Thriving In The 21st Century

RUSSELL JAFFE, MD, PH.D., CCN

©2021 Russell Jaffe

Published by HSC Press

Printed in U.S.A.

This book is not intended to be a substitute for the medical advice of a licensed physician. The reader should consult with their doctor in any matters relating to his/her health and particularly with respect to any symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention. The statements made about products and services have not been evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

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SKEPTIC TO ADVOCATE: A PERSONAL STORY OF DISCOVERY, EVIDENCE, AND RECOVERY

Growing up in Albany, New York, my intention was to become a lawyer and a theologian. When graduating high school, my choice was a six-year undergraduate program at Columbia University in which you earned a law degree and could enroll in the theological center of your choice. Life, and my high school principal, thought differently: My principal said he ‘preferred not to comment’ on my merits in regard to a favorable letter of recommendation. My application was not accepted.

Scrambling to find something to do in the fall, I was attracted to Boston University’s College of Liberal Arts mostly because of location. When visiting the campus for my interview, Dean Bernie Meckle asked me if I was interested in a six-year medical degree program. He said they had 48 slots, 47 acceptances, and one decline; if I wanted it, that final spot in Boston University School of Medicine could be mine. My answer: Yes!

After two years of undergraduate work and two years of medical school, it became clear that medical education is a trade school in which you are taught what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. Academic medical education at that time followed a “watch one, do one, teach one” model, which thrust medical students

into performing procedures on patients quickly after learning about those procedures. They were then considered well-versed enough on that procedure to teach it to others. It made me realize that I wasn’t interested in practicing medicine as it was then practiced. I wanted to do some original research, so Carl Franzblau became my dissertation adviser in a combined MD/PhD program with emphasis on biochemistry, physiology, and general medical sciences.

Next came internal medicine training at University Hospital under Dr. Norman Levinsky. It was an incredible opportunity for me and so many other doctors to be mentored by him throughout his long and storied career.

My interest in internal medicine, biochemistry, and molecular biology included applied clinical and scientific understanding of health and illness causes and mechanisms. My first independent project was to figure out how connective tissue collagen and elastin cross linkages are inhibited by d-penicillamine, a non-metabolized simple amino acid. Knowledge of connective tissue was helpful in then determining the architectural or quaternary requirement for collagen protein to activate blood platelets—findings I included in my early peer reviewed publication in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI). My post-graduate education continued at the National Institute of Health’s Clinical Center, where I was assigned as a US Public Health Service Officer and matriculated to the senior staff by the age of 30.

Each year at NIH, my group published an improved method that became a new standard in medical care. One NIH project improved the precision of occult blood testing as a screening test for colon cancer. Another project quantified the number of collagen binding sites on a platelet. Our multiple specialized studies included functional platelet survival, functional fibrinogen survival, and platelet activation (aggregation). The data in our studies showed that changes in blood clotting are predictive years before a cardiovascular catastrophe. Yet another project looked at changes in blood clotting as predictors of cardiovascular events. Still another

improved precision of parasite detection in stool. Another improved detection of blood in urine.

An inner conflict emerged: Could all this training leave me ignorant of elegantly simple and simply elegant functional healing systems?

As a man of science and of spirit, I felt an obligation to investigate rather than reject out of ignorance. I set out to debunk so-called complementary approaches including acupuncture, yoga, and meditation, but instead my ignorance encountered abundant evidence that validated ancient practices’ ability to relieve suffering and promote health by addressing causes more than consequences.

The first system for me to debunk was acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Jing Nuan Wu, a Taoist priest and acupuncturist, had a studio on MacArthur Boulevard in Washington, DC. (If you are a Steely Dan fan, Jing was the basis for their song “Dr. Wu.”) His results so impressed me that a seven-year apprenticeship followed. Patch Adams trained with Jing at the same time. Together, we translated the Nan Ching (The Difficult Classic) into English. It was then my privilege to teach a three-year course titled Oriental Strategies in Western Medical Practice, the first program for medical acupuncture licensure in New York and California.

Seeking to debunk yoga, I contacted Dr. Ramamurti Mishra, whose textbook on yoga psychology and his commentary of Patanjali’s Sutras caught my attention. He encouraged me to experience inner space through meditation, music, and quiet times. These practices made the benefits of each of the seven yogas increasingly clear to me.

In the 1970s, Abdul Aziz Said, professor at American University in Washington, DC, introduced me to the Mesnevi Sufism Order of the East. He and Pir Vilayat Khan, of the Sufi Order of the West, opened to me this spiritual and wisdom tradition.

Along the way, the healing results Olga Worrall and Dr. Robert Leichtman achieved at the New Life Clinic, conducted in the Mount Washington Methodist Church in Northwest Baltimore on most

Thursday mornings, came to my attention. Arriving as a skeptic, the obvious results of her work encouraged me to spend about five years as a member of her staff, participating in and observing the healing services.

Drs. Stanley Krippner and Morton Leeds introduced me to positive psychology. Roger Tolle and Deane Juhan introduced me to somatic psychology as introduced by Dr. Milton Trager. Moshe Feldenkrais was a friend and mentor to me and to Anat Baniel.

Helen Boney introduced me to music therapy. Joan Kellogg introduced me to mandala art therapy. Erik Peper’s therapeutic biofeedback, Meg Jordan’s insights into health coaching, and Marshall Rosenberg’s insights into nonviolent communication each and all added to my resources and practices.

Though I set out to debunk them, the gifted people I encountered on my journey were all gracious and eager to guide me. They gently pointed out my ignorance and then taught me what they knew. And they taught and mentored without asking for any compensation. Going from skeptic to their student, and then often to their doctor, was my privilege.

What really sealed my fate as an enthusiastic supporter of ancient approaches to well-being occurred when a friend asked me to give her a ride to a birthday party for Sam Dech Preah Bhanté Vira Bellong Dharmawara Mahathera, known as Bhanté, a Cambodian Buddhist monk.

Bhanté had recently arrived in America with a mission to establish a Buddhist vihara (temple) in Oxon Hill, Maryland, near Washington, DC, and to teach a color-based healing system attributed to Gautama Buddha 2,500 years ago. Bhanté advised the royal families of Cambodia, Thailand, and Tibet; the Nehru family in India; as well as John Bennet’s Gurdjeiff College for Continuous Education in England and its American affiliate, Claymont.

Bhanté became the head of the World Buddhist Fellowship and founded the Institute for Buddhology. He was one of only two monks who outranked His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. Bhanté went on to become my friend and teacher of many things, including the non-

invasive color healing paradigm that he taught. He became one of the godparents to my daughter, and my mentor for the last 30 years of his life, from ages 80-110. Bhanté appreciated the children whom we bore; both children benefited greatly from their casual contact with him, as well as my other contacts.

Medical training taught me to have an objective, analytic view of the world. My studies with Bhanté and these other teachers of ancient wisdom practices have taught me to experience more deeply realms beyond the quantitative.

This came into personal focus when, in my 60s, a near death experience (NDE) rocked my world.

At 9 AM on August 2, 2014, my world was normal. At 9:02 I felt dizzy. At 9:05 I was on the floor, unable to open my eyes, with severe idiopathic paroxysmal vertigo (dizziness). Reaching out for help, it was clear that this catastrophe might be as much of a spiritual crisis as a physical one. Perhaps my spiritual commitment was being tested. The stress of going to a hospital and having diagnostic procedures done by young physicians might likely, in my stressed state, make the situation worse. When Dr. Leichtman advised me to go to the hospital, my response was to ask him to send healing energy. He called me a fool, insisting my situation was consistent with a stroke and would benefit from conventional medical care. He also agreed to pray for me.

Shortly thereafter, something happened that is commonly related by people who report a NDE. While it blew my mind, the room filled with angels. They communicated telepathically. “Are you here to take me to the other side?” I thought. They replied, “No we’re here because you need help.”

My adult son, Sky, drove four hours from New Jersey to come help care for me. When he arrived and saw me lying on the floor, he picked me up and put me on my bed where I remained, essentially immobile for three days. Every time my body started to contract, he stretched me out. While I was aware of who was in the room and their intention, my eyes mostly stayed closed—my attention was focused on breathing and surviving.

For three days my world consisted of mostly lying still and breathing. No food. No urination. No poop. My son called Carlos, a family friend, to come and perform body therapy on me while I was in this state. On days 1 and 2 Carlos told my son, “If your dad is still alive tomorrow, I’ll come back.”

Day 3: Able to sit up.

Day 4: Took a shower.

Day 5: My sister and my son helped me on a recumbent bike, in an attempt to recover the small amount of cardiac decompensation that occurs when you lie in bed for three days. My condition continued to improve without conventional medical interventions.

Once well enough, a colleague who also trained at NIH did a brain and body positron emission tomography (PET scan) on me at his scan center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He confirmed that my symptoms seemed to match those of a middle cerebral artery stroke, which leaves a residual paralysis. My brain scan didn’t show any evidence of damage. He also checked my kidneys—having not urinated for three days, there was concern that they had been damaged, too. Again, nothing showed up on the PET scan. My NDE gave me the opportunity to practice more than preach.

Yet, this experience only reinforced what I had been preaching: When facing a physical challenge, seek first to invoke your natural, innate healing responses before rushing in with a procedure or a prescription. Your body truly can achieve remarkable levels of healing when you give it what it needs and reduce or remove what harms it.

Iwant you to thrive rather than just survive. This book is a guide to make you healthier, wiser, and fitter for life, regardless of your current age or wellness status.

You are unique. Your chemistry, your relationships, and your history all interconnect to make you who you are. Albert Einstein pointed out that “religion without science is blind, and science without religion is lame.” This manifesto integrates these two seemingly disparate realms so that you can nurture your own nature and engage your natural innate healing response to rise above 21st century life challenges.

Dr. John Knowles, a mentor and advocate for personalized care, recognized in the late 1970s that “America is spending ever more while becoming ever sicker, and that is what we call health care.” He was then president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund after leading Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

In the U.S., 2.6 million people die each year, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. One million of those deaths are of people who die too young at high cost and suffering—half a million from diabetes and its complications, a quarter million from nutritional deficiencies, and another quarter from the stress of high-tech living. That is a catastrophe on multiple levels—personal, of course, but also social and economic. America spends a little over $3 trillion a year on health care. If we invested in our own health and stopped waiting for biotechnology, with its pills and procedures, to fix us, we would collectively save $1 trillion a year. That’s not an opinion, it’s a fact that’s been confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the National Institute of Health (NIH), and the National Center of Health Statistics (NCHS).

I am not alone in my views. Elliott Fisher, MD, MPH of the Dartmouth Atlas; Eric Rasmussen, MD, MDM; Erik Peper, PhD; Jack

Lewin, MD, functional cardiologist; Amory Lovins, FRSA, founder of Rocky Mountain Institute; and Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP, founder of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and acting commissioner for Medicare under President Obama, have each independently concluded that a dramatic shift toward prevention and health promotion is needed to bend the current disease curve.

The most famous health economist of our time, Princeton professor Uwe Reinhardt, essentially said, “If we look forward a generation or two, everyone in America will be in a hospital bed taking care of the person next to them. No one will be working or paying taxes. And that is the likely outcome of our best current efforts to bend the disease curve.”

There are many advocates for a sensible, high-value, health-promotion system rather than a high-cost, disease-treatment system. By reading this book, I hope that you will become one, too. The risks of continuing on our current trajectory are enormous, but the potential rewards of changing it are even greater.

By following the principles I outline in this book, we can save a million American lives annually. We can avoid a trillion dollars of unnecessary costs and suffering from chronic illness. We can add life to years and years to life by applying what we already know yet too rarely implement. Investments we make in our health now are repaid by avoiding sick-care, suffering, and costs later.

Half a century in medicine, science, and spiritual practices have taught me about how to live long and well, especially in times of unprecedented stress and toxins. Despite the challenges we face, there are still remarkable opportunities for those who choose more wisely.

Over 90 percent of illness, suffering, and disability is determined by epigenetic lifestyle choices and can be better managed using nature, nurture, and wholeness, along with personalized, proactive, predictive, primary prevention practice protocols that we, among others, have pioneered based on today’s scientific evidence integrated with wisdom traditions.

Health and environmental effects of toxins, mostly anthropogenic, largely introduced in the last half century, include reductions in:

● Life expectancy: heart disease, cancer, and autoimmunity that were rare in the early 20th century are today the greatest killers

● Quality of life: chronic illness now burdens more than half of all Americans

● Sperm and ovum quality reduced by half: just in the last 60 years after being stable for half a century

● Healthy products of conception (i.e., babies): increases in first trimester loss, need for neonatal intensive care units, and infant development scores all suggest more risks and less resilience in infants today and tomorrow

And increases in:

● Anti-nutrients: those overprocessed foods and chemicals that induce free radicals and oxidative burdens

● Digestive disorders, from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) to dyspepsia, Crohn’s disease, and ulcerative colitis

● Synthetic chemicals that accumulate in the environment in ever larger amounts that disrupt and impair sleep, mood, cognitive function, and productivity

● Impaired immune defense and repair, causing more autoimmune and repair deficit inflammatory conditions, resulting in increased suffering, costs, and lost productivity

● Functional atrophy of all organs and body systems from head to toe (brain to bones, organs to muscles)

● Chemical residues in air, tap water, and furnishings in our environment

● Dozens of synthetic chemicals in umbilical cord blood, mostly non-biodegradable ‘forever’ molecules with many unknown interactive effects and highly plausible connections to learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, Down syndrome, and attention deficit conditions.

● Loss of soil quality and, therefore, less nutrition in foods.

● Overfeeding yet widespread undernourishment including incessant craving of highly processed, packaged, and nutrient-

bereft foods that promote ill health, don’t meet nutrient needs, and in contrast increase anti-nutrient exposures

● Transgenerational and environmental influences on the genetic code (DNA) and the translation of that code (RNAs) are increasingly recognized as epigenetic, as determined by lifestyle habits and choices

The simple truth is, if you don’t take proactive steps to address and overcome the challenges of the 21st century, the odds are that you will die too early, with unnecessary suffering and at greater costs.

Yet you can add decades of quality, comfortable, low-cost life. This book shows you what to do, and why to do it.

A PERSONAL INVITATION

Join me on a journey of self-assessment, self-discovery, and selfawareness. Leave behind the notions of symptom-reactive sick care and embrace being well as a lifestyle choice.

There are evidence-based and practical ways of saving your life and the lives of those about whom you care. The process is both personal and evidence based. Now is the time to learn about what to measure when it comes to health and well-being, what the measurements mean functionally, and what to do about them.

Join me on this ‘back to the future odyssey’ to reconnect and rediscover your healing capacities based on evidence and experience, wisdom and wit, science and practice.

Because our time is short and the challenges are great, we must do our best to rise to the opportunity. If you care about yourself and those in your biological or intentional family, read on for the wisdom and the action plans that have already saved many lives. The best news is that whenever you start, the benefits and dividends abound. If not now, when is the time to heal and be well?

Let us begin.

21 ST CENTURY HEALTH

CHALLENGES

“It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change.” –Charles Darwin

Our health future is determined by choices we make. What we eat, drink, think, and do has enormous influence over short- and long-term quality of life. By following the guidelines I outline in this book to help you make healthier choices, you can regain or maintain a sustainable level of well-being that adds life to years and years to your life.

Too often people say, “Oh, there’s nothing I can do to be healthy, because in my family, we die of cancer (or suffer from arthritis) (or have weak hearts).” Or they say, “My grandparents lived into their 90s and they didn’t have to change their diet or take supplements— my good genes will protect me.” Neither of these beliefs are valid. This book is full of evidence-based, globally validated ways of living long, feeling well, and being joyful.

It is true that if you accept the same beliefs, cultural attitudes, and eat the same foods as everyone else in your family who is of your same generation, you are very likely to receive similar health diagnoses. It is also true that our parents and grandparents grew

up in a world that was markedly different from today’s world, with different foods, a different environment, and a different pace of life. Their good health and good genes aren’t enough to protect you from the challenges we face now in the 21st century, when we are all marinating in anti-nutrient toxins and distress at the same time that much-needed nutrients are deficient in most people’s diet.

Society’s current priorities invite dis-ease. It’s not your fault that this is so. It is your opportunity to take steps to protect and enhance your own internal environment and milieu—your whole self.

Personalized, predictive, proactive, and primary prevention protocols form the core of this health manifesto. The medicine I teach and research is individualized to each patient, and each patient’s role is critical to their healing—more than anyone outside. This individualization happens as a result of the four strategic self-assessments and eight predictive biomarkers—which I share with you in these pages—that can help you identify and restore any functional imbalances. These few tests assess the physiological effects of your entire lifestyle, and the smart systems my team and I have developed allow you to understand the tests’ meanings so you can evoke your innate healing responses and reduce your current risks for illness and suffering.

Using the self-assessments and predictive biomarkers, it often feels like I’m a midwife or catalyst at the birth of a patient’s healthier self. And in this book, I teach you how to bear this version of yourself into being, too.

My aim is to give you the news you need as well as solutions you can use—not to scare you nor to give you a diagnosis. In fact, it’s to relieve you of any diagnoses you may have been given, so that you can stop identifying with your disease and start creating the conditions your body needs to be healthy. You have an innate healing response that is incredibly powerful—miraculous, even. But you have to employ some knowledge and some strategy to evoke your healing response. Through this book, you will gain the knowledge and the strategy to succeed.

Although I am a product of a traditional medicine system, I seek to keep you away from a symptom-reactive system and away from

the hospital, at least until hospitals pivot toward preventative care and away from sick care. Invest in yourself rather than await healthcare costs, chronic ill health, and catastrophes.

THE 21ST CENTURY IS AN UNCONTROLLED, HIGHLY PERSONAL EXPERIMENT

In medical school, aspiring doctors learn the intricacies and the facts of human pathology. Medical training pays lip service to the inner and outer environments in which we live and their incredible power to influence our quality of life. Further, the environment has changed radically in the last 200 years. What was true about medicine in the 1800s and 1900s no longer stands, because so much of our daily reality has changed. In the 19th century, people were physically active. There was no sitting at a desk for the majority of one’s waking hours. The diet consisted of whole foods, rarely eaten to excess. Few people could afford to eat more than they needed for replenishment, and the foods then were more whole and less processed. In the 20th century, with the introduction of processed foods and government practices that created a glut of corn, dairy, wheat, and soy, we became overfed and under-nourished. Our stress levels started rising as more of us became upwardly mobile and left the extended family support system to live with more mobile nuclear families. In the 21st century, we have more low-quality foods and higher stress hormones. Low-quality foods promote ill health, as modern farming practices have progressively depleted nutrients and minerals in the soil. The foods that are made from these nutrient-deficient crops are then formulated to addict your tongue and brain—or to induce what’s known as “the crave factor,” in industry parlance. As a result, our food is less nutritious than ever, and we are eating more of a few foods laced with chemicals, some of which you will learn are anti-nutrients—meaning, they deplete your essential nutrient supplies. Multiple toxins have infiltrated our air, water, soil, and food. Toxic chemicals have increased by orders of magnitude since 1950. In addition to the agriculture, cleaning products, housing supplies, and personal care chemicals, we have also embraced radioactive

technologies (nuclear power, nuclear weapons, release of radioactive materials, clinical CT Scans) and communication technologies (wireless internet, cellphones, 5G and 6G) that can bombard us with avoidable electromagnetic frequencies.

WE ARE ALL IN A TOXIC SOUP TOGETHER

It doesn’t matter where you live: Toxins travel far and wide. Each year, the East Coast of the United States receives 100 tons of mercury that has been carried via the atmosphere from Africa, where they use fungicides in very dry areas. At certain times of year that dust is brought up into the atmosphere and swept across the ocean where it is deposited from the Caribbean to Maine. The West Coast of the U.S. gets similar amounts from Asia. The Midwest gets its share via the Mississippi River. In Japan, you may see shelves bursting with beautiful produce. But if you measure the spinach with a Geiger counter, as many people do in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, occasionally the spinach elicits clicking, meaning it is radioactive. The same is true in the environs around Chernobyl, Ukraine—where the reactor of that nuclear plant exploded and burned in 1986.

With our global food supply, long half-lives, and the atmospheric river and ocean currents that carry contaminants halfway around the globe, we are all susceptible to radioactive isotopes, including from radon in certain areas. Individual toxins from asbestos, formaldehyde, fiberglass, pesticide residue, toxic metals, electromagnetic radiation, and radioactive isotopes are a challenge to human health. Once they are in our bodies, they interact with each other—a truth we have barely begun to study and understand. The single variable science from the 19th and 20th centuries is no longer applicable in the 21st century. We are all participants in multiple uncontrolled experiments. You can be ignorant of the problem. You can deny that it is a problem. Yet the risks of modern living remain.

There is good news: About 80 percent of our toxic exposures are avoidable. Eighty percent! You can reduce your exposure to the bad stuff and bring in more of the good stuff through your diet,

hydration, supplementation, attitude, and activities. It is up to us as individuals to reduce our toxic burden and fortify ourselves with vital nutrients while we wait for science and policy to catch up. You have a lot of control; my intention in this book is to show you how to exert it.

WE MOSTLY HAVE SICK CARE INSTEAD OF HEALTH CARE

Our current dominant model of health care does not address our current risk levels. As sick care works now, you choose a provider and let them diagnose and treat you. There are a few issues with this. First, your doctor is being reactive to your symptoms and seeking to mitigate those symptoms with either a pill or a procedure, rather than being proactive to promote health and prevent future symptoms. The traditional medical system sees the body as an object that breaks down and needs something from the outside to reduce its impairment. Instead of anticipating what might come in years or decades to avoid a health catastrophe, too many wait until they get sick and are patched up. It’s not health care, it’s mostly sick care. Second, the diagnosis and treatment model is externally focused—the doctor is ‘doing’ the healing, when in truth each of us has an inner physician. This internal force is your innate healing response, and it is influenced by what you eat, drink, think, and do. This means that the path to health is a practice that you yourself manage, in consultation with your health coach or licensed physician.

In my consulting, I often see patients with complex cases in which no one’s quite sure what’s going on. Often among the first things I say is, “Your particular life history doesn’t exactly fit the diagnosis you’ve previously been given. In fact, I want to ignore it.” People often breathe a sigh of relief because the diagnosis is scary. Then we start with physiology before pharmacology. It’s a wisdom-based, historically validated approach that works not because of what I say, but because of what people eat, drink, think, and do after they see me, guided by insights gleaned from personal assessments I share. It’s an approach that allows each person to engage in personalized medicine.

Symptomssuchaspain,fatigue,excessweight,sleepdisturbances, orsomethingsimilarafflicttoomanyandoftenreducequalityoflife. Idowanttoprovideyouwithrelieffromsymptoms.Butratherthan merelyseektomakesymptomsgoaway,Iseesymptomsasopportunitiestofindwhereyourhealingresponsesarebeinginhibitedand asguidepoststhatilluminateaplanforgettingbacktohealth.When yourhealingcapacitiesarerestored,thesymptomsrecede.

Fordecades,Ihavetaughtanintegrativeholisticphilosophyto licensed medical professionals and health coaches. They are often amazedthatnoonebeforehastoldthemhowtocreatepersonalized action plans for their patients based on four self-assessments and eightpredictivebiomarkers.Mycritiqueisn’tofdoctorsthemselves; itisabouttheeducationtheyreceive.Mostconventionalpractitionerstakea“whenindoubt,treatorcutitout”approachtohealth care instead of teaching patients how to evoke their own healing responses. Modern medical curricula remain woefully deficient in teachingtheparticularsoflifestyle,nutrition,environment,relationships,mentalhealth,andstressmanagement.Theyteachphysiciansto seetheirpatientsasanassemblageofsymptomsanddiagnosesrather thanhumanslivinginaparticularmoment.Inturn,mostphysicians arereactive,seeingmostpatientsonlyatsickvisitsandissuingor managingprescriptionsorprocedures,ratherthanbeingproactive andcustomizingplanstocreatehigherlevelsofwellness.

OUR WORLD AND LIVES HAVE CHANGED

Intheearly20thcentury,therewasaonepercentcancerrate.Now adultshaveaoneinthreechanceofdevelopingcancer.Intheearly1900s,heartdiseasewassorarethatifPaulDudleyWhite,the founderofpreventivecardiologyandeventualchiefoftheCardiac Services at Massachusetts General Hospital, had a single heart attack patient, it was so unusual he wrote it up for a scientific journal.Hementionedthatourfoodandourenvironmenthavechanged radicallysincethen,butthat’snotall.Thestressesweface,theway we work, our relationships, and our faith traditions have all transformedaswell,andrarelyforourbenefit.Intheremainderofthis

chapter, I’ll walk you through the many obstacles that stand in the way of health in the 21st century.

SITTING IS THE NEW SMOKING

Our daily lives and our pursuits once required continuous physical activity. Now the majority of us spend eight-hour workdays sitting behind a desk. Add in up to an hour each way sitting in a car or on a train to get to and from work, plus the hours we spend watching our screens, and many of us are sitting for 12 hours or more every day. When you sit, you slouch, and when you slouch, your blood pressure goes up, your breathing goes down, and your body becomes more hospitable to hypertension, respiratory illness, and general ill health. It has been shown that sitting is as big a risk to your shortand long-term health as smoking tobacco. You can mitigate these risks by incorporating regular breaks to get up and move around.

SCREENS AND LIFE ONLINE HAVE CHANGED THE WAY WE RELATE

The internet is hailed as a breakthrough in productivity and connectivity. While it may keep us connected to information, it’s making it harder for us to have the person-to-person connection that is so vital to all aspects of our health.

Young people especially feel this lack, because part of growing into a healthy adulthood is being able to communicate with words, body language, facial expression, and feelings, and today’s young people are expressing themselves through emojis, gifs, and memes. Today’s teenagers communicate almost exclusively via texting— even when they are sitting in the same room together. These screens are incredible technology. I use them. But I started to make use of them after learning how to communicate. Even the most privileged young people today have too little attention paid to communication skills and self-awareness. The fabric of civil society is eroding because of a lack of meaningful communication of communion between people.

It’s vital that we all make a point to cultivate a life that isn’t wholly dependent on screens and devices. Dedicating at least one day a week to being device-free allows us to reconnect with each other on a human level.

90+ PERCENT OF PEOPLE ARE DEFICIENT IN AT LEAST ONE ESSENTIAL NUTRIENT

Our modern food is less nutritious and more contaminated than ever. In the 1950s, one carrot contained 15-20 milligrams of zinc; today if you get one milligram you’re lucky (unless it’s organic or biodynamic, which I will cover later in this chapter). The nutrients aren’t just nice to have, they are essential for our survival. They are also protective in that they help our bodies neutralize and eliminate anti-nutrients.

In the last half century, the level of magnesium in our soils and thus, in our food, has been reduced by half. Because magnesium buffers acid, and because so many of our current exposures contribute to acidity in the body, our need for magnesium has gone up two-fold—that results in a deficit that is now quadruple fold. This is just one example of the good stuff that has been depleted just as our need for it has increased. Without proper assessment and corrective supplementation with bioavailable nutrients, nearly all of us are deficient in at least one essential nutrient.

EATING HABITS RENEW OR DEPLETE HEALTH

It’s not just what you eat, but how you eat it. Digestion begins with the eyes, continues in the nose, moves to the mouth, and then finishes in the GI tract. If you begin eating a food one minute after you see it, your digestion is already impaired. Seeing and smelling your food cues the release of digestive enzymes and alerts your body that food is coming. If all you need to do is reach into a cabinet, rip open a bag, and start putting it in your mouth, your body is impaired in processing and assimilating the nutrients in that product.

Eating is something that deserves your full attention—not something to do while you do something else, whether that is walking,

driving, working, reading, or even talking. Giving your meal your full attention also helps you slow down and savor it, which helps you avoid eating to excess and makes it easier for your body to go about the important work of digestion.

Start each meal with something warm and wet to warm up your digestive functions. Then go on to something whole and savory. When you are half full, stop for five minutes; perhaps have a conversation with your tablemate, and let your brain catch up to your stomach. Most of us talk while we eat and think about other things. Eating is a powerful chance to practice doing one thing at a time. It helps you live in the moment, not in the past or the future.

THE STANDARD AMERICAN DIET (SAD) HAS TOO MANY ANTI-NUTRIENTS

Sodium, fat, sugar, biocides (substances that destroy living things – pesticides, herbicides, etc.), and artificial sweeteners are harmful to our neurohormonal systems and throw these systems out of whack, creating widespread downstream effects throughout the body. These ingredients are known as empty calories, but that term makes them sound benign. And they are not benign. They are antinutrients—meaning they are robbers of health (we will cover antinutrients more fully in Chapter 2). Some of the consequences of a diet of anti-nutrients include: sleep issues, cancer risk, heart disease, and mood and digestive disorders.

You are sweet enough as you are. There is no need for empty calorie sugar or artificial sweeteners.

There are healthful sources of fat found in whole foods such as nuts, seeds, olives, and avocados. The oils that are extracted from these foods become damaged by oxygen in the air and the anti-nutrient chemicals added to prolong their shelf life or mask their rancidity. When still in the seeds and nuts, the fats are protected. I recommend you avoid edible oils entirely. Try naked salads with herbs, edible flowers, seeds, and sprouts.

We need a balance of omega-6 and omega-3 essential fatty acids. Our high intake of edible oils, and foods cooked in them, leaves

people with too much omega-6 activation. Too many Americans get 30-60 times more omega-6 than omega-3, a severe imbalance. This is a problem, because too much omega-6 promotes inflammation, retards cellular repair, and puts the immune and neurohormonal systems on alert, while making you more susceptible to infection.

When you take in a proper balance of omega-6s and omega-3s through whole foods, you end up with a healthier immune system, restorative sleep, healthier weight management, better ability to concentrate, and heightened capacity for daily renewal.

Although olive oil has been hailed as a health food, what you get in the store is not really extra virgin olive oil (EVOO), though it may be labeled as such. The industry is rife with corruption, and many sellers pass off cheaper mixes of oils as EVOO. Even if it were authentic, you have to be on site where they extract the oil from the olives using traditional methods to get authentic EVOO.

You are better oiled with seeds and nuts than with extracted, processed oils. If you want to make a special dessert that needs some organic grapeseed oil, OK. However in my kitchen we don’t need or use any edible oils. We dress salads only with a little aged vinegar and sea salt, sometimes nuts or seeds or edible flowers. We cook with wine and broth or with a tagine that uses the moisture in the food to cook.

CONVENIENCE TAKES A TOLL ON HEALTH

Beatrice Trum Hunter, author of seminal works such as The Natural Foods Cookbook, taught many of us that you become healthier by shopping around the perimeter of the grocery store, because that’s where you find whole foods. If you go down the aisles, be careful: Those products may look like food, but if you read the list of ingredients you see only a word or two that you recognize as food, and a whole lot of complex words that are the names of the chemicals that give that food a long shelf life or other quality. Food companies value items with a long shelf life because they are more profitable to them, but your body doesn’t value these foods. It values nutritious,

delicious, whole foods that are easy to digest and assimilate without impacting your neurohormonal balance.

In our quest for convenience, we have modified not just the food itself, but also the way we cook our food. Cooking or reheating food in a microwave molecularly rearranges the food so that it becomes unnatural and less healthy.

It’s not that you have to make your food preparation inconvenient for it to be healthy. It’s that you have to educate yourself on the time-saving tools that don’t come with a cost to your health: things such as slow cookers and pressure cookers and blenders and immersion blenders. (These are covered in Chapter 5.)

Fast food is sickness-making food. It depletes rather than completes you. It encourages weight gain and reduces productivity. On the positive side, when you shift back to eating whole foods that have been grown in biologically favorable ways, whether it be organic, biodynamic, or homegrown, and savor the process of eating it, your health can flourish beyond even what you may currently believe possible. And, even better news: When you choose to makeover your kitchen, it won’t take you long to prepare really yummy food that truly nourishes you.

MANY COMMONLY PRESCRIBED MEDICATIONS DEPLETE DIGESTION

Digestion is a vitally important physiological function and component of health. When digestion is impaired, you can unlock and assimilate fewer nutrients, including antioxidants (which help protect you from the scourge of inflammatory repair deficits) and minerals (which buffer acidic toxins and act as regulators of your neurohormonal systems). It also reduces the function of your liver and gallbladder, which work in tandem to filter toxins from your bloodstream and break them down so they can be excreted. The result is enteropathy, which is the technical name for atrophy of your digestive capacity. Enteropathy means that the surface area of your intestines— which, if stretched out flat would cover the area of a tennis court when

healthy—is reduced to a small fraction of its normal coverage, and it occurs in too many people.

Among the digestion-impairing medications are:

● Antibiotics. Your doctor makes a diagnosis of a specific organism and prescribes a specific antibiotic to kill that organism. An unintended consequence of taking antibiotics is that they also kill your friendly gut flora. Without enough of these beneficial gut bugs, the bad bacteria take over, impairing digestion and immunity. After taking antibiotics, you need to take actions to restore a healthy microbiome for three to four months, but the vast majority of doctors don’t mention this, and thus, very few people rebuild their digestive competence.

● Blood pressure medications, while they are helpful at lowering your blood pressure, they rarely get you to a healthy blood pressure range. In addition, all the classes of blood pressure medication waste magnesium and other minerals. When your cells are low in magnesium you increase the resistance in your blood vessels, which then drives blood pressure up. Magnesium also plays an important role in digestion, and when you are low in magnesium, you invite enteropathy. Paradoxically, restoring your magnesium to healthy levels helps to normalize blood pressure (to 120/80 or lower)—evidence that when you restore neurohormonal balance, the body can repair itself. The scientific literature also suggests strongly that these medicines are hard on the kidneys: In fact, chronic kidney disease has become epidemic since we’ve had blood pressure medicines.

● Acid inhibitors and proton pump inhibitors. These stomachacid reducing medications are typically prescribed to people with symptoms of stomach ulcers. Yet the assumption that excess stomach acid causes ulcers has been unequivocally disproven—it’s a deficit of stomach acid that leads to digestive ailments such as ulcers. You want your stomach to be highly acidic so that the food that comes out of it is pre-digested. Your stomach acid is also what stimulates your pancreas to produce bicarbonate and digestive enzymes, your gallbladder to

deliver bile to your liver, and your liver to break down fat-soluble nutrients. An insufficiency in stomach acid, which these medications induce, impairs your ability to repair, reduces the competence of your digestive tract, and, over time, robs you of your quality of life and vitality. Stomach-acid inhibitors also increase susceptibility to viruses such as COVID-19.

