Yearly Archives: 2011 - Page 11

Toward an Anti-Cancer Diet

Posted by on September 15, 2011 47 comments

Since starting the blog, I’ve gotten a number of emails from cancer patients or their family members. When the Q&A page started last week, the second question was from Lindsay, asking for a cancer diet:

In the past 3 weeks my partner has been diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. She is 28 and there is no family history….

Do you have suggestions aside from vit d and green tea that might be therapeutic?…

In my mind she simply needs to be extremely well nourished, but that is proving tricky due to nausea. I made a batch of chicken broth the other day and the smell alone sidelined her. Any thoughts on a way to sneak in dense nutrients without a strong odor?

I’ve delayed blogging about cancer and diet because of the complexity of the issue. Research has not yet determined the optimal diet for cancer patients, and there is reason to believe that the optimal diet may differ for different cancer patients. It is not easy to balance the many factors that should influence a cancer patient’s diet.

Today I’ll lay out my general perspective on cancer. The goal is to identify aspects of the disease that we can influence through diet. In subsequent posts, I’ll discuss foods, nutrients, and eating strategies. I hope the manner in which I’m addressing the issue will help cancer patients to understand the issues better and to design an effective personal eating strategy.

Cancer as a Progression of Diseases

Cancers often develop over long periods of time – typically decades. They usually cannot be detected or diagnosed at early stages. This is just as well, because most early cancers resolve spontaneously; they disappear or return to a normal state. Perhaps we should have a distinct name for these early and usually harmless cancers – “proto-cancers” perhaps.

Proto-cancers develop through a series of stages into life-threatening cancers. At each stage, the character of the disease changes. The purpose, and perhaps the nature, of dietary interventions may change with it.

Origins of Cancer

What characterizes these proto-cancers is that one or more cells develop an abnormal state of gene expression that I’ll call the cancer phenotype.

What causes a cell to develop the cancer phenotype? I believe the most common are:

  1. Infections, especially viral infections (since viruses are good at modifying gene expression).
  2. Toxins, especially DNA-modifying toxins such as those generated by peroxidation of polyunsaturated fats.
  3. Malnutrition, especially nutrient deficiencies that impair the ability to maintain epigenetic regulation of DNA.

The Wikipedia page “Infectious Causes of Cancer” says that 18% of human cancers are known to have infectious causes, but I suspect the fraction will get much larger. Read through our story of XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome (“Retroviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Aug 24, 2010) for an example of how difficult it is to identify the viruses that cause cancers. In this instance, a new human retrovirus may (it is still disputed) have been discovered because men with genetic impairments to anti-viral immunity have much higher rates of prostate cancer, and scientists searched prostate tumors of men with this genetic impairment for viruses. If finding the cancer-causing virus is so difficult when we know it is present in the tested tissue, you can easily imagine how many other viruses may have escaped scientific notice.

Interventions to prevent the original causes of cancer are great for cancer prevention, but they may also be therapeutic. Removing cancer-causing viruses may enable the body to defeat a cancer it otherwise could not.

Proto-Cancers and the Evolution of Cancer Cells

The cancer phenotype has various characteristics, but at early stages important characteristics may include:

  • Suppression of mitochondrial activity, especially apoptosis (programmed cell death).
  • Metabolic changes toward metabolism of glucose and away from metabolism of fatty acids or ketones.
  • Isolation of the cell from the rest of the body. Normal human cells closely coordinate their activities with the rest of the body, especially with neighboring cells, and respond to hormonal and other signals. Cancer cells tend to be more “individualistic,” less responsive to the body and to their neighbors.

Every once in a while one of these cells with a cancer phenotype will divide, creating two daughter cells. Perhaps in part because after metabolic impairment the cell has difficulty providing sufficient ATP to handle the complex motor tasks involved in cell division, these cancer cells often fail to divide properly, resulting in daughter cells with altered genetic state. Common changes include:

  • Aneuploidy. Most genes have two copies, one inherited from the mother and one from the father. In cell division, genes are first duplicated, and then divided among two daughter cells, so that each cell gets two copies. In aneuploidy, chromosomes are improperly separated so that one cell gets three copies of a chromosomal strand, the other one. Genes on that strand then become expressed 1.5-fold in the cell with three copies, half-fold in the cell with one copy.
  • Translocations. Chromosomes have a certain gene order. However, they can be re-assembled in an improper order, with one segment translocated to another place. This changes gene expression.
  • Epigenetic modifications. DNA comes with a protein scaffold that packages and organizes it, and can be modified so that gene expression is silenced (via methylation) or enhanced (via acetylation). Epigenetic modifications are usually inherited by daughter cells – but dividing cancer cells may experience less stability in the epigenome.

