Yearly Archives: 2011 - Page 4

Jay Wright’s Weight Loss Journey

Posted by on December 1, 2011 133 comments

Jay Wright, who comments as “Jaybird,” has had a remarkably successful weight loss story. He adopted our diet in March at a weight of 250 pounds, and reached his normal weight of 170 pounds at Halloween, seven and a half months later.

I met Jay at Wise Traditions in November and can attest that he is now a handsome, slender man.

Jay’s weight loss was remarkably consistent at about 2.5 pounds per week. He agreed to describe his weight loss journey in a guest post; my questions are in italic, Jay wrote everything else. Welcome, Jay! – Paul

I would like to thank Dr. Paul Jaminet and Dr. Shou-Ching Jaminet for writing a great diet book and website!  You have been instrumental in helping me achieve the long elusive goal of great health and weight. For me, this truly is the Perfect Health Diet!

Before PHD

Paul: Jay, what do you think caused your overweight condition in the first place?

1. Ignorance and confusion. I believe I would have eaten the PHD way and remained at a healthy weight if I was taught to eat this way from the beginning. Instead, the government promotes the anti-saturated fat, pro-seed “vegetable” oil, and whole grains food pyramid. The belief formed from trusting the experts is a lot to overcome. I remember a decade ago during the Atkins’ hype that I thought that he must be crazy to recommend such a dangerous diet that would go against the “entire” medical establishment.  Then, even after I stopped believing the Lipid Hypothesis, I was still confused by all of the rest of the diet claims out there. While I was uncertain, I thought I might as well enjoy a “normal” diet until I can figure it all out.

2. Eating Habits. Besides the high carbs, food toxins, and malnourishment of the food pyramid diet, a few other factors may have affected my eating habits. I was a normal weight child growing up and I could eat anything and everything in sight and not get even pudgy in the slightest. When all foods have the same effect – none – you don’t worry about whether the food is healthy. Also, I spent my childhood playing one sport after another which might have actually worsened my eating habits. At least here with Texas football, we were constantly encouraged to stuff ourselves and put on more weight.  When sports ended for me after college, normal amounts of food looked like a starvation diet on a plate!

3. Carelessness toward health.  Was I careless because I was told “healthy” meant a yucky salad and “unhealthy” meant a yummy steak?  A young boy always chooses the steak especially when I was constantly hungry from 3 hour practices!  This all started to change after my dad was diagnosed with heart disease and started eating a “healthy” low-fat diet. However, the real wake-up call came when my mother was diagnosed and eventually died of breast cancer! To fight the cancer, she put up a courageous fight by being the most dedicated eater of an “alkalizing” vegetarian diet ever! Yet, even though I began to care more about health, I continued to allow myself to eat anything while I learned more and took breaks from trying different diets.

4. Lack of exercise because of a bad back.  I have had a herniated disc in my lower back for about 10 years now. When I changed careers and became even more sedentary, my back problem only worsened from bad posture while sitting. I should have at least continued to walk short amounts, but at the end of the day, I didn’t even feel like tolerating even a little pain after dealing with it so much during the day. The recliner offered relief.

5. Convenience.  As a single guy, I relied on eating out for convenience over the years and pre-made frozen dinners when I ate at home mostly. Starting a diet always meant making big changes to my routine and giving up a lot of time to cook.

6. Diets were Too Low in Food Reward.  Looking back, all the diets I tried were much lower in food reward than the “regular” American diet with lots of sweets that kept calling to me! All of the previous diets required a Herculean will power just to fight the temptations. It was mental torture being on a diet!

Paul: Jay, what were your experiences on the various diets you tried – and what caused you to give them up?

Here is my weight history:

After college sports, I struggled with my weight. I was a yo-yo dieter – I could lose weight but it always ended up even higher. I tried meal shake replacements, frozen dinners to limit calories, no meat/meat, no dairy/dairy, acid/alkaline, exercise/no exercise while dieting, no cash or credit cards in my wallet going to work so I wouldn’t stop at a fast food, punishment where I had to eat a raw tomato if I cheat (I hate raw tomatoes), and many other vegetarian leaning and mental tricks.  A pattern emerged with these diets.  I would starve with low energy for about a week or two until my will power ran out. Then, I would go eat something “bad.”  If I continued to repeat the pattern and managed to be “successful,” I stayed hungry even once I reached my goal weight.  I tried to transition to a “regular” amount of food to stop starving and just maintain but to no avail.  My weight went right back up even higher than before even without cheating on the diets.