AMERICANS ARE OVER-MEDICATED

All medications come with side effects. It can take time for these side effects to be fully understood. Yet we focus on finding new, novel medications that each have their own unintended consequences. Chief among them is an over-reliance on pharmacology and a lack of respect for physiology. Supporting your biology achieves better clinical results and higher levels of overall health and vitality without the cost of unwanted side effects. Hippocrates, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford all said the same thing: Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food. Yet many have been convinced that if you have a symptom that there’s a pill or a procedure that should be used to make the symptom go away. In reality, symptoms are an indication of need or of imbalance. When that need or imbalance is corrected, the symptom goes away in a more sustainable way. When we medicate that symptom out of existence, the imbalance remains and the medicine causes a new set of imbalances—and thus a new set of symptoms.

HEART HEALTH HAS DECLINED AND CANCER RISKS INCREASED

As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, heart disease and heart attacks were extremely rare in the United States in the 1930s. As early as the 1960s, however, cardiovascular disease had skyrocketed to become one of the most common killers in Western civilization. Such a rapid rise in incidence is too fast to be explained by any change in genetics, as evolution takes hundreds if not thousands of years to respond to changes in the environment. The rise of cigarette smoking certainly

had a lot to do with our declining heart health. In 1937, Dr. George Zur Williams published a definitive article linking smoking with lung disease and heart disease. The scientific community knew for decades of the connection. The Tobacco Institute spent millions of dollars to obscure that simple fact. Now most people have heard that smoking is bad for you. While a challenging dependency to undo, it is possible when personal commitment joins with proven programs to stop tobacco dependency.

A similar disinformation campaign involves the types of fat in the blood (primarily cholesterol and triglycerides) in regard to the cause of heart disease, and that certain people are just genetically predisposed to having more of these fats. I was part of the team in the 1970s that showed that this theory was never true and in fact couldn’t be true, because when people changed their diet, activities, and attitudes, their blood fats changed too.

Another theory is that dietary fat—particularly saturated fat— is the cause of elevated blood fats. This theory arose after Ancel Keys, a famous epidemiologist, published a study in the 1950s that claimed to establish a link between dietary fat and heart disease. Called The Seven Nations Studies, it looked at the diets of people in seven different countries with low incidence of heart disease and found that they ate little saturated fat. However, the study ignored another seven countries where the data disagreed. That little fact didn’t dissuade Time magazine from putting him on the cover in 1961. As a result, the low-fat craze took root, resulting in many foods being loaded with high fructose corn sugar and table salt in order to replace the flavor lost from including natural, healthier fats.

Further, a lot of prescribed medicine is geared toward reducing blood fats, when the truth is, if you keep oxidation away from your cholesterol and triglycerides and your blood fats don’t become damaged, you do not have heart disease risks. Research in animals as well as humans has shown that you can have cholesterol levels as high as 500 mg/dl (generic advice calls anything over 200 mg/dl ‘high’) and as long as that cholesterol isn’t damaged (oxidized), atherosclerosis and hardening of the arteries does not occur. A healthy immune defense and repair system keeps vessels and organs renewed.

LUNGS ARE UNDER ASSAULT

Lungs are remarkable. When you are healthy and you breathe deeply, your lungs can expel many toxic metabolites, in addition to carbon dioxide, with every breath. Yet today many of us have experienced traumas that impair our breathing, even years after the initial event. Sitting all day also restricts the movement of the lungs and the diaphragm, resulting in shallow breathing. In many cities of all sizes, you are exposed to contaminants in the air, including asbestos, soot, and other toxic particles that harm lungs. No matter where you live, chemicals such as formaldehyde and other solvents from furniture, mattresses, and cleaning products often make your indoor air more polluted than outdoor air. These factors mean your lungs endure assaults from multiple sources every day. For this reason many lung diseases have become extremely common—most notably, asthma, which has a strong environmental link.

The harder your lungs have to work, the more you’re also burdening your heart. But if you know how to breathe, your body can adapt to the pollution, and your lung tissue can stay healthy and pink throughout your life.

THE BREATH OF LIFE

Learning how to breathe deeply is vital to your lung, heart, emotional, and overall health. I recommend dedicating five minutes in the morning and five minutes in the evening to abdominal breathing. Many practices such as tai chi, yoga, Pilates, the Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, and the Anat Baniel method will help you rehabilitate your breathing process and teach you how to breathe slowly and deeply. If you breathe in such a way that your diaphragm goes up and down with each breath, your blood pressure drops, your stress hormones decrease, digestion improves, and your blood sugar and hemoglobin A1c comes down.

Over time you will nudge your breathing into a slower and deeper pattern around the clock. This training will also help you steady yourself in stressful times, when most people tend to hold their breath.

After just a few months of regular practice of abdominal breathing, you will see an improvement in your stress hormones, digestive capacity, muscular and cardiovascular endurance, and restorative sleep. In addition, emotional well-being and mental clarity rises. Yet very few people I know, including wellness professionals, actually practice a full suite of self-renewing, life-enhancing exercises such as deep breathing.

If you are not sure how well you breathe, there are two ways you can objectively assess it:

1) You can get a biometric device with a strap that goes around your chest and gives you information about how much your chest expands and your diaphragm moves as you breathe, from which you can conclude if you’re breathing deeply and slowly or fast and shallowly (you want the former). There are also devices that measure your forced expiry volume, or FEV1, that you can buy and have at home.

2) You can sit tall or lie down on the floor so that your spine is lengthened and your torso has plenty of room for your diaphragm to move, and measure how many times you breathe in a minute. The typical range of respiration is 12-20 breaths per minute. The fewer breaths you take, generally, the better you are breathing.

In addition, there are many common lung-diminishing medications that impair our ability to take in oxygen and detoxify our bronchial passages. On a recreational level, there are cigarettes, marijuana smoking, and vaping (whether that is tobacco, CBD hemp, or THC marijuana). Although vaping has a reputation of being better for your lungs, it is still a definite no-no from a health perspective. It irritates your lungs, and because the device has erratic temperature control, it gets too hot too fast. Vaping is designed not for reduced health risks, but rather for sneaky convenience and, like processed foods, a crave factor, as evidenced by the fruity synthetic flavorings. Vaping is a habit that provides short-term pleasure and long-term harm. As far as marijuana goes, if it’s an important part of your culture that you use for occasional festivity (and not on a daily basis), I suggest finding biodynamically or organically grown plants, cooking them with butter to create a substance you can bake with, and avoiding smoking altogether.

As marijuana becomes legalized, you can now buy edibles, but almost all of them use THC that has been extracted with chemical solvents, which are problematic. Overall, I’m skeptical of edibles because of inadequate quality control and random analyses showing important differences between the label and actual contents.

My suggestion: Practice abdominal breathing, active meditation, listening to healing music, being creative in your garden, or an artistic endeavor to nourish your being so that you don’t feel you need drugs to ‘take the edge off.’

In addition, prescription medications such as asthma medications, allergy medications, steroids, immune-suppressing medications, blood lipid or high blood pressure drugs, and blood thinners, while commonly prescribed, impair organ performance and renewal.

The inhalers used by people with asthma paralyze the lung muscles that are squeezing too tight and impeding airflow. This medicinally induced paralysis then impedes the formation of healthy infrastructure of the lungs, including the collagen and elastin that form the tissue that lines the interior of the lungs and prevents irritants and allergens from getting into the tiny air sacs. The pharmacology may reduce the symptoms, but it impairs the body’s ability to renew

itself. It’s only by supporting your innate healing response that you can restore balance, maintain your body’s defense, and repair neurohormone and digestive detoxification systems.

Another example is blood thinners, such as Coumadin (also known as Warfarin) or Eliquis, which provide benefit by preventing potentially lethal blood clots from forming elsewhere in the body and lodging in the lungs. They also increase bleeding risks from broken blood vessels throughout the body. Numerous individual clinical factors have been linked to an increased risk of hemorrhage, including older age, anemia, and renal disease.1

The recent COVID-19 pandemic highlights just how crucial lung health is to overall health, as people with impaired lung, heart, blood vessel function and repair are at greatest risk of catastrophe from coronavirus. The fact that any kind of comorbidity makes the virus more deadly shows how important it is to stay in balance, find ways to self-renew, and stay resilient.

LIVER HEALTH IS UNDER SIEGE

Your liver is a primary component of your immune, defense, and repair system.

The liver is responsible for producing most of the structural and functional components of the blood. As such, it’s an organ of synthesis, creation, and renewal. It is also an organ of detoxification.

Liver blood vessels are lined by Kupffer cells, which sense what toxins are coming to the liver. When your Kupffer cells are healthy, your liver is somewhat protected because toxins are extracted and prevented from reaching liver cells. When your Kupffer cells are stressed, the liver responds by releasing proteins such as bilirubin, uric acid, CRP, TNF, interleukins, ferritin, and fibrinogen. Elevated levels of such physiologic antioxidants are the liver’s way of calling for help. If you’ve ever had your liver function tested by your doctor, the clinical range of what’s considered ‘normal’ is misleading—only

1 Shoeb, Marwa, and Margaret C Fang. “Assessing bleeding risk in patients taking anticoagulants.” Journal of Thrombosis and Thrombolysis vol. 35,3 (2013): 312-9. doi:10.1007/s11239-013-0899-7

results in the lower half of that range are truly healthy. If your values are in the upper half of the lab range, you’re at risk. And if you’re above the lab range, your liver is distressed.

The liver needs abundant essential nutrients and only modest, if any, exposure to alcohol. You’ve probably heard about the scarring in the liver caused by excessive alcohol consumption known as cirrhosis, but there’s also nutritional cirrhosis. My dear father was so poor as a child that his liver scarred due to a lack of good nutrition. When I was a young doctor, fatty liver was an alcoholic’s problem. Now we have an epidemic of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Today’s epidemic correlates with the amount of high fructose sugar in the diet, made worse if you don’t have enough essential nutrients to renew your liver.

One of the most remarkable parts about the liver is that it is regenerative. Even if only five percent of your liver is still healthy, your body can regrow it until you have a whole liver that is entirely healthy. This is news you don’t hear often enough. It does have its limits, however, and it does require attention. If you are drinking alcohol regularly and not eating nutritious foods, your liver is likely crying out for help.

One nutrient that is particularly beneficial for the liver is choline as citrate. It thins the bile that the liver uses to get rid of certain fat-soluble toxins, which can become thick and thus not flow well from the gallbladder to the liver to the small intestine. Eating enough fiber—meaning somewhere between 40 and 100 grams a day of unprocessed, raw fiber—helps ensure that those fat-soluble toxins that the bile escorts into the small intestines get excreted through your stool. If your digestion is impaired and your transit time is slow, those toxins can get reabsorbed and cause more damage.

DEHYDRATION CHALLENGES THE BRAIN, KIDNEYS, SPLEEN, LIVER, AND PANCREAS

Your kidneys filter 10 liters of fluid every day, reabsorbing what is beneficial and concentrating anything that isn’t needed into waste products that can be excreted through your urine. Many people to -

day are told at their check-ups that their kidney function is slipping. If you are even one percent dehydrated, your kidneys are 20 percent more burdened. When you are three percent dehydrated, your blood is thick enough to sludge up the filter in your kidney, known as the glomerulus, and really start to burden the body. Many medicines provide statistically significant benefit but are harsh on kidneys. Your spleen function is also closely related to how hydrated you are, as it has little channels called sinusoids that are so small that cells can only pass through them one at a time. Passing through the sinusoids cleans the cells and removes any antibodies or antigens. Again, if you are even one percent dehydrated, your blood begins to thicken and your cells are less able to wiggle through the sinusoids. The spleen also requires plenty of essential nutrients—such as antioxidants, buffered minerals, and various cofactors—and fewer than 10 percent of people get all the nutrients they need.

The pancreas is responsible for delivering digestive enzymes and bicarbonate to the intestines to enable healthier digestion. Mild (and all too common) dehydration induces distress in the pancreas, spleen, liver, and brain.

ASSESS YOUR KIDNEYS

The assessment of how well your kidneys are functioning is called the specific gravity measurement; it measures the density of your urine compared to water after you have gone 12 hours without drinking any water. Your doctor can do this test for you, or there is a moderately priced device (a refractometer) you can buy so that you can assess your own hydration at home, without needing to see your physician.

Most people do not drink enough water and herbal beverages and have mild, yet still significant, dehydration.

The remedy for mild dehydration is simple: Drink more water, herbal beverages, or mineral water. Another practice that goes a long way toward not only improving hydration but also boosting

digestion is starting each meal with something wet and warm, such as a cup of broth, warm water with citrus or berries, or herbal tea. Our habits also contribute to dehydration, including engaging in moderate or intensive exercise without adequately replacing the water that is lost through sweat and respiration. Before you undertake any movement that is moderate or intense, drink at least eight ounces of a clean beverage of your choice (so long as it isn’t sweetened with either artificial sweeteners or sugar). If you don’t like plain water, you can add berries, cucumber slices, or lemon slices to flavor it. You can also make sparkling water with an at-home carbonating machine, or buy spring water or sparkling mineral water (so long as it comes in a glass container; plastic bottles can leach chemicals into the water that alter the taste and harm your health).

I will delve more into the substances that are the enemies of health—called anti-nutrients—in the next chapter.

ANTI-NUTRIENTS ARE PROOXIDANT HEALTH

DEPLETERS

But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.”

–Rachel Carson

In every epic story there is a battle between the dark (evil) and the light (good). The same is true for our health. In the 21st century, the dark forces we must battle are unprecedented levels of antinutrients—the ‘bad guys’ that are found in our water, food, and air that cause damage to our cells. And the light that can counter the ill effects of these anti-nutrients are essential nutrients—the ‘good guys’ that our bodies require in order to function. Essential means your body requires them to function but lacks the ability to make them, so you must get them from outside sources, whether that be food, a supplement, or even the sun. These nutrients are required for your cells to manufacture the energy your body needs to run and stay healthy. Minerals, antioxidants, and cofactors are essential, for example.

Just as the bad guys in movies grow stronger when there is no concerted effort to resist them, without a concerted effort to reduce exposure to anti-nutrients and increase intake of essential nutrients, our health suffers.

People have not had time to adapt to the unprecedented increase in exposure to non-biodegradable and other chemicals introduced over the last half century. All of us are participating in a global, nonconsensual, uncontrolled experiment that tests how pervasive antinutrients and foods that have been depleted of essential nutrients affect the human body. You can go anywhere, even to an unexplored indigenous wilderness, and the people and environments are majorly polluted. Animals are a part of this experiment, too. Along with the loss of sea ice, polar bears are endangered because they are saturated with modern toxins and challenged by a less nutritious diet.

Anti-nutrients are prooxidants; they use up your essential nutrients and impair your immune, defense, and repair system. They are prevalent in processed foods, personal care products, cleaning products, and too many of the disposable goods that we buy and bring into our homes.

Essential nutrients fuel the 50 billion first line immune cells that are devoted to the repair and renewal of the infrastructure of the body—the collagen and elastin that make up the biological ropes and rubber bands that are essential for bones, joints, blood vessels, and cell basement membranes, which orient cells and encourage needed nutrients to get into the cells and safely remove waste products. These immune cells are eager to do their job, so long as they have enough essential nutrients. When these nutrients are continually renewed, you’re healthy, you feel well, and you are symptom free. When you are exposed to too many anti-nutrients and take in too few essential nutrients, however, your immune system is overworked and exhausted, and you are susceptible to chronic inflammatory or autoimmune conditions.

Our current reality is that anti-nutrients are at an all-time high. This means that our need for essential nutrients is also at an all-time high, just as levels of them in our food and water are also at an alltime low. As a result, our internal rebalancing mechanisms are under assault. In the 21st century, if you want to live a long and healthy life, you have an obligation to reduce your toxic burden and increase your essential nutrient intake.

In scientific terms, attaining health is dependent on achieving détente in the constant battle between allostatic and homeostatic balance (or imbalance):

● Allostatic refers to an external force or stressor that is placed upon an individual from the outside, including air, water, soil, food, light, and electromagnetic radiation, light, and vibration. Conventional medicine uses allostatic forces—the doctor provides diagnosis and then prescribes a pill or procedure. It is all done to you. Anti-nutrients are also allostatic forces in that they exist in the outside world, and when we ingest them and bring them into the body, they have an impact on our health.

● Homeostatic refers to the internal, self-restoring systems that have been described in Eastern medical texts for millennia. When distress or toxic matter challenges us, we restore equilibrium and balance through homeostatic self-regulating mechanisms. These have been documented as core principles of physiology and functional medicine. And they can be called upon when we have enough essential nutrients, stay well hydrated, engage in daily active meditation or relaxation response practices, and pay attention to reducing exposure to anti-nutrient, prooxidant environmental toxins.

Most clinical doctors today are either not educated about the homeostatic systems or have forgotten about them in their focus on prescriptions and procedure. Yet our need for a return to renewing homeostasis is increasing exponentially.

There is good news here: Thanks to the work of Dr. William Rea at the Environmental Health Center in Dallas; Dr. Theron Randolph, a pioneer in the field of modern environmental medicine; Dr. Walter Crinnion, ND; and Beatrice Trum Hunter, whom I mentioned in Chapter 1, we know that you can prevent 80 percent of your anti-nutrient exposure. To have only 20 percent of the exposure compared to the average person is very fortunate indeed. You can achieve this reduction with every breath, movement, meal, and shopping decision you make each day.

When you choose different inputs in the present, you get different outputs in the future. Little things, such as taking your shoes off before coming inside, having clothes that you change into whenever you are indoors, being more careful about the personal care and cleaning products you use in your home and the furnishings, cookware, and food you bring into your space, all provide major opportunities to reduce your exposure.

KNOW THY ENEMY

There are five general categories of anti-nutrients. They each have their characteristics, sources, and biological effects. When physicians are trained in these categories and their ramifications, they can fairly quickly deduce which anti-nutrient is highly relevant to their patients’ afflictions. Because too few physicians today are trained in them, it’s helpful for you to know them for yourself or to work with a knowledgeable practitioner so that you can begin making the choices that will reduce your health risks and improve your resilience.

ANTI-NUTRIENT CATEGORY #1: PERSISTING ORGANIC POLLUTANTS (POPS)

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs, or as some scientists call them, ‘forever molecules’) are chemicals that never degrade in the environment or in your body. Once they are in your body they wreak havoc on your health by interfering with your hormonal signals until you proactively do something to kick them out.

Many POPs were first introduced after World War II as a means of killing pests or boosting crop production, or as a main ingredient or byproduct of manufacturing and other industrial pursuits. Some of the best-known POPs are DDT/DDE/Dioxin/2,4 D, PCBs/PBBs, and glyphosate. Although the use of the deforesting agent DDT, for example, has now been banned in the U.S., it still exists in and impacts our environment.

There are numerous POPs still in regular commercial use, such as glyphosate, the most used herbicide and one of the most dangerous chemicals to all living things, and perfluorinated compounds (PFOAs), which are found in nonstick coatings on pans. The man who invented Teflon in 1938 attended the same synagogue in Albany, New York, that my family did. When he and I discussed his invention, he admitted that his wife did not cook with Teflon-coated pans, because they were, as he said ‘too toxic.’ When a nonstick pan is first manufactured, the PFOAs or silicones are locked inside the nonstick coating. But as soon as that coating is scratched—such as when you scrape the pan with a metal spatula—the toxic compounds can leach into your food.

If you eat foods that come from packages, restaurants, and fast food joints, you have an abundance of POPs in your body. If you eat organic, whole foods and live in a pristine environment, you don’t. This means that upwards of 90 percent of Americans are riddled with these health-harming forever molecules.

POPs are what’s known as lipophilic—they love fat. That means that once they are in your body, they are stored in your fat cells as part of your body’s attempt to keep these harmful molecules away from your vital organs. It also means that POPs concentrate in the oils of whole foods. This is yet another reason I strongly suggest that you exclude edible oils from your diet. As soon as you separate the oil from the seed or the nut, oxygen damages the beneficial fats and you give yourself a concentrated dose of whatever POPs are concentrated in the edible oil. The vast majority of commercial edible oils, including soybean, corn, cottonseed, canola, sunflower, safflower, and even olive, have concentrated amounts of POPs thanks to the commercial and agricultural use of pesticides, fungicides, and chemical fertilizers. While organic or biodynamic oils are less contaminated, the fact is that you don’t need edible oils. It is easy enough to take them out of your diet and you spare yourself the calories and a host of risks when you do. In place of edible oils, you can cook with broth, wine, or water, or use a traditional cooking method such as a tagine, which uses the moisture from the food to cook it.

Again once in your body, POPs hide in fat, such as the pads we all have on our thighs, back, or abdomen, turning them into storage sites for toxic materials. If or when you decide to lose weight and burn your fat repositories, you liberate these toxins and feel worse on your way to feeling better, which is a huge disincentive to losing weight. Our nervous systems are also fat-rich and susceptible to hormone disruptors.

The best way to rid yourself of these toxins is to use your skin as an organ of excretion by sitting in a low-temperature sauna (set to somewhere between 105 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit). At this heat, you do not sweat much, but you develop a sheen as you mobilize oils through your skin. Then you immediately get in the shower with a loofah or washcloth and castile soap and scrub the oil off so that it’s not reabsorbed. If you don’t have access to a low-temperature sauna, you can rent a personal sweat cabinet. It may be that the first time you use one of these body-heating devices you give off a chemical smell. This is normal and a sign that you are in fact relieving your body of some of its POP burden.

ANTI-NUTRIENT CATEGORY #2: SOLVENT RESIDUES (VOCS)

Solvents are chemicals that dissolve other substances, and they are often comprised of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which means they easily disperse in air. If you merely open a container of something that contains VOCs, you’ll smell the chemicals as they spread into the air. That means it’s volatile.

Common sources of VOCs include paint and paint thinners, fire retardants and stain-protective treatments present in furniture and bedding, dry cleaning agents, cleaning supplies, and crafting supplies, including adhesives and permanent markers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found that levels of VOCs are two to five times higher indoors than outdoors, even in rural areas.

Some solvents are also POPs, and all VOCs are lipophilic. That means that using low-temperature saunas to put the skin to use as an organ of excretion also reduces your solvent load. If you practice the

abdominal breathing outlined in Chapter 1 while you’re in a sauna or personal sweat box, you can use your lungs in addition to your skin to expel volatile chemicals. Because your blood has fats in it, the VOCs can get carried in your blood. When your blood flows through your lungs, if you are breathing deeply you can get rid of the VOCs that are contained within your blood fats.

In addition to getting VOCs out of your body via your skin and your lungs, you also need to stop them entering your body in the first place. And to do that, you have to identify and then reduce or eliminate the source of exposure.

In addition to the products listed above, you could be getting exposed to solvents and VOCs through the medicines that you are prescribed, supplements you take, and any convenient forms of food that have a multi-year shelf life and are not really nutritious. Remember, as Beatrice Trum Hunter popularized, you want to eat foods that spoil, but eat them before they do. That’s how you avoid the chemicals that are only present to extend shelf life.

In your indoor environment, you want to transition to using as many traditional materials and natural fibers that have been minimally processed as you can. It is possible to buy organic clothes, as well as organic mattresses, sheets, towels, and even rugs. Once upon a time, it made sense to use fire retardant chemicals in household items such as mattresses, particularly when people were frequently smoking in bed. But now, when they are present in a child’s mattress, for example, if the child pees, it causes those chemicals to be desorbed and find a way into their system. Making careful purchasing decisions, and committing to spend the extra money that safe products cost, pays dividends in your health and your family’s health (and your personal and family health care costs) for decades to come.

ANTI-NUTRIENT CATEGORY #3: TOXIC MINERALS (TMS)

There are many minerals used in agriculture and manufacturing that are toxic when inside your body: chief among them are lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, and nickel. Once these minerals are dis-

carded by industry or poured on crops, they find their way into soil and water, and from there into our food and drink.

In the classic book The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, he devoted a large section to the toll of the lead the Romans used to line their aqueducts. When lead is present in large amounts in the brain, it leads to encephalopathy, otherwise known as brain damage, which sheds a very interesting light on the behaviors of some of the late Roman leaders.

Toxic metals appear to weaken and then cross the blood-brain barrier. Once there, they can disturb sleep, disrupt mood, and make one more likely to be harsh, judgmental, and violent. They have become ubiquitous in our air, water, soil, and commercial food supply over the last half-century.

Although it is purported to be lead-free, lead also shows up in the zinc that is turned into solder. My friend represented the zinc manufacturer’s association of America. I asked her if there is lead in the ‘lead-free solder’ they use and she said, ‘Of course there is; it’s just a question of how much.’

Mel Brooks, while playing his classic character, the 2,000-yearold man, said never to eat fish because fish swim in the ocean and the ocean is polluted. Well, he was right. Massive amounts of toxic metals, particularly mercury and lead, find their way to the ocean through agricultural runoff and via wind currents that flow over the oceans and drop some of the particulate matter into the water. This is why you want to eat low on the food chain, avoiding, as the comedian Dick Gregory suggested, eating anything that pees, poops, or farts. The smaller the animals that the animal you consume eats, the more likely that animal is to be highly contaminated with toxic metals. Swordfish, for example, which subsist on a diet of smaller fish, is so contaminated with mercury that it is a hazard to your health to eat it even once, unless you simultaneously consume enough ascorbate- and sulfur-rich foods to help bind and escort that mercury out of your body. This widespread contamination of fish is why fish oil supplements need to be distilled under nitrogen to remove toxins and protect the essential omega-3 EPA and DHA healthy fats.

Agribusiness uses toxic metals at a phenomenal rate, whether directly on the crops themselves or to the feed that’s given to livestock, as preservatives, or even in the linings of the cans used to package food. As discussed in Chapter 1, 100 tons of mercury a year travel to the East Coast of the United States from Africa, where it is used in fertilizer and then carried on dust across the ocean. On the West Coast, another 100 tons comes from Asia. It’s simply mind-boggling how many parts per billion we inherit on a regular and daily basis unless we stop them at the door. You can stop toxic metals at the door by eating low on the food chain. You can also show the toxic metals you’ve already ingested the door by eating copious amounts of GGOBE foods, which stands for garlic, ginger, onions, brassica sprouts, and eggs. These foods are sulfur-rich detox foods, and although they are typically thought of as condiments, when you turn them into staples in your diet you also help rid your body of its toxic burden, as the sulfur draws out the metals from your cells and binds with them so that they can be excreted safely via the kidneys and digestive tract. (I’ll talk more explicitly about how to add these foods to your diet, and how to choose an egg that doesn’t come loaded with its own high doses of hormone disruptors, in Chapter 4.)

ANTI-NUTRIENT CATEGORY #4: MOLD PRODUCTS

Mold is an invader that harms your immune defense and repair system because it puts you into defensive mode, otherwise known as inflammation, and leads to cumulative repair deficits (as discussed in Chapter 1). From there, it can also cause harm to any part of you in need of repair.

The key to minimizing your mold exposure is modulating the humidity levels in your home. Because mold is aquaphilic, or waterloving, it needs a relative humidity (RH) above 40 percent in order to grow. Relative humidity is the percentage of water vapor actually in the air compared to how much water vapor the air could potentially hold.

There are ways to modulate the RH inside your home, but there are two primary factors you need to take into consideration first:

● Your local climate. Your RH is hugely influenced by the climate in which you live. In Arizona, the average RH is 38.5 percent; in Louisiana, it is 74 percent. Think of how tuberculosis patients in the past were counseled to travel to the mountains in order to take in the mountain air. Where the air is pristine, mold is absent. Unfortunately, it is largely therapy for the wealthy, not for the average person.

● The construction techniques used when building your home. The more energy efficient your home is, the more it is sealed off from the outside environment. Highly energy efficient buildings may be helpful at lowering your heating and cooling bills because they keep outside air (and its accompanying temperatures) outside and inside air in. But they can also help breed mold by trapping humidity inside, if not properly ventilated through air-to-air heat exchangers, making your home a hospitable environment for this toxin. Even if your home isn’t terribly energy efficient, a lot of bad plumbing and construction techniques allow mold to grow, hidden, underneath the paint or even behind the wallboards. When mold is hidden, it could be harming you for years and all you would know is that you feel like you’re catching a lot of viruses and aging faster than you had expected you would.

You could spend quite a lot of money on improving the quality of your indoor air and preventing mold. To keep the RH in your home within a Goldilocks range of not too much and not too little, you could install a biosensor in every room that automatically turns on a combination humidifier/dehumidifier to keep your RH in the sweet spot. A less expensive option is to buy an affordable humidifier and dehumidifier for every room you spend a lot of time in—perhaps your office, your bedroom, and your living room.

Keeping the inner environment in a specific RH range helps prevent mold from forming in the first place. Filtering your indoor air helps negate any spores from mold that has already grown. There are four different types of filters that are helpful for this:

1. A high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter traps 99.7 percent of particles that are at least .3 microns big.

2. An ultra-low particulate air (ULPA) filter traps mid-sized particles between .12 and .4 microns.

3. Activated carbon or charcoal filters trap smaller particles, such as those found in smoke, odors, and VOCs. They also need to be changed approximately every six months to remain effective.

4. Electrolytic room air cleaners are now available that ‘zap’ rather than ‘trap’ pollutants.

You can use one or a combination of all four types of filters. To each type, consider adding an ionizer, which adds electrons to the air so that toxic molecules are attracted to the filter.

There are devices that perform all three functions—filtration, ionization, and humidity control. Ideally you’d have one for every room you spend time in.

If you can’t clean the air you have, get as much fresh air as you can. At a minimum, you can improve your indoor air by allowing in as much outside air as possible. There are air-to-air heat exchangers that bring in fresh air without heat loss.

You can’t rely on the government to improve air quality for you. Even in jurisdictions in which the leaders believe in improving air quality, the necessary changes are very rarely fully implemented. In the early 1980s, colleagues and I prepared a report on indoor air quality for then-Governor Jerry Brown of California. That report, known as Clean Your Room, outlined 18 challenges to the indoor environment along with their solutions. As I write this in 2021, all 18 recommendations are still needed.

ANTI-NUTRIENT CATEGORY #5: RADIOISOTOPES, INCLUDING RADON

Radon is a colorless, odorless gas that comes from the breakdown of uranium that is naturally occurring in soil and rocks. It can seep into your home or into your water supply (particularly if

you have a well). And because it is radioactive, it can damage your lungs.

There are a few characteristics of an environment that contains radon:

● The soil is sandy

● Tobacco and other broad-leaf plants grow well

● You are near the water

Symptoms of radon exposure include a cough, difficulty breathing, and hoarseness. The only way to be sure if you are exposed to radon or not is to have the air in your home tested. You can buy radon tests at most home supply stores; you can have a specialist come in and assess the air in your basement (look at your state’s department of health website for local contractors that provide this service); or you can look on the website of the Environmental Protection Agency to find maps of the U.S. that show which counties are more likely to have radon in the soil.

You might think you’re safe in an apartment building, but very often the cement used in its construction has radon in it. If you find you do have radon in your air, that might mean you need to buy a radon filter for your basement, or it might mean you need to improve the airflow in your home, or both.

Of course radon is but one radioisotope we can be exposed to. When a nuclear power facility explodes or melts down, as happened in Chernobyl and Fukushima, the event spews radioisotopes into the air and water that then travel all over the world.

Today in Lapland, in northern Finland, they encourage the natives to go out and trap reindeer because it is a long-standing and important part of their culture. As soon as they have the dead reindeer, they bring it to the county health official, who then gives them a nonradioactive reindeer. This is because even though the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded and burned in 1986, the environment for hundreds of miles around is still contaminated with radioactive material, and the reindeer eat and drink from that contaminated environment and then become contaminated themselves.

In addition, there was such shoddy workmanship in the way they sealed in the radioactive material in Chernobyl that the condition of the destroyed Reactor No. 4 remains unstable. If you take your Geiger counter to the perimeter fence it still registers radioactivity.

In Japan, as I mentioned in Chapter 1, many people bring a Geiger counter with them to the grocery store to test the produce before they buy it. Beyond Japan’s borders, an unforeseen consequence of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima is that there’s a stream of radioactivity leaking out of that plant into the ocean. Once in the ocean, the radioisotopes are carried on ocean currents to western Canada and the northwestern United States.

No matter what kind of radioisotope you are exposed to, whether it’s radioactive iodine, plutonium, cesium, or radon, it is a prooxidative anti-nutrient. Sadly, radioisotopes are being added to our environment at an unprecedented rate. If they hit the membrane that surrounds your cell, they can damage that membrane so that it becomes more rigid when it needs to be fluid. Very often there’s a recoil from the isotope that tears the membrane apart and kills the cell.

Low-level radioactive contamination adds to the anti-nutrient, prooxidative burden that depletes health and encourages chronic ill health. Any exposure to radioactivity will reduce the essential nutrients in your body. Thankfully, there are very simple things you can do other than what I’ve already listed that reduce your exposure. The simple act of taking off your shoes before you come in the house, and even changing your clothes that you wore outside once you are home for the day or night, helps you dramatically reduce the isotopes you carry into your living space. And if you confirm that there’s radon or some other radioactive isotope in your home, you can use a carbon block filter to trap it and keep it from entering your body. These strategies are how you follow the three steps to mitigating environmental risk in the 21st century, which are avoid, measure, and reduce.

5 QUESTIONS TO ASSESS YOUR ANTI-NUTRIENT LEVELS

1) Where does your water come from?

If it’s from the tap and city water, it can contain a variety of toxic metals and solvents. If you get your water from a clean spring, you don’t have that burden. Even filters don’t work when they get contaminated. Get clean water to start with, in a glass bottle. In many cities there are artesian wells where you can go and fill up your jug. Both of my homes have clean aquifer water. Get clean water from your own well or from a trusted source. (Mountain Valley, Crystal Springs, Acqua Panna, Voss, and often local spring water sources will deliver water in glass on request.)

2) Do you eat primarily organic or biodynamic foods? If not, the 20 mcg of metals, such as arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium, and nickel you’re getting every day will slowly wear you down. Anytime you eat non-organic or non-biodynamic rice, or chicken, meat, fish, grains, or hummus, you’re getting a dose of toxic metals.

3) What is the relative humidity in your home?

The United States has an epidemic of moldy homes. You want the relative humidity in your home to be between 35 and 45 percent.

4) Do you have a simple Geiger counter, and/or have you had your home tested for radon?