These changes mean that cell division causes cells with a cancer phenotype to evolve. Let’s say aneuploidy occurs affecting a gene that stimulates cell division. One daughter cell gets 3 copies and becomes more likely to proliferate; the other cell gets only 1 copy and becomes less likely to proliferate. Of course, every time a cell divides it creates two daughters, so a decade later the first cell may have thousands of descendants while the first cell has few. A proliferative phenotype has become more common in the “tumor.”

The Middle Stages of Cancer Development

As a result of cellular evolution, the early cancer phenotype becomes a later cancer phenotype with new traits, such as:

  • A tendency to proliferate. This is the trait people most commonly associate with cancer cells.
  • A tendency to stay alive indefinitely. Some cancer cells become “immortal.” For instance, HeLa cells are immortal cells taken from the cervical cancer of Henrietta Lacks, who died in 1951. So resistant to death were these cells, they were the first human cells ever to survive in vitro.

Both traits are promoted by infections. Viruses and other germs want to stay alive, and to do that they need to keep their host cell alive, since cell death typically kills any germs in the cell (thus programmed cell death is a major part of human immune defense). Viruses also want to replicate, and to do that they often piggyback on human DNA replication. So viruses have evolved ways to promote proliferation and immortality of host cells. Cancers caused by viruses, therefore, often have a head start on acquiring these traits. Cancers that appear at young ages are probably almost always viral in origin.

Once these traits are acquired, the cancer cells proliferate and form a tiny tumor. These micro-tumors can reach a size of about 0.5 mm in diameter. At that point, growth stalls for lack of oxygen and nutrients. Cells inside the tumor cannot get enough resources to continue their growth.

Often this is the end of the cancer; it never develops beyond this point. It’s been estimated that most adults have thousands of these microtumors, and most never go on to develop clinical cancer. It is generally impossible to diagnose the presence of these microtumors.

However, cells in the microtumor are still evolving. Cells, when nutrients are available, divide, and one daughter cell survives to divide again while another cell in the tumor dies to make room. There is a “survival of the fittest” contest in which cells become more adapted to the environment of the tumor.

Progression to Diagnosable Disease

At some point, one or more cells may gain the ability to manipulate neighboring cells to their own benefit. This is a crucial stage in the development of cancer: when the cancer phenotype extends to give the tumor new abilities to exploit its human host. A key capability is:

  • the ability to induce the formation of blood vessels. This process is called angiogenesis.

This process involves manipulation of the immune system, which is responsible for wound healing as well as defense against foreign bodies. Angiogenesis is part of the normal wound healing process, and when it becomes angiogenic, a tumor (in the famous phrase of Hal Dvorak) becomes a “wound that never heals.” That is, it acts like a wound to call forth the blood vessel generation process, but it never allows the wound healing process to terminate.

Once cancer cells can call forth new blood vessels from surrounding tissue, they have access to all the body’s nutrient and oxygen resources. There is no longer any limit to the tumor’s growth. This evolution of an angiogenic capability could be said to create the disease of cancer.

One of the interesting findings of recent research is that foods can significantly influence the likelihood that tumors will develop an angiogenic capability. A number of plant compounds from foods such as garlic, tomato, green tea, and turmeric have been shown to inhibit angiogenesis. If you read the excellent book Anti-Cancer by David Servan-Schreiber, you’ll find that these anti-angiogenic foods form the essence of his dietary advice.

Once tumors can induce angiogenesis, they can grow quite large. But even large single tumors are usually not deadly.

Progression to Deadly Disease

Cancers become deadly when another change evolves:

  • Some cancer cells become metastatic.

Metastatic cells migrate away from the tumor, interact with non-cancer cells, and may travel through the blood to distant sites where they establish new tumors. When cancer metastasizes, many tumors can develop and the cancer can become a devastating drain on the host.

Immune Suppression and Co-Infections

Other new cancer capabilities may also evolve. For instance:

  • Suppression of anti-cancer immunity.

When the immune system successfully attacks and destroys cancers, it is usually through an innate immune response involving natural killer cells and macrophages. Interestingly, this is also the same immune response which defends against fungal infections.

One of the interesting aspects of the evolution of cancer cells is that they often end up with many genes silenced, such that they lose many distinctively “human” genes and probably come to resemble our primitive evolutionary ancestors. In other words, cancer cells evolve to look more like fungal cells, so that a tumor may biologically resemble a mold colony.