Paleo was finally the exception to the starving rule, but only at first.  I felt great on a very low carb paleo for a couple of months.  I ate a pound of meat a day and mostly vegetables with a little fruit and nuts and a lot of coconut oil. The extra fat and meat seemed to enable me to lose weight and not be hungry. I lost nearly 40 lbs and halfway to my goal.  However, I started to not feel so well and hunger was returning, too. I had headaches and energy fluctuated throughout the day. I never liked the taste of vegetables and I began dreading the need to eat more vegetables than I had ever cared to eat in my life. Also, the sugar cravings never stopped just like on the vegetarian diets. Eventually, will power ran out eventually on paleo just like on the other diets.

Here’s what I looked like at 250 pounds. I’m the one on the left in the gray shirt; the one on the right is my brother Craig Wright:

I knew I had better find an answer when my family and friends would laugh each time I declared, “Diet starts tomorrow!”

Paul: Jay, it’s very interesting that on pre-Paleo diets you were always hungry, and when you ate to satisfy your hunger, your weight returned to as high or higher than when you began. That’s consistent with the set-point theory of obesity: your set-point hadn’t changed, and so when you reduced weight below the set-point, you got hungry; when you ate to satisfy your appetite, you were obese. The Paleo experience could also be said to be consistent with the set-point theory: it reduced the set-point so you lost 40 pounds without hunger, but weight was still above normal and hunger returned as your weight got below the new set-point.

An interesting data point, which I see as a challenge for the setpoint theory because it suggests an alternative view, is that on VLC Paleo your hunger returned at the same time you began to feel unwell. This suggests that hunger and setpoint are really an index of health, and when the body is not being properly maintained the brain manufactures hunger. When nutrients are abundant and the body has all it needs to establish good health, the setpoint is reduced to normal weight, hunger disappears, and weight loss resumes.

Perfect Health Diet

Paul: Jay, what was your experience on PHD? I’m especially interested in whether you experienced plateaus where weight loss stalled, and whether you experienced hunger as on other diets.

I recorded my weight every day from April 15 through November, and enough days in March and early April to give a clear picture. Here is what happened:

As you can see, there was no stall in weight loss until I hit my target weight of 170 pounds.

Here’s my after photo, again with my brother Craig. This time Craig is on the left in black, I’m on the right in green:

Interestingly Craig has eaten pretty much the same foods as I have throughout life, and always maintained a normal weight. On my recommendation he adopted PHD soon after I did, and he also experienced health improvements – psoriasis, which he’s had for 20 years and used to leave red scales over much of his body, is nearly gone.

Hunger

I followed the PHD weight loss protocols and felt virtually no hunger throughout the 7 months. Intermittent fasting with one meal a day worked best for my schedule; I coconut oil fasted earlier in the day and 1 day per week.  After the first month, I coconut oil fasted for an entire week since I figured I should clean out my system. Then I dropped the calories to only 1200 to get some faster results early on to help my back. I thought I would readjust the calories up or the eating schedule according to my hunger, but I did not experience any hunger and had great energy so I left the plan alone. What little hunger I did experience was very mild and just meant it was time to drink another bottle of water or swig a tablespoon of coconut oil before the evening dinner. Interestingly, I ate some birthday cakes toward the end and experienced stronger and more uncomfortable hunger the following days than the previous months. The lack of hunger was definitely a key to my weight loss success.