Because radioactive isotopes are being added to our environment at such an unprecedented rate, you have to take steps to measure your exposure so that you can avoid and reduce it.

To get more specific information on your exposures, you can have a lymphocyte response assay (LRA) done—one of the predictive biomarker tests provided by ELISA/ACT Biotechnologies, my lab, that are available through any doctor. A direct-to-consumer portal, BetterLabTestsNow.com , makes tests and their interpretation

available to consumers. The LRA tests for hypersensitivity and direct toxicity to minerals, foods, preservatives, toxic metals, mold products, animal dander, feathers, and POPs. It offers a window into your own anti-nutrient status and helps you target your efforts to move that status into a healthier range.

ANTI-NUTRIENT CATEGORY #6: ELECTROMAGNETIC

NON-IONIZING RADIATION FROM ELECTRONIC DEVICES

As we become more and more reliant on WiFi and cellphones, and require more and stronger electromagnetic signals to keep up with our demand for ubiquitous connectivity, we are turning our outdoor environment into a soup of electromagnetic fields (EMFs). These frequencies affect us, because we are electromagnetic creatures. Our bodies are constantly pulsing with electricity and magnetic fields—frequencies you can measure with an electrocardiogram or magnetocardiogram. In addition to your heart, your brain is very sensitive to the EMF frequencies between 1 hertz (Hz) and 60Hz. These frequencies can alter your fundamental cell chemistry, disrupting levels of sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium within the cell; promoting leakiness in your cellular membranes; and negatively impacting the resilience of the cell. Many devices operate at frequencies higher than these, such as 5G and 6G (coming soon). The more our devices evolve, the faster and stronger the signals will be, and it will be harder and harder to avoid EMFs. Our ever-broadening adoption of EMF frequencies is an enormous uncontrolled experiment that has very few avenues for opting out. Some simple ways to reduce your EMF exposure include:

● Use an Ethernet cable instead of a wireless router to connect to the internet. (This results in a connection that is often faster than wireless.) At a minimum, do not sit anywhere in the line of sight of the antenna on your wireless router and be as far away from it as possible.

● If you use a wireless signal booster, have it turned to avoid people in the environment.

● Turn your wireless router off before you go to bed each night. (An automatic timer that turns it off a certain time each night and back on in the morning makes this easy and unforgettable.) Make your bedroom completely device-free so that it is a private space that functions only as a spot to restore, renew, and spend time with your partner. When you live in harmony with nature and the rhythms of life, your resilience and resistance to EMFs increases.

● Limit your use of wireless ear buds and/or headsets. If you rarely put a radio transponder in your ear, your ear can recover. If you’re using them all the time, you’re inviting damage to your middle ear, which houses very tiny collagen fibers with little crystals at their base that vibrate based on the frequency that comes in. The radio frequencies that your ear buds use to function shake those fibers and can change the calcium-magnesium balance in your cells. Calcium excites and magnesium relaxes—you want to keep calcium outside your cell and magnesium inside. But wireless earbuds do the exact opposite—they let too much calcium in and magnesium goes out, so it’s a double deficit.

● If you are using a device that can either be plugged in or run on battery, such as a laptop, unplug it while you are using it and let the battery power it. When you’re unplugged you dramatically reduce the EMF radiation in your immediate area. When you do plug in to recharge the battery, don’t be in close proximity to the device. Batteries run off of direct current, which has less of a physiological toll than alternating current, which is what comes out of the socket and into your device through the plug.

● A beneficial practice for countering the biological effects of EMFs is to go outside in bare feet and connect yourself directly to the earth in a process known, aptly enough, as grounding. This practice reduces stress hormones and gives your immune defense and repair system a much-needed break. It also exposes you to fresh air, which, as we’ve covered, is almost always cleaner than inside air.

● You can also do an audit of the electrical outlets in your house to determine if they are grounded properly or not. Theoretically, the electrical wiring in your house is all connected to a big copper rod that is buried in the earth outside your home— this gives the ambient EMFs that travel along electrical lines a place to go and reduces your EMF exposure. Yet the grounding in most homes is imperfect. If you went plug to plug in your home and tested them, you’d see some are grounded and some aren’t. It requires a simple, inexpensive device to determine (see the Resources section for more information) if your outlets are grounded; it requires the help of a trained electrician to remedy them if you discover any that aren’t.

Overall, you want to use technology prudently. You may feel that you are unaffected by EMFs, but everyone is affected at the cellular level. And for a small portion of people reading this, you are well aware that EMFs are disrupting your well-being because you feel ill when you are in their presence and better when they are absent. If this is true for you, you will need to put time, energy, and money into creating as natural a home environment as possible.

For more information on this topic, download the electronic version of Clean Your Room, which contains 18 challenges and solutions produced for the California Department of Consumer Affairs in 1983. https://healthstudiescollegium.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/ Clean-Your-Room3.pdf

THE EFFECT OF ANTI-NUTRIENTS ON YOUR HORMONAL SYSTEM

While you are an electrical being, you are also a chemical being. The chemicals that play a profound role in both your function and your perception are hormones.

Hormones are natural products (meaning, they are manufactured by you) that amplify, alter, and modulate communication between cells. Your hormones are part of your endocrine system: a collection of glands that are in constant communication with each other and

work together to keep your hormone levels in balance. These glands include the pancreas, testes or ovaries, thyroid, pituitary, adrenals, and pineal.

The pituitary is the master gland of the endocrine system. It sends stimulating hormones from its perch between your eyes, almost directly back from the bridge of the nose, out to your other hormone-producing glands. These hormones work by docking in little parking spaces on cell membranes. Many anti-nutrients take up these parking spaces and, because they are forever molecules, never leave. When there are enough forever molecules to disrupt your hormone cycles, it’s a perfect storm for creating cancer, autoimmune disease, cardiovascular disease and stroke, and a deficit of repair. Anti-nutrients disrupting hormonal function has only been a problem since the 1950s. It has become a human catastrophe in the last few decades.

Very often the pituitary is over-stimulated and exhausted, which causes it to send out weak messages. POPs compete with the pituitary’s messages by taking up receptors on cell membranes, which are places where hormones typically sit. In essence, they take up all the spaces in the parking lot, and worse yet, they never leave because their binding energy is high. When this happens in enough places, you shift into the repair deficit mode known as inflammation and then seek out treatments to mask the symptoms inflammation triggers, such as taking ibuprofen or acetaminophen, steroids, antihistamines, or antacids to reduce pain or dyspepsia. The preferred alternative is to avoid the true cause of the inflammation, which is the excess of anti-nutrients. This is an excellent example of using physiology before pharmacology.

As a dynamic system with many parts, the absolute measure of one hormone alone is incomplete information. You always want to have one hormone in proper ratio to the other hormones with which it works synergistically. For example, the adrenals make the stress hormone cortisol. If cortisol goes up in proportion to dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), a precursor to steroid hormones, you’re resilient. But if cortisol goes up and DHEA stays down, you

get anxious or sleepless. And if neither go up, you’re overstimulated and exhausted, chronically fatigued, and experience disturbed sleep.

Hormones also need nutrients to become activated and deactivated. If you have enough essential nutrients and not too many antinutrients, your endocrine system hums and is in balance, and if you have too many anti-nutrients and too few essential nutrients, it’s not.

The pineal gland will order the pituitary gland to send a stimulating hormone to the thyroid gland. In response, the thyroid produces thyroxine (T4), which is comprised of a tyrosine amino acid and four iodine molecules. If you don’t have iodine in your diet, your thyroid will be compromised and you may develop a goiter. Iodine is a common nutritional deficiency, unless you eat plenty of sea vegetables, which have lots of iodine, or consume salt that has had iodine added to it. The T4 that the thyroid makes is not an active hormone, it’s a precursor. Cell receptors have to be in just the right configuration so that one iodine gets removed correctly and you get T3, which is the active form of thyroid hormone.

You can work to heal your endocrine system by rebalancing the pineal gland, which is the mistress of the pituitary gland. It sits deep in your brain, and it is regulated by the quality of light that comes to your retina. The filtered light found in forests is balancing for the pineal gland because it is green light, which falls in the middle of the visible light spectrum. Unlike blue light—such as sunlight and the light emitted from most electronic devices—which lies at one end of the spectrum and is stimulating, or red light—found in firelight— which is calming, green light has a beneficial effect on your master clock at any time of day. Walking in the woods under a green canopy makes a happy pineal gland. If you can’t easily do that, you can buy and use dichromatic green-enriched light bulbs to simulate the effect and bring harmony back to your endocrine system (see more on this healing practice on pages 42-43).

The endocrine system works directly with the nervous system. Hormones are the primary messengers of your nervous system, of which you have at least two—one that is centered in the brain and one that is centered in the gut. (I hypothesize that there is a third in the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, but perhaps that will be

the subject of another book.) These two epicenters of nerve activity are connected by the vagus nerve, which sends messages from the brain to the gut and also the gut back to the brain. Just a few years ago scientists thought that the vagus only sends information one way, brain to stomach, but it’s truly bi-directional.

The more you become sensitive to your own subtle internal experience, the more conversations you will discover are going on within your body that impact your well-being. Being ever more aware is helpful.

Remedies that keep your hormone glands in balance are called adaptogens for their ability to give the gland what it needs—stimulation when it is underactive, and calming when it is overstimulated. Adaptogens are natural substances that provide support without harm. They don’t push or force or control. Rather, they nurture in order to bring about rehabilitation and homeostatic rebalancing.

All herbs and spices are in essence adaptogenic, and you see herbs and spices used as the primary medicines in all wisdom traditions, including Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, and homeopathy. It takes self-knowledge, a willingness to practice healthier habits, and a health care provider or health coach who understands you as a whole person well enough to know which herbs and spices in which amount and combination will be most helpful and adaptogenic.

It’s important to approach the care of your endocrine (hormone) system with adaptogens, because your hormonal needs are different in each season of life.

BALANCE THE PINEAL GLAND WITH DICHROMATIC LIGHT

In the 1960s, MIT researchers (Pitts and Letvin) showed that there are nerves in the retina that go directly to the pineal gland that in turn control the pituitary gland through the hypothalamus. This goes on deep in the brain and has nothing to do with vision. The pineal is the master of the entire endocrine system; the pituitary gland regulates hormonal balance through releasing factors; and the hypothalamus modulates deep brain rhythms. This nerve connection constantly de-

tects the ratio or proportion of green light coming into the eye. This system regulates mood and emotion, digestion and metabolism.

High-tech living stresses the pineal gland. When green light is dominant, the pineal gland breathes a sigh of relief and calms down. This is why walking in a forest is beneficial for the nervous system—the green light is balancing and soothing. But you don’t have to be in a forest to benefit from green light. You can use pure dichromatic light bulbs that generate the same frequency of light found in the forest.

Regular exposure to green dichromatic (also called “dichroic”) light is an effective way to positively influence this neurochemical pathway, reduce the negative impact of chronic stress, and help the body shift toward balance and resilience.

Only pure dichromatic bulbs (PAR 38 dichro) generate the true frequency that sends the soothing messages from the eye to the pineal gland. Light bulbs that have been painted green won’t do it. They may create the illusion of color by frequency subtraction, but they are not helpful for light therapy, also known also as phototherapy.

Dichro bulbs are the better choice for this simple and inexpensive self-care therapy. The acronym PAR stands for “Parabolic Aluminized Reflector” and refers to the metallic material inside the bulb, which reflects the color output of the lamp. The “38” designates the diameter, in one-eighth inch increments (a “38” is actually 4.75 inches in diameter). Dichro bulbs look very similar to standard floodlight bulbs, but the bright aluminum coating found on the reflector surface is different. They generate pure, balanced colors of specific wavelengths; other unwanted wavelengths are reflected back into the lamp. These bulbs aren’t cheap, but they last a long time. You can use them in a regular lamp where you screw in a bulb.

Shine it on your face for at least 20 minutes then on the part of your body that you want to be more comfortable. Shine the light at a distance of four feet so it is comfortably warm. Sit in full exposure to this light for 20 minutes in the morning, and again in the evening. It does help to use dichromatic lights in a relaxed state, such as while meditating, listening to classical music, or taking a salt/soda bath.

GOOD HORMONAL HEALTH AT ANY AGE

You are a different being at different stages of life. Some of the shifts your physiology undergoes come about due to the circumstances of your life: When you’re pregnant, your needs are different than when you’re nursing or when you have children at home. Some are simply the result of your age: You are different when you are a child, an adolescent, at maturity, in middle age, and when you reach your elder years. The amount of sleep you need to restore yourself, the amount of food you need to sustain yourself, the amount of water you need to drink to stay hydrated, and the amount of time you need to devote to inner exploration or meditation varies depending on whether you’re an infant, a child, an adolescent, a young adult, a mid-adult, or an elder.

Numerous prophets of medicine, from Hippocrates and Maimonides to Rudolph Steiner, say that we enter a new phase of life every seven years. In each cycle of life, our inner landscape changes, both in function and in perception. When young, many people can eat anything and not gain weight. Then, when they are older, it seems that they can gain two pounds merely walking past a bakery. Living in harmony with your nature means understanding what season of life you’re in and then adapting your behavior and your perception to fit that season.

Your neurochemicals, hormones, and digestive enzymes fluctuate with each season. Your current hormone and neurochemical status can be illuminated by knowing the results of your four self-assessments, eight predictive biomarkers, and other personalized functional tests if and as needed. I asked myself some years ago, “Why did I gain 50 pounds over the last 20 years?” The answer I discovered was a lack of deeper understanding about foods that burn calories and those that add pounds, and a lack of awareness on how my increasing age impacted my body’s interaction with those calories. Once I started following the lifestyle program I outline on these pages carefully (and reduced my excuses), the weight slowly and methodically fell away. Restorative sleep, improved memory

and endurance, a desire to be active, and reduced hospitality to illness were welcome dividends.

It has now been long enough that it is unlikely my lost weight will be regained, which is a rare thing to be able to say. My mother gained and lost prodigious amounts of weight in her lifetime. She used extra food as emotional armoring and a coping mechanism.

People who can eat anything and not gain weight are fast oxidizers, or have a ‘fast metabolism,’ while those who are disposed to retain fat are slow oxidizers or have a ‘slow metabolism.’ This may make it seem like you are doomed to be one or the other. But being a fast oxidizer isn’t a question of genetics or even age: If your metabolic hormones are balanced, you too will be a fast oxidizer. That means pulling yourself out of having an endocrine and nervous system that is overstimulated and exhausted will help you lose weight. In other words, if you have more bad stuff (anti-nutrients) than good stuff (essential nutrients), you’re in trouble. And if you take steps to reverse that ratio, you will live long and well.

Those steps involve eating a wide variety of organic or biodynamic whole food that is low on the food chain. It also involves using the self-assessments and predictive biomarkers that are outlined in detail in Chapter 8 to determine which of those foods are easy for you to digest, assimilate, and eliminate without immune burden.

As I covered in the introduction to this book, this personalized approach to medicine prioritizes physiology over pharmacology and, if widely adopted, could save one million American lives and a trillion dollars spent on healthcare every year.

It’s a fundamental truth that you matter, as do your choices. You have a tremendous influence over your own health and well-being, especially in the 21st century. For the rest of the book, I’ll focus on the solutions you can use to keep you feeling like dancing well into old age.

THE IMPACT OF EXTERNAL AFFLICTIONS DEPENDS UPON INTERNAL ADAPTATION

“The greatest discovery of any generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering the attitudes of their minds.”

–Rev Dr. Albert Schweitzer

Thus far in the book I have shared the bad news with you: that we are being inundated with anti-nutrients at an unprecedented and ever-increasing rate. Starting in this chapter, I’ll share the good news. Specifically, I’ll cover how to reduce your exposure to anti-nutrients and increase your intake of essential nutrients.

As I mentioned in Chapter 1, you can avoid 80 percent of toxic exposures. You can also fortify your ability to detox those anti-nutrients that you have previously been exposed to, and the other 20 percent of exposure that is unavoidable in today’s world, by boosting your levels of essential nutrients.

Your body has two basic states: elective protective or survival. You are in elective protective mode when you have enough essential nutrients (the good stuff) on hand. You are in survival mode when you don’t have enough of the good stuff to renew, repair, and defend while being exposed to too much of the anti-nutrient bad stuff.

The rest of the book is a call to action to adopt the habits that keep you in elective protective mode. The short-term and lifelong benefits are likely to be unmistakable.

If you are sick and tired of being unwell, you are in the majority of people who are stuck in survival mode. It’s common for individuals and endemic for general society. If you follow the ‘tractor beam’ of modern life toward over-work and high stress, your cells become less able to protect themselves from invaders and repair themselves from harm. If you choose to live a life that reduces the internal distress and increases essential intake, you progressively become more resilient and better able to have meaningful moments and meaningful work.

HEALTH IS A USE IT OR LOSE IT PROPOSITION

Each of us responds to what we encounter. Whatever afflictions you face, you also experience internal responses. When it comes to physiology, it really is ‘use it or lose it.’ Anything you do repetitively, you renew. And anything that you don’t challenge, you lose. The more you restore your innate elective protective functions at any age, the better your body can keep you healthy, resilient, and renewing.

In each moment, you’re either enhancing, renewing, or depleting the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of your life. Each part of you is constantly rebuilding. Your bones are the oldest part of you— they renew every 10 years. Your largest blood vessels and joints renew every seven years, and your major organs about every five years. Much of you has completely renewed in the last month; even the last week. So it matters quite a lot what you do on a daily basis to replenish yourself. If you get enough of the good stuff and not too much of the bad stuff, then you renew, and, if not, you defer renewal. Any homeowner who has waited a little too long to replace their water heater or roof can tell you: They wish they had been proactive instead of reactive. Because once the water heater dies or the roof leaks, it’s a much more extensive and expensive repair.

Being mentally and physically sedentary is an invitation to ill health. If you sit in front of screens for much of the day and don’t get up and walk around, your musculoskeletal and cardiovascular health suffers. Your mind starts to atrophy if you don’t give it mental challenges, whether that’s playing Sudoku or solitaire, learning a new skill, reading a book, or communing with another being. Your spirit suffers if you don’t devote some time to practices that both relax and uplift, such as spending time in nature, listening to classical music, or quiet active meditation. You are likely somewhat familiar with your body and mind. You may or may not have given much thought to your spirit. Spirit describes a third, subtle, eternal aspect of life. Spirit is what is left after you take away your body and mind. It is connected to the essence of life itself as well as to every other being on the planet. You can ignore your spirit, or doubt its existence, but it doesn’t go away. It just waits for you to get interested and turn attention to it. And if you don’t sufficiently slow down and become receptive to hearing the messages of the spirit, it can more forcefully get your attention (as it did in my own near death experience).

You don’t have to push yourself to extremes to take care of these three fundamental aspects of being alive. You needn’t become an ultramarathoner, chess champion, or monk to achieve physical, mental, or spiritual health. Many activities benefit your body, mind, and spirit all at the same time—like walking in the woods, or practicing a mind-body discipline such as hatha prana yoga or tai chi chuan. Put simply, to be physically fit, you have to stretch and use your muscles, joints, and bones; to be mentally fit, you have to use your mind; and to be spiritually fit, you have to engage in quiet contemplation and receptive listening. These pursuits take different forms at each season of your life and can help you discover and live in harmony with your nature.

Dividends of choosing to renew yourself are hard to quantify yet hugely substantial. In fact, the elective protective pursuits that you choose can be the very things that protect you from the next global pandemic. To eat, drink, think, and do what is better for you individually, adds life to your years and years to your life. It can even reduce your age: While chronological age is fixed according to the date

on your birth certificate, you also have a functional age—the age at which your body functions—and this metric of age is variable. Your functional age fluctuates based on your ratio of essential nutrients to toxic matter, and on your habits of daily living.

You can choose convenience, eat processed foods, be sedentary, and use chemicals and pharmaceuticals as short-cuts. The result is to die too early at a high cost and likely separated from loved ones. Or… you can choose a life that includes a higher level of engagement from you at a lot lower cost.

By changing what you eat, drink, think, and do to be more in line with your nature, you reduce your chances of getting cancer to less than one in a hundred and cardiovascular disease to less than one in a thousand. If you don’t, and you follow the typical American lifestyle, your chances of succumbing to one of these top causes of death are one out of three each for cancer and for cardiovascular catastrophes.

SUPPORT YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM, AND IT WILL SUPPORT YOU

In a healthy individual, with more essential nutrients than anti-nutrients, when you encounter an assault—whether that be exposure to a virus, a chemical, a stressful period of life—your immune system says, “I can get you back in balance.” It can elect to protect you innately.

When you suffer a lack of essentials and a surplus of toxic matter, your immune defense and repair system says, “Sorry, I’m just trying to keep you alive. Call up reserves.” It is stuck in survival mode.

Your immune defense and repair system has two sides: an innate, always-on surveillance side, and an adaptive side that is activated when the innate side can’t keep up. The innate side wants to send anything that’s foreign to be recycled—to break it down to its building blocks and then give those building blocks back to the body so that it can rebuild itself. Each person has 50 billion of these innate immune cells on surveillance at every moment.

Your adaptive side comprises your reserves. If the innate immune system cannot break down and recycle the foreign invader, then your adaptive side brings in white blood lymphocytes, either B (bursa) cells or T (thymus) cells. The B cells produce antibodies. Antibodies can be helpful and go on to neutralize invaders or they can be harmful and activate immune attack. T cells don’t need antibodies, as they respond directly to anything foreign. Your immune cells decide which mode they are in based on the energetic environment within them. Specifically, on whether they have enough ascorbate (antioxidant) and magnesium (buffering mineral).

You may be reading this and thinking to yourself, What about autoimmune illness? Isn’t it possible for the innate and adaptive sides of the immune system to be overstimulated and attack my own cells as if they were an invader? The way to prevent or redirect self-attack is to know yourself well enough that you don’t expose yourself to things that burden your immune defense and repair system and impair its ability to renew you. The self-assessment and predictive biomarkers that are the subject of Chapter 8 provide an important start toward that awareness.

CHOOSE GOOD HEALTH NOT ILL HEALTH

Choices about what you eat, drink, think, and do either make you hospitable or inhospitable to infections, chronic illness, mood disorders, sleep disorders, and disease. Your prior life experiences also have a lot to do with how hospitable or inhospitable you are. Being hospitable to these afflictions may expose you to a life of symptomreactive care. This care can then make you more prone to acute or chronic disease, including the infectious scourge of the moment.

There are many medical therapies that are designed to treat symptoms that end up doing more harm than good because they don’t address the cause of the symptoms and then create their own side effects. For example, if you tell most primary care providers that your stomach hurts, they’ll prescribe a proton pump inhibitor. Proton pump inhibitors are a double jeopardy. First, they impair stomach digestion that requires ample acid to stimulate downstream digestion. Second,

they impair uptake of vitamins and minerals. Further, they are now known to promote chronic ill health. For most people, taking 500 mg l-histidine free amino acid 30 minutes before a meal improves digestion and removes need for proton pump inhibitors and similar medications that impair digestion. Or, if you say your heart has been racing, they’ll say take this medicine that reduces heart rate, but it also happens to increase other risks of death. For too many medical therapies, additional prescriptions or procedures are used to treat the side effects the medicines created.

Often the prescriptions you’ve been given or procedures you’ve undergone have left you depleted of certain essential nutrients or distressed in ways that impair healthy neurochemical, hormonal, immune, digestive, and detoxification functions. For example, a one- or two-week course of antibiotics requires three months of taking prebiotics (the fiber-filled foods that feed healthy gut bacteria), probiotics (healthy gut bacteria), or symbiotics (recycled glutamine, synergistic with prebiotics and probiotics). Perhaps your doctor told you to eat yogurt after completing your antibiotics. That would be more guidance than is generally given, and even then, it’s not nearly enough.

Too many doctors have been taught to prioritize pharmacology over physiology. A perfect example of this philosophy can be seen in the conventional advice to take an aspirin, or baby aspirin, every day, to keep your blood platelets from clumping together and inducing a heart attack, embolus, or stroke.

For decades cardiologists were taught that you could selectively inhibit certain aspects of blood clotting and platelet function without risk. Taking a daily aspirin does cause harm, including an increased risk of stroke, cancer, intestinal bleeding, and impaired kidney functions.

Evidence has moved on from the assertion that a daily aspirin is helpful for preventing cardiac events, yet community standards of practice often lag decades behind the evidence.

Meanwhile, physicians who follow the evidence have advocated taking in enough essential nutrients so the immune defense and repair system can eliminate abnormal cancerous cells while also de-

fending and repairing all of you, instead of relying on a daily baby aspirin to protect you and your platelets.

In healthy people platelets are reparative and restorative. Blood platelets are part of your immune, defense, and repair system, as well as your neurohormonal and nervous systems. They have receptors for hormones and neurochemicals on them, and are important in wound repair and overall self-regulation.

Lifestyle is better than anticoagulant therapy. In particular, getting your fats from whole foods and not edible oils and processed foods and keeping your intake of omega-3 essential fatty acids high promotes platelet health. Processed foods contain too much oxidized and omega-6 fats. This makes platelets over-reactive and sticky. If you’re taking in foods that you can assimilate and eliminate without immune burden, your platelets promote healthy renewal, starting at the blood vessel lining, the endothelium. Beyond diet, stretching and walking improves circulation, as does slow deep breathing. When you eat healthfully, move your body, and commit to breathing deeply for a few minutes a day, your platelets and all of you benefit.

It’s common for people to ask me, “How do I convince my doctor to take my suggestions seriously?” Remember, each of us retains ultimate authority over what enhances our health. Taking steps to get healthy and build your resilience so that your need for conventional therapies is reduced will help you become inhospitable to agents that can harm you while building resilience at all levels.

HARDENING OF THE CATEGORIES

The strategies and approaches in this book are not original to me. They are the synthesis of decades of immersing myself in literature of all forms (spiritual, medical, and cross-cultural science) while studying under and working with many guides and mentors in search of wisdom. And this is a crucial strategy that too few healthcare practitioners employ: Remain eager to learn more. Why is this approach so vital? We are either open to new ideas, or we fall prey to ‘hardening of the categories.’

When hardening of the categories occurs, it doesn’t matter what question you’re contemplating or someone else is posing; in your mind, you already have the answer. You may have been conditioned into ways of thinking that filter and bias your experience.

In medicine and biochemistry, in particular, we often look back on something we used to do and see that it was a mistake. As a young doctor, my colleagues and I gave huge doses of steroids as anti-inflammatory treatments. We were so aggressive that if someone had a swollen brain, the swelling shrank too fast and they died. There are a lot of things we’re currently doing as standard medical practice today that in 10 or 15 years we will likely question, asking, “Why did we do that?” It’s natural that knowledge and wisdom evolve; when we fall prey to hardening of the categories, we prolong the evolutionary process. In medicine, the result is that too many people die too early, all in the name of ‘medicine.’

Of course, no doctor consciously has the intention of closing their mind off to new information, or of harming their patients. Hardening of the categories is the result of a discipline that trains its professionals to exist in a series of silos. When you ask most doctors something that’s outside their knowledge base, they often offer an opinion that’s uninformed. The three hardest words for most doctors to say are ‘I don’t know.’ You can’t hold them responsible, because they weren’t trained to view things more holistically.

A BETTER APPROACH: BEING OPEN TO THE UNIVERSE

In his book Confessions of a Medical Heretic, Bob Mendelsohn pointed out that modern allopathic medicine resembles a religion. It has sects, each with a set of beliefs and thought leaders. Every set of beliefs deserves to be challenged, with respect, appreciation, and a desire to be open to a greater truth. You want to be well-rooted in what others believe while also open to the universe. Think for yourself. Keep your life in order. Avoid categorical rejection. When you feel confident that you know who you are, also know that your insight is evolving with every experience.

Einstein posited that life’s fundamental question is, “Is the universe a friendly or capricious place?” There is much belief that the world is governed by universal laws, such as gravity, but that life is otherwise random, mechanistic, and meaningless. Everything happens for a reason is my experience; understanding the reasons is part of the art of living.

Being open to the universe means you are present in each moment and appreciate what that moment offers. You come to discern what you need in each moment. You know that if you are feeling distress that you can walk slowly and breathe slowly in the woods, and that nature nurtures you. In Japan it’s called shinrin yoku, or forest bathing. There is a wonderful sensory world presented to us daily.

Being open to the universe also means that you are open to the possibility that your current reality doesn’t have to be your ultimate reality. When the moment is right, things can move quickly. Even today, when our institutions appear to be breaking down, and food security, retirement, Medicare, and Social Security are under threat, and we are spending ever more on ‘health care’ and feeling ever worse, as John Knowles famously said, there are options. And where there are options, there is hope.

You have an immediate choice to step out of the ‘river’ that is sick care and chart your own path to true health care. Come back into connection with your own homeostasis via self-regulation, selfrestoration, and self-renewal. Most people sacrifice their health to gain wealth, then spend their wealth to regain their health. Most people live so much in the past or the future that when they die they have barely lived. Eckhart Tolle reminds us of the importance of letting go of both the past and the future and living in the now. If you live in the past you get depressed. If you live in the future you get anxious. If you live in the moment you rediscover the joy of being in life’s flow.

Every wisdom tradition urges people to be in the moment. And that includes with what you eat, drink, think, and do. Being in the flow means staying hydrated and eating foods that you can digest, assimilate, and eliminate without immune burden. It also means giving up fear. Fear is the mind killer, as Yoda reminded us in the Star

Wars movies. Breath and mindfulness practices are refuges from afflictive reactions and responses, such as fear. Most people hold their breath when they’re stressed. You can retrain yourself so that the moment you begin to experience external stress, you begin a quiet, deep abdominal breathing and breathe through whatever is going on. That changes everything from your cellular chemistry to your perception of the possible. Practice is more helpful than analysis.

It’s important to do some things that are unfamiliar—particularly those things that bring you closer to nature, nurture, and wholeness. This may momentarily bring you out of your comfort zone. Very often that is a good thing. Try the practices covered in this chapter and see what you have an affinity for. Notice if one makes you feel better or worse, and trust that a feeling of betterment is doing you quite a lot of good. It doesn’t matter how proficient you are at first; practice and perseverance furthers success. You can’t do everything. You don’t need to. Choose what new thing to practice based on your affinity for it, the season of your life, and the results you observe.

HEALING TRAUMA’S TOLL

Trauma often has a negative impact on your health, especially trauma that occurred when you were a young child. As a child, if someone comes at you harshly because they had a bad day, the effects can become long lasting. The victim too often grows up and becomes a victimizer in a transgenerational passage of trauma. This is where the mind and spirit really come into play, as self-awareness, compassion, and forgiveness of self and others can break that chain. The good news here is that forgiveness can happen in any moment. Practices that teach non-attachment and promote the relaxation response—such as abdominal breathing, meditation, tai chi chuan, hatha prana yoga, and somatic therapies—are helpful in aiding you to disengage from the afflictions caused by your prior life traumas. They renew mind, body, and spirit. They can help you witness the events of your life without evoking the visceral distress that leads to a cascade of stress hormones and causes you to retreat into survival mode in your cells.

It may feel like you don’t have the inner fortitude to look at your traumas. Mind, body, and spirit-renewing practices help you build resilience and fortitude.

Also, the more you renew yourself, the more you are drawn to people who are also doing what it takes to renew themselves. This is what social psychology calls the spreading effect. In essence, if you take better care of yourself, the people around you get healthier too. And if you do the opposite, the people around you get less healthy. Making healthier choices is the equivalent of adding yeast to a bread recipe—it uplifts everything.

INVESTING IN SPIRITUAL RENEWAL PAYS BIG DIVIDENDS

In order for the things you eat, drink, think, and do to support your renewal, it is helpful to have greater self-awareness and self-knowledge. Think of this as inner space exploration. It’s wonderful that humans have walked on the moon, but there are worlds within each of us that too few of us examine. There are numerous practices and modalities that can help you uncover what makes you tick; what motivates you; what hurts you have to heal; and what capabilities you have yet to unleash.

A life well lived includes paying attention to your spiritual health. Religion aside, let’s explore questions such as “Why?,” “What matters?,” and “Who?” The act of seeking and giving yourself the opportunity to consider possible answers is helpful.

The spiritual and mental process of raising your own self-awareness is made practical by the four self-assessments and eight predictive biomarkers presented in Chapter 8. Once you know more about how your body works, as well as what holds it back from functioning well and resiliently, you can choose to do the things that nurture your particular physiology. You will also have the means to measure your personal progress.

In addition, there are many practices, disciplines, and bodies of wisdom that nurture the spirit (see page 58 for a list of possibilities).

MIND-BODY-SPIRIT HEALING MODALITIES

Aikido

Active meditation

Alexander Technique

Feldenkrais and Anat Baniel Method

Forest bathing; ambling in the woods

Hatha prana yoga or Tai chi chuan

Intensive Journal of Ira Progoff (Dialogue House)

Organic or biodynamic gardening

Pilates

Reevaluation counseling

Rogerian therapy

The Trager Approach

The Appendices list books, links, and connections that provide guidance on such pursuits.

As an adult you may explore until you find resources and practices that resonate with you to renew your body, mind, and spirit. Once found, stay long with those practices and habits. Learning the tools and techniques in this book and on this page in particular can help you verify that you do indeed have a spirit and that it is communicating with you, offering you guidance on life’s big questions.

As mentioned, you don’t have to go live in a mountain cave for the rest of your life. You can practice abdominal breathing while in the comfort of your own home (or at your desk, or while commuting to work). You can even read or listen to music while you do abdominal breathing. You could be listening to music that soothes and uplifts you. Most of us have a few minutes here and there throughout our days to breathe and peruse spiritual writings. If you’re not a reader, you can listen to the audio version of a book. If you’re a kinesthetic learner, you could do a moving meditation where you sway or step with every breath. Hatha prana yoga, tai chi chuan, aikido, Pilates, the Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, and Trager are all mindful movement practices. These are spiritual practices in part because

you’re doing them ‘in the moment.’ And anytime you’re in the moment you reap benefit at all levels of being.

The key to all these modalities is that they teach you to look within for answers, rather than looking for salvation from an external source. Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, Naropa, Confucius, and Lao Tzu all counseled seekers to look inside themselves for guidance. When you start looking within, it may be that what you find inside is not initially pretty. If you stay with a gentle process, 20 minutes twice a day of something that fosters introspection, you’ll enjoy renewal in your mind, body, and spirit.

If you are wondering where to start your spiritual pursuits, my teachers encourage people to go back to their own roots, whether you’re Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, unaffiliated, or agnostic. It makes sense to learn where you come from before you venture out into unknown realms.