Suppose cancer cells evolve a capability to suppress the NK cell and macrophage immune response. Then the tumor will flourish more readily – but so also will fungal infections.

It happens that late-stage cancer patients commonly develop systemic fungal infections.

It also works the other way: fungi that have evolved into obligate parasites of human hosts, like Candida, are good at suppressing human anti-fungal immunity. In doing so they also suppress human anti-cancer immunity. Thus, fungal infections are a risk factor for cancer. I saw a study recently in which a large fraction of people treated for systemic fungal infections were diagnosed with cancer in the following five years.

There is evidence that fungal infections of cancer cells increase the rate of metastasis. So the combination of cancer and fungal infections may be particularly deadly. This suggests that cancer patients might benefit from anti-fungal therapies.

There may be great variability in human immunity against cancer. Biologist Zheng Cui has found such variability in mice, and estimates that 10-15% of humans may be highly resistant to cancer. It is likely that diet can modulate this resistance, which suggests looking for dietary tactics that promote anti-cancer immunity.

Cachexia and Anorexia

Cachexia is the wasting syndrome that afflicts late-stage cancer patients. The tumors become a large drain on resources, their nutrient consumption is not met by diet, and the rest of the body is cannibalized in order to provide resources to the tumors. Muscle and other tissue wastes away until they can no longer sustain life.

Cachexia is often what kills cancer patients.

Now, if the cancer patient could eat sufficient food, even very large tumor burdens might be tolerable. Olympic swimmers eat 12,000 calories a day; pregnant women support 8 pound growths in their abdomen without risk.

Unfortunately, cancer also tends to diminish appetite. One of the consequences of cancer’s interactions with the immune system is that late-stage cancer generates a lot of inflammatory cytokines which can be imported into the brain where they affect the food regulatory systems that Stephan Guyenet has written about, causing anorexia.

Cancer-related anorexia makes food distasteful and causes cancer patients to cease eating. Lindsay mentioned her partner’s anorexia as one of the problems she hoped I could help her address.

Exercise and dietary strategies that promote muscle and tissue growth (“anabolic” strategies) such as those employed by bodybuilders and strength athletes might increase appetite, protect tissue, and delay the negative effects of cachexia. They might also have an anti-cancer effect by depriving the cancer of resources.

Interaction with Chemotherapies

Yet another complexity is that the standard therapies for cancer involve poisoning the body with chemotoxins.

This raises a conundrum. A healthy diet makes the body, and all its cells including cancer cells, more resilient to toxins. So a healthy diet may undermine the effectiveness of chemotherapies.

Some diet-chemotherapy interactions are well documented. Supplementation of vitamin C, glutathione, and omega-3 fats are all known to protect cancer cells against chemotherapies.

If beneficial foods reduce the effectiveness of chemotherapy, it might also be the case that toxic foods could increase their effectiveness. Thus, the optimal diet during chemotherapy might be quite different from the optimal diet when off chemotherapy.

I will not say much about these interactions, other than to advise that before undergoing chemotherapy cancer patients discuss their diet and supplement regimen with the oncologist.

Summary: Our Path to an Anti-Cancer Diet

So, we’ve identified a number of possible levers for attacking cancer. We can look for dietary steps to:

1)      Defeat viral or other infections that originally caused the cancer.

2)      Remove toxins and improve nutrition in order to promote DNA and epigenome stability.

3)      Deprive cancer cells of their favored glycolytic metabolic pathways, slowing their growth.

4)      Restore mitochondrial function, promoting apoptosis (programmed cell death) of cancer cells.

5)      Inhibit angiogenesis.

6)      Inhibit metastasis.

7)      Promote anti-cancer and anti-fungal immunity.

8)      Mitigate anorexia and cachexia.

Those who are trying to prevent cancer will want to focus on (1)-(5); those with early stage cancers on (1)-(7); those with late stage cancers on (1)-(8).

Our mission: understand how diet and nutrition can affect each of these; and then try to integrate various dietary tactics into an optimal anti-cancer strategy.

Conclusion

I think this gives us plenty to work on. Next week, I’ll provide short provisional answers. Over the next year, I’ll examine each type of cancer-diet interaction in detail and see if we can refine and improve our anti-cancer strategy.

Sarah Atshan’s Lovely Food

Posted by on September 11, 2011 42 comments

On Facebook, Sarah Atshan has put up photos of meals that helped her lose 120 lbs.

