energy is required to separate the chemical bonds that hold food together. It takes our bodies the same amount of energy to do the work that can be done for us by fire, and our tongue identifies beneficial molecular properties of food as delicious (or not). Charring food breaks it down into its most basic elements, allowing them to be absorbed without much effort. Since we have survived for hundreds of thousands of years as a species while consuming charred food I was not inclined to accept the conclusions of the study, and even less so after reading it. The authors conducted no clinical trial whatsoever. This study in particular is a kind which is notoriously unreliable for determining cause and effect, and is supposed to be used as a jumping off point for further scientific inquiry, not to be published and distributed as proven science. This study was authored by young scientists conducting phone interviews with a random assortment of people, asking them pointed questions about food habits and then following up with a later phone call to inquire if they had contracted cancer. The authors then “adjusted” for variables which means they altered the data, and arrived at this conclusion without so much as drawing a single drop of blood or running one slide of cell culture on their subjects. Not once did they confirm by observation or in clinical settings that these people actually ate burnt food, how much of it they did or didn’t eat, or exactly how burnt each meal was nor even measuring the amount of the supposed chemical in question in any food eaten by any single one of the participants. They did not take blood or tissue samples, or run any kind of lab. There is absolutely no evidence from this or any study that charred food actually has any causative association with any type of cancer, whatsoever. In fact, it should also be argued from the results of their study that if there really was an association of prostate cancer with charred food, which there is not, because if there was an association nearly every single male in the Untied States would have prostate cancer, it is equally possible that people who develop prostate cancer might naturally crave charred food for some yet unknown therapeutic action, which is a more probable reality since we as a species intuitively crave foods which alleviate suffering and illness.

This study is tantamount to fraud, as are most studies where people draw erroneous conclusions from sets of data they have manufactured themselves, and people consume the information from these studies as legitimate advice or insight because most people think that authors of such work are motivated by a desire to help them and advance scientific discovery rather than one of profit and professional advancement, never contemplating that a scientist’s aim in performing a study may be solely to achieve notoriety. Thousands and thousands of studies just like this exist, where people take one set of data and correlate it with something, because correlations exist all around us. Studies and articles which use subjects unfamiliar and frightening to the general public such as acrylamide sound legitimate because we often don’t know what they’re talking about. There are literally more dangerous chemicals on the grocery store receipt you handle every day than are in charred food from a barbecue. The authors and promoters of the barbecue study also failed to mention that acrylamide is entirely destroyed by stomach acid, a fact that should have rendered the study invalid from the very outset.

If we are going to get cancer it’s not the fault of a delicious grilled dinner, but from lack of nutrients, exposure to environmental contaminants, or from behavioral or environmental stressors which compromise the ability of cells to produce energy, and what really causes cancer and how to cure it is discussed in great detail in the upcoming chapter on cancer. The kind of scientific malfeasance which leads to misinformation and even dangerous health consequences is a lesson in how unscrupulous people misuse or misinterpret evidence which can influence your own health and experience, and why it’s important for the general population to understand the context of a study when using it to make important health decisions. Whether such bias is intended or not it is the sole reason so much confusion and contradiction surrounding health is so infectiously pervasive. In my own experience my health was further destroyed by blindly heeding supposedly “scientific” advice, especially if backed by a study or seeming irrefutable support, never understanding that “science” as it exists is as easily and commonly affected by malfeasance, deceit, cheating, conflicts of interest, ulterior motives, and incompetence as any other profession. Adding to the confusion is the motivation of media and other businesses to use the most outrageous, novel, and emotionally exploitative sources for click-bait, it begins to seem clear how little reliance should be placed on this system of health information dissemination. This is nothing new, of course, as humans have always used deceit and information for gain. Even the great Benjamin Franklin concocted outright lies to increase the popularity of his newspaper. He once wrote an entirely fabricated article claiming to have found caches of human scalps belonging to white Americans taken by Indians aligned with King George. Of course no such thing happened and white colonists were in contrast responsible for the genocide of an entire continent of people. The lie no doubt enflamed prejudiced against indigenous populations and contributed unnecessarily to fear and the emotional unrest of consumers of that information. That same thing happens to us when we listen to exploitative, misguided, and opportunistic sources of information rather than investigating for ourselves and exercising some critical thought before acting on it. For me, it nearly cost my life.

Once I found reliable information it became plainly obvious how to get it. The broad strokes of truth can be seen in every day life. The effectiveness of low-carb diets are invalidated by everyone who doesn’t see results. Those taking prescription medications which act opposite their claimed benefits means those medications do not work. When portion control is cited as necessary for fitness it is invalidated by all those with abs who eat like porkers. Our food history has a rich tradition of good dishes made well while enjoying the benefits of youth and wellness. It is not necessary to resort to exotic solutions or extreme behaviors. It only requires a little care and compassion for your own body. When ingesting dietary advice it behooves a consumer to ask whether it is rational, logical, and likely. If it is not those things, best to disregard. Your life may be at stake.

If you want to learn more about human health, my personal story, and how to address many metabolic diseases, get a copy of Fuck Portion Control. Available in paperback (500 pages) or eBook.