I encourage Westerners to explore Eastern wisdom traditions. The West is better at how to make, and the East is better at how to be. A harmony of making and being yields a life well lived, a life filled with meaningful moments—life in which, when you reflect back on it, you don’t ask why you spent so much time away from the people you love cloistered in something called obligations. There are many beautiful spiritual texts that have been written through the millennia (see Appendix IV) available today in a variety of formats.

Time is the most precious resource we have. Devoting time to nurturing yourself and making yourself a priority pays invaluable dividends. While you can’t prolong life, you can shorten it—diabetes shortens your life, as does bathing in toxins and distress. When viewed through this lens, taking 20 minutes a day to give yourself decades of additional quality life is an opportunity. It’s a gift you give yourself and your loved ones.

You can unplug for minutes at a time throughout the day, but then there are times when it’s necessary to take a whole day, or a few days, to unplug. Everyone needs a retreat from time to time, particularly when the stress of life at that moment feels overwhelming. There are many places to go and give yourself the chance to disconnect from the pressures of everyday living and immerse yourself in quieting

practices. Examples include certain monasteries, spiritual communities, ashrams, and other places where people live in community and welcome others to come for days to weeks to months and sometimes to move in. Almost everything resets itself if you unplug it for a period of time… including you.

However, what you do every day carries more weight than what you do every once in a while. In order to cultivate a new habit, particularly one that uplifts your nature and nurtures you back to wholeness, you often have to give up some deeply held but not necessarily conscious beliefs. As you believe, so it is for you. If you believe you’re helpless and hopeless, then you are. If you believe that you are connected to everything else in the universe, and that the universe is a benevolent place, then you find evidence of this belief as being true. Every positive choice you make reaps far-reaching benefits once choice becomes a habit. Devote just 15-20 minutes a day to immersing yourself in spiritual readings or practices. Observe and witness your life as your mind and heart open to life’s wonderfully subtle possibilities.

This may seem an unusual perspective to take in medicine. Most medical professionals are taught and rewarded for separating mind and body. Spirit is too rarely included. It is possible to be a man of science and a man of spirit. They are not mutually exclusive. In my experience, they are constantly overlapping. As a member of the American Medical Association (AMA) for over 40 years, my philosophy that the mind, body, and spirit are each important leads me to be in a growing minority within medicine. This book puts physiology before pharmacology. This book promotes nature, nurture, and wholeness in ways that honor individuals, regardless of the diagnosis.

I have lived through several transitions in which ideas were ignored, then they were viewed as controversial, and then they were brought into mainstream medicine as if they were known all along. I can see that now the medical and scientific community is beginning to recognize personalized medicine that embraces mind, body, and spirit. (Acupuncture, yoga, mindfulness, and environmental medi-

cine are examples.) We are still in transition back to a deeper understanding of personalized care of the whole person.

HOMEOSTASIS (SELF-REGULATION) IS KEY TO HEALTH

Your healthy survival depends upon energetic account homeostasis. Homeostasis means self-regulation of physiological systems to create an internal balance between use and renewal, and between imbalance and balance. Your neurochemicals and hormones, digestion, detoxification, spleen, liver, and kidneys are all under challenge on a daily basis thanks to the realities of 21st century existence. When we’re healthy, and we are taking in all the essential nutrients we need to combat the anti-nutrients we are exposed to, these bring us back into balance. That is homeostasis.

To be homeostatic, as I covered earlier in this chapter, you must use the parts and systems of the body you want to renew. If you want a stronger heart, muscles, and bones, you can’t merely think about exercising, as it’s only when you’re moving that these parts of the body renew. At the same time, your mind, body, and spirit also have a need for rest and renewal. Sometimes you have to withdraw to replenish. That doesn’t mean you hide in a hole. It means actively replenish and take up healthier habits. Even changing the hand you use to brush your teeth can help you renew. Your ability to establish new connections is also ‘use it or lose it.’ Introduce novelty and innovation to enhance awareness.

Your ability to stay in homeostasis is related to the amount, and types, of energy that is being created in your cells. There are two molecules that deliver the energy that cells need to perform their elective protective work: adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and adenosine diphosphate (ADP). A healthy person has 100 times more ATP stored energy potential than ADP. However, for every molecule of ATP you need one molecule of magnesium ion for it to work. This is why magnesium deficiency is one of the most devastating chronic maladies of our time. Without sufficient magnesium, you are prone to loss of restorative sleep, hopelessness and helplessness, irritability,

and anxiety. Anxiety says your nervous system is nervous. When you have enough magnesium, as well as the calming neurotransmitter acetylcholine and the amino acid glycine, not only do your cells have the energy they need to keep you in homeostasis, but your nervous system and your anxiety settle down. You feel better in body, mind, and spirit.

When you are in homeostasis, you can use the potential energy in your cells to fully engage in life and seek out new opportunities. You have the resilience to be helpful to yourself and to others. You may feel the difference at a macro level but what’s going on is also molecular. Health is the result of harmonious molecular teamwork. You need your ATP and ADP to be in proper ratios to each other. The cell battery is known as the mitochondria. Within the mitochondria are four energy-charging centers known as cytochromes. If you have enough ascorbate and magnesium, and you’ve lowered your exposure to anti-nutrients that need to be detoxified through your mitochondria, everything runs smoothly in the energy-creation process. If you throw monkey wrenches into mitochondrial functions, you switch into survival mode and your joy of living is reduced.

When you have enough minerals such as magnesium, zinc, chromium, etc., the body is better able to exclude toxic metals—such as lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, and nickel. When your cells lack magnesium and are more acidic, the body is so hungry for healthy minerals that it opens up ion channels that even let in the toxic metals. If you’ve shifted from elective protective to survival mode you are at risk of feeling bad, experiencing unpleasant moods, and experiencing chronic illness and autoimmune disorders because you are in repair deficit (also known as inflammation.)

Your health can be repaired, one molecule at a time. In order to do that, you need to be proactive about pursuing personalized prevention. The resilience of your cells is the result of your lifestyle habits. If you invest just five percent of your waking hours—72 minutes a day—in stimulating renewal, you are consciously creating homeostatic, self-renewing conditions. Now, I know you might hear “72 minutes a day” and think, Where is the time for that? But through the practices I suggest you do during those 72 minutes (which I outline

in Appendix I), you are likely to find the input so rewarding and reap such substantial rewards—even with occasional lapses—that you’ll have no problem making the investment a daily priority.

Twenty-first century survival requires a roadmap that makes you resistant to harm—be it infections, toxins, or relationships—and open to the opportunities that life offers you. Resilience results from an ‘internal symphony’ played by the essential nutrients that you must take in from outside. Once they’re in your body, these players work together with a profound, awe-inspiring synergy. One molecule activates another molecule, while yet another molecule recycles the first molecule so that it’s ready to activate another molecule. If you are deficient in any nutrient, it has a ripple effect on any number of processes that are vital to health. When any one is lacking, the harmonious molecular teamwork that creates homeostasis is impaired, like a horse with a lame leg.

THREE IMPORTANT ESSENTIAL NUTRIENTS FOR HOMEOSTASIS

The most common essential homeostatic nutrient deficiencies in Western civilization are vitamin C (ascorbate), magnesium, and omega-3 fats. A critical factor in cellular survival is its RedOx potential—or the tendency of the cell to acquire electrons and become reduced, or give electrons and be oxidized. Ascorbate sets the RedOx potential in your cells. If you have enough ascorbate, you have a healthy (low) RedOx. When your ascorbate begins to go down because you’re not taking it in as quickly as you are using it, your RedOx goes up. This opens the door for every pathogen that enters the cell to express itself rather than be recycled. For this reason, having adequate ascorbate levels is imperative for survival. In fact, when Nobel Prize-winning physician Albert Szent-Györgyi, was asked how essential ascorbate is to life he replied, “As essential as light and oxygen.”

Szent-Györgyi was the first to separate ascorbate from food, specifically from the red peppers used to make paprika. He noticed that the peppers retained their vibrant red color even when they were

dried. He wondered what compound was in the pepper that acted as an antioxidant (and prevented the red pigment from oxidizing to a dull brown).

Almost every other species can make ascorbate from sugar. Humans are one of the few species that can’t convert glucose to ascorbate. We have to take it in through diet and supplements.

Magnesium is also vital for cellular health, particularly magnesium citrate, which regulates the acid/alkaline balance within the cell, with help from potassium. A healthy cell is just on the alkaline side of neutral, above 7 on the pH scale, which keeps it in elective protective mode rather than survival mode.

Omega-3 fatty acids are essential, in that the body requires them, yet we cannot make them and must take them in through food or supplements. Essential fats are an integral part of cell membranes throughout the body and affect the function of the cell receptors in these membranes. They provide the starting point for making cytokines that regulate blood clotting, contraction and relaxation of artery walls, and inflammation/repair.

We need to have balanced levels of omega-3 essential fatty acids, which are present in fatty fish and some nuts and seeds, and omega-6 essential fatty acids, which are present in high levels in edible oils and the processed foods that contain them. In essence, omega-3 fats enhance, repair, and soothe the body, while omega-6 fats stimulate and activate the body.2 Yet thanks to the standard American diet, most people take in exponentially more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3s. Large-scale studies, such as NHANES IV, suggest typical Americans take in 20 to 100 times more omega-6 than omega-3, mostly due to the consumption of vegetable oils and practices like frying and high-heat cooking—a primary reason why I advocate avoiding edible oils and cooking with broth, water, or wine instead. 3

2 B. Hallahan, “Efficacy of omega-3 highly unsaturated fatty acids in the treatment of depression,” The British Journal of Psychiatry 209 (2016): 192–201.

3 Yanni Papanikolaou, et al. “U.S. adults are not meeting recommended levels for fish and omega-3 fatty acid intake: Results of an analysis using observational data from NHANES 2003–2008,” Nutrition Journal 13 (2014): 31.

While essential nutrients are vital, there is such a thing as too much as well as too little. Like most things in life, the dose makes the poison. This goes against what many people assume, which is that more is better. Sometimes a little bit of an essential nutrient stimulates a detoxification pathway or a repair pathway, whereas an excessive amount has an adverse effect.

Almost every doctor is taught that there’s a linear dose-response curve. If you look carefully, it’s not linear, it goes up and down. In other words, there is a sweet spot of effectiveness for any remedy. If a patient has an adverse reaction to a prescribed medication, often another medicine is used in an attempt to remedy the side effect. The nature, nurture, and wholeness philosophy provides a different set of opportunities to redress the cause and resolve the symptomatic consequences.

In addition to getting the right amount of essential nutrients, you also want to reduce the amount of anti-nutrients to which you are exposed. Most people have a list of anti-nutrients they’re taking in without being aware. As mentioned briefly earlier, a lymphocyte response assay (LRA)—which I cover in depth in Chapter 8 —can pinpoint which items burden and impair your immune defense and repair system. With this information you can take steps to reduce such exposures while rebuilding essentials.

You can take an LRA test every six months. On one of my personal LRAs, my reaction included fluoride. Having long diminished my fluoride exposure—by using fluoride-free tooth powder and drinking fluoride-free well water—I was surprised. After some investigation, I discovered the source was India Spice tea, which I was drinking a lot of. This spicy, caffeine-free tea has many virtues, but when you analyze its components, it’s high in fluoride. After I stopped drinking it, a few extra pounds fell away and my sleep, mood and digestion improved. Each individual has different sensitivities at different times. It remains a 21st century challenge to stay in elective protective mode. Performed with regularity, the four self-assessment and eight predictive biomarkers in Chapter 8 lead you back to the promised land of vibrant health for life.

HOPE TODAY

Can we achieve homeostasis in the 21st century? Is this century so distressed and toxic that it’s like walking outside in a rainstorm without your galoshes or an umbrella?

When you have enough of the good stuff to get the bad stuff out and reduce exposure to the bad stuff you can live long and well in the 21st century. You can practice balance, or you can lose your balance and become more vulnerable to illness or trauma.

A question for our time is, ‘If not now, when?’ My studies with Bhanté taught me that now is truly all we have. The past is behind us, the future isn’t guaranteed. Yes, you can have 5, 10, and 50-year plans, but the only place to dwell is in the moment. If you dare to live in the present—and this approach challenges you to do so—it’s well worth the effort. You’ll stop rehashing the memories that traumatized you, and stop fearing the possible future developments that cause anxiety. You’ll enjoy your life now, and you’ll create the conditions necessary for an enjoyable future, too.

THE POWER OF WHAT YOU EAT, DRINK, THINK & DO

“Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.” –Hippocrates

To live long, well, and joyfully is now a choice—rather, is dependent on the choices you make. When your anti-nutrient exposure is lessened and your needs for essential nutrients are met, you become more resilient and self-restoring. What you eat, drink, think, and do profoundly influences your quality of life by enhancing or impairing your hormonal, immune, digestive, and detoxification competencies.

There are many essential nutrients. Yet the vast majority of people alive today are woefully deficient in many of them. Among these are ascorbate (otherwise known as vitamin C), vitamin D, magnesium, and omega-3 fatty acids. Only those who eat thoughtfully and take supplements meet any level of adequacy or sufficiency in these nutrients. With each and all of them in balance, we can enjoy longterm better health.

Ascorbate, for example, sets the energy potential and resilience to damage of your cells through helping reduce oxidation (or what’s known as your RedOx potential). Without enough ascorbate, your RedOx is high and you’re inviting chronic infection due to impaired immune

defense and repair response to disease. With adequate ascorbate, your RedOx potential is low and you’re resistant to infection.

Magnesium buffers acid, and the natural byproducts of metabolism are acidic. If you take in enough magnesium with choline citrate to enhance uptake and cell retention, it kicks the acid out and maintains the cell’s alkaline environment.

Coenzyme Q10, or CoQ10, is an essential cofactor that supports your mitochondria, which are essentially batteries that live inside your cells. If you were to place the mitochondria outside of the cell, oxygen would kill them very quickly, but protected inside the cell they create the energy that you need to live. The role of the mitochondria is truly profound. CoQ10 is the shuttle that helps that system work. Pure rice bran oil enhances the uptake and benefits of CoQ10 when used in a micellized softgel.

In my research, I have developed tests and refined self-assessments that help determine precisely how much ascorbate (the C cleanse), magnesium (the urine pH test), hydration, and digestive transit time (the transit time assessment) are needed to keep your cells vital and resilient. When you know your self-determined need—and this book will guide you to find the natural forms of these nutrients and not the cheaper, synthetic forms that typically line the shelves of your local drugstore—it is simply amazing how seemingly effortlessly your body can heal. Common observations include weight loss that seems to happen on its own, mental clarity that comes once your body has the tools it needs to release toxins, and the energy that comes from giving your cells what they need to keep your batteries charged. And that’s just in the short-term—when you change your habits, your destiny changes. You become much less susceptible to the chronic diseases that have become ubiquitous in modern societies.

These simple self-assessments can help you make sure that you can turn the food you eat into something helpful for you without burdening your immune and repair system. It is a process of profiling yourself and then interpreting the information so that you know what action to take as well as when and how to take it. It is a personalized, proactive, and predictive approach that will help you

identify and overcome the burdens that the realities of 21st century life have imposed on you.

Your guiding dietary mantra should be to eat whole foods that you can digest, assimilate, and eliminate without immune burden. But diet and supplement needs are personal. Below are seven evidence-based principles to follow when choosing what you eat and drink so that you can live well, the Alkaline Way™.

THE ALKALINE WAY LEADS TO A HEALTHIER LIFE

There is a wide range of illness yet a very narrow range of health. In chemistry labs, a pH of 0 is most acid, and a pH of 14 is most alkaline. Neutral, then, is 7. Your body seeks to maintain a pH level in its blood and cells that is slightly neutral or slightly alkaline—between 6.5 and 7.5.

Albert Szent-Györgyi, a mentor to many described in Chapter 3, pointed out that human metabolism is alkaline by need and acid by function. It takes sufficient amounts of the essential mineral magnesium to neutralize excess cell metabolic acids. Measuring your urine after rest to keep it between 6.5 and 7.5—a process I talk you through in more detail in Chapter 8—indicates that your diet has enough alkaline mineral buffers to remove from cells excess metabolic acids.

When you are in an alkaline homeostatic state, you are in elective protective repair mode. Even a small movement toward more acidic results in a shift into survival mode. Metabolic acidosis is the clinical name for this increasingly common condition, which comes with substantial increased risk of disease and loss of cell resilience.

You can live in the self-restoring (homeostatic) healthy range by following the Alkaline Way as described here. By contrast, the standard American diet (SAD), coupled with ever-increasing toxic exposures, adds acid to cells and impairs life quality.

The following practices are a synthesis of wisdom and original evidence. Following them helps you reduce your exposure to the ‘bad stuff’ and get enough of the ‘good stuff.’ And that is how you thrive in the 21st century.

EIGHT ALKALINE WAY PRINCIPLES TO LIVE WELL, LONG, AND JOYFULLY

PRINCIPLE #1: ENJOY A WIDE VARIETY OF FOODS IN A WIDE VARIETY OF HEALTHIER WAYS

Most Americans don’t realize that they only eat about 10 foods— wheat,corn,soy,dairy,andmeatareallatthetopofthatlist.They alsoconsumeinoneweekthesameamountofemptycaloriesfrom sugar that grandma and grandpa would eat in a year. These commoditieshavebeengeneticallymodifiedandcontainglyphosateand otherbiocidesthatareincreasinglylinkedtochronicillhealth.

Healthier people eat many dozens of different, nutrient-rich foodsdaily.ApopularJapaneseadageistoeatatleast40different foodsaday.JapanhasoneofthehealthiestpopulationsonEarth.

Followingthewisdomofcuisinesthathelppeoplelivewelland long around the world—including the traditional Greek Mediterranean diet and the traditional Japanese diet—my primary advice is toenjoyawidevarietyofnutrient-densefoodsthathavebeenpreparedinawidevarietyofhealthierways.

Eatingabroadarrayofnutrient-densefoods,whencomplemented withsafersupplements,ensuresthatyougetthefullsuiteofessentialnutrients.Remember,yourphysiologyislikeasymphony.Ifyou aremissingevenoneinstrument,orifanyinstrumentisoutoftune, you’llhearthedifference.Whenyouingestavarietyoffoods,your body can select what it needs and eliminate the rest through your urine,sweat,andstool.Itisbettertoletyourbodyremovetheexcess thantoriskdepletionofanyessentialmicronutrientthatpredisposes youtoautoimmunity(self-attack)andinflammation(repairdeficit).

Youalsoneedawidevarietyoffoodssothatyoudon’tgettoo muchofanyonefood.Nomatterhowhealthyafoodis,orevenhow wellitisgrown,youcanstilleattoomuchofit.Youmaybetempted toeatfoodsbasedononeparticularnutrientitcontains.Forexample, Brazil nuts are good sources of selenium. You may think that

you should eat lots of Brazil nuts. However, if you start eating them by the pound, your digestion becomes imbalanced.

Of course, you want the foods included in your wide variety to be whole. Eating a few more processed foods increases the opportunity to develop immune burdens due to maldigestion and related afflictions.

A further benefit of eating a variety of whole foods is that, while inevitably some foods contain contaminants, you are more likely to get enough of the essential nutrients you need to counteract any anti-nutrients you may consume. The perfect nutrient profile is not the goal. Instead, eat a wide variety of foods that you can digest, assimilate, and eliminate without immune burden, and you’ll get a daily replenishment of the full suite of essential nutrients, each of which plays an important role in the symphony of life.

PRINCIPLE #2: AVOID GENETICALLY-MODIFIED (GMO) AND NON-ORGANIC FOODS

Glyphosate is now one of the most ubiquitous chemicals on the planet—a 2016 research study detected it in 70 percent of a sampling of Southern California residents, a number that has surely risen in the half a decade since.4 Glyphosate isn’t only applied to crops, which would mean it could be washed off—it is woven into the genes of plants that are used in commercial food products. These include the soy, wheat, corn, oats, and rice that are the staples of modern diets. This means the plant itself produces the biocide that as an additional effect reduces helpful mineral intestinal uptake including magnesium.

Incorporating toxic chemicals in the food supply raises many questions about their effects on long-term personal and environmental health. Prioritizing nature, nurture, and wholeness means going back to genetically unmanipulated food from heritage or

4 Mills PJ, Kania-Korwel I, Fagan J, McEvoy LK, Laughlin GA, BarrettConnor E. Excretion of the Herbicide Glyphosate in Older Adults Between 1993 and 2016. JAMA. Vol. 16, no. 318. (2017):1610-1611. doi: 10.1001/ jama.2017.11726.

heirloom sources that have been grown organically, or better yet, biodynamically.

Biodynamic refers to a farming system developed in the early 20th century by Rudolph Steiner based on his study of Goethe and Theosophy. Biodynamic farmers constantly enrich the soil with slow-cured humus compost. This approach also requires farmers to feed the crops by spraying certain nutrients on them at certain times, and to treat their farm as a complete ecosystem—rather than simply a plot of earth to grow one particular crop. Biodynamics is one way to see the world as ‘we’ rather than ‘me.’

Organic should be the minimum standard you accept for the foods you consume. Biodynamic is much better. And unless the food is listed in the sidebar at right as one of the items on the list of leastcontaminated produce, and it’s not listed as organic or biodynamic, you should avoid it.

Even if your produce is organic or biodynamic, you want to wash it well before consuming it. To kill bacteria on the outside of your produce, soak it in one part white vinegar and three parts water for at least two minutes; rinse in clean water before eating. Baking soda is also effective at removing pesticide residues. Dissolve two and a half teaspoons baking soda in four cups of water, then soak your fruit and vegetables in it for at least five minutes. Again, rinse in clean water before eating.

MOST CONTAMINATED PRODUCE (CONSUME ONLY ORGANIC OR BIODYNAMIC, OR AVOID)

Apples

Cherries

Coffee

Grapes

Kale

Nectarines

Peaches

Pears

Strawberries

Spinach

Sweet bell peppers

White potatoes

LESS CONTAMINATED PRODUCE (ORGANIC OR BIODYNAMIC PREFERRED)

Asparagus

Avocado

Broccoli

Broccoli rabe

Brussels sprouts

Cabbage

Cantaloupe

Cauliflower

Eggplant

Honeydew melon

Kiwi

Mango

Onions

Papaya

Pineapple

Squash

Sweet potato

Sweet peas

THIS INCLUDES AVOIDING COW DAIRY

Cow dairy is another food that is best avoided. In general, cow dairy is hard to digest because it contains a sugar, called lactose, that requires an enzyme to break it down. Two out of three adults acquire deficits of this enzyme along with other protective molecules that shut down when a person is in survival mode.

Also, most of the cow dairy products—whether milk, yogurt, cheese, or butter—come from animals that are fed GMO grains. These grains and the biocides they contain often bioaccumulate in the cow’s body and their milk. By the time a milking cow is ready to retire it can no longer stand, so depleted are its bones of minerals. Most have to be euthanized. The industry keeps consumers unaware of how harsh and toxic the environments are in which milking cows are mostly kept.

You may be able to get raw cow’s milk, and yogurt, cheese, or butter made from it. Wholly grass-fed milk won’t have the issues of contamination (although you still may lack the enzyme to digest lactose properly).

Ghee is one exception. Also known as clarified butter, or ‘liquid gold,’ ghee is prepared by cooking butter over low heat until all the milk solids separate out and are skimmed away, and you are left with butyrates and short-chain fatty acids (SCFA). Ghee is the one edible

oil that is nutritious, delicious, and alkalinizing. You can cook with it, bake with it, or put a dab of it on top of the cooked grasses that you eat, and it enhances rather than harms your digestion. Look for it in a glass or ceramic container or make it at home. And make sure it is organic.

Dairy from sheep and goats (as well as water buffalo and yak, depending on where you live) are more digestible and less likely to be fed with contaminated grains. They are each used to make cheese, butter, and yogurt. If you really love cheese or yogurt, have these options.

Sheep and Goat Cheese Options

Sheep’s milk cheeses

Feta (sometimes, read the label)

Haloumi (sometimes, read the label)

Manchego

Pecorino Romano

Ricotta (sometimes, read the label)

Roquefort

Goat’s milk cheese

Chevre

Feta cheese (sometimes, read the label)

Goat gouda

Humboldt Fog

Buffalo’s milk cheese

Burrata (sometimes, read the label)

Mozzarella (sometimes, read the label)

As for highly processed non-dairy substitutes, unless you make your own, don’t use them. Whether these are mainstream faux-creamers or even nut milks, they come from a chemical processing plant. They are not classifiable as foods. While commercial nut milks are derived from a whole food, they are packaged in plastic (where the chemicals from the plastic leach into the nut milk) and they are, essentially, synthetic (work-alikes that don’t actually work like the real thing), and are not recommended.

Making your own nut milk is simple, with the right equipment, as it contains nothing more than the nut and water, so it classifies as a whole food. Combine four ounces of the raw nut of your choice (such as almond, macadamia, or cashew) with eight ounces of water in a high-speed blender. Blend for five to 15 minutes, depending on how smooth you would like your nut milk to be.

PRINCIPLE #3: RETRAIN YOUR PALATE

Today, most people’s palate, tongue, nose, and brain need to be rehabilitated. You have likely been addicted to unhealthy fat, sugar, salt, and processing chemicals.

When it comes to deciding what to eat, just say no to anything packaged, processed, canned, and preserved. Salt, fat (in the form of edible oils), and sugars are added to processed, crisped foods, such as crackers, cookies, chips, and other snack foods, to amp up the crave factor and sell more product. With such foods, as the old commercial said, you can’t eat just one.

If a food product has ingredients you don’t recognize, or that sound like a chemical, it probably is a chemical. Avoid these foods. A good first step to start guiding you toward better dietary choices is, before you eat a food, ask yourself does it:

● Make you feel satiated?

● Encourage cravings?

● Addict your tongue?

● Make your brain dependent on it?

● Afflict your gut?

Fast food, or what I prefer to call ‘convenience food’, always comes with a tax that is paid by your body—your metabolism, digestion, immunity, sleep, and detox functions are all over-burdened by these food-like products. The key to ridding yourself of this tax is to determine what you can digest, assimilate, and eliminate without immune burden, and to makeover your diet so that what you eat and drink is more whole and in season.

When you eat foods that are in season, you get the ripest, freshest, and most naturally flavorful foods possible at the best value. Eating fresh foods dramatically reduces your consumption of anti-

nutrients, including oxidative molecules, persistent pollutants, mold products, and radioactive isotopes.

Eat as much locally grown food as possible. The average tomato or strawberry travels 2,000 miles by the time it gets to you. In addition, it’s likely artificially ripened. It may look perfect, but if you analyze it, it’s mostly water and fiber and very little nutrition. Instead, seek out sources of local foods. Shop at farmer’s markets, purchase a share of the harvest of a local farm through what’s known as community supported agriculture (CSA), and grow your own garden. You’ll be surprised how much food you can grow in a small space and how easy it is to keep yourself in herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and leafy greens.

If you love the flavor of crispy foods, you can make your own using an air fryer, which uses temperature to crisp the outside while sealing in the food’s natural juices. A little browned food is fine; you just want to avoid any food that has been cooked to the point that it is charred.

PRINCIPLE #4: UPGRADE YOUR SALT, FAT, AND SUGAR

To attain or regain healthy resilience, avoid the salt, fat, and sugar that dominate the 21st century diet. This doesn’t mean you can never eat these foods; it means to be discerning about what you buy and consume.

Instead of traditional table salt, choose Celtic Sea Salt®, comprised of 13 percent trace minerals, including the essentials that are hard to get elsewhere; in comparison, other sea salts are only one or two percent trace minerals. During the salt curing process, most sea salt companies don’t allow the sea water to completely evaporate. Instead, they push the final micromineral-rich brine into the ocean. That’s why Celtic Sea Salt® is comprised of larger flakes, as opposed to the smaller granules of most other sea salts. Celtic Sea Salt® costs more than other sea salts for this reason; quality matters. Also, once you have high-quality salt, don’t add it during cooking—wait until the foods are fully prepared and then use a bit of Celtic Sea Salt® to flavor it to your taste.

The quality of your pepper matters, too. Piperine is the active part of black peppercorns, and it is only present in freshly ground pepper. (This is why servers at fancy restaurants offer to grind pepper directly on to your food—so that you get as much active piperine to improve flavor and digestibility.) Piperine increases the uptake of nutrients in food, particularly the curcumin released when turmeric is heated (think curry). The catch is that once a peppercorn is ground up, the piperine only lasts a short time. For this reason, another investment you want to make is in a good pepper grinder that allows you to adjust the size of the grinds. (I recommend grinders from Italian manufacturers with a copper stem, as they are resistant to moisture and fungus—see the Resources section for the specific brand recommendation.)

When it comes to fats (refer to Chapter 1 for more information about fats), you want to get them from nuts, seeds, and sprouts, and forego edible oils. The oils that are pressed from vegetable seeds (including olive, canola, coconut, and sunflower) go rancid quickly. To hide that fact, oil manufacturers use chemicals to mask the sharp rancid taste. This means foregoing salad dressings and any foods that are fried, crisped, or chipped, as they are all cooked in oxygendamaged edible oils. And the heating process degrades the oils while harming digestion even further!

Instead of cooking with oil, use broth, wine, or juice. Or use a slow cooker, pressure cooker, Dutch oven, or tagine (a traditional earthenware pot from Morocco that uses the moisture from the food to cook it). Grilling is fine so long as you don’t go for a heavy char, as the blackened bits on food that is grilled are a source of carcinogenic monoamines. If you love crispy foods, using an air fryer is a healthier option.

You are sweet enough as you are; there is no need to add simple empty calorie sugar. Processed sugar provides empty calories that make you gain weight, crave more sugar, cultivate a bigger population of unhealthy gut bacteria, and sleep poorly. You are free to enjoy the natural sweetness of fruits and berries that are in season (and grown organically, or better yet, biodynamically), because the fiber in fruits slows sugar uptake into the body and improves digestion.

PRINCIPLE #5: REPLACE GRAINS WITH GRASSES

Grains in our grandparents’ time were the staff of life. Every locale used to have a slightly different strain of wheat or soy or corn or rye. Over the last 100 years, the food agribusiness industry has consolidated their seeds into a few strains that have been manipulated to have more sugar and less protein. This decreases nutrition and increases chances of famine and susceptibility to predators like locusts and weevils. On top of that, these single-strain seeds are full of anti-nutrients, including glyphosate and toxic metals thanks to pesticides and chemical fertilizers, all of which makes them easier to process, but harder to digest. It is good for profitability and a disaster for global health.

Grains have other issues: Wheat and other grains including rye, kamut, and oats also contain the proteins gluten and gliadin, which makes the grains sticky (gluten is what makes bread dough hold together and gives bread its structure) and harder to digest.

Nutritionally bereft wheat is milled to further reduce its nutritional value to produce white bread. The soft, spongy white bread that is commonplace today originated in the 1950s in England, in the town Chorleywood. Prior to this time, most people could only

afford darker breads—white bread was expensive because it required a long, labor-intensive process of allowing it to rise multiple times over a period of days. British nutritional scientists were tasked by the government to develop a less expensive way to make white bread. The scientists determined that they could violently shake the ingredients together, and in 45 minutes, they’d have a dough that would create a bread that is very like the Wonder Bread of our childhoods. Nearly all white bread available at the grocery store today is Chorleywood bread. While a miracle of food production, the process of the yeast acting over a few days is critical to make the wheat or other grains digestible. When you can make a playdough-like ball out of the bread, it is a Chorleywood bread that has many adverse unforeseen digestive and health consequences.

If you can purchase bread that’s been made with organic or biodynamic heritage wheat using a traditional method, by all means, go for it—though it is not easy to find and is probably more expensive than other loaves of bread available. I have a wood-fired bread (and pizza) oven at my home. Traditional breads the world over are made this way, from Italian and Turkish breads to roti (India) and injera (Ethiopia). Invest in your foods and the dividends soon become clear. Rice is a grain that contains its own gluten and gliadin, and (today) it is almost always contaminated with arsenic, a slow-killing toxic mineral. The agricultural water in Thailand, Bangladesh, and throughout Indochina contains arsenic and mercury from the runoff of chemical fertilizers and pesticides used upstream. This is the water that irrigates rice fields. In the last decade or so some producers have found that microplastic fragments are increasingly present in rice. While plastic pollution has long been recognized as an ocean hazard, 5 the levels of microplastics in soil, irrigation water, and food are also rising.6 The result is rice that contains increasing amounts

5 Lusher A., Hollman P., and Mendoza-Hill J. “Microplastics in fisheries and aquaculture.” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Paper 615. Rome, 2017. http://www.fao.org/3/a-i7677e.pdf

6 Sarker A., Deepo D. M., Nandi R., Rana J., Islam S., Rahman S., Hossain M.N., Islam S., Baroi A, Kim J. E. “A review of microplastics pollution in

of non-biodegradable hormone-disrupting plastic that harms digestion and life in general.

You can buy organic, relatively uncontaminated basmati rice that is grown at higher altitudes. It costs nearly three times as much as the rice that you can buy cheaply in bulk at discount distributors. While true that you pay a premium for uncontaminated, certified food, it is an investment wholly worth making.

Better yet, though, avoid grains as much as possible. In their place, add more grasses to your diet. Grasses do not contain gluten or gliadin, have been much less manipulated to change their basic composition (with the exception of corn as covered below), are easy to digest, and are, therefore, recommended. They are a good source of complex carbs (dietary fiber) to slow sugar uptake after eating them.

Technically corn is a grass. Today, we think of corn as being sweet and tender, but traditional corn, known as maize, is chewy and less sweet. The corn you find in your local market has been genetically manipulated to make it more palatable, and it is harder to digest. It has twice the fructose sugar, half the protein, and is genetically modified and loaded with glyphosate. But maize, which was a staple of indigenous cultures throughout the Americas before the arrival of Europeans, is higher in fiber and protein and lower in sugar, making it more nutritious. It’s what Dr. Demetrio Sodi-Pallares, a renowned Mexican cardiologist, administered to people who had acute cardiovascular disease, and 90 percent of his study participants enjoyed a mild to excellent reduction in symptoms.7 the soil and terrestrial ecosystems: A global and Bangladesh perspective.” Science of the Total Environment. Vol. 733 (2020): 139296. doi: 10.1016/j. scitotenv.2020.139296.