Her food is Perfect Health Diet compatible and awesomely healthy!

I was going to link to her photos yesterday, but Sarah deserves a post to herself. All photos are © Sarah Atshan 2011.

Keftah (middle Eastern meatballs) with raw onion in hummus and veggies.

Beef and broccoli over rice, with some kimchi.

“So simple yet so yummy”: Hainanese chicken rice. Poached stewing hen from Polyface farm (stuffed and cooked with aromatics), plus rice cooked in chicken fat and chicken broth from the poaching, plus caramelized onion and chicken skin. Mix and serve with a chili, garlic, ginger, and lime sauce.

Korean bibimbap is a great way to dispose of leftovers. This began with leftover vegetables: Daikon radish, broccoli, carrot, button mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, green onion, and cilantro. Standard ingredients: onion, garlic, ginger, and Serrano peppers added to beef, rice, and a raw egg yolk.

Korean seafood stew: Fish and shrimp cooked in homemade seafood broth, with rice, green onion, garlic, jalapeno, cilantro, onion, carrot, bok choy, shiitake mushroom, ginger and Chinese broccoli (gai lan).

Korean style Shepherd’s Pie:

Mash made with Japanese sweet potatoes, Yukon gold potatoes, and egg yolks.

Mince made with grass fed beef, mushrooms, onions, garlic, ginger, kimchi, and Korean seasonings.

Vegetables: wilted pea shoot, carrot, and daikon radish salad.

“Mex-a-bap”: Korean bibimbap with Mexican ingredients. Grassfed Mexican seasoned beef with onions and mushrooms, rice, garlicky guacamole, and green mango salsa (tomato was not in season yet).

Steamed shellfish with grass fed butter, lemon, crystal hot sauce, old bay seasoning, homemade cocktail sauce (tomato paste, fish sauce, and horseradish), served with oven roasted potatoes.

Middle Eastern cabbage stuffed with grass fed beef and beef heart, garlic, green pepper, onion, rice, and spices. Cooked in chicken stock.

Salad: tomato, bell pepper, and dandelion greens with lemon juice.

Yogurt sauce: raw milk yogurt, hot pepper, lemon and garlic.

Beef with lots of garlic, onion, Serrano pepper, mushrooms, green onion, and Sarah’s special sauce, served with carrot and kale, and rice cooked in homemade chicken stock.

Thai coconut milk soup with fish, veggies, and eggs. Serve with rice.

Thai green coconut milk curry with beef. Potato, kale, yellow squash, carrot, green onion, basil, Thai basil, cilantro, and garlic scapes; grass-fed beef, and homemade stock.

The green curry paste was home made: jalapeno, poblano chili, Serrano chili, New Mexico green chili, Thai green chili, lemongrass, galangal, lime leaves, cilantro root, basil, red onion, garlic, ginger, fermented shrimp paste, white pepper, coriander, cardamom, and cumin.

Thai green papaya salad.

Salmon cakes made with basil, mint, carrot, cucumber, onion, lime, garlic, lettuce, ginger, jalapeno, pepper, and tomato. Salad is dressed in a homemade spicy coconut lime dressing and topped with nuts.

Beef pho with beef tendon and rice noodles, garnished after cooking with Thai basil, carrots, cilantro, Thai chilies, lime, daikon radish, and vinegar-ed onions.


Vietnamese garlic and ginger beef stew with beef tendon, daikon radish and carrot salad, rice, and homemade turnip kimchi, topped with raw yolk. Mix and eat.

Vietnamese steak salad made with grass fed sirloin, baby chard, romaine lettuce, carrots, daikon radish, vinegared red onions, cilantro, and pickled jalapenos. With coconut milk rice and a hard-boiled duck egg.

Conclusion

Sarah’s food is super-healthy, super-appetizing – and perfect for those who want to lose weight.

Sarah, it’s great being Facebook friends and all, but how do we wrangle an invitation to dinner?

Around the Web; 9/11 Remembrance and Brain Injury Recovery Edition

Posted by on September 10, 2011 17 comments

As we approach the 10th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, it may be worth remembering that of the 2,998 killed in New York City, 403 were first responders, including 343 firefighters and 60 police. One was a priest. It is in the nature of life that those who risk themselves for others, who give and love the most, often suffer the most. Let us honor their generosity and their spirit.

[1] Interesting posts this week: Mark Sisson has an interesting discussion of GERD / acid reflux. We’ll have a few posts coming up on acid reflux as well – at least one by me, and several by a guest blogger who some of you know as “Valtsu.”