7 Sodi-Pallares, D., Fishleder, B. L., Cisneros, F., Vizcaino, M., Bisteni, A., Medrano O., G. A., Polansky, B. J., & De Micheli, A. (1960). “A low sodium, high water, high potassium regimen in the successful management of some cardiovascular diseases. Preliminary clinical report.” Canadian Medical Association Journal, 83(6), 243–257.

Grasses include millet, amaranth, quinoa, buckwheat, and wild rice. Most of us don’t eat many grasses, so it may take your palate some time to acclimate and your culinary skills some time to adapt to creating healthier, grass-containing meals. Your improvement in digestion, assimilation, elimination, mood, and productivity are worth the effort it takes to swap grains for grasses. When eating grasses, organic and biodynamic are always healthier, more nutritious, more delicious, and less likely to be contaminated.

Grains

Wheat

Farro

Kamut

Oats

Rice

Grasses

R ye

Spelt

Barley

Einkorn

Amaranth Corn (the traditional form, known as maize)

Buckwheat

Quinoa

Millet

Wild rice

PRINCIPLE # 6: EAT EITHER HIGHER-QUALITY MEAT AND FISH, OR NONE AT ALL

Survival today depends on eating low on the food chain. Animals are as high on the food chain as you can get. Animals raised conventionally, on feedlots or in fish farms, are fed large amounts of grains or processed nitrogen waste. It takes up to 50 pounds of grain and lots of water to produce every pound of meat. This means the contaminants in the grains get concentrated in the meat and milk. Commercial meat, fowl, and fish all concentrate harmful chemicals in abundance.

If you choose to eat high on the food chain, be careful that the animal was well cared for. If once in a while you want to eat a grass-

fed lamb chop or a fish that someone caught with a rod and reel, that’s a very fine thing to do. Make it a rare occasion—and the cost of procuring animal protein of such high-quality naturally helps you do that. This means patronizing farmer’s markets and boutique providers, where the meat and dairy products are more expensive yet much more nutritious than in your typical grocery store. It is cheaper to invest in high-quality food than in the emergency room, hospital, or physician’s office.

Here are some guidelines for buying the best-quality meat. It should be:

● Grass fed, 100 percent.

Animals in the wild eat grass and not grains. Most commercial farms feed their livestock grains, which as we just covered are contaminated, because they fatten the animals quicker. An equal concern is that conventional livestock are kept in an over-crowded feedlot—and any place where you have hundreds or thousands of animals peeing and pooping is a recipe for infection. Eating conventional meat is a very expensive and resource-intensive way to poison people. What I’m conveying in this book, in comparison, is an inexpensive way of helping people improve their health.

● Humanely slaughtered (kosher or halal).

Colorado State University professor Temple Grandin is a long-time advocate for the humane treatment and slaughter of livestock. Grandin perceived that when an animal headed to slaughter could see the next animal being killed, it caused so much fear in the animal that stress hormones in the animal’s blood shot up so high you could find those hormones in the flesh of the meat it produced. Thanks to her research and advocacy, many slaughterhouses have changed their set up so that the animals follow a circular, not linear, path, which spares them trauma at the very end of their lives.

One way to see at a glance if an animal was slaughtered humanely is to look for the words “kosher” or “halal” on the label. These terms refer to traditional laws regarding the slaughter of animals, and they insure a good death for the

animals. Kosher doesn’t mean the animal was grass-fed, or antibiotic-free, or guarantee that it wasn’t distressed, depleted, and sick, however. It is a helpful designation, but it only goes so far.

All this being said, you still want to avoid sausages, hot dogs, and lunch meats, even if they are grass-fed and/or kosher. They have been manipulated with fat, salt, and sugar to be addictive and then chemically modified to last a long time on the shelf. As Beatrice Trum Hunter advised, eat only foods that mold, spoil, and rot, but eat them before they do.

● Avoid chicken and chicken eggs.

Like cows, chickens are fed primarily contaminated grains. Commercial chicken is likely to have detectable levels of arsenic, as well as a gamut of other biocides and pesticides that have been applied to the grains they are fed. A store-bought chicken egg today is an experiment in toxicity. If you want to eat eggs, choose duck, goose, or quail eggs, or organic biodynamic chicken eggs. They are all nutritious and delicious.

● Eat only fish that has been line caught, never frozen. Commercial fishing nets extend for miles. They catch so many fish at one time that they must flash freeze them, which is a highly automated process that degrades the quality of the cells of the fish, and enables whatever toxins were built up in those cells to flood the meat of the fish as it thaws. In addition, commercial fishing depletes entire areas of fish and disrupts the ecosystem. When you make sure to buy line caught, never frozen fish, you’re ensuring that that animal was caught on a hook, which means it was a healthier fish.

These considerations are before you contemplate the poisoning of our oceans due to runoff from agriculture. It’s gotten to the point that there are companies mining mercury, cadmium, and arsenic from seawater. In addition, there is so much plastic on the bottom of the ocean, that it is challenging the whole ecosystem. When shopping for fish, look for eyes that are clear, as when you freeze fish the eyes get cloudy. In a market where 25 fish are dis-

played, generally only one has clear eyes; that’s the one you want, as it was line-caught and never frozen.

Farmed fish are better avoided, as farmed fish typically eat the nitrogen-rich waste of water treatment plants, contaminated with many chemicals you don’t want in your body. No fish farmer can afford to feed quality food to the fish. Farmed fish are prone to developing cancer or ulcers on their skin, indicating that their immune defense and repair system has collapsed. Some artisanal companies feature line caught wild fish, known to our grandparents as ‘brain food.’

If you order fish at a restaurant, chances are overwhelming that it is farmed and frozen and, thus, a contaminated and unhealthy choice. For all these reasons, you need to prioritize eating mercurytrapping high-sulfur foods (as discussed in Chapter 2) so that your body can clear out the contaminants you have ingested through the fish and other foods as well as water and air.

Fatty, deep-water fish are still an important source of omega-3 fats. Get these essential fats from a fish oil supplement that has been distilled under nitrogen to remove toxic minerals and pesticide contaminants. (Refer to Chapter 7 for more information about choosing an omega-3 supplement.)

● A note about game animals:

Avoid hunting deer, duck, turkeys, and other wild game for their meat. Whatever you kill may be the sickest animal of the herd. Even wild animals are too often infected and contaminated to be healthy food sources today.

PRINCIPLE #7: EAT LOWER ON THE FOOD CHAIN

Plants are the basis for lifelong health. Of the wide array of plantbased foods available, you want to make sure they are whole, and as much as possible, organic and/or biodynamic.

Beyond what to avoid—grains, edible oils, sugar, cow dairy, fish, and meat, particularly conventionally raised fish and meat—here are highly nutritious, more delicious foods to include in your diet.

BERRIES

Berries tend to be richly colored, which means they are high in carotenoid and polyphenolic phytonutrients. There is a reason why ripe berries are the preferred food of birds; they know that’s the most nutritious thing around. The darker, the better, including raspberries, blueberries, cranberries, marionberries, Arctic kiwi, and blackberries.

SPROUTS

Sprouts are a highly concentrated source of nourishment. They are also easily digested as well as a good source of fiber. You may think of sprouts as something you put on a sandwich or sprinkle on top of your salad, but you should think of them as a staple, not a condiment. Make a salad out of sprouts, and adorn it with edible flowers, herbs, seeds, nuts, and greens. It is an easy and tasty way to eat a wide variety of nutritive foods in one sitting. Brassica (broccoli) sprouts are particularly recommended.

SEA VEGETABLES

Sea vegetables, such as seaweed, are excellent sources of iodine and trace minerals. They are also high in fiber and help you get more of the bad stuff out of your system and improve the health of your digestion and your microbiome. You do want to be sure that your sea vegetables come from a clean source, since, as I’ve mentioned, the oceans are highly contaminated with toxic metals and plastics. Quality sea vegetables are harvested in pristine water, far away from urban runoff and contamination. Companies that go through the trouble to source their products from these locations include infor-

mation about their efforts and their products’ lack of contamination on their labels.

SEEDS AND NUTS

Seeds and nuts offer concentrated nourishment in a tasty, portable package. Eat a wide variety of nuts and seeds in rotation so that you don’t eat any to excess. It is crucial that you buy organic or biodynamic nuts and seeds. Otherwise, if the seed was preserved with a fungicide it retains that biocide in it, or if it was grown on aluminum-rich compost it harms your brain. Remember, you want to maximize the good stuff and minimize the bad stuff.

HERBS AND SPICES

Herbs and spices are wonderful nutrient delivery systems. They also make the food you prepare even more delicious. Most commercial herbs are contaminated, and all are produced to have a pretty color and a long shelf life; they are to be avoided unless they are organic or biodynamic. As an example, the bright yellow color of turmeric, once it has been powdered, is often maintained by adding low—yet still harmful—levels of lead to it. 8 Otherwise, the spice turns a dull yellow brown.

A far better choice is to grow your own herbs in your garden or in a container on your windowsill. This produces a less contaminated and even tastier herb. It also lets you pick fresh herbs minutes before you are ready to use them. Shortening the amount of time between when the herb is harvested and when you eat it is a really good idea, as all plants contain delicate components that start to dissipate as soon as they are picked. Fresh-picked is tastier. If you drink vegetable juice as soon as it is juiced, and then again after it has been

8 Forsyth J.E., Nurunnahar S., Islam S. S., Baker M., Yeasmin D., Islam M.S., Rahman M., Fendorf S., Ardoin N.M., Winch P.J., Luby S.P. “Turmeric means ‘yellow’ in Bengali: Lead chromate pigments added to turmeric threaten public health across Bangladesh.” Environmental Research. Vol. 179, Part A (2019): 108722. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2019.108722.

sitting on the counter for two hours, you can taste the difference. And when you experience how tasty fresh, whole foods can be, it motivatesyoutoeatmoreofthem.

SULFUR-RICH NATURAL DETOXIFIERS

These are the GGOBE foods discussed in Chapter 2: garlic, ginger, onions, brassica sprouts (such as broccoli sprouts), and pastured chicken,duck,orquaileggs,allofwhichhelptobindtoxinssothat theycanbeusheredoutofyourbody.

MUSHROOMS

Mushroomsareuniquesourcesofimmune-,neurochemical-,anddigestion-boostingcompounds.Eatingmoreediblemushroomshelps yourgutandyourcentralnervoussystemremovetoxicmetalfrom your intestines, brain and body. This helps you thrive despite the challengesofthe21stcentury

PRINCIPLE #8: NURTURE YOUR DIGESTION

Digestionisanimportantprocessthatyouwanttosupportasmuch as you can, and it is a much more involved process than you may realize.

AsI’vementioned,digestionbeginswithyoureyes,andthenit continues with your mouth, where your saliva and your chewing begintobreakdownyourfood.Essentially,youwanttochewyour food15-30timesuntilitisliquid.Inthisway,it’salmostasifyou drinkyoursolids—afarcryfromthewolfinggulpssomanyuseto chokefooddown.Itcantake20minutesforyoutoregisterthatyou arefull,andbythattimeyouhaveover-stuffedyourselfandoverburdened your digestive system. For this reason, you want to eat halfwhatyoufeelyouneed,thenstopforfiveminutestogiveyour bodyachancetofurtherthedigestiveprocesswhileyoutakeafew deepbreaths—apracticethataidsdigestion.Ifyou’reeating,justeat and enjoy the process. Don’t read, check your email, or watch TV.

It’s better to be silent while you eat—you can converse while you take your pause.

If you still want more foods after you’ve had your break, you can do that. If you eat whole foods—and avoid edible oils and simple sugar—your stomach will be filled easily and happily. When you are eating processed foods, which are high in edible oils, it’s all too easy to take in too many calories overall, and too many of the wrong calories. Two tablespoons of oil contain the same amount of calories that you would get from enough whole food to fill your stomach.

Thomas Jefferson espoused eating condiments as staples, and reserving staples (such as grains and meat) for condiments. In general, you want to turn condiments into staples: have salad as a main course, and eat plenty of so-called GGOBE foods: garlic, ginger, onions, brassica sprouts (such as broccoli sprouts) and eggs, as they promote digestion and immune function.

In addition, think about the timing of your eating. You may find that consuming essentially all of your calories in a six-hour window–noon to 6 pm, for example, improves digestion and much more.

An exception to this: If you are rehabilitating your digestion to regain resilience and health you may need to eat every couple of hours and only eat one or two foods at each meal. This is a traditional way of rehabilitating digestion.

For everyone, it helps to start each meal with a warm liquid: warm water with a squeeze of fresh lime or lemon juice, a cup of broth, soup, or anything you need a spoon to eat that’s warm. This simple practice boosts your digestion and helps keep you hydrated.

An added note: Avoid iced beverages, as they are cold enough to reduce and harm stomach digestion.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: MACRONUTRIENT TARGETS FOR HEALTH

Balanced nutrition usually means making 60 percent of the calories you consume come from complex carbs; 20 percent from healthy, whole food fats; and 20 percent from protein derived from plants and animals that are low on the food chain. This is easy to do if you

follow a whole foods approach, and hard to do if you get foods from boxes and bags. While this is not how most Americans currently eat, do you want to follow the herd off the nutritional survival cliff?

You don’t want to eat more fat than 20 percent of your calories (despite what advocates of the ketogenic diet may advocate) because you want insulin that works. Insulin is the hormone that regulates blood sugar. It is produced on demand by the pancreas. If you take in more than 20 percent of your calories from fat you develop insulin resistance, which induces diabetes, cardiovascular, and other autoimmune repair deficit inflammatory conditions. Most Americans are literally eating themselves sick, which is a double shame when it is so easy and tasty to eat yourself well.

The majority of your calories should come from complex carbs, which means those that are high in fiber. Every cuisine of populations that live the longest shares this macronutrient breakdown of 60-20-20.

You also want a much lower protein intake than the average American currently consumes.

PROTEIN INTAKE AND MUSCLE, BONE, JOINT, AND BLOOD VESSEL QUALITY

Our obsession with protein makes sense—after both fat and carbs have been vilified as the source of obesity, protein is the only category of food left. Yet most protein is acid forming. If you have too much of it, regularly, you could end up inducing metabolic acidosis, magnesium deficiency, and chronic illness.

How much protein does a human need in a day? The answer is much less than you likely assume: only 60-80 grams, which is the amount of dry protein that you can put in the palm of your hand. Since most food contains a large amount of water, those 60-80 grams of dry protein translates to 250-350 grams of protein-rich food. Most people today eat too much protein.

The myth that eating more protein enables you to build more muscle is widely held, but it is still a myth. If you take in more protein than you need, you end up with keto acids that, true to their

name, make your cells more acidic, deplete your cells of magnesium and other essential nutrients, and shift you into survival mode and away from elective protective mode. The way to build lean muscle is to have an energetic alkaline cell with all the right amount of protein and other essential nutrients. It is the ‘Goldilocks scenario’ again: too little is too little, and too much is too much; for example, excess protein metabolically depletes rather than helps.

Fitness devotees and followers of keto diets are often guided to consume two or more times more protein than they need. In the short term, eating high amounts of protein may help you ‘bulk up.’

Yet, as soon as you stop intensive exercise and high protein intake, you quickly become flabby. When you eat too much protein you end up with muscle hypertrophy. This means bigger and more bloated cells. This is the opposite of what you want.

If you want to have a lean, robust, and well-repaired body for life, you want to take in a balanced diet. This means 20 percent each of protein and fat and 60 percent fiber-rich, complex carbs.

Hyperplasia, or smaller and more efficient muscle cells, is better. You want to enhance your ability to produce new, healthy cells rather than produce bigger, flabbier cells that only make you quickly flabby. Not to mention, over-consuming protein causes an excess creation of acid, which is especially harmful to the kidneys. To be clear, excess acid also harms the brain, liver, spleen, muscle, eyes, and voice as well as the kidneys, lungs, and intestines.

This may go a long way toward explaining the chronic kidney disease that has become near epidemic in 21st century America. When you keep your kidneys happy by adopting the strategies outlined in this book, you also reduce your risk of cancer, heart disease, autoimmunity, and progressive chronic illness by at least 80 percent.

If your kidneys are already compromised, you can preserve and even restore kidney function by following the four personal selfassessments and eight predictive biomarkers covered in Chapter 8, and by following the eating principles outlined in this chapter. Eating high on the food chain concentrates the bad stuff and harms the kidneys; eating healthy whole foods that are low on the food chain helps rehabilitate most chronic kidney disease.

With those excess acids comes a shift to survival mode. This means your body calls on anaerobic or sugar metabolism instead of energy metabolized by the mitochondria. In order to manufacture energy in the mitochondria, you need ample amounts of magnesium, ascorbate, and CoQ10. Magnesium buffers the acids, ascorbate is an antioxidant, and CoQ10 helps produce the molecules of energy, known as adenine triphosphate (ATP), so they can be delivered from the mitochondria to be used by the cell for energy (work). When you use sugar for metabolism, you get a drop of energy. When you use the mitochondria, you get a whole bucket. You can survive on sugar metabolism, but you’ll be fatigued, you won’t get restorative sleep, and your mood and digestion will suffer; you’ll become more susceptible to illness in general.

GUT HEALTH NEEDS PREBIOTICS AND PROBIOTICS PLUS SYMBIOTICS

Quorum sensing is a term microbiologists use to describe when good gut bacteria crowd out bad gut bacteria so that no toxins are produced. It’s another way of saying that the majority rules in your gut. No one has a complete absence of bad bugs in their gut, but when the number of the bad bugs are low and the good bugs are high, the bad bugs don’t express their toxins and become harmful. They have to be present in high density in order to communicate with each other, which only happens when you have a dysfunctional microbiome. If you have enough of the good and get exposed to the bad, as we all are at some point, they won’t harm you. On multiple international trips to participate in scientific conferences, my colleagues got sick, while my prebiotics, probiotics, and symbiotics protected me—even though we were all eating the same food and drinking the same water. When people asked me how I was staying well, I counseled them on the strategy of taking probiotics, prebiotics, symbiotics (and zinc). Once they implemented that strategy, they reported that they didn’t get sick on subsequent trips, because the good prebiotics and probiotics crowded out the harmful pathogens.

To achieve quorum sensing, you need to be taking in enough prebiotic fiber (feeding the probiotics), live probiotic organisms, and symbiotics (recycled glutamine, to be covered shortly). When you meet prebiotic, probiotic and symbiotic intake goals, you reduce the risk that if you’re exposed to a pathogenic organism it is able to multiply enough that it can be harmful.

Viruses and bacteria produce toxins in anyone who has a digestive disorder induced by prior therapies (see Chapter 3). Antibiotics, acid inhibitors, medications such as metformin (for diabetes) and statins (for blood lipids), or blood pressure medicines all cause a wasting of essential nutrients and require an increase in intake of essential nutrients, cofactors, and buffering minerals. No matter the assaults to which your gut may have been exposed, as soon as you begin taking in ample amounts of prebiotics, probiotics, and symbiotics, you begin to heal.

CONSUMING ENOUGH PREBIOTIC FIBER TO PROTECT GUT HEALTH

To keep your probiotic population thriving, eat 40–100 grams of unprocessed fiber daily. Make those grams 80 percent soluble fiber, which nourishes your microflora, and 20 percent insoluble, which binds toxins so that they can be more safely eliminated. This is guidance many of us learned from Dr. Dennis Burkitt, a British physician, Nobel laureate, and author of the 1979 book Don’t Forget the Fibre in Your Diet.

All foods outlined in this chapter—particularly grasses and sea vegetables, seeds, nuts, and sprouts—provide ample amounts of fiber while enhancing your microbial ecology.

ENSURING AMPLE AMOUNT OF PROBIOTICS

You want to consume 40–100 billion live probiotics every day. You can get these from a combination of traditionally fermented foods and live supplements.

Many foods that you think contain probiotics don’t actually have live strains. For instance, most yogurt is made by acidifying milk,

sterilizing it with heat, and then at the last minute injecting a certain number of bugs. That is not a traditionally fermented yogurt, where the probiotics transform the milk into yogurt. It is easy to make your own yogurt drink: add 2–3 capsules of a quality live probiotic supplements to a quart of any type of milk (I recommend sheep or goat) and leave it on the counter at room temperature overnight; in the morning you will have delicious kefir that is teeming with probiotics.

You can also have your fill of traditionally fermented pickles, sauerkraut, and other vegetables (they must be traditionally fermented and not pickled using vinegar, which does nothing to cultivate a probiotic population in the pickling brine). If your pickled vegetables come in a jar, even if they have been traditionally fermented, they have likely been heated (pasteurized) to the point at which the organisms are dead. There are still delis where you can buy pickles out of a large barrel—these are likely traditionally fermented—or you can make many of these at home with simple instructions that you look up online.

In addition to eating live fermented foods daily, you also want to take probiotic supplements, so that your total daily consumption totals at least 40 billion to 100 billion colony-forming units (CFU) a day. You want supplements that contain mixed strains of probiotics, including acidophilus and bifidus. You need a daily supplement because acidophilus, an essential probiotic strain that nourishes all the other healthy bugs in your microbiome, doesn’t multiply in your gut. It needs to be replenished regularly. The average healthy individual has 100 trillion gut bacteria in their digestive tract, comprised of about 1,000 different species;9 they are all nourished by acidophilus.

A 2017 Irish study of more than 4,300 older individuals found that women who ate the most yogurt had a 31 percent lower risk of osteopenia and a 39 percent lower risk of osteoporosis than those who ate yogurt the least frequently, and the men who ate yogurt

9 Harvard Men’s Health Watch. “Can Gut Bacteria Improve Your Health?” Harvard Health Publishing, Harvard Medical School. October, 2016. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/ can-gut-bacteria-improve-your-health

regularly had a 52 percent lower risk of osteoporosis.10 It’s not the calcium that’s responsible for this statistic; it’s the live bugs. Although it’s not as simple as eating any old yogurt, as the probiotics in most yogurt have been killed by the pasteurization process, as I just covered. The way to tell if your yogurt is a good probiotic source is to look at the label for the number of live species (CFU or colony forming units), not the total number of organisms. It’s also helpful to eat sheep or goat’s milk yogurt, as cow’s milk is most often highly contaminated with GMOs, as discussed earlier in this chapter.

The amount of daily probiotics you need to maintain a healthy microbiome is a tiny fraction of what you need to restore your microbiome after you have devastated it with medications. In order to restore your microbiome, you need to take in five times the baseline, which means 200–500 billion CFUs per day. Without this level of rehabilitation, you risk long-term continuing dysbiosis, increasingly linked to many health woes, including neurodevelopmental challenges as well as early loss of brain and body functions.

Any time the central nervous system is not resilient, as reflected in an inability to concentrate or learn, or disordered moods, or even a diagnosis of autism, the population of good gut bugs is likely to be deficient. This often occurs after pharmaceutical therapies. Even those treatments that offer help can be harmful over the long-term if you do not restore the collateral damage.

This is but one example of how our misunderstanding of physiology and our misuse of pharmacology is creating problems that are causing social disruption and expense beyond measure. We are spending ever more and feeling ever worse.

10 Harvard Men’Laird E., Molloy A.M., McNulty H., Ward M., McCarroll K,. Hoey L., Hughes C. F., Cunningham C., Strain J. J., Casey M. C. “Greater yogurt consumption is associated with increased bone mineral density and physical function in older adults.” Osteoporosis International. 2017 Aug; 28 (8):2409-2419. doi: 10.1007/s00198-017-4049-5.

ENHANCE GUT HEALTH WITH SYMBIOTIC RECYCLED GLUTAMINE

Glutamineisanaminoacidthatisessentialforgettingenergytothe cellsthatlineyourgut(enterocytes)aswellasthosecellsinyour brain,muscles,andliver.Yourgutcellsneedenergysoquicklyand sointenselythattheycan’tgetitfromanythingexceptglutamine. Forthisreason,glutamineisanimportantaccompanimenttoyour prebioticsandprobiotics.Symbioticrecycledglutamineisthethird legofthestoolofguthealth.

Glutamine deficiency is epidemic in the American diet. Withoutenoughglutamine,derivedeitherfromfoodsorfrominternal recycling, you build up too much of the amino acid glutamate, a powerfulexcitatoryneurotoxinthatdamagesnerves.Youcantake recycled glutamine in supplement form. This includes pyridoxyl alpha-ketoglutarate(PAK),amoleculethatrecyclesglutamine(see the Resources section for information on the glutamine/PAK supplementIdeveloped.)

Youcouldn’teatenoughseafood,beans,nuts,eggs,anddairy(all glutamine-richfoods)tomeettheenergyrequirementsofagutthat hasbeenimpairedbyalifetimeof21stcenturymedicaltherapies and procedures, stress, and exposure to toxins and anti-nutrients. This is why my company offers the glutamine/PAK supplement I developed. Taking three capsules of recycled glutamine on rising andbeforebedplusanadditionalthreecapsulesbeforeanintense workout repairs and energizes the intestines without ever increasingharmfulglutamate.

HEALTHY GUT BENEFITS

Whenyourprebiotics,probiotics,andsymbioticsareallinbalance, your gut and the rest of your body are in continuous communion. Beyondjusttalkingtoeachother,theyinstructandinspireeachothertoperformbetter.Thisishowyoupreventyourselffromactually getting sick when you are exposed to respiratory, oral, or contact pathogens.

It is also how you get restorative sleep, as most people who can’t sleep deeply and regularly have excito-neurotoxins coming from pathogens in the gut. Most people have no idea that what they eat has any influence on their sleep, except perhaps if they eat something spicy before bed. But everything you put in your mouth shapes your gut health, and your gut health has a direct impact on the quality of your sleep. (Restorative sleep is addressed in Chapter 5, in the Bedroom Makeover section.)

Your gut and brain are in a constant conversation via the vagus nerve. It is a two-way street. This is a documented fact that science was unaware of as recently as 10 years ago. Not so long ago we thought the brain only sent messages to the gut, and not the other way around. Now it has been abundantly clarified that there are at least two nervous systems. Science is self-correcting and we are constantly learning how wrong our previous assumptions were.

What you eat, before it’s eliminated, can flood the body with good stuff or induce harmful immune, neurochemical, and other diseasecausing consequences depending largely on digestive transit time. When you eat what you can digest, assimilate, and easily eliminate without immune burden, the gut sends messages to the brain that things are fine. This is often not the case. That’s why taking an LRA test as part of predictive biomarker testing is so essential—learning which foods you can tolerate and which you cannot gives you strategies and a roadmap for rebuilding your gut health and therefore your whole-body health. (More about these vital tests in Chapter 8.)

By tailoring your diet to what you can digest, assimilate, and eliminate without immune burden, you can rehabilitate and renew your entire being. The benefits from doing so are always available to you. Whether you are two months old or 120 years old, if you do the right things, you reap the benefits.

5

LESS HARM, MORE PROTECTION

“Everything in excess is opposed to nature.”

–Hippocrates

Good news… it is possible to substantially reduce your toxic exposure while enhancing resilience, even though 21st century exposure to anti-nutrients and harmful chemicals is unprecedented. Walter Crinnion, an environmental medicine specialist, found that, of the most common 20 anti-nutrients in the human body, 80 percent of them were due to recent exposures. This means you have the ability to dramatically reduce the anti-nutrients you take in by making better choices about what you eat, drink, think, and do.

In Chapter 4, we reviewed how to reduce harmful exposure to and boost intake of essential nutrients that counteract anti-nutrient exposures.

In this chapter, we’ll cover how to reduce your exposure to anti-nutrients in your immediate environment by making specific choices—like taking your shoes off before you enter your house and changing from outside clothes to inside clothes, in addition to the myriad makeovers covered in this chapter. These actions lower your total allostatic (external) toxic load. But in addition to lessening exposure to harm, you want to bring more into your environment that

nourishes you. This is a potent prescription for a healthier, longer life. After these makeovers, you can live in harmony with nature, and bring richness to every season of your life.

KITCHEN MAKEOVER

Ancient history and modern science affirm that sustainable health begins in the kitchen. At the kitchen table, we commune with one another as we nourish our bodies and celebrate nature’s ability to nurture. The tactile sensations and aromas of cooking are fundamental human experiences that have profound effects on both our central and intestinal nervous systems.

To assure you get enough essential nutrients while reducing your exposure to anti-nutrients, it is worthwhile to examine your shopping, cooking, and eating habits, as we covered in Chapter 4. An additional and powerful step is to create a kitchen that helps you prepare foods in a healthful, efficient, and enjoyable way.

How you cook matters as much as what you cook. You want to avoid many modern cooking technologies—such as nonstick pans that use fluorinated, hormone-disrupting chemicals or silicones— and choose traditional cooking methods—like cast iron pots and pans, unglazed ceramics, glass, and wood—that have been proven over millennia to support health.

Invest in cookware, utensils, and appliances that make cooking a pleasurable and health-nourishing experience. Preparing your own foods is much more cost-effective in the short and the long term than eating ‘convenience’ foods. A small investment in a healthier kitchen up front is better than investing your life in treatments and disease management. By choosing to make the investment, you’ll improve the nutrition of the food you prepare, reduce toxins in your diet, and connect to a deeper lineage of wisdom passed down by your ancestors.

CHOOSE TRADITIONAL COOKWARE

Rethinking your kitchen requires you to invest in quality cookware. Over time, this saves you money and time, and reduces food waste.

For example, copper pans that are clad with stainless steel distribute heat so evenly and so well that it’s harder to burn food, and it takes less time and energy (whether your stove is gas, electric, induction, or wood-fired) to cook your foods.

Another example is the tagine, a pot with a cast iron base and an earthenware top used in Moroccan cooking. On low heat and with no added oil, the foods release their fluids, which then helps to cook and flavor the herb-infused food (instead of having the steam and flavor dissipate).

When buying cookware, go for the best value, not the lowest price. Look for cast iron, copper-clad stainless steel (such as those made by Mauviel™ professional), and unglazed ceramic (such as those made by Romertopf™ and Le Creuset™), and avoid anything with nonstick coatings. Buying better quality cookware yields better results. Look for heirloom-quality pots and pans. You can visit second-hand kitchen supply stores and flea markets and find wonderful deals if you know what you’re looking for (as found in the Kitchen Makeover section of Appendix II).

Using traditional cooking methods and vessels makes the process of preparing nourishing foods easier and more efficient.

MAKE YOUR LIFE HEALTHIER WITH THE RIGHT GADGETS

Microwave ovens have become ubiquitous kitchen appliances—ones that I do not recommend for cooking. Microwaved foods have a tiny fraction of helpful antioxidants remaining compared to traditionally prepared foods. Microwaves are useful only to warm plates before serving food on them, and to sterilize your sponges or masks.

Many kitchen appliances and utensils are much more than novelty items. The Resources section has gadgets (such as a pressurized rice cooker) and utensils (such as spatulas, strainers, whisks, and brushes) that make your meal prep easier, more enjoyable, and more successful, encouraging you to cook more. As with most things in life, you want to use the right tool for the right job. This increases efficiency and effectiveness.

Most of us want our kitchen utensils to also be as chemical-free as possible. That means no plastic. You want your waffle iron to not have a nonstick coating, for example, and your spatulas, spoons, strainers, and tongs to be made from metal, ceramic, wood, bamboo, glass, or other natural materials. This may mean that you need to donate your old utensils and invest in healthier options.

Store your kitchen appliances where you can easily reach them without having to rummage through a cabinet: A ceramic crock on the counter, or a hanging rack above the stove are good storage spots for utensils. It’s not enough to have the right tool, you need to be able to find it, too.

SAFELY STORE FOOD

How you store your food matters, both in terms of protection from chemical exposures and in inspiring you to cook more. Ditch plastic containers that have probably multiplied like gremlins in your cabinets. When you look in your pantry and see your lentils and wild rice, each in their own glass container, it spurs your gustatory creativity and helps you more easily decide what to have for dinner.

In addition, hang baskets from the ceiling to store staples like sweet potatoes, yams, onions, garlic, ginger, squashes, apples, pears, avocados, lemons, and limes. Having these delicious foods in full view fuels your creative process and healthier snacking. They also provide a gentle aroma that improves mood and appetite.

CLEAN CHEMICAL FREE

A substantial portion of kitchen life involves cleaning. There is no way to cook, eat, and commune with loved ones in a setting where food is involved without having dishes to wash and counters to wipe afterward.

Cooking, like cleaning, includes movement, and can be meditative. Thich Nhat Hahn, in his masterpiece book The Miracle of Mindfulness, writes of the practice of “washing the dishes to wash the dishes”—to undertake kitchen cleanup not so that the kitchen is

clean, but simply because the dishes are there, and they need washing. It is mindfulness in each moment. Doing just one thing at a time brings us into contact with meaningful moments.

Avoid cleaning products that rely on toxic chemicals for their effectiveness—as the vast majority of products in the cleaning aisle of your home goods store do—and choose cleansers made out of allnatural products. Doing so only elevates the calm and sanctification that cleaning can provide. See the Kitchen Makeover section of Appendix II for a list of nontoxic cleaning supplies. In general, baking soda, apple cider vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, bleach, vodka, and washing soda (sodium carbonate, which is a highly effective stain remover and component of many commercial and homemade laundry detergents) cover a lot of bases when it comes to safer cleaning. You can find recipes for simple, effective kitchen cleansers at the blog called Keeper of the Home.

MAKEOVER YOUR BATHROOM

Being good to your skin is very important because it’s where immune defense and repair T cells mature, and your immune system relies on those T cells to defend you from infections and foreign invaders.

Use full-disclosure products. While medications are well regulated and dietary supplements are somewhat regulated, cosmeceuticals are essentially unregulated. Consider the following alternatives to the standard personal care products:

● Toothpaste. Most toothpastes are riddled with toxins, from the glyphosate in the corn that gives the paste its texture to the other chemicals used, including fluoride, an industrial waste product. A far better choice is a fluoride-free tooth powder. If your gums bleed during brushing or flossing, it’s a sign that you need more vitamin C, as C shores up fragile blood vessels throughout the body, including your gums.

● Mouthwash. Ascorbate makes a far superior mouthwash to what is typically available at your local drug store. It not only helps your teeth and gums, but also promotes healthy bacte-

ria in your mouth. The healthier your oral bacteria are, the less likely you are to have Alzheimer’s, senility, gingivitis, and digestive disorders. To make it, dissolve ½ teaspoon of fully buffered and reduced l-ascorbate in a glass of two ounces of water, then use it to gargle with and swish around inside your mouth. You can swallow it or not, it’s your choice.

● Soap. You want your skin to be cleansed without being stripped of the oils that keep it—and you—hydrated. Avoid anything that foams or that is made with lye (as most soap is), and stick with a castile or goat’s milk soap, which doesn’t use harsh chemicals and therefore nourishes skin health. Any soap that makes you smell like a strawberry uses lye and likely uses synthetic scents, which are often the most toxic chemicals in any skincare product.

● Rethink sun protection. Instead of buying chemical sunscreens, select a sunscreen that uses sesame oil and zinc oxide as a barrier to protect your skin. Better yet, wear a hat and sun-protective clothing.

● Avoid antiperspirants. Antiperspirants contain toxic metals like aluminum. Avoid artificial scents, as they are irritating to the skin, lungs, heart, brain, and body. If you eat a healthier diet and have healthier digestion, you smell better and won’t need antiperspirants. In fact, a gentle muskiness is a sign of your health and well-being. If your body is putting out odors that are unpleasant, it’s a sign to change your diet, hydration, activity, or mind.

If it’s during the warmer months or you’ve been exercising intensely, you can bathe or shower more than once a day. Better to be clean than to try to cover up your lack of cleanliness with something scented with toxic chemicals. If you would like to enhance your smell, you can use cold-pressed sandalwood oil. Other options include lavender, eucalyptus, rosemary, or calendula essential oils, which have the bonus of helping to balance mood, brain, and body. Cold-pressed and organic essential oils are better choices.

● Make skincare products. You can make wonderful personal care products at home that help you glow and save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars at salons and spas. Cucumbers are terrific for the skin on your face; slice them thinly and place them on your eyes to reduce puffiness. Make a paste of green clay (the green clay called Montmorillonite is high quality and widely available) and water to draw out toxins from your skin. If your skin is irritated, take dried chamomile flowers (also known as chamomile tea) and steep them in hot water for 15 minutes. Immerse a washcloth in the tea and then, when comfortable to touch, let it sit on your skin for 20 minutes. This simple practice has been transformative for many people whose self-esteem was undermined because of blotchy skin. Use cold-pressed organic oils such as sesame, coconut, or almond or shea butter as skin moisturizers, organic when possible.

SOAK MORE

Few things help your skin feel better—and you sleep better—than taking a bath in Epsom salt and baking soda before bed. It helps wash away the stresses of the day, as well as any airborne contaminants you have picked up, and relaxes you so that you easily drift into restorative sleep. See the Personal Care checklist in Appendix II for instructions on taking a salt/soda bath.

RID YOUR SKIN OF DEAD CELLS

Skin is an accessory organ of detoxification and the largest organ in your body. When your kidney, spleen, and liver are overloaded—as they often are in our toxic 21st century—your skin excretes toxins through your sweat, and skin pores can get clogged.

To support your skin’s detoxification efforts, find the most absorbent and comfortable-feeling towel you can that is big enough to wrap fully around your body—preferably made from organic cotton or bamboo. After each bath vigorously rub the skin on your arms,

legs, back, belly, and chest. In addition to fostering detoxification, this ‘dry brushing’ stimulates circulation, renews the tiny blood vessels that feed the skin, and stimulates your skin several layers down. It also reduces extra fat and relaxes the tiny muscles in your skin that have been tensed up during your waking hours. It helps your skin be radiant, resilient, renewed, and repaired.

The average adult sheds a half-pound of dead skin cells per day. The more dead skin you remove with dry brushing, the fewer skin cells there are in your bed to feed the little critters who eat them, reducing the need for special mattress covers designed to thwart bed bugs.

If you notice your hair, skin, and nails are more fragile, dry, or brittle than you’d like, see the Resources section for supplement recommendations that contain essential bone- and skin-building nutrients.

USE A NATURAL SPONGE OR LOOFAH

Sponges are actually highly absorbent sea creatures and wonderful gentle skin exfoliators. Use a natural sponge or loofah with a castile or goat’s milk soap to make your skin more vibrant. Simply rinse the sponge with warm water after each use and allow to air dry or sterilize in a microwave.

RENEW YOUR COLLAGEN AND CONNECTIVE TISSUE FROM WITHIN

Collagen must be built from within. Taking collagen supplements is popular yet a false promise. Collagen protein is a poor-quality, incomplete protein that is best avoided since it is harsh on your kidneys and can make essential amino acid deficiencies worse. See Chapter 8 for more information.

EAT YOUR VITAMIN A; AVOID SYNTHETIC RETINOLS

The family of colorful phytochemicals called carotenoids includes alpha and beta carotene, lycopene, lutein, and astaxanthin (and a

variety of other xanthins). You need the full carotenoid family to support your overall health and especially skin health. Fortunately, when you eat a wide variety of colorful foods you get carotenoids in ample amounts. You can also get them by taking the supplement formulas recommended in the Resources section.

Beta carotene is easily converted to vitamin A by your liver. Vitamin A is known to be essential for skin integrity and health. You may be familiar with this fact because of the many skincare products that contain retinoids, such as retinol or retinoic acid analogues. However, the retinoids included in most skincare products are synthetic and they are now known to have adverse side effects in your immune defense and repair system.

You do want plenty of vitamin A to support your skin, and you want your body to make it from beta carotene, not take a synthetic work-alike either in supplement form or in a skin cream. You want the natural forms of vitamin E and a suite of minerals to keep your skin looking its best, as it always takes a team of compounds in balance to promote health. Use physiology before pharmacology.

BEDROOM MAKEOVER

Restorative sleep saves lives, improves mood, and balances hormones. When you get it, your body renews itself and your risk of cancer, heart disease, and autoimmunity are dramatically less. When you are sleep deficient, you set yourself up for early chronic ill health and expensive premature death.

If you are sleep deprived, you function less than at your best. Sleep deprivation is known to reduce workplace performance, productivity, and safety.11 Many well-performed studies have shown that sleep deprivation leads to collapse of mood, mind, and body. If you regularly get restorative sleep, your life quality is higher and duration can be decades longer.

11 M.R. Rosekind, K.B. Gregory, M.M. Mallis, S.L. Brandt, B. Seal, D. Lerner. “The Cost of Poor Sleep: Workplace Productivity Loss and Associated Costs.” Journal of Environmental and Occupational Medicine. Vol. 51, no. 1. (2010): 91-98. doi: 10.1097/JOM.0b013e3181c78c30/

Quality sleep includes at least three complete sleep cycles that restore and reset the following bodily systems:

● Hormones and neurochemicals

● Immune defense and repair functions

● Digestion

● Detoxification

● Repair of worn out and production of new cells, bone, joints, muscles, and organ tissues

Everyone makes cancer cells every day. You have innate anticancer mechanisms that identify and eliminate those cells during a few small, five-minute windows during deep sleep. During these few minutes, your pituitary hormones briefly flood the body so that your body’s surveillance system can identify any abnormalities or wear and tear, and flush away the abnormal cells and replace what’s worn out.

Sleep is also important for mental, emotional, and psychological health. The deepest parts of your central brain—the pineal gland, thalamus, cerebellum, and brain stem—are constantly in communion with your gut brain that is reset by restorative sleep.

Restorative sleep is an important way to rehabilitate your biorhythms and your capacity to heal, to renew, to get bad things out, and to know that you’re doing the right stuff.

In addition, sleep is when we commune with our subconscious. It’s when we process our day. Many people find if they have a challenge and they ask themselves to solve the problem overnight, often in the morning, when they first wake up, they have some intimations of the solution, if not the solution itself.

There is an entire industry of sleep therapies and prescriptions, most of which interfere with restorative sleep. It is valuable to set your bedroom up for restorative sleep. To do that, it’s best to take a back to the future approach and create an environment of 100 years ago by adhering to the following principles:

● Your mattress matters. You want to buy the firmest, most supportive mattress that you can both tolerate and afford. A very cost-effective mattress is a futon—preferably made from

organic materials—on the floor. In fact, many doctors who treat people with back pain recommend that their patients sleep on the floor. At the premium end, there are latex mattresses that provide excellent support, but they can weigh as much as 1,000 pounds—you have to be sure your floor can support the weight. The mattress company Helix makes a hybrid mattress, meaning they combine springs with foam, that is consistently rated the most comfortable. They also have an organic line called Birch.

● Air quality and temperature is important. Indoor air is nearly always more polluted than outdoor air. If you can, while you sleep have a bedroom window open or an air-to-air heat exchanger installed so that you get fresh air in the bedroom. You also want the temperature in your bedroom to be at least five degrees Fahrenheit cooler than your living room, because your core body temperature naturally decreases during repair done while asleep. If it’s too warm in your bedroom, it works against your falling into deep sleep. This also means you want layers of sheets and blankets, such as duvets made of natural fibers, to regulate how covered and comfortable you are.

● Darkness is critical. Light is stimulating to your pineal gland, which regulates your internal clock. You want it dark in your bedroom. No nightlights or clocks that have a lighted display. In addition, you want your WiFi to be “dark”; don’t bring your connected devices into your bedroom, as they disrupt circadian rhythms, and (perhaps) use an automatic timer to shut down your WiFi at bedtime each night.

● Pre-bedtime rituals for healthier sleep. Most people wait until they’re exhausted and then fall into bed. The process of inviting restorative sleep actually starts a half hour before getting in bed—these 30 minutes are critical to quality of sleep. A long shower or a warm Epsom salt and baking soda bath, followed by a brisk rubbing of your skin with a towel and five minutes of stretching shifts your body into sleep mode. This practice helps you transition from day—when you

should be on—to night—when you should be off. In addition, avoid screens for the 30 minutes before bed; this is good advice for everyone in the family. Most everything works better after being unplugged, including you.

● Sunlight is the best alarm clock. If at all possible, you want to be awakened by the rising sun and the sounds of the birds, not an alarm. This is because pre-programmed alarms usually interrupt sleep cycles, leaving you feeling groggy despite how long and how well you slept. Getting up with the sun allows your rising hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline, to wake you from the inside out. If you need an alarm clock to get up, you’re going to bed too late.

● Nighttime eating and drinking are problematic. In general, it takes about three hours to digest a meal or to excrete a beverage. For this reason, finish dinner and have your last glass of water, mineral water, or herbal tea hours before bed. This way, your sleep is less likely to be interrupted by the need to urinate, and your body can focus on repair and renewal, and not digestion.

Many people have chronic sleep issues that prevent them from getting the restorative sleep they need. Three common reasons are:

ƒ Fear. The antidote is to recognize you’re never in control; in fact, you never could be, so you don’t even need to try. Hypnosis, acupuncture, and relaxation response practices can help you discover that fear is an illusion. If you add the Trager, Feldenkrais, or Pilates methods, all the better. Prescriptive solutions too often have poor outcomes.

ƒ Premature separation from mom. Dr. Spock, who was the most popular parenting expert for decades, believed children need to learn how to be on their own shortly after birth. As a result, generations of parents put their babies in cribs in their own rooms, and if they cried, the parents were told to let them cry themselves to sleep. As a result, many children were not adequately touched and held by their parents and were put on a sleep schedule

before they were ready. The ramifications of this can last for generations.

ƒ Biochemical disturbances due to diet. In the 21st century, many people are overfed and undernourished, eating fiber-depleted processed foods laden with forever chemicals and hormone disruptors that interfere with all manner of bodily functions, including sleep. If you can’t detoxify, you end up with excitatory neurotoxins that make it difficult for your nervous system to quiet down enough for you to relax into deep, restorative sleep or be productive during the day. Following the dietary principles outlined in this book helps bring your gut microbiome back into balance with your metabolism (metabolome).

Sleep problems too often feel insurmountable. Just because you haven’t found a solution to your sleep problems yet doesn’t mean that the solution isn’t simple, doable, and in front of you, using physiology before pharmacology.

RETHINK HOUSEHOLD DRINKABLE WATER: HYDRATE FOR HEALTH

The human body is between 30 and 80 percent water, depending on which part is being measured. Water and fat are what make blood liquid. Water and fiber help move food through the digestive tract and remove wastes from the body. The quality of your water has widespread impact—on your kidney, liver, brain, gut, and cardiovascular health.

The quality of water that we drink, cook with, and even bathe in is an important—yet often overlooked—determinant of health. Unfortunately, public drinking water is gray water, not drinking water. It is ok for washing your vegetables, and maybe even bathing yourself. But it is not potable or drinkable by any standards of contamination.

Public drinking water routinely contains contaminants that the body does not benefit from and that are sometimes downright toxic.

Flint, Michigan, is an excellent example, yet is by no means isolated. Many municipalities have water systems that use pipes lined with lead to deliver water into individual homes. Updating these water systems is vital but expensive and takes time. Local governments have a poor track record in regard to water quality.

Public water typically contains water treatment by-products, agricultural pesticides, industrial waste, and medication residues. The net result is that in far too many communities, the life-giving properties of water get “watered down” and become life-reducing.

My friend George Leone, founding chairman and CEO of Alcon Labs in Fort Worth, Texas, served on his county water board. He relayed that every year the contaminants in the water supply were above the acceptable level. Since there was no budget to lower the level of contaminants, the local government simply changed the standards. It’s not an urban legend, it’s the news: What comes out of your tap is not necessarily drinking water.

One town in Massachusetts had two sources of water. One was near a salt dome that they used in the winter to melt ice on the roads and the other was not. On the side of town where salt was leaching into the water, an unusual percentage of people had high blood pressure. On the other side, there was no spike in high blood pressure. Researchers got residents to drink the water from across town, and the results reversed.

Have your tap water tested—you can find options for measuring contaminants in your local water system in the Resources section. If tests show that you have contaminants, you can determine how to obtain safer, healthier water.

While you can filter your tap water, that is the last resort. Ideally, you would have or be able to drill a well that taps third aquifer water, or water that lies below bedrock and thus avoids surface contaminants. A second choice is to use spring water for drinking and cooking. Plastic bottles leach chemicals into the water they contain, so you want spring water to be in glass bottles. You also want to be able to get spring water into your glass without it having to pass through plastic—meaning you need either a glass, ceramic, or metal crock to house the bottle.

Refer to Appendix II for information on water sources and tests. Spring water bottled in glass is drinkable. Spring water bottled in plastic is cancer- and heart disease-promoting. However, if you can’t regularly access third aquifer water or clean spring water, filtering what comes out of your tap may be an option. Here’s a rundown on the types of water filters available:

● Reverse Osmosis (RO): This water purification technology uses a semi-permeable membrane to remove ions, molecules, and larger particles from drinking water. While RO seems great, it comes with problems. It usually needs multiple filters and expensive membranes. Some brands are prone to break down. RO is costly, both financially and resource-wise. It requires about 50 units of untreated water to yield one unit of good water, making it unsuitable for arid or drought-prone regions. RO water is an expensive, partial solution to poor water quality.

● Charcoal Filters: Unlike RO systems, charcoal filter units are inexpensive. There are many varieties. Some contain filters that include silver, while others do not. Some are under-faucet or faucet-mounted, while others are pitcher-based systems for use with relatively small amounts of drinking water. For the most part, these systems work fairly well to eliminate many common toxins—until those carbon blocks become saturated. Then, the toxins leach back out from the charcoal into the water! If you fail to replace carbon filters regularly, it nullifies any benefit they originally provided.

● Whole-House Filtration Systems: These feature a threecartridge mechanism that not only filters the water, but also sterilizes it. While a quality whole-house filtration system is effective, a downside is the high initial cost, typically well over $10,000. These systems also have high recurring costs. So, they’re not a particularly good option for renters who do not own their homes. We installed one in my house and found it made the water soapy. We gave it away.

● Distilled Water: Distillation removes impurities and toxic elements, meaning distilled water is devoid of many of the

life-giving minerals in water. It is a cumbersome and wasteful process to boot. Some call it “dead water,” and reports show that distilled water has the capability to actually leach minerals from the body. Distilled water is soft water, meaning it is mineral-poor. Soft water is good for plumbing but bad for you. Your body needs ample amounts of minerals.

Whichever type of filter you use, you have to change the cartridge, block, membrane, or other component at least twice as often as what the company says, because their data is based on perfect metropolitan water, which you likely do not have.

You can also use a homemade traditional water filter that includes wood chips, charcoal, sand, and cotton. Layer these materials and then pass water through them into some kind of reservoir that holds the water for drinking and for cooking. While not perfect, it is a better choice than commercial filters.

DRINKABLE WATER

Good health requires you drink enough water to pass the hydration test shared on page 137. If you’re even a little bit dehydrated, you amplify disease risks. America has an epidemic of chronic kidney disease that is partly explainable by consuming too little of the good stuff, too much of the bad stuff, and not enough water. Dry wit is fine. Dry organs, tissues, and blood (even if only a little dry) are harmful.

For every caffeinated or adult beverage you consume, drink an extra glass of mineral-rich water or herbal beverage.

Sparkling spring water in a glass bottle is fine—look for water from Pellegrino, Appolinaris, or Gerolsteiner. These brands are different from typical bottled water, which is often just bottled tap water.

Dasani is one bottled water that is ok in a pinch. Coca-Cola, Dasani’s parent company, goes to lengths to purify the water and then add back in a standardized mineral complex so that the water

has a consistent taste nationally. Again, this is only in case of necessity, since it comes in a plastic bottle.

COOKING AND BATHING WATER MATTERS

If you can smell solvents when the shower is running, it means they have volatized and are in the air you breathe. In this case, you want to install a charcoal filter on your showerhead, and then change it monthly. If you don’t want to take this step and can smell the solvents in your bathing water, it’s better to take a bath.

WHEN YOU GO CAMPING OR HIKING, CAN YOU DRINK THE STREAM WATER?

This answer used to be yes, but today it is no. There are so many possible problems, from toxins poured into water upstream to intestinal parasites, so it is prudent to bring spring water with you. There are people who spend time in the outdoors who keep ascorbate and a straw with iodine in it to filter any water they need that they didn’t bring with them. While there are a few places that have clean artesian water, you need someone studied in ecology to direct you to them. Otherwise, when you are in the wilderness and wondering whether you can drink the water, don’t.

STEPS FOR ENSURING HEALTHY WATER QUALITY

Step 1: Test the water that comes out of your tap. (See Appendix II for test recommendations.)

Step 2: Decide if what you have is clean enough and mineral-rich for you. Remember, you want to drink and cook with hard water, not soft water.

Step 3: Choose your water—either spring water, a third aquifer well, or a filtration system that you commit to updating regularly. Use this water for both drinking and cooking.

Step 4: To counteract any contaminants that may be in your water, make sure that you are taking ample amounts of ascorbate. This is the best way to take slightly harmful water and reduce its risk.

Ascorbate wraps itself around many, although not all, toxic molecules and chaperones them out of the body, thereby reducing harm. You can add the ascorbate directly to each glass of water you drink, or to a glass container that contains all the water you want to drink in a day. How much ascorbate to take depends on your C cleanse, one of the four self-assessments covered in Chapter 8.

FILTER YOUR AIR, AS WELL

Equally as important as filtering your water is filtering the air inside your home, as discussed on page 113. A HEPA or ULPA filter and/or a Molekule device can greatly reduce the pathogens and contaminants in your indoor air and contribute to an 80 percent reduction in anti-nutrients that science has shown is attainable.

REDUCE STRESSORS WHERE POSSIBLE

Stress is one of the most pernicious toxins today. Hans Seyle, a medical researcher, coined the term ‘stress’ in 1936, defining it as “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change.” When you encounter a demand for change, do you perceive it as an opportunity to perform better and become more functional, or as a source of distress that wears you out and wears you down to the point that you become chronically ill?

You can find out if stress is wearing you down and out or enabling you to succeed. Your stress can be measured by hormones in saliva, urine, and occasionally sweat. Other neurochemical, detoxification, and metabolic assessments can be done if needed in particular situations. Start with the four self-assessments in Chapter 8 that can show you your health opportunities. Then, the eight predictive biomarkers can pinpoint which of your systems need support.

There are two basic types of stress: distress, which is an antinutrient, and eustress, which compels you to grow stronger and

use what you have more efficiently. The hormones of distress are cortisol, adrenaline, and melatonin; the hormones of eustress are DHEA, serotonin, and GABA. You need a balance between cortisol and DHEA, adrenaline and serotonin, and melatonin and GABA to remain in the elective protective zone.

The hormones and neurochemicals of distress increase the need for essential nutrients because they increase the consumption, metabolism, and use of antioxidants, minerals, and co-factors. Helpful eustress doesn’t overconsume essential nutrients.

External pathogens only get a hold when you lack elective protective mechanisms. When you have these deficits, you shift into survival mode. When you have ample essential protective nutrients to foster protective mechanisms, you are in elective protective mode. When you’re exposed to a pathogen when you are in elective protective mode, you don’t succumb. You stay resilient, rather than become more burdened.

When most people talk about stress they’re talking about the external forces or events that press down on them. Do you hold your breath, or do you keep breathing when under stress? Do you stretch, walk, and renew your body, including through restorative sleep, all of which help take away adverse effects of distress? Or, do you grin and bear it and endure? If the latter, you eventually become ill with self-attacking autoimmunity or chronic disease unless you use the techniques and strategies outlined in this book. If you exercise and don’t practice relaxation response, or vice versa, you’re only getting a fraction of the synergistic benefit you’d get if you practiced both.

With whom do you spend time? Are you surrounded by people in distress? Then you are likely to be in distress too. If you surround yourself with people who are getting healthier, you likely benefit. Self-care is not indulgent. It is necessary. Comprehensive self-care can be accomplished in just 72 minutes a day (refer to Appendix I for some suggestions on how to spend these 72 minutes). This covers all your basics. The time it takes to restore and renew yourself is a small investment that can add 20+ quality years to your life.

10 HABITS THAT LOWER DISTRESS

There are many innately stress-busting and health-promoting activities that help you recover from the distress of the news, environmental toxins, future fears, and past traumas. If you’re willing to invest five percent of your time in self-care, you neutralize distress hormones and neurochemicals promptly. Below are my 10 favorite habits for countering distress. There are many more.

1. Gardening

2. Dancing

3. Laughing

4. Ambling in woods (forest bathing)

5. Foraging

6. Swimming

7. Stretching

8. Abdominal breathing

9. Mindful biofeedback

10. Meaningful moments of gratitude

RETHINK CONVENIENCE

The makeovers suggested require initial effort and an investment both of time and money. This book challenges assumptions that convenience is a good thing and traditional ways are old-fashioned. Some conveniences add to quality of life. For instance, we have a snowblower to avoid excess shoveling. But for the most part, convenience offers a false promise. Convenience foods rob you of nutrition and expose you to anti-nutrients. Convenience in your life, thanks to alleged ‘time-saving’ devices, comes with atrophy, less mobility, and more time spent in survival mode. Young people today have less grip strength than their counterparts in older generations (perhaps all that swiping is resulting in

a loss of function).12 Young women have more ovarian cysts, endometriosis, and painful or irregular periods. Young men have lower sperm counts. Attention spans are growing shorter as people spend more time looking at screens. Your eyes need to look at a variety of distances to focus and keep your brain functions strong.

Being physically and mentally active in your daily life extends life quality and duration. Park as far away as you’re comfortable given the weather, or better yet, leave the car at home and walk. It takes time to walk, but it’s time that nourishes you in many ways— the fresh air, sounds, and sights of your local environment increase circulation and well-being. You may spend time chopping your vegetables rather than microwaving a frozen dinner, but that time adds quality years to your life. Time is the most precious currency we have.

Once your kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom are retrofitted, you’ll find that life gets simpler and more elegant. It gets more worthwhile because you’re engaged in your own care and feeding the loved ones who share your life, as well as the family and friends who visit you. Being electively protected and having enough of the essential nutrients is rare today. With this guide you, too, can make this transition.

Don’t rush. Pick one or two items to start with, and then keep going from there. Each step you take improves your health and gives you more vitality, making it progressively easier to engage in the next challenge. Now is the time to start. Now is the best time to choose health. If not now, when is the time to start living fully?

Reduce the anti-nutrient exposures while bringing up your essential protective essentials, as guided here.

12 E. Fain and C. Weatherford. “Comparative Study of Millennials’ (Age 20-34 Years) Grip and Lateral Pinch with the Norms.” Journal of Hand Therapy. Vol. 29, no. 4. (2016): 483-488. doi: 10.1016/j.jht.2015.12.006.

EPIGENETICS FOR YOU AND YOUR FUTURE

“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.” –Buddha

Most choices are governed by habit; they’re behaviors done repetitively upon conditioned, often unconscious, stimuli. Helpful habits promote mental, physical, and spiritual wellbeing. Some habits afflict. Any moment is the right time to start reconditioning your life. The past is behind; the future has not come. This moment has options for consideration. What we learned in childhood no longer needs to control our future responses.

Evaluate habits and undo false beliefs that whatever ailments exist ‘just happen’ or ‘run in the family.’ In fact, we can do much to change our fate. Afflictions may run in your family. Habits—what you consume, activities you do, attitudes, and environment—learned early can be transgenerational and influence your genetic code expression. My experience is that everything happens for a reason, although the reasons are often challenging to discern.

EPIGENETICS DETERMINES 92 PERCENT OF LIFETIME HEALTH; GENETICS IS JUST 8 PERCENT

Whereas, “genetics” is the study of inherited characteristics, “epigenetics” describes how behaviors and environmental influences affect the expression and activity of your genes.

DNA was identified in the late 1940s. From there, we learned that DNA produces RNA, which then produces proteins. It seemed so elegant in its simplicity—the idea that our genes laid out the blueprint for every aspect of our being, from our eye color to cancer risk. Yet there is much more that goes into the creation and maintenance of a human being than this simple chain of events. We now know that there are elaborate processes required for the reading, translating, transporting, transcribing, and quality controlling products of genetic instruction—processes that are all epigenetic.

Watson and Crick—who received the Nobel Prize for identifying that DNA is a double helix—and Dorothea Franklin identified only a tiny part of how people and their environments interact. In most people, DNA is comprised of 23 identifiable units (chromosomes). Chromosomes are made of components that modulate and either repair or harm the core DNA.

Professor Watson was asked, “You convinced the United States congress to devote $25 billion to study the genetic sequence. Yet you know that epigenetics is more important, and the genetic code itself has only a tiny fraction of influence. Why didn’t you get money to research epigenetics?” His answer was, “I could explain DNA to a child. Epigenetics is complicated.”

He continued, “if you want to take a public health approach to epigenetics, you’d have to take on the agribusiness industry, the makers of baby formula, the pharmaceutical industry, and every type of business that influences what we eat, drink, think, and do.”

We have the power to affect positive change when we act individually and together. Every day, the choices you make that influence how much of the good stuff you take in and how much of the bad stuff you avoid influences how well you feel and function.

“Epigenetics” is a fancy way of saying lifestyle. It refers to all the things you can influence—what you eat, drink, think, and do, along with how you sleep, any supplements you take, attitudes, and the meaningful moments you encounter. Every part of you renews when you engage it. Applied epigenetics can evoke or restore renewal and repair mechanisms.

If you want to know how old you are chronologically, look at your birth certificate. Your biological or functional age, on the other hand, is a choice. It is possible—especially for those of us who are over 40—to function biologically at half our chronological age. Epigenetic choices determine your functional or biological age.

When essentials are inadequate and anti-nutrients are retained, ill health emerges. Chronic ill health is usually in one of three categories: heart and vascular diseases, cancers, or self-attacking autoimmunity and repair deficit inflammation. “Epi” means supplemental. Epigenetics refers to anything that regulates, modulates, expresses, turns off, and protects the DNA genetic material. DNA and RNA are influenced, for good or bad, by your epigenetic choices. Your genetic material accounts for eight percent of lifetime health. The remaining 92 percent is epigenetic, according to the consensus at NIH, NCHS, and NAS since the 1970s.

Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a family of messengers made up of the same units as DNA with one difference. There are different RNAs: some silence, some enhance, some transcribe, and some have modulatable functions. We’re still learning about RNA functions. We’re also still learning about the elegant epigenome.

Nature, nurture, and wholeness cultivate health-promoting habits and apply physiology before pharmacology. You may believe that you inherited your propensity to carry weight around your middle, or your tendency toward high blood pressure, or your risk for cancer from your parents or grandparents. Yet your genes are influenced by epigenetic factors—what you eat, drink, think, and do, as well as how you modulate your stress, how restorative your sleep is, what environmental toxins you’re exposed to, and the habits that have been passed down through generations in the family.

DNA repair systems include histones and enzyme catalysts, which constantly identify potential problems and abnormal building blocks, removing the abnormal and replacing it with the healthy.

Telomeres are glycoprotein tails on your chromosomes. Telomeres seal and protect the end of DNA strands. Longer telomeres mean longer life, while shorter telomeres mean shorter life with less joy of living. Maximizing essential nutrients (see Chapter 4) and minimizing anti-nutrients (see Chapter 5) lengthens and sustains longer telomeres. It helps you shift from survival mode into elective protective mode (see Chapter 3).

Many have been taught that the sequences of DNA and RNA are the Rosetta Stone of health. It turns out that’s just not quite true. Awareness of functional epigenetics can enable us to live long, well, joyfully, and at low cost. Our individual choices can add life to years and years to life.

Take, for example, my father. He died, at age 90, of natural causes at my home and in my arms. Given the extreme deprivation of his youth, he was not likely to live past 45. He also had a stroke at 83 in my living room. Dad fully recovered over nine months and went on to live seven more years, each day of which was the ‘best day of his life.’ At the end of his life, he was on no medication, although he was taking all-natural supplements. My father’s experience is atypical yet provides an example of the possible. It was my privilege to assist Ven Bhanté Dharmawara in his stroke recovery as well.

Your everyday choices are meaningful opportunities to improve life quality and duration. Better moods, restorative sleep, and enough essentials makes you more resilient and stress tolerant. It benefits every aspect of you—your hormones, digestion, metabolism, detoxification, ability to repair, and how you experience the world.

Your body shifts into elective protective mode. When that happens, you are resilient under stress, and life can be joyful. Epigenetic choices create opportunities to make a choiceful future a chosen reality.

STRENGTHEN YOUR EPIGENETICS; EXTEND YOUR SENSES

Epigenetics includes all senses. Your sense of smell, for example, has a direct connection to the limbic system of your brain and also plays a role in your stress response (as you are subconsciously sniffing for hints of danger or safety). Remember that what you use renews and what you don’t atrophies. You can take conscious steps to strengthen your senses. Almost all people have one sense that is naturally more sensitive than the others, whether it is sight, sound, touch, smell, taste, intuition, or even being aware of electromagnetic activity.

If you identify yourself as kinesthetic or somatic or visual or auditory… that’s your preferred sense. If you feel you have any particular sense that is a gift, start there. You may think you don’t have a gifted sense, and perhaps that is true. However, perhaps you are just your own worst skeptic.

It is possible to nurture and nourish a sense to the point when you can detect things that most people can’t. That’s called an extended sense—a natural sense that has been strengthened by gift and practice.

To further build your own strongest sense, type “auditory extended sense” or “visual extended sense,” for example, into a search browser. That search will likely lead you to a bunch of sites that are just looking for your money; don’t give it to them. But it will also connect you to places that generously share real content and guidance on what to practice. Some trusted sources are included in this book’s Resources section.

There are many real-world opportunities to practice extending your primary sense. Rebecca, mother of my children, is a fine artist. When we attend museums together, sometimes she is not in the room; she is immersed in the painting as well as the painter and what the painter was feeling at the time of creation. She has followed her senses briefly into another time, another world, another reality. Your practice could be watching a movie, play, ballet, band, symphony, or opera. It doesn’t even need to be the arts. It could be

rambling outdoors, or cooking, or interacting with animals. Whatever activity is attuned to your strongest sense.

Many people have an idea of what is their more sensitive sense. You can tune in, like a radio. Or your work might actually be to learn how to tune out your strongest sense, as it might be overstimulating and exhausting. Find someone who can guide you in your quest, so that you get equal amounts of tuning in and tuning out.

Intuition is a well-documented human capacity. When executives use it to make decisions, they sometimes say it is their ‘gut’ that guides them. Many mothers call children at critical times, and the children wonder how she ‘knew’ they needed her. It was ‘intuition,’ and it does originate in the gut.

Your microbiome is a whole nervous system that’s connected to the central nervous system via the vagus nerve, a master channel known in Traditional Chinese Medicine as the governing vessel.

Being more attuned to the world around you—both the seen and the unseen, relates to every aspect of your life from health to wealth to relationships and helps you make the choices that will nurture your epigenetics.

I think of it as becoming epi-curious, which means that you are interested in trying new cuisines, or adopting new habits, or making over your lifestyle. It means you recognize that there is always more to learn, and you seek out wisdom and time-honored perspectives. You can cultivate an inner doctor. Then you can also partner with a wise external doctor as needed, one who sees you as a partner, and not just a body to diagnose.

AN EXAMPLE OF THE POWER OF EXTENDED SENSES

One of the practitioners I set out to debunk—only to become a filled with respect at her true gift—was Olga Worrell. As a child, Olga would sit outside her father’s waiting room in Cleveland, Ohio. She often saw that her father’s parishioners had a specific ailment, such as a headache or joint pain. She’d go touch them and the pain would

go away. Mrs. Worrell grew up to be the best documented layingon-of-hands healer of the 20th century. Her extended senses were scientifically documented multiple times, including in experiments in which it was my privilege to participate. Rev. Dr. Robert Leichtman, MD, continues her work at the New Life Clinic at the Mount Washington Methodist Church in Northwest Baltimore most Thursday mornings.

CREATE HEALTHIER HABITS

Modify one habit to overcome or a few nutrient deficits to correct at a time. If you don’t sleep well, improving sleep is always a good place to start. You can implement changes and reap benefits quickly by prioritizing quality sleep.

Why start with restorative sleep? According to scientific experts, philosophers, spiritual leaders, and mothers, quality sleep is priority number one for well-being. It’s also rare. Eighty percent of Americans don’t get enough restorative sleep—meaning sleep that isn’t induced by medication, alcohol, or recreational drugs.

At different seasons of life, your need for sleep duration and your sleep rhythms change. In my young and immortal days, it felt like sleeping was somewhat like being lazy. At that time, five or six hours of sleep a night was enough. That’s the least amount of sleep that people need.

Some people need a minimum of 10 hours a night to feel and function their best, while others are fine with seven hours or less. You can tell what serves you best by how you feel in the morning. You will feel well when you’ve been able to truly reset and restore during the night.

You may not want to start with sleep, and that’s fine. The important thing is that you choose something to begin to improve. The choices you make today influence your future quality of life and what the end of your life will be like, as well as how much you will need to spend on lifetime care.