Alcohol was part of the Paleolithic diet: Drunk Swedish elk found in apple tree near Gothenburg.

Apropos recent discussions of the influence of food reward on addictive eating, Paul Whiteley points to research suggesting that drugs of abuse exploit the same pathways as our natural hunger for salt.

Newell Wright explains why Gary Taubes has much to be proud of.

Beth Mazur explains why she eats moderate carbs for weight loss; and proclaims herself 95% compliant with the Perfect Health Diet.

Beth’s not the only one: Chowstalker is evolving toward the PHD. Patty writes, “since loosening up a bit with the “safe starches”, my energy level has been higher and my weight is inching down a bit.”

I liked Cate Shanahan’s Deep Nutrition a lot, but its argument that pre-natal maternal nutrition has a big impact on children’s looks is controversial. For some, Deep Nutrition is a horror book:

ok, so deep nut is now giving me nightmares. i woke up from one this morning in which my second born was super ugly and i was ashamed to take him in public. every time i did, all these ugly grown ups with patchy hair and skin infections and missing limbs would coo over him in grguly voices and tell me that he reminded them of themselves when they were babies.

Melissa McEwen observes that Paleolithic moms were often well nourished, and yet “Paleolithic people have traits … many of us no longer consider beautiful … such as brow ridges.” Hey – are you calling my Neanderthal ancestors ugly?

Elsewhere, Melissa reports that postpartum depression was “quite rare” in traditional societies. Alas, depression is quite common in New York City, and Melissa is leaving. She has our best wishes; may this move be a step forward, in all respects.

Bix at Fanatic Cook explains why ibuprofen can cause osteoporosis.

John Durant says that bears can teach us which foods are healthy: they eat the fat and abandon the nitrogen rich testicles. Bad news for Aaron Blaisdell?

I didn’t listen to all of Richard Nikoley’s b____t videos, but according to the transcript, he predicted that dogs fed a vegan diet would eat their owner. Life mimics art.

When I saw Emily Deans writing about “the MTHFR enzyme,” I wondered if she had freed her animal. But no, it turns out she’s only explaining how homocysteine promotes anger. Earlier, Emily averred – rightly – that “all that is psychologic is biologic,” and explored links between depression and serum cholesterol.

Lucas Tafur notes that a fruitarian was able to develop extreme nutrient deficiencies after only a 1 week fast.

Barry Sears calls meditation “push-ups for the brain.”

A possible key to fat loss: Be in a socially engaging environment. If you can’t manage that, include running wheels in your cage.

Cracked.com has a cartoon showing “How Stress is Killing You.”

Finally, be sure to correct your chocolate deficiency: “The highest levels of chocolate consumption were associated with a 37% reduction in cardiovascular disease and a 29% reduction in stroke.”

[2] Music to read by: The Copenhagen Philharmonic flash mobs Copenhagen Central Station to play Ravel’s Bolero.

[3] Cute animal photo:

[4] The vagaries of academic research: Most people think medical research should focus on understanding disease causes and finding cures. However, this is slow and difficult – an inefficient way to obtain money or advance a scientific career. Actual research often proceeds along different lines.

It is easier to induce pathologies than to cure them, so an effective strategy for developing a “therapy” that provides symptomatic relief is to induce a new pathology whose symptoms are the opposite of the symptoms of the old pathology. The new-pathology symptoms are dubbed “side effects,” which are an accepted feature of modern medicine. Xkcd mocks this kind of approach:

Other times, research proceeds busily in a hopeless direction. For instance, genes are densely networked, and so no one gene has a big effect; observed effects may be mostly noise. Seth Roberts argues that reported gene-environment interactions may all be invalid.

Even when research is potentially productive, there is a temptation to do shoddy work – to publish an interesting result, without double-checking or triple-checking it to see if it will disappear; or even to do careless work, so that interesting results will be more likely to appear by chance. Researchers who work this way often produce unreproducible data. Via Marginal Revolution, solid evidence that over half of biomedical research studies are irreproducible:

Bayer halts nearly two-thirds of its target-validation projects because in-house experimental findings fail to match up with published literature claims, finds a first-of-a-kind analysis on data irreproducibility.

An unspoken industry rule alleges that at least 50% of published studies from academic laboratories cannot be repeated in an industrial setting, wrote venture capitalist Bruce Booth in a recent blog post. A first-of-a-kind analysis of Bayer’s internal efforts to validate ‘new drug target’ claims now not only supports this view but suggests that 50% may be an underestimate; the company’s in-house experimental data do not match literature claims in 65% of target-validation projects, leading to project discontinuation.