Doing brings understanding. Questions are often distractions, and open doubt’s door. There are grandmaster worriers: people who

will worry if they don’t have anything to worry about. If this describes you, my suggestion is to reserve 10 minutes a day and allow yourself to worry very intensely for those 10 minutes. Any other time a worry comes, let it go. You don’t fight with it; you merely breathe through it. People today tend to worry, and worriers underventilate. This results in a low gas exchange, with more of the bad stuff remaining in the lungs. This is a reason why I recommend doing slow, deep abdominal breathing for five minutes twice a day. It quickly reforms your innate breathing rhythms for the better and helps you expel more anti-nutrients.

When you change your habits, your destiny changes. You become resilient to stress, so that your quality of life goes up and you become much less susceptible to the chronic diseases that have become ubiquitous in modern societies.

THE IMPORTANCE OF WISER, SAFER, EFFECTIVE SUPPLEMENTS

“He who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Over 90 percent of people are functionally deficient in one or more essential nutrients. Your body requires essential nutrients for many processes, including those involved in epigenetic regulation.

As I have covered, food no longer meets human nutritional needs in the 21st century. In order to be epigenetically healthy, you need to supplement, and to choose your supplements with wisdom and care. Even if you eat a whole foods diet, you need to supplement. This was not always the case. In the 19th century supplementation was not required. In the 20th century it was elective. In the 21st century it’s essential because food is not as nutritious as it once was, the environment is more polluted, and we encounter more stress in our daily lives.

There are many essential nutrients. Essential means your body requires them to function but lacks the ability to make them. You must get them from outside sources, whether that be food, a supplement, or even the sun. They are required for your cells to manufacture the energy your body needs to operate and stay healthy. Minerals, antioxidants, and cofactors are examples of essential nutrients. The vast majority of people alive today are woefully deficient in them. Among these are ascorbate (otherwise known as vitamin C), vitamin D, magnesium, and omega-3 fatty acids. Only those who eat thoughtfully and take supplements meet any level of adequacy or sufficiency in these nutrients. With each and all of them in balance, we enjoy long-term better health.

Ascorbate, for example, sets the energy potential and resilience to damage of your cells through helping reduce oxidation (or what’s known as your RedOx potential). Without enough ascorbate, your RedOx is high and you’re inviting chronic infection and have low response to disease. With adequate ascorbate, your RedOx potential is low and you’re resistant to infection.

Magnesium buffers acid, and the natural by-products of metabolism are acidic. If you take in enough magnesium, it kicks the acid out and maintains the cell’s alkaline environment. Enhanced uptake with choline citrate is smart, with intake based on urine pH after rest.

Coenzyme Q10, or CoQ10, is an essential cofactor that supports your mitochondria, which are essentially batteries that live inside your cells. If you were to take the mitochondria outside the cell, oxygen would kill them very quickly, but protected inside the cell, they create the energy that you need to live. The role of the mitochondria is truly profound. CoQ10 is the shuttle that helps that system work. When micellized in 100 percent rice bran oil, tiny stable drops occur that triple the uptake of CoQ10.

My decades of experience led me to identify and develop four self-assessment tests: ascorbate (the C cleanse), magnesium (the urine pH test), water (hydration), and digestive transit time (the transit time assessment)—these are covered in Chapter 8. These

tests guide you to find your personal needs for a healthier diet, hydration, supplementation, restorative sleep, and engaged activities.

Common observations from people who have let these self-assessments guide their supplementation include effortless weight loss, mental clarity that comes once your body has the tools it needs to release toxins and reset, and the energy that comes from giving your cells what they need to keep your cell batteries charged.

That said, it’s vital that your supplements provide the natural forms of each nutrient. They are safer and more effective. Avoid the synthetic work-alikes that turn out to be harmful and have failed in multiple trials.

By example, there are eight forms of vitamin E; the common synthetic is only one. There are also eight forms of different B complex vitamins; research has shown the synthetic forms are poorly metabolized. Science confirms that work-alike forms don’t work as well or as safely as nature’s forms. So why are they in so many supplements? They are cheap, profitable, and legal yet marginally helpful, if that.

In addition, different nutrients need different co-factors in order to be taken up and used by the body. Some are better when administered under the tongue. Others are fat-soluble and thus need to be contained within the supplement in a fat. Others need to be micellized, which is a biochemical process of making something smaller and more absorbable that my company, PERQUE®, pioneered.

Yet, when you look at consumer behavior, and the scientific literature, people are almost always drawn to the better marketed, cheaper product. These are often contaminated, synthetic, and do not work.

When you get a bottle off the shelf of vitamin A, B, C, D, E or fish oil, chances are you will be unaware that the supplement you are holding in your hand is synthetic and not as helpful as the natural form. The takeaway is you should only buy supplements for which you are able to obtain full-disclosure statements that show you the meaningful, bioavailable form of the ingredient. PERQUE pioneered this practice in the 1980s and people told us consumers were not smart enough to understand the differences. Decades later, there is a trend of accurate labels that disclose the safety, efficacy, purity, and

meaningful amounts in every product all the time. Paying for quality, full disclosure, and post-production verification tests is a worthy investment. As said: Synthetic nutrients are common and seemingly cheaper yet are really more expensive, because they have poor uptake and are often contaminated with competitive molecules.

It is hard to determine what you need and what to avoid. The research on supplements often uses the common synthetic forms in isolation tests as drugs rather than as part of a team or ‘symphony’ of life. For example, in 1994, a study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine that received wide media attention finding that high dose synthetic vitamin E and high dose synthetic beta carotene are not effective in regard to reducing the risk of lung cancer. The article concludes that low doses were fine, but “this trial raises the possibility that these supplements may actually have harmful as well as beneficial effects.”13

There were two major problems not discussed in the study, nor in the media articles about the study. First, you need all the carotenoids, a family of molecules that give many vegetables their vibrant colors, and not just synthetic beta carotene in isolation. In fact, taking just synthetic beta carotene will make your levels of the full suite of carotenoids imbalanced and may induce harm, not help.

Similarly, as mentioned, there are eight forms of vitamin E. You need all eight for heart, brain, and vascular health. This study administered alpha-tocopherol, which is a synthetic vitamin E helpful to the uterus but not the cardiovascular system. There are also beta-, gamma-, and delta-tocopherols. Gamma-tocopherol is heart-helpful. The more synthetic d-alpha you take, the more you dilute the hearthealthy gamma form.

You want to look at balance and physiology, not just chemistry. Families of molecules—such as B vitamins, E vitamins, and the carotenoid family—have all been made widely available in their synthetic and isolated forms. They are cheaper and seemingly cost-

13 Alpha-Tocopherol, Beta Carotene Cancer Prevention Study Group. “The effect of vitamin E and beta carotene on the incidence of lung cancer and other cancers in male smokers.” New England Journal of Medicine. Vol. 330, no. 15 (April 14, 1994): 1029-35. doi: 10.1056/NEJM199404143301501.

effective compared to the natural forms. When you consider the bioavailability and effectiveness of synthetic forms, the cost per active and beneficial dose is so high that they end up being expensive as well as potentially harmful.

In regard to vitamin E, in the 1950s and 60s, the Schutte brothers in Canada gave people 3,600 IUs of a mixed natural vitamin E (equivalent to 2,412 mg alpha-tocopherol) —a high dose—and they saw a 90+ percent reduction in cardiovascular events. This is something you can do for yourself that will take away 90 percent of stroke risk, hardening of the arteries, and heart attacks. You might be interested to know that when the 1994 article came out that said high doses of vitamin E was bad, I asked the authors if they were familiar with the Schutte brothers’ work. They politely said it was not relevant to their article. It is part of the scientific method to have different opinions and to continually refine our understanding. Science is self-correcting. Over the next decades the principles of modern physiology rather than pharmacology will bring a renaissance of cost-effective, safer care.

Your clinician likely didn’t learn about this approach in medical school. Medical school curriculum development committee members weren’t educated on these subjects. They don’t make a priority to include how to evoke human healing responses. You can help speed the transition from sick care to healthful caring by choosing the life-enhancing approaches presented here.

When Europeans arrived in the American Great Plains, the topsoil was ten feet thick. Now, it’s less than an inch in some places. Just as our exposure to anti-nutrients grew exponentially, our access to essential nutrients dropped precipitously. Or, as my grandmother would say, “The rents are going up and the ceilings are coming down.”

SUPPLEMENTS TO AVOID AND WHAT TO USE

There are many well-marketed supplements that claim to be good health building blocks yet turn out to be based on belief, testimonials, and not on science. Here are several to avoid and what to take instead.

● Silver, gold, and other base metals. Nanoparticles of metals have been shown to help one third of people who take them. The placebo effect evokes the same response. While these metal-based supplements are marketed to cure everything from hangnails and halitosis to Alzheimer’s and autism, you could save yourself the money and buy a sugar pill, as there are no controlled experiments to verify their claims of efficacy. I recommend you stick with nature’s minerals, from magnesium and potassium to trace minerals as found in Celtic Sea Salt® and other biodynamic, alkaline-forming foods.

● Zeolites. On first look, zeolites seem helpful. They are an interesting combination of minerals that trap toxic metals in the lab. Yet once you take them orally, they irritate and harm the digestive tract. Just because it works in the lab doesn’t mean you should swallow it. As I noted previously, biological detoxification using GGOBE (garlic, ginger, onions, brassica sprouts, and eggs), ascorbate, magnesium, and choline citrate is highly recommended.

● Curcumin. This compound is found in turmeric and is, indeed, a powerful anti-inflammatory. This benefit, however, is only when turmeric is heated immediately before consuming, and eaten along with fresh ground black pepper, which contains a compound called piperine that aids absorption of curcumin and is only active for about an hour after the peppercorn is ground. If you take a curcumin supplement, it lacks active piperine and so is not bioavailable. Curcumin is often contaminated with lead in order to keep it bright yellow. In place of curcumin supplements, eat once or twice a week a traditional organic or biodynamic sourced curry, a multibean chili, or an herb-rich lentil dal as health-promoting and cancer- and heart disease-reducing choices.

● Collagen. When sold as a supplement, collagen is a total illusion. If you want to build the collagen infrastructure of your skin and body, that happens from inside your cells and not by swallowing the final protein. Not only does a collagen supplement offer a false promise with regard to building your con-

nective tissue, it is an incomplete protein and hard on your kidneys. If you take enough, it will cause kidney harm.

My previous book, Joy In Living: The Alkaline Way, and the predictive biomarker tests highlighted in this book show how to build all the collagen, elastin, and basement membrane connective tissue needed in the right places and at the right times.

● Methyl-B12, also known as methylcobalamin. Methylcobalamin is a synthetic form of vitamin B12, in contrast to hydroxocobalamin, which is nature’s B12. When methyl-B12 is exposed to metallic mercury—which we ingest through seafood and conventionally raised grains—it creates methylmercury, which is 10,000 times more toxic than metallic mercury.

In contrast, nature’s fully buffered, fully reduced all lascorbate produced under a nitrogen blanket preserves the effective natural form. Ascorbate recycles, preserves, and rehabilitates other antioxidants and the flow of electrons from cell membrane to mitochondrial battery.

● Bone broths. Bone broth is not a smart choice. Bone broths have too much glutamate, too many toxic minerals, and residues from the GMO grains fed to the animals. Instead of bone broth, I recommend organic vegetable, fish, chicken, duck, or goose broths, preferably slow cooked at home. These recommended broths are easy to assimilate, help digestion and improve health. In contrast, the massively marketed bone broths are a poor value and too full of anti-nutrients.

● Ascorbate, or vitamin C. Most ascorbate is synthetic and damaged either by oxygen in the air or with contaminants from the commercial synthesis.

In contrast, nature’s fully buffered, fully reduced all lascorbate produced under a nitrogen blanket preserves the effective natural form. Ascorbate recycles, preserves, and rehabilitates other antioxidants and the flow of electrons from cell membrane to mitochondrial battery.

● Essential fats. EPA and DHA are helpful omega-3 essential fats of which people usually need more. Omega-3 fats pro -

mote healing and recovery. Arachidonic acid and gamma-linoleic acid (GLA) are omega-6 essential fats. Omega-6 fats promote repair and inflammation. While highly healthy people can convert precursors into active essential fats, most people are unable to do this and need to take supplements. I recommend micellized supplements with EPA/DHA that have been distilled for purity under nitrogen to avoid exposure to air.

● Alkaline-forming yes, acid-forming no. Minerals like magnesium and potassium, essential short and medium chain triglycerides, and alkaline amino acids like lysine are the only biological ways of alkalinizing the body. Fooling the body with bicarbonates or other pseudo-alkaline items, like electrolytically alkaline water, do not help and could potentially harm. Live by the adage, ‘physiology before pharmacology.’ Fooling the body ends up fooling the user.

FINDING THE RIGHT SUPPLEMENT, AT THE RIGHT DOSE, FOR YOU

It’s not enough to have a list of which supplements to take or to avoid—you need individualized guidance on which supplements you need, and in what amounts. That’s what the four self-assessments and eight predictive biomarkers are designed to help you determine. I will cover exactly how to use them in the next chapter.

IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU

“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” C.S. Lewis

Today, 88 percent of Americans are unwell and 75 percent are overfed and undernourished. This book is an invitation to make personal choices that lead to feeling and functioning better. For all the reasons we have already covered, supplements are no longer optional, they are required. But what do you need? Are you getting enough, yet not too much? In this chapter we review four selfassessments and eight predictive biomarker tests that help you attain a better self. Join us. Function and feel better.

Start with the four self-assessments.14 Once you know their results, you can start to keep tabs on your health status. Next, move on to eight predictive biomarkers, 15 to assess your individual risks and rewards for the healthy habit changes you are making. The predictive biomarkers cover epigenetics—the 92 percent of health determined by your lifestyle choices as discussed in Chapter 6. These

14 https://www.perque.com/lifestyle/self-tests

15 Jaffe R., Mani J., “Predictive Biomarkers in Personalized Laboratory Diagnoses and Best Practices Outcome Monitoring for Musculoskeletal Health” Metabolic Therapies in Orthopedics, Second Edition, Ingrid Kohlstadt & Kenneth Cintron (Eds), CRC Press, 2018: 39-53.

eight tests, when properly interpreted, are known to be predictive of future life quality.

THE FOUR SELF-ASSESSMENTS

These self-assessments, when coupled with predictive biomarkers, are a synthesis of health wisdom across cultures and medical philosophies. My team and I brought them together to so that we could help place physiology before pharmacology, and to implement personalized, predictive, proactive, primary prevention practice protocols.

SELF-ASSESSMENT #1: DIGESTIVE TRANSIT TIME

Digestive transit time is the interval between when you eat a food and when you eliminate the digested waste from that food. A healthy transit time is 12–18 hours. The typical American transit time is somewhere between three and seven days (36–144 hours).

When your digestive transit time is longer than 18 hours, you have some combination of maldigestion, dysbiosis, enteropathy (digestive atrophy), and likely reabsorption of toxic matter. Even if you have a daily bowel movement, what’s coming out may have come in last week, not last night.

Shorter is not always better. If your transit time is less than 12 hours, you might not be digesting, assimilating, and eliminating in a healthy way.

If you have roast beets at dinner, you should see red in the commode in the morning. But when most people see red in their stool, they don’t think ‘beets,’ they think ‘blood.’ That’s why I recommend using charcoal capsules in this assessment. The Digestive Transit Time self-assessment kit I use includes:

● 20 charcoal capsules

● Easy-to-follow instructions

● Interpretation guide

● Healthy digestive transit time tips

SELF-ASSESSMENT #2: HYDRATION

Most people, especially young and old, are a little bit dry. This stresses every part of you—kidney, spleen, liver, brain, heart, gut, muscles, mood, and sleep. Even being 1, 2, or 3 percent dehydrated is a risk factor. Your hydration level is easy to assess once you know how to do it.

To test your hydration level, gently pinch the skin on the back of your hand and then release it. Essentially, if it takes more than 1/1,000th of a second for your skin to fall flat again after releasing the pinch, you need more water. Go drink eight ounces of water, and then test again in 30 minutes.

Hydration varies greatly, so doing this test daily makes sense. It helps motivate you to consume the five to six quarts of water and

herbal beverages needed at a minimum to stay well hydrated and wash water soluble toxins out of the body (in addition to consuming warm and wet foods at the start of every meal).

HYDRATION TIP

Keep a carafe of water and a glass at your desk. When the glass is empty, fill it. When the glass is full, drink it.

SELF-ASSESSMENT #3: C CLEANSE

People are correctly concerned about anti-nutrient toxins that abound in everyday life in the 21st century. The way to find out how much prooxidant toxin you are currently exposed to is to find out how much of nature’s vitamin C is needed to flush out extra fluid and toxins from your body quickly and safely.

Doing a C Cleanse means taking a certain amount of nature’s ascorbate (fully buffered, fully reduced l-ascorbate)—not a synthetic version—every 15 minutes until you have an evacuation of the GI tract and pass watery stools. The amount of l-ascorbate needed to achieve this depends on how quickly your body uses it up. Complete, step by step instructions for doing a C Cleanse can be found at https://www.perque.com/lifestyle/self-tests/ascorbate-cleanse.

When possible, start on an empty stomach, first thing in the morning. Most people can accomplish the cleanse (aka flush) within an hour or two. Occasionally, the need is much greater, and it may take a number of hours to complete the initial flush.

To do the C Cleanse:

● Dissolve each dose (one level half-teaspoon, or 1.5 grams, to two level teaspoons, or 6 grams) of fully reduced, buffered mineral l-ascorbate powder in two to six ounces of water or juice diluted 1:1 with water. Count and record each dose amount. A healthy person begins with a level half-teaspoon dissolved; a moderately healthy person begins with one teaspoon; and a person in ill health begins with two teaspoons.

● Drink the beverage after dissolving the l-ascorbate and allowing any effervescence to abate (typically dissolves within two minutes).

● Repeat the same amount every 15 minutes.

● If, after four doses, there is no gurgling or rumbling in the gut, you should double the initial dosage and continue every 15 minutes.

● Continue with these instructions at the proper time intervals until you reach a watery stool or an enema-like evacuation of liquid from the rectum. Do not stop at loose stool. You want the body to flush out fluid and toxins while reducing the risk they will be reabsorbed, recirculated, and will induce problems.

● After the cleanse, stop consuming buffered ascorbate for that day. However, if your calibration dosage is more than 50 grams of vitamin C, consume at least 10 percent of the total l-ascorbate needed to induce the C calibration “flush” in the later afternoon or evening.

● Some people report gas or fullness while doing the ascorbate calibration “flush,” and that is almost always due to dissolving the vitamin C in too little water or rushing the procedure. Room temperature liquid is best for absorption. Cramps may occur, though rarely, and it is usually because too little fluid is used to dissolve the ascorbate or that toxins are being rapidly flushed out.

● Many people report a subjective sense of improved well-being after their C Cleanse. As toxins are eliminated from the body and as it is energized through the action of ascorbate, you likely will feel progressively better for longer periods of time.

A weekly C Cleanse is smart. Repair deficits initially increase ascorbate needs over time until a consistent dose of vitamin C is observed for 3–4 consecutive cleanses. Discuss with your practitioner the right frequency for you.

C CLEANSE HELPFUL HINTS AND INSIGHT

I suggest doing your first ascorbate C Cleanse on a day when you are at home. Once you have done one, you will have a better idea of how much time is needed for the next cleanse.

● For most people, it takes somewhere between 3 to 8 teaspoons of ascorbate to flush. The amount needed to cleanse depends on your health status and how quickly your body uses up ascorbate.

● Some people remain bloated or have loose stools for a day or so after doing the ascorbate flush, as their body continues to remove unhelpful debris and makes room for helpful diets and supplements.

● Others have reported hot stools that burn the anus after several evacuations. If so, you can use a natural salve, such as calendula ointment, to soothe the area. This tends to cease after the first few times you do the C Cleanse.

● People with hemorrhoids, irritable bowel disease, or inflammatory bowel disease may find that the ascorbate activates their tissue-healing process. They may need to increase ascorbate and bioflavonoids slowly over time before doing an ascorbate calibration.

The efficacy of the C Cleanse is illustrated in the story of one of my patients, Ed, who has done a C Cleanse essentially every day since 1990. He takes a quarter of a pound of ascorbate a day. If he doesn’t, his fingers and face swell, he can’t think, and his sleep is disturbed.

A healthy person’s C Cleanse is usually ≤4g. It is common to see initial C Cleanse results of 50g or higher. Once you know the amount to cleanse, until the next cleanse, take in 50 to 75 percent of the amount to induce the cleanse, spread through the day.

Take nature’s ascorbate in a tabsule (a tablet shaped like a capsule), effervescent powder, or capsule, in the dosage appropriate to you, as determined by your C Cleanse, in two to four or more daily doses. Some people mix their daily intake of ascorbate in a liter or

quart size bottle with a top that is sealed and sip on it throughout the day. Sufficient ascorbate for most people is 5 to 25 grams/day.

After a week, perform the C Cleanse again—to assure that your antioxidant needs are met, and your body flushes out toxic metabolic wastes.

SELF-ASSESSMENT #4: ZINC ASSESSMENT

Most people, over time, slowly deplete needed minerals, especially zinc. Essential mineral deficiencies are now widespread. Zinc plays vital roles throughout the body, especially for immunity and sleep. Zinc deficit is almost always linked to toxic metal excess. In addition, many people today have taste and smell disruption due to hormone-disrupting pollutants. This renders the zinc tolerance test less reliable.

Decades ago, Dr. Robert I. Henkin, founder of the Taste and Smell Clinic in Washington, D.C., showed it was possible to assess your zinc levels with a simple smell or taste test. The easiest way is to hold a strongly scented food that you recall being able to smell below your nose and inhale—if you can still smell it, your zinc levels are likely OK. If you can’t, you may have a zinc deficiency. This applies to people hospitable to respiratory RNA-based viruses.

As mentioned, though, this venerable zinc tolerance test is no longer reliable, because too many people have taste and smell that has been distorted by pollutants and lack of other essential nutrients. Assume that you need zinc. If excess zinc is present, a distinctive small intestinal discomfort confirms the excess. As a water-soluble element, reducing zinc intake safely brings you back to homeostatic zinc balance. (Note: the goal for zinc to copper ratio in blood is 20:1, although a range from 10:1 to 30:1 is acceptable.)

Since 1987, my company PERQUE® has only used recrystallized fully soluble zinc and other mineral salts that are known to have ultra-low levels of toxic metals (hard to do in the 21st century). This focus on ensuring that the minerals in supplements are uncontaminated is not required, but to my view, is ethically and scientifically necessary.

A dose of 25 to 50 mg per day is usually sufficient to maintain adequate zinc status in people with only metabolic needs. Under stress or with toxin exposure, the need for zinc can be 100 mg elemental zinc or more daily.

ACCESSING AND INTERPRETING THE SELF-ASSESSMENT AND BIOMARKER TESTS

Results of the four self-assessments and eight predictive biomarkers provide a detailed and individualized map useful to guide health promotion. Health coaches or clinicians trained in functional health promotion action plans help restore or maintain health at best outcome levels.

Following are websites that can help:

● BetterLabTestsNow.com is a consumer portal. It provides access to the self-assessments and predictive biomarker lab tests, including functional interpretations.

● PERQUE .com offers the self-assessment test kits as well as super-premium, evidence-based, more bioavailable professional supplements. PERQUE ® Customer Service provides referrals to professionals who can interpret your results and develop a plan of how to proceed.

● Healthstudiescollegium.org has been researching, training, and certifying professionals since the 80s in holistic, comprehensive, and integrative sciences.

● ELISAACT.com offers the tests to help you understand your functional immunology, digestion, and nutritional needs. Specially trained certified clinical nutritionists (CCN) are available to assist with questions regarding test results and implementation of the forward plan. The Customer Service team provides referral to professionals who offer the tests.

● Drrusselljaffe.com offers insights about this approach to living well and is a way to contact me directly. I invite you to subscribe to my YouTube channel (go to You Tube and search for “Dr Russell Jaffe”) for video interviews and discussions on timely topics for consumers and professionals.

THE EIGHT PREDICTIVE BIOMARKER TESTS

My team reviewed over 100,000 different tests to find which tests cover all aspects of epigenetics. We documented just eight validated predictive biomarkers and synthesized them into clinical protocols. Each predictive biomarker test has been performed on all ethnic and socioeconomic groups for many years. The best outcome values are known. When you are at best outcome values, you add life to years and years to life.

These tests are widely used by clinicians, but usually compare results to a statistical lab range. In contrast, when predictive biomarkers are interpreted based on best outcome values, high level, highly relevant, and personalized health insights emerge. You get vital information about your health status without necessarily needing a diagnosis and learn how to add years of quality life. Collectively, these provide a toolkit to thrive in the 21st century.16

This is a paradigm shift toward personalized care and away from statistical comparisons, away from lab ranges and static (non-functional) lab procedures that have long been used.17 While appropriate for population monitoring, they are inappropriate, inadequate, and misleading in regard to guiding individual care. The results of the predictive, functional tests compare your health status to best outcome values and not to a small statistical population (made up of ambulatory but often unwell people used to establish lab test ranges).

When compared to healthy goal values, the results of the eight independent, primary, predictive tests are effective forecasters of individual health risk or resilience. These tests have been independently validated on large populations and are functionally interdependent yet analytically independent. The goal values of each of these tests are best outcome, least risk and provide the basis for a

16 Jaffe R. and Mani J. “Polyphenolics Evoke Healing Responses: Clinical Evidence and Role of Predictive biomarkers.” Polyphenols in Human Health and Disease, Second Edition, Volume 1, Watson R. R., Preedy V. R., and Zibadi S. (Eds) Academic Press, 2018: p 403-413

17 R. S. Galen and S. R. Gambino, “Beyond normality: The predictive value and efficiency of medical diagnosis” (New York, NY: Wiley, 1975), 10-40.

comprehensive action plan for you as an individual, not you as one in a poorly defined population.

Each is a separate marker of specific aspects of physiology. Human systems are interdependent. When one biomarker is no longer at best outcome goal value, the entire organism is distressed, less resilient, and more at risk. Homeostasis is reduced; impaired functions are likely.

Individually, you can function years—or even decades—younger than your birth age by bringing and keeping each of these biomarkers to its healthy goal value.

THE POTENTIAL HEALTH BENEFITS OF ADOPTING THE 8 PREDICTIVE BIOMARKERS

On a civil society level, administering these tests and developing a plan to improve outcomes saves one million expensive, early deaths each year in the U.S. alone. These deaths cost a trillion dollars annually and, when saved, would add $8 trillion to the American balance sheet annually, when fully applied.

Mortality by final diagnosis and by underlying fundamental causes

Notes: National Center for Health Statistics data re-examined by fundamental cause by Health Studies Collegium Task Force on Sustainable Health.

Ref: CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, “Table 18: Years of potential life lost before age 75 for selected causes of death, by sex, race, and Hispanic origin: United States selected years 1980-2014,” https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/contents2015. htm#018 . [adapted]

The following tests save lives, resources, time, and guide 21st century personalized care.

PREDICTIVE BIOMARKER #1: HEMOGLOBIN A1C (HGBA1C)

Hemoglobin A1c18 is a common test that measures the average amount of extra sugar attached to your hemoglobin over the lifespan of your red blood cells (usually three to four months). It is a useful and important biomarker. It accurately predicts the risk of diabetes long before the disease advances, and it can be used to assess the impact of any form of therapy aimed at regulating blood sugar and insulin sensitivity.

This biomarker encompasses age-related glycation products (AGEs), glucose, insulin, and energy efficiency. There’s a lot of valuable information contained in this measurement. Some call it The “Swiss Army Knife” of diabetes assessment.

HgbA1c was introduced in 1967 by Paul Gallup, a mentor of mine. Since then, it has been found to be more helpful, useful, and meaningful than any other measure of blood sugar or insulin, for a few reasons: 18 Jaffe R. and Mani J., “Predictive Biomarkers: Clinical Opportunity to Save Lives and Prosper Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients.” 2018, Jan (414): 25-26.

● Day-to-day blood sugar levels (glucose testing) are affected by many pre- and post-analytic variables such as exercise, meal timings, or medications; HgbA1c is not as variable and is more predictive of future risks.19

● Just as ‘white coat hypertension’ often leads to transient elevations in blood pressure because of the stresses some people experience in a doctor’s office, there is also ‘white coat hyperglycemia’ that occurs when blood sugar is measured in the office or clinic, due to adrenaline and cortisol variable stress responses. HbA1c is not influenced by such transient effects on blood sugar.

Healthy goal value: While the American Diabetes Association and the pharmaceutical companies encourage people to have HbA1c levels of less than 7, the best outcome goal value is less than 5. The difference between an HbA1c of 7 and 5 is a difference in lifespan of 18 to 20 years. If your HbA1c is 5, you gain those 18 to 20 years, and if it’s 7 or above, you lose those years or more. It’s a stark difference that makes the decision to cut sugar out of your diet a simple choice. Remember, you are sweet enough as you are.

PREDICTIVE BIOMARKER #2: HIGH SENSITIVITY

C-REACTIVE PROTEIN (HSCRP)

C-reactive protein (CRP) is the best documented measure of repair deficit also known as inflammation. The liver produces more CRP when repair is needed. High sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP), however, is more precise and predictive than regular CRP as a predictive marker of systemic inflammation, particularly in connection with cardiovascular risks.

Persistent elevations of hsCRP indicate overload in the innate immune system, increased host hospitality to chronic infection or

19 Hinzmann R., Schlaeger C., Tran C. T. “What do we need beyond hemoglobin A1c to get the complete picture of glycemia in people with diabetes?” International Journal of Medical Science 2012;9 (8):665-681. doi: 10.7150/ijms.4520. Epub 2012 Sep 29. PMID: 23055818; PMCID: PMC3465850.

autoimmune self-attack, and an increased risk of bone fracture, joint erosion and blood vessel fragility, and inflammatory, autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid to juvenile arthritis, lupus, diabetes, vasculitis, psoriasis, eczema, asthma, and multiple sclerosis along with hundreds of other repair deficit conditions.

Healthy goal value: An hsCRP of less than 0.5 mg/L indicates you have tamed inflammation risk and are in active repair mode.

PREDICTIVE BIOMARKER #3: HOMOCYSTEINE (HCY)

Homocysteine20 is a predictive biomarker for all cause morbidity and mortality across all ethnic groups and geographies. Plasma homocysteine levels under 6 μmol/L predict a 10-year survival rate of around 99 percent. On the other hand, 10-year survival in people with homocysteine levels greater than 18 μmol/L is less than 40 percent.

Elevated homocysteine irritates the lining of the blood vessels, causing them to become scarred, hardened, furry, and narrowed due to lack of repair caused by essential nutrient cofactor deficits.

This biomarker predicts many things beyond heart disease. It reflects the functional status of bone,21 joint, blood vessel, ear, and eye (retinal) tissue. It is indicative of a host of autoimmune conditions.22 High homocysteine is also associated with refractory migraine headaches.23

20 Jaffe R. and Mani J., “Predictive Biomarkers: Clinical Opportunity to Save Lives and Prosper,” Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients. 2018, Jan (414): 25-26.

21 Jaffe R. and Brown S., “Acid-Alkaline Balance and its Effect on Bone Health,” International Journal of Integrative Medicine 2 no. 6 (2000): 7-18.

22 Herrmann M., Widmann T., Herrmann W., “Homocysteine--a newly recognised risk factor for osteoporosis.” Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, 2005; 43(10):1111-7. doi: 10.1515/CCLM.2005.194.

23 Nelson K. B., Richardson A. K., He J., Lateef T. M., Khoromi S., Merikangas K. R., “Headache and Biomarkers Predictive of Vascular Disease in a Representative Sample of US Children.” Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine, 2010;164(4):358–362. doi:10.1001/archpediatrics.2010.17.

Lower homocysteine levels are associated with improved tissue repair competence and reduced inflammation. Simply put, low homocysteine levels correlate with longer and healthier life; elevated levels are indicators of high risk of debilitating (and expensive) chronic illness.

Healthy goal value: Healthier people maintain plasma homocysteine levels under 6 μmol/L. Risk increases dramatically as homocysteine levels in the plasma rise.

PREDICTIVE BIOMARKER #4: IMMUNE TOLERANCE

LYMPHOCYTE RESPONSE ASSAY (LRA)

A healthy immune system is tolerant. It can defend against abnormal cells, and then repair any damage they may have caused. Healthy people have an immune system that does not tolerate abnormal cells. Most Americans have had exposure to antibiotics and other prescriptions that create maldigestion, dysbiosis, and other digestive impairments that result in an immune defensive reaction to all the things we ingest every day. The result of this immune intolerance is inflammation and/or autoimmunity (AI). The ex vivo lymphocyte response assay (LRA) determines which foods and/or chemicals trigger an improper immune response.24

Your immune system memory is based in white blood cells known as lymphocytes, of which there are three categories: B-cells, immune complexes, and T-cells. To know what foods you can consume without immune burden, assess the response of your lymphocytes… exactly what the Lymphocyte Response Assay (LRA) tests do. LRA tests measure harmful, symptom provoking, B-cell antibodies, immune complex reactions and T-cells, while avoiding false positives from helpful, neutralizing antibodies that are not symptom-provok-

24 Jaffe, R. “Immune Defense and Repair Systems: Clinical Approaches to immune Function and Testing and Enhancement.” Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients. Part 1: #79/80: 88-92; Part 2: #81/82: 38-44; Part 3: #83/84: 59-64.

ing. LRA results show you what to eat and what to avoid in order to rehabilitate your metabolome and microbiome.

These results may surprise you. For example, you may read an article about how nightshade foods (tomatoes, eggplants, tobacco, and okra) induce arthritis, and therefore assume that you should avoid all nightshades. Nightshades include solanines, a class of chemicals that people with autoimmune diseases, such as arthritis, are more likely to have immune reactions against. Yet this is not a one-sizefits-all truth, as not all who eat nightshades react to them. Taking an LRA test tells you if your body reacts, or if it doesn’t. It shows you all the foods burdening your immune system so that you can avoid these foods while you enhance your body’s ability to repair itself.

The LRA gauges whether your T- and B-cell white blood cells react on exposure to over 500 different chemicals, foods, medications, or foreign substances. While some antibody tests show you as reactive to everything in Western civilization thanks to false positives, the LRA tests showed most people actually react adversely to between six and 15 items out of hundreds of cell culture assays. Once you avoid these few reactants, your body works better and you are able to switch out of survival mode and into elective protective and repair mode. It can be a breakthrough in your overall health and your quality of life. In addition, most people lose a few pounds, think better, sleep better—everything improves.