[5] I demand clinical trials!: Dr. Kurt Harris says there are “cases where even Paul Jaminet could customize your diet down to the molecule and you would still get fat”.  Maybe so, but I suspect a well-fed human body is very resilient.

[6] Taubes v Guyenet … Kozinski v Chin?: Two prominent federal judges have taken opposing stands on how to lose weight. Alex Kozinski, Chief Justice of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, advises: “Few carbs, less sugar.” Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Denny Chin once advised “Run more, eat less.”

Judging by their pictures, Kozinski is the better judge – of weight loss methods!

[7] Good cause of the week: Deacon Patrick of Mind Your Head Co-op is recovering from brain injury, and has been having good results on our version of the ketogenic diet:

The results are amazing. The more ketogenic my diet, the better my brain capacity, cognitive energy, energy stability, longevity, and the better I feel.

In an email to me he wrote with an expression of thanks and a request for help:

Thank you for the gift of better brain function you have given me! A few months ago I switched to ketogenic diet, and now a completely Paleo diet based in large part on your Perfect Health Diet — the differences I’ve experienced are amazing.

I am currently section running the Colorado Trail to raise awareness for brain injury (which I have) and to help spread the word of the iPad/iPhone donation program of Mind Your Head Co-op which I founded and run — which donates used iPads and iPhones to soldiers and civilians with brain injury.

Would you please help spread the word about the iPad/iPhone donation as well as my run? Here are a few links:

iPad/iPhone donation.

My most recent adventure.

All Colorado Trail Posts.

The Press Release and Pack.

With Abandon,

Patrick

Please consider donating your used iPad or iPhone to Patrick’s effort to help the brain injured. If you don’t have a used iPad or iPhone, donations of money would also be appreciated.

[8] Not the weekly video: Todd Hargrove introduces us to a film introducing the Feldenkrais method from practitioner Irene Gutteridge. Meet Baby Liv, Feldenkrais instructor:

[9] Shou-Ching’s Photo-Art:

[10] Weekly video:  Via Joshua Newman comes a great story about a brain-damaged man who hoped to be a mechanic, but settled for becoming a writer. His cherished hope is to see his stories made into movies. He succeeded in persuading one enterprising film maker to do a short film – about him. Enjoy:

Jeffery and the Dinosaurs from Yasmeen Ismail on Vimeo.

Odds and Ends: Q&A Page, Food Plate, Etc.

Posted by on September 8, 2011 43 comments

I am having to devote some time to other work so I will skip the usual science blogging this week in favor of a few administrative matters.

[1] Q&A Page: I’ve put up a page where readers can leave personal health questions. I will try to answer questions on this page, even though the answer will often have to be, “I don’t know.”

There are several advantages to collecting questions and answers on a single page:

  • It makes it easier for readers to find questions that may be similar to their own, and to search past answers.
  • It makes it easier for knowledgeable readers to contribute and improve upon my answers. We have doctors, scientists, and experienced patients among our readership, and their collective wisdom far exceeds my own.
  • It establishes a permanent record of information, so that knowledge we generate in this community is not lost or forgotten.

With the creation of this page, I will no longer answer emails with personal health questions. I think it is more valuable to ask and answer questions publicly.

[2] Second Draft of the PHD Food Plate: On the “The Diet” page, you can see our new draft of the Perfect Health Diet food plate. We are grateful to all readers who gave us so many excellent comments on the first draft. The current version is much improved, thanks to all of you.

[3] Allan Balliett has Grass-Fed Beef: PHD reader and commenter Allan Balliett is a farmer and producer of grass-finished beef in Shepardstown, West Virginia. He distributes his beef in the Washington DC area, and would like to reach out to PHD readers. (In fact, he is delivering beef in the DC area this Saturday, and has 80 pounds still available.) If you’re in DC and would like to buy some locally produced grass-finished beef, consider giving Allan a try.

[4] Our Talk in York, Maine: Shou-Ching and I will speak to the Locavore Dinner, hosted by Denny and Aimee Perrin at the Wrap-Around Cottage, 254 Cider Hill Road, York, Maine, on Saturday September 17. Contact information may be found here. A pot-luck dinner starts at 5 pm; bring “a dish to share consisting of locally-sourced ingredients of animal and/or vegetable origins.” After dinner, I’ll give a talk describing our diet and the logic behind it.