Any licensed health professional can order the LRA tests from ELISAACT.com. The results come with a free consultation with one of our health coaches who can work with your doctor and you to understand what to do and why. You buy the test; the plan interpretation and counseling are included.

Healthy goal value: The goal is to have no LRA reactions. This confirms your immune system is tolerant and resilient.

PREDICTIVE BIOMARKER #5: URINE PH AFTER REST (METABOLIC CELL ACID/ALKALINE MINERAL BALANCE)

In Chapter 4, we covered how the body has a very narrow range of health in terms of acid/alkaline (pH balance). Life sits exquisitely poised just above the pH neutral point of 7.0. This test shows where you are on the acid/alkaline spectrum.

Chronic metabolic acidosis, often the result of poor diet, medication effects, and environmental toxins, fosters development of many common chronic and deadly disorders. Fortunately, it is easy to assess and can be reversed with diet and lifestyle change. Measurement of first morning urine pH gives a good indication of the body’s mineral reserve and its acid/alkaline state. This because the body routinely uses overnight rest time to excrete excess acids. This capacity varies based on toxin load, your ability to make energy, as well as your capacity to inactivate toxins and to excrete them in urine, sweat, and stool.

Testing your urine pH—using at-home urine strips, used first thing in the morning after at least six hours of rest—is inexpensive, easy to do at home, and gives important clinical information. The lower the number, the more acidic the sample. Healthier first morning urine pH is between 6.5 to 7.5—a more or less neutral pH indicating that overall cellular pH is appropriately alkaline and that the small amount of acids built up from normal metabolism have been easily concentrated for excretion.

The pH scale is logarithmic; a reading of 5.0 indicates that the urine is 10 times more acidic than urine giving a reading of 6.0 and 100 times more than a reading of 7.0. If readings are consistently below 6.5, you should begin changes aimed at alkalinizing your diet. The acid-forming tendency of the standard American diet means that many people will initially show low pH readings.

At the other end of the spectrum, morning urine readings that are consistently greater than 7.5 represent a “false alkalinity,” and indicate a catabolic state involving tissue breakdown. This warrants further clinical attention.

The results of this simple test show how much enhanced uptake magnesium and choline citrate you need to neutralize excess acid you now have in your cells.

Tiny changes in cell pH have deep implications for metabolic health.

● Levels below 6.5 indicate metabolic acidosis inside cells and suggest mineral deficits, with magnesium need as the priority. This is because minerals tend to get pulled from bone and body fluids to neutralize metabolic acids that often form faster than the intake of buffering minerals and alkalinizing nutrients.

● Levels of urine pH above 7.5 can indicate presence of catabolic illness in which amino acids are used as survival energy sources while lean muscle is consumed.

Checking your urine pH level daily provides ongoing monitoring to see how to maintain acid/alkaline balance through alkaline diet choices and magnesium choline citrate supplementation.

Healthy goal value: The predictive goal value range for urine pH is 6.5–7.5 after six or more hours of rest, typically checked first thing in the morning.

PREDICTIVE BIOMARKER #6: VITAMIN D

Most Americans, depending upon their age and community living environments, have inadequate levels of Vitamin D.25

Vitamin D is a neurohormone that is important in regulating mineral uptake and cell proliferation. Less than healthy levels increase risks of obesity, cancer, heart disease, inflammatory autoimmune disorders, as well as psychiatric and mood disorders.26

Healthy vitamin D levels:

● Protect against musculoskeletal disorders (muscle weakness, falls, fractures), multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, neurocognitive dysfunction, and others;

● Allow vitamin D to function successfully as a hormone, moderating cell division, providing vital communication links between cells, normalizing cell growth, and avoiding aggressive cell production;

● Improve immune status and protect against autoimmune disorders; and

● Reduce inflammation in the brain and nervous system—this is particularly important since brain repair depends on an energetic, tolerant immune system.

Vitamin D deficiency/insufficiency is associated with allcause mortality.27 Because so many people have inadequate levels of vitamin D, most people need to supplement. Knowing your vitamin D level helps you determine if supplementation is required, and in what amounts if it

25 Jaffe R., Mani J. “Predictive Biomarkers in Personalized Laboratory Diagnoses and Best Practices Outcome Monitoring for Musculoskeletal Health” in Metabolic Therapies in Orthopedics, Second Edition Ingrid Kohlstadt & Kenneth Cintron (Eds), CRC Press, 2018: 39-53.

26 M. Pereira-Santos, et al. “Obesity and vitamin D deficiency: A systematic review and meta-analysis,” Obesity Reviews 16 no. 4 (2015): 341–349.

27 Pawel Pludowski, et al. “Vitamin D effects on musculoskeletal health, immunity, autoimmunity, cardiovascular disease, cancer, fertility, pregnancy, dementia and mortality—A review of recent evidence,” Autoimmunity Reviews 12 no. 6 (August 2013): https://doi.org/10.1016/j. autrev.2013.02.004

is. The preferred test to assess vitamin D levels involves the measurement of 25 hydroxycholecalciferol (25 OH-D).

Healthy goal value: The best outcome goal value range for 25-OH D is 50–80 ng/ml. This achieves better health and neurohormone benefits than the commonly stated suggestions of lower values based on misunderstandings of statistically normal and normal in the common sense of the word.28

PREDICTIVE BIOMARKER #7: OMEGA-3 TEST

Most Americans have low omega-3 levels and excess omega-6 fat intake. People pay a substantial metabolic price for this imbalance in essential fats. Essential fats are an integral part of cell membranes throughout the body and affect the function of the cell receptors in these membranes. They provide the starting point for making cytokines that regulate blood clotting, contraction and relaxation of artery walls, and inflammation/repair. By tuning down inflammatory signaling, omega-3 fats allow osteoblasts to make new bone even as osteoclasts recycle worn out bone. Attaining peak bone mass in adolescence, maintaining bone mineral density, and prevention of age-related osteoporosis are positive effects of adequate omega-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA) when micellized in softgels and distilled under nitrogen to protect essential fats and remove toxins.29 Levels of omega-3 are predictive of coronary heart disease (CHD) risk and are important for brain, vessel, organ, and joint health. 30

28 Personal communication, Dr. Michael Holick, NCI consensus conference on Vitamin D, 2015

29 M. Hogstrom, P. Nordstrum and A. Nordstrom, “n-3 Fatty acids are positively associated with peak bone mineral density and bone accrual in healthy men: The NO2 Study,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 85 no.3 (2007): 803–807.

30 B. N. Justin, Michele Turek, and Antoine M. Hakim, “Heart disease as a risk factor for dementia,” Clinical Epidemiology 5 (2013): 135–145.

Low levels of omega-3s are also related to increased risk for fatal heart attack, depression, and senility. 31

In essence, omega-3 fats enhance, repair, and soothe the body, while omega-6 fats stimulate and activate the body. 32 We need both in balance. Large-scale studies, such as NHANES IV, suggest typical Americans take in 20 to 100 times more omega-6 than omega-3, mostly due to the consumption of vegetable oils and practices like frying and high-heat cooking—a primary reason why I advocate avoiding edible oils and cooking with broth, water, or wine instead. 33

The omega-3 test is a measure of the active omega-3 fats in red blood cells.

Healthy goal value: An omega-3 index of >8% indicates adequate intake of EPA and DHA through food and supplements. An index of <4% (common in the U.S.) indicates high risk. 34 The goal value for the omega-3 test is >8%, a level associated with the lowest risk of death from chronic or coronary heart diseases.

PREDICTIVE BIOMARKER # 8: DNA OXIDATIVE DAMAGE (8-OXOGUANINE OR 8-OHDG; 8-HYDROXYGUANINE,

8-OXO-GUA, OR OH8GUA)

This biomarker is used to assess DNA damage after exposure to cancer-causing agents, such as tobacco smoke, asbestos fibers, heavy metals, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. In recent years, 8-OHdG has been used widely in studies not only as a biomarker for the measurement of endogenous oxidative DNA damage but also as a risk factor for many diseases including cancer.

31 Liana C. Del Gobbo, et al. “ω- 3 polyunsaturated fatty acid biomarkers and coronary heart disease pooling project of cohort studies,” JAMA Internal Medicine 176 (2016): 1155–1166.

32 Clemens von Schacky, “Omega-3 index and cardiovascular health,” Nutrients 6 no. 2 (Feb 2014): 799–814.

33 Clemens von Schacky, “Omega-3 index and cardiovascular health,” Nutrients 6 no. 2 (Feb 2014): 799–814.

34 Clemens von Schacky, “Omega-3 index and cardiovascular health,” Nutrients 6 no. 2 (Feb 2014): 799–814.

Testing for 8-oxoguanine provides important information about oxidative stress and its effects on DNA and the genetic sequence. The test is well validated as a measure of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA oxidative stress and is well supported in the research literature. 35

Elevated 8-OHdG is a sign that antioxidant nutrient intake needs to be increased. Toxicants and lifestyle stress factors may also contribute to increased oxidative challenge. When antioxidant levels are sufficient, oxidative damage from free radicals does not occur.

This predictive biomarker focuses on the acceleration of age-related decline due to DNA status, particularly telomere length, and is an effective way to evaluate the success of an intervention, whether it involves dietary change or essential nutrients.

Healthy goal value: A value of <5.3 ng/mg creatinine indicates adequate DNA antioxidant protection and efficient DNA repair from oxidative stresses.

GLOBAL ASSESSMENTS OF FUNCTIONAL AGE

Functional age36 is different than biological age. Chronology is fixed at birth. Functional age describes how well your body operates— whether you have the abilities of a 20- or an 80-year old, or somewhere in between. Functional age fluctuates and can even move backwards. My functional age is half my biological age. You deserve the same.

You or your physician can do one or all of these assessments of functional age.

If you want interpretive help on when to do neurochemical, hormonal, and detoxification tests, contact the team at drrusselljaffe. com or betterlabtestsnow.com so we can provide more information

35 V. Humphreys, et al. “Age-related increases in DNA repair and antioxidant protection: A comparison of the Boyd Orr Cohort of elderly subjects with a younger population sample,” Age and Ageing 36 no. 5 (2007): 521–552.

36 Jaffe R., Mani J. “Predictive Biomarkers in Personalized Laboratory Diagnoses and Best Practices,” https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=hsA3Ei7rvo8

about what functional tests measure, what results mean, and what actions to take.

BEYOND PREDICTIVE BIOMARKERS

While eight predictive biomarkers do provide a robust portrait of whole-person health, sometimes you want to look more deeply at a particular organ system or other physiological need. The following tests are helpful for doing that.

● Neurochemicals and detoxification competence in urine and hormones in saliva can also be individually functionally helpful

● Concentrating capacity for kidney health (use a specific gravity refractometer)

● Lung function assesses how much air is moved with each breath (starting with a FEV1 test)

● Metabolic assessment overview through urine dipstick-10

● Sulfite assessment in urine to assess molybdenum, a mineral and micronutrient that catalyzes enzymes and breaks down amino acids

● Oxalate assessment in urine by dipstick or urine analysis

● D-Penicillamine provocation to assess essential and toxic minerals

● Autonomic nervous system (ANS) status tests

● Heart rate variability (HRV) tests

● Oliver’s sign (abnormal downward movement of the trachea that can indicate an aneurysm)

● Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

● TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, which can gauge and then treat nerve pain)

BIOMETRIC DEVICES

Biometric devices are wearable gadgets that give feedback on some area of health. Without going into specifics—as technologies change

quickly—here are the devices I currently find helpful, as well as ones that promise more than they can deliver.

In general, these trackers help you pay more attention to your health and provide real-time insights on the effects of what you eat, drink, think, and do. Seeing those insights can motivate healthier behavior.

● Pedometer or movement tracker. Such devices tell how many steps and how many stairs are climbed. Every stair you climb adds a few seconds to your life. Many provide more functions than simply counting steps, such as tracking your heart rate throughout the day. Such devices motivate us to get up and go for a stroll.

● Heart rate or blood pressure monitor. There are many different devices that will track different aspects of cardiovascular health. Some will even give you a cardiogram, though most are only approved currently to confirm that your heartbeat isn’t in a dangerous, erratic pattern known as atrial fibrillation. These devices are helpful for showing which direction you are moving, and whether that’s for the positive or the negative.

● Sleep tracker. Most tell you how long you spend in each different phase of sleep, in addition to your total time slept. Again, some are more accurate than others.

● Biofeedback devices. These devices, often administered in a practitioner’s office but also available as wearable devices, give you feedback on how your body position, breathing patterns, and other actions impact your biology, as measured by things like blood pressure, brain waves, and heart rate. Dr. Eric Peper and other therapeutic biofeedback practitioners helped lower my blood pressure by 35 points. It is behavior change through practices of mindful attention.

TESTS AND DEVICES OF LIMITED USE

There are also devices that, to my view, aren’t worth their cost. These include:

● 24-hour glucose monitors. As I write this, these devices are relatively new to the market, but they’ve been developed over the last 20 years. They are a good example of something that’s passed its expiration date before it was ever released. The most important indicator of blood sugar status is the results of your HbA1C test.

● EEGs. These alleged tests of brain function measure only the top one percent of your brain activity, not the deep brain, which is what you really want to assess. I worked with a man who developed the EEG machine and know intimately its strengths and limitations. The EEG provides a measurement without meaning that is, at best, confusing. If you want a proper EEG, you have to use all sorts of nasal devices and a lead cap with 256 sensors that goes on your head, and if they don’t shave your head, your hair might interfere with the reading. And your hydration influences your reading or whether you had alcohol or any stress in the last few days. Yet the standard EEG is reimbursable, and therefore performed frequently, with little benefit to show for the cost.

● Breath analysis. This simple test of whether you’re breathing is easily done, but in the breath there are many chemicals— from hydrogen to solvents—that can be quantified and analyzed in order to show your toxic status and how well your digestive, metabolic, and detoxification needs are being met. Tests that assess these important things are only available in .01 percent of clinics, and require an experienced functional professional to interpret.

● Basal Metabolic index (BMI). This assessment, which is billed as a way to gauge obesity, is unhelpful. It measures the wrong things in the wrong ways, and gives the wrong result

most of the time. BMI is still used by people who believe what they learned 20 years ago. It is not a predictive tool for the 21st century.

● Oxygen saturation monitors (oximeters). These devices measure how much oxygen is in your blood. There are cheap models available in every drug store. I bought one and while it did make a measurement, it was easily fooled. An accurate oximeter costs about $400, but you still need someone to interpret it. Otherwise, you could end up in a panic by misinterpreting the measurement.

THE TIME IS NOW

To begin—or significantly enhance—your journey to thriving in the 21st century, start with the four self-assessments and eight predictive biomarkers. You may decide that you’re concerned about your nervous system and your moods, which indicates testing your neurohormones and their metabolites. You may be concerned about your kidneys or your gut. Partner with a competent health professional who knows which tests and assessments are appropriate as well as how to interpret them functionally and, most importantly, to formulate a plan designed to improve those results. If you have not yet found the right health care practitioner, contact PERQUE® or ELISA/ACT® Biotechnologies for a referral to a practitioner of these physiology before pharmacology approaches.

When you begin to make changes in daily lifestyle habits, diet, and stress levels, the results are reflected in your predictive biomarkers, too. They move toward or even achieve the best outcome value. This means you likely live longer and function better.

If you want to improve your health, or the lives of the ones you love, now is a good time to start using this action plan.

about the author

Russell Jaffe, MD, PhD, CCN, is an internist and immunologist. He is board certified in clinical pathology, with subspecialty board certification in chemical pathology and he is a Fellow of the following medical societies: ASCP, ACAAI, ACN, ASIP, and FRSM. Dr. Jaffe helped advance several adjunctive healthcare approaches including medical acupuncture (TCM), certified clinical nutrition (CCN), health coaching, and predictive biomarkers. Enabling primary, proactive prevention in clinical practice is part of Dr. Jaffe’s mission to speed the transition from sick care to healthful caring in policy, practice and research. With over 100 peer reviewed publications, invited chapters, and books, Dr. Jaffe speaks at continuing professional education conferences and in technology innovation forums. Dr. Jaffe is director of ELISA/ACT Biotechnologies (Sterling, VA), PERQUE (Ashburn, VA), RMJH Rx (Vienna, VA) and serves as a founding Fellow of the Health Studies Collegium. He works and lives in Virginia.

APPENDIX I

Self-Renewal in 72 Minutes Daily

Add life to years and years to life by adding self-care to 5% of your day.

Starting in the evening…

30 minute transition to restorative sleep including Epsom Salt & Baking Soda soak ± cold pressed aromatic oil during which you engage 5 minutes of abdominal breathing + 15 minutes of active mindfulness practice; dry off including dry brushing of skin with towel; take evening supplements; 5 minutes of stretching in bed before sleep in cool, dark, WiFi free bedroom.

5 minutes stretching in bed on rising and before getting out of bed. OK to include notes from prior nights dreams.

As part of daily self-care…

● OK to stretch and breathe deeply as you move about.

● Use a tooth powder and not a toothpaste.

● Use buffered l-ascorbate as mouthwash. Use a goat’s milk or castile soap.

● Take daily morning dose of dietary supplements.

Start each meal with something warm and wet… water with fresh lime juice, broth (vegetable, fish or meat; never bone) or fresh vegetable juice. Eat foods you can digest, assimilate and eliminate without immune burden.

Use four self-assessments and eight predictive biomarkers with personalized interpretation to cover all lifestyle choices (Epigenetics). Hydrate by consuming more than four liters (or four quarts) of water or herbal beverage daily.

Spend 10 minutes daily…

● doing Hatha Prana Yoga or Tai chi Chuan or Aikido or Pilates or Trager Mentastics or Feldenkrais technique… whichever appeals to you.

● ambling or forest bathing or walking, gardening or dancing while observing what is around you.

● with an intensive journal or recording video or sketching in a free association creative mode.

Spend 7 minutes daily being grateful for what you have and sending good will as well as good wishes mentally to those about whom you care. For me, early morning time works better.

Extra benefits accrue from leaving shoes and exterior clothes at the door and changing into comfortable inside clothes. An air cleaner is needed in most urban areas.

72 minutes to renew, restore, rehabilitate, recreate and regenerate.

21st Century Makeovers that Enable Us to Thrive

Kitchen Makeover Checklist

Food

❏ Join a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)—A source for locally grown, fresh, organic, or biodynamic foods. https:// www.localharvest.org/csa/

❏ Start a kitchen herb garden—Herbs are easy to grow, even in a pot on a sunny windowsill if you don’t have outdoor space. https://www.trueleafmarket.com/products/barnwood-planter-organic-culinary-herb-gardenkit?variant=29390615773299

❏ Always have biodetox superfoods—staples in The Alkaline Way™ diet—on hand:

1. GGOBE https://www.drrusselljaffe.com/what-is-ggobe/

2. Dark berries and whole fruits

3. Fresh vegetable juices from macerating juicer

4. Fermented live foods

5. High fiber organic or biodynamic whole foods

6. Lemongrass, ginger and fresh ground black pepper refresh tea

Cookware

❏ Say “NO” to non-stick coated cookware

❏ Replace non-stick with…

ƒ Copper-clad stainless steel (Mauviel® 250 or similar)

ƒ Cast iron wok and stew pot

ƒ Unglazed ceramic (RomerTopf)

ƒ Pressure cooker (Kuhn-Rikon®)

ƒ Convection oven (Cadco)

ƒ Air fryers (Breville)

ƒ Tagine

ƒ Wood fired bread/pizza oven

❏ Use a microwave ONLY for warming plates, not cooking or warming food

Small Appliances

Buy value and function; cheap usually does not function well nor long

❏ Blender (Vitamix® or equivalent)--variable speed, robust motor, and easy cleaning

❏ Macerating, slow speed, high extraction vegetable/fruit juicers (Hurom®)

❏ Immersion blender (Breville) with long stalk and easy movement

❏ Burr grinder to grind coffee beans (Breville) for ease of use

❏ French press (no paper; metal filter; better coffee with fewer toxins)

❏ Espresso maker (Breville); semi-professional unit for best quality crema and espresso

Utensils

❏ Eliminate plastic and non-stick cookware

❏ Better options are:

ƒ Bamboo whisks

ƒ Wooden spoons and ladles

ƒ Stainless steel spatulas and strainers

ƒ Bamboo sporks

ƒ Pepper grinder with an adjustable ratchet grinder (Kuhn-Rikon)

Knives

A few high-quality knives are worth many that dull and fail. Use the best quality kitchen knives and utensils available.

In addition, a Damascus steel with sharpening wet stone is recommended.

Bedroom Makeover Checklist

Restorative sleep renews you.

❏ Darker is better. Comfortable eye shades are helpful

❏ Put WIFI on timer that turns off during sleep

❏ Keep devices (phone, tablet, TV) out of the bedroom

❏ Use a latex or similar mattress without pressure points, such as PlushBeds Hybrid Organic Latex Mattress

❏ Choose quality sheets and pillow cases: natural fibers (cotton, bamboo, or silk)

❏ Wake to rising sun

❏ Include low-light plants to clear the air

❏ Create a ‘prepare to sleep’ ritual 30 minutes before bed. Examples include salt and soda bath, abdominal breathing, mindfulness practice, green dichroic light, etc.

Bathroom & Personal Care Makeover Checklist

❏ Soaps cleanse (detergents create illusions): Use Castille, olive oil, or goat milk soap

❏ Shampoo: Use traditional shampoo, e.g., shikakai, without sulfates or other detergents

❏ Skin dry brush: Use loofah, towel, or soft sea sponge

❏ Moisturizer: Seal in hydration with natural oils and skin butters (Weleda or Dr. Hauschka)

❏ Avoid antiperspirants; use baking soda and good hygiene

❏ If solvents present in water, change shower carbon block filter every few months

❏ Choose a shower head based on local water pressure & contaminants

❏ Enjoy frequent Salt & Soda Baths:

ƒ Start with a tub of warm water. The water temperature should have you come out pink like a baby, not red like a lobster. Add 1 cup of Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) and

1 cup of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to the water. Soak for 20 minutes.

ƒ The bicarbonate makes the water alkaline, helping your body absorb the magnesium from the Epsom salts. Magnesium relaxes muscles and the microvasculature—the tiniest little blood vessels—release acidic waste products.

ƒ For added enjoyment and calming, add a drop or two of sesame oil and/or your favorite essential oil, turn on a dichroic green light, and spend a few minutes taking in deep abdominal breaths while you soak.

❏ Devote 72 minutes per day to renew, restore, rehabilitate, recreate and regenerate

Work/School/Living Space Makeover Checklist

Cleaning Supplies

❏ Safely dispose of toxic cleaning chemicals

❏ Replace with safe, natural, traditional cleaning solutions, made from:

ƒ Vinegar

ƒ Baking soda

ƒ Soap

ƒ Alcohol (vodka)

ƒ Peroxide And Use:

ƒ Natural sponges

ƒ Steel wool

ƒ Scrapers (Teak or Ype)

❏ Find recipes for homemade cleaners at https://keeperofthehome.org/homemade-all-natural-cleaning-recipes/

❏ The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a non-profit organization that is a useful resource of information about contaminants in foods, personal care, and cleaning products, as well as in our water and air. Visit their site https://www.ewg. org for consumer guides and reports on testing the organization conducts.

Water Quality Checklist

❏ Test your water

❏ EWG Tap Water Database https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/

❏ Tap water is NOT for drinking. Find a source of clean spring water delivered in glass. The following companies deliver nationwide.

ƒ Mountain Valley

https://www.mountainvalleyspring.com/pages/ homedelivery

ƒ Alive Waters

https://alivewaters.com

(if you are not in their delivery area, check out their spring finder) https://findaspring.com

Indoor Air Quality Checklist

❏ Air quality testing

https://www.safewise.com/best-air-quality-monitor/

❏ Use IAQ monitor for carbon dioxide (CO) and smoke detector

https://www.x-sense.com/collections/ combination-smoke-and-carbon-monoxide-alarms

❏ Filter and clean—use one air filter/cleaner per room

ƒ HEPA fine mesh traps pollen, pet dander, dust mites, and tobacco smoke.

ƒ ULPA removes smaller particles than HEPA

ƒ MERV 13 trap targets bacteria, passive tobacco smoke, sneeze/particles, cooking oil, paint pigments, and fine facial cosmetic powders

ƒ Electrostatic (PECO) air cleaner, e.g., Molekule, uses static electricity and no filters to remove particles 1000 times smaller than HEPA down to size of small viruses

❏ Avoid VOC products; let new products ventilate outside until they are off-gassed, or better yet, buy natural products without volatile chemical smells

❏ When replacing HVAC unit, high EER or SEER is better

❏ Ducts integral to the HVAC system: Supply, return, exhaust, clean at least twice a year and test ventilation air quality at least yearly

❏ Fresh air indoor heat exchangers remove moisture and provide fresh air at home that is pre-heated by outgoing air.

❏ Maintain humidity (rH) <40 percent to reduce mold

❏ Indoor plants to clean air, improve Feng Shui, and more:

ƒ Aromatic: Rosemary, lavender, and jasmine in the bedroom provide scents that soothe the nervous system and improve sleep quality for many people.

ƒ Succulents: Keep aloe in the kitchen for sunburns, cooking burns, and irritated skin (apply fresh aloe liberally to the affected area).

ƒ Asparagus: Spider plants can thrive indoors. They clean the local air of volatile organic chemicals (VOCs). Hang them at a comfortable level so you can easily remove older fronds as new leaves form.

ƒ Ivy: English ivy, red philodendron, Chrysanthemums and Dracaena in particular remove indoor air pollutants from the room where they live. This is particularly helpful for people with asthma or other breathing issues.

ƒ Ferns and plants to clean indoor air:

○ Boston Fern, areca palms, lady palm, ficus, snake plant, and rubber plants take in air pollutants and give off oxygen.

○ Pineapple plants have been reported to reduce snoring (NASA studies).

○ Devil’s ivy or pothos (Epipremnum aureum)

○ Dwarf date palm (Phoenix Roebelenii)

○ Peace lily (Spathiphyllum)

○ Philodendron

❏ Institute a no-shoes policy in the house. There is value of walking bare-footed and you will reduce the pollutants you bring inside.

❏ Outside clothes; indoor attire

❏ Go phthalate free, look for recycling #3 or V for PVC products

❏ Avoid treated wood, Teflon® or non-stick or fire-retardant coatings (PFAS, PFOS)

❏ Reduce EMFs: Check that your outlets are properly grounded, using a tester like the Gardner Bender GFI-3501 Ground Fault Receptacle Tester & Circuit Analyzer

Trustworthy Brands of Natural Cleaning Products

● Meliora

● Better Life

● Dr. Bronner’s

● Branch Basics

● Attitude

● GOOP

Beauty and Skincare Companies That Prioritize Natural, Organic, or Biodynamic Ingredients

● Beautycounter

● Butterbean Organics

● California Baby

● C’est Moi

● Dr. Hauschka

● Juice Beauty

● Jurlique

● Two Peas Organics

● Weleda

Mind, Body, Spirit Healing Modalities

● Aikido: Founded by Moriheri Ueshiba, Aikido is a martial art that focuses on harmonizing with your opponent to bring peaceful resolutions to situations involving conflict.

https://aaa-aikido.com/about-aikido/

● Active Meditation: Active Meditation is a process of consciously directing your thoughts and feelings to expose them to the benefit of your inner intelligence and compassion. https://activemeditation.org/dr-leichtman/

● Alexander Technique: The Alexander Technique is a way to feel better, and move in a more relaxed and comfortable way… the way nature intended.

https://alexandertechnique.com/

● Feldenkrais Method: The Feldenkrais Method® is a powerful and revolutionary approach to improving your life that uses gentle, mindful movement to bring new awareness and possibility into every aspect of your life.

https://feldenkrais.com/

● Anat Baniel Method®: This NeuroMovement® approach utilizes movement and the “nine essentials” to “wake up” the brain and upgrade its functioning, with the higher goal of overcoming pain and limitation, and achieving higher levels of physical, emotional, and cognitive performance. https:// www.anatbanielmethod.com/

● Forest bathing: Ambling in the woods or Forest Therapy, is inspired by the Japanese practice of Shinrin-Yoku, which translates to “forest bathing.”

https://www.natureandforesttherapy.org/

● Hatha prana yoga: Hatha means ‘force’ and is traditionally defined as ‘the yoga of force,’ or ‘the means of attaining a state of yoga through force’–with the ultimate goal of uniting the mind, body and spirit. The aim of hatha yoga is to balance and tone the “prana” (life force).

● Tai chi chuan: Meaning “supreme fist” in Chinese, tai chi chuan is designed to provide relaxation in the process of bodyconditioning exercise and is drawn from the principles of taiji, notably including the harmonizing of the yin and yang https://www.taichifoundation.org/

● Progoff Intensive Journal® Program for Self Development: Created by Ira Progoff, this program is a full-scale active method of personal life integration for continuous and cumulative work.

https://www.intensivejournal.org/

● Organic or biodynamic gardening: Organic gardening involves not using synthetic products, including pesticides and fertilizers and ideally replenishes the resources as it makes use of them. Biodynamics is a holistic, ecological, and ethical approach to farming, gardening, food, and nutrition. Biodynamic farms and gardens are inspired by the biodiversity of natural ecosystems and the uniqueness of each landscape. https://www.biodynamics.com/ biodynamic-principles-and-practices

● Pilates: An innovative and safe system of mind-body exercise using a floor mat or a variety of equipment, evolved from the principles of Joseph Pilates.

https://www.pilatesfoundation.com/about/

● Reevaluation counseling: A process whereby people of all ages and all backgrounds can learn how to exchange effective help with each other in order to free themselves from the effects of past distress experiences.

https://www.rc.org/

● Rogerian therapy: Created by Carl Rogers, a therapeutic technique in which the client takes an active, autonomous role in therapy sessions. It is based on the idea that the client

knows what is best, and that the therapist’s role is to facilitate an environment in which the client can bring about positive change.

https://books.google.com/books/about/Client_centered_ Therapy.html?id=UnLMOgAACAAJ

● The Trager Approach is a form of somatic education. It helps release deep-seated physical and mental patterns and facilitates deep relaxation, increased physical mobility, and mental clarity. The founder, Milton Trager, called his work Psychophysical Integration.

https://www.trager.com/

Books on Personal Development and Spiritual Sciences

Margins of Reality, Bob Jahn and Brenda Dunn

The Brilliant Function of Pain, Milton Ward

Meetings with Remarkable Men, G. I. Gurdjieff or the movie by Peter Russell

The Web That Has No Weaver, Ted Kaptchuk Moving into Agelessness, Roger Tolle

The End of Stress As We Know It, Bruce McEwen, Ph.D.

The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck, MD

Healthy at 100, John Robbins and his family including Ocean Robbins

My Prayer, 2 Volumes, Rabbi Nissan Mindel

Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman, Ph.D.

The Textbook of Yoga Psychology: the Definitive Translation and Interpretation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras for Meaningful Application in All Modern Psychologic Disciplines, Dr. Ramamurti S. Mishra, MD

Confessions of a Medical Heretic, Dr. Robert S. Mendelsohn, MD

Olga Worrall: Mystic with the Healing Hands, Paloma Cerutti

Ingwe, M. Norman Powell and Ingwe Powell with illustrations, Rebecca Sylvan Jaffe

90 Days to Self Health, C. Norman Shealy, MD, Ph.D.

At a Journal Workshop, Ira Progoff, Ph.D.

The Ages of Gaia, Jim Lovelock, Ph.D.

The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, Joseph Chilton Pearce

Joy’s Way: A Map for the Transcendental Journey, W. Brugh Joy, MD

Tao Te Ching, with Photographs, Jane English, Lao Tzu

Coming into Being, William Irwin Thompson

Elective Affinities, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

How to Raise a Healthy Child Despite Your Doctor, Dr. Robert S. Mendelsohn

The Work, Byron Katie (www.thework.com)

Essential Supplements for 21st Century Health

PERQUE®, the line of supplements my team and I developed, utilizes the preferred forms of all nutrients that are now required in order to thrive amidst the abundance of anti-nutrients with which we live in the 21st century.

https://www.perque.com/

1. Nature’s Ascorbate:

PERQUE Potent C Guard™

Take the amount you need based on your body’s level of oxidative stress, as determined by the C Cleanse. www.perque.com/product/perque-potent-c-guard-powder

2. Polyphenolic family for antioxidant support

PERQUE Pain Guard Forté™

www.perque.com/product/perque-pain-guard-forte

PERQUE Repair Guard™

https://www.perque.com/product/perque-repair-guard

3. Digestive health

• Prebiotic

PERQUE Regularity Guard™

www.perque.com/product/perque-regularity-guard

• Probiotic

PERQUE Digesta Guard™ Forté 10

www.perque.com/product/perque-digesta-guard-forte-10

• Symbiotic Recycled Glutamine

PERQUE Endura/PAK Guard™

www.perque.com/product/perque-endura-pak-guard

4. Vitamin E: Tocopherol/tocotrienol family

5. B Complex

Taken in sufficient amount to keep urine sunshine yellow

6. Super multi-vitamin/mineral

PERQUE Life Guard™

www.perque.com/product/perque-life-guard

PERQUE Life Guard™ mini

www.perque.com/product/perque-life-guard-mini

ƒ Minerals (magnesium, zinc and friends)

Use urine pH to assess cell metabolic acidosis and deter mine how much you need.

○ PERQUE MG Plus Guard™

www.perque.com/product/ perque-mg-magnesium-plus-guard

○ PERQUE Choline Citrate™

www.perque.com/product/perque-choline-citrate

7. Omega 3s

EPA/DHA purified under nitrogen and micellized in MCT

PERQUE EPA/DHA Guard™

www.perque.com/product/perque-epadha-guard

8. CoQ10

Micellized in 100 percent rice bran oil

PERQUE Mito Guard™ 100 Plus

www.perque.com/product/perque-mito-guard-100-plus

9. Carotenoid family

Alpha carotene, beta carotene, astathanxin, zeathanthin, lycopene, lutein

PERQUE Liva Guard™ Forté

www.perque.com/product/perque-liva-guard-forte

10. Bone/skin/nails/hair-building nutrients

• PERQUE Bone Guard Forté™

www.perque.com/product/perque-bone-guard-forte

• PERQUE Hair Skin Nails Guard™

www.perque.com/product/perque-hair-skin-nails-guard