Food Reward

For me, PHD is a high food reward diet. It tastes great every meal! Even in the beginning of the diet, I enjoyed the PHD meal just as much mentally as thinking about eating my old food. Later, my taste buds changed and PHD became clearly the more rewarding food. However, at least part of the PHD was bland. The coconut oil provided calories with no taste and helped keep my calories low. Yet, I really believe I would not have lasted on the diet if the food was bland. Having a neutral taste reminds me of the very low carb paleo diet that didn’t allow the safe starches and even small amounts of dairy. The white rice and white potatoes enabled me to eat vegetables regularly by buffering the taste until my taste buds adjusted and I began to like them. Avoiding milk but having small amounts of other dairy also went a long way in the enjoyment of the food and menu options. The safe starches, dairy, and a little bit of fruit also seem to be responsible for satisfying my sweet tooth cravings. I’m not sure if the high food reward PHD would have controlled my calorie intake since I counted calories. Nonetheless, compared to the other past diets I dreaded to eat, I prefer the high food reward of PHD. I use to say, “Why does all of the food that’s good for you taste so bad and all of the food that’s bad for you taste so good?” I don’t say that anymore with PHD.

Plateau

My belief is that total calories do matter. I’ve always been able to lose the fat and get back to my original weight provided that I lower my calories enough to accomplish it. However, my will power usually ran out before I accomplished it many times. The constant hunger and low energy with lower calories exhausted my desire to lose the weight on previous diets. In contrast, I experienced the opposite on PHD. While the PHD food and supplements provided satiety and energy, I controlled my calories by exercising, counting calories, eating only a single meal, and having oil fast days. Even after only a month, I experienced such a surge in energy even on lower calories that I increased my exercise to 2 hours of walking. Having established such a low calorie amount in the beginning with a challenging exercise and eating plan, I simply had to maintain the routine until the goal was reached.

I believe the key was PHD enabled me to maintain low enough calories to not experience a plateau as on other diets.

Set Point

My experience might show some truth to the concept of a set point. For instance, prior to starting PHD my weight stayed consistently within a 5 lb range for about 2 years. During this period I was eating whatever I wanted. My experience on PHD could be construed as the resetting of my set point to my normal weight – 170 lb. I was never hungry on PHD as long as my weight was above 175 lb. I started feeling more hunger once I got close to my normal weight in the 170s.  Unlike previous diets, I was able to eliminate the hunger by eating a little bit more — just upping my calories slightly.

Although other diets could get me to this weight point before, I had to stay in a perpetual starving mode to remain at this level. Unlike on PHD, on other diets adding enough calories to stop hunger always led to a rebound of weight that leveled out at a higher level than before I started.

When I started PHD my intended target weight was 175 pounds. With PHD, I actually continued to lose a little more than the 175 down to 170 without planning on it. Then, my weight slightly increased with obvious cheats like some birthday cake. While eating the normal amount the following days without the cheats, the weight returned to previous levels without an effort to compensate. After the weight loss, my weight has become more stable. The last month I have had several repeating days on the weight scale with the same exact weight number to the tenth of a point. This occurred even though I ate more on a few of the previous days. My weight history shows a stair stepping up higher with each diet attempt until PHD stabilized my weight back to its original healthy level.

Closing Thought

During the middle of my weight loss, I was at a restaurant eating a salad with balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing, 8 oz steak, and a baked potato with butter and sour cream and some water with lemon, but without a dinner roll.  I paused and proclaimed, “I can’t believe I’m eating this and still losing weight! This is the BEST DIET EVER!”

Fermented Mixed Vegetables

Posted by on November 27, 2011 132 comments

We’ve been eating a lot of fermented vegetables lately. We started with kimchi (Homemade Kimchi, Jun 26, 2011), but lately we’ve been fermenting our vegetables in a less spicy style that is normally used for sauerkraut.

“Sauerkraut” means “sour cabbage.” We are not huge cabbage fans, so we often substitute other vegetables. We’ve had good results from Daikon radish, red radish, carrot, celery, and cabbage; the only vegetable we didn’t care for was parsnip.

This is a really simple procedure – mix salt, water, and vegetables with a few spices; leave in a cool, dark sealed container for 7-10 days; eat.

For safety, the key is to give enough time for the water to become acidic. Wikipedia explains the evolution of the bacterial population:

The fermentation process has three phases. In the first phase, anaerobic bacteria such as Klebsiella and Enterobacter lead the fermentation, and begin producing an acidic environment that favours later bacteria. The second phase starts as the acid levels become too high for many bacteria, and Leuconostoc mesenteroides and other Leuconostoc spp. take dominance. In the third phase, various Lactobacillus species, including L. brevis and L. plantarum, ferment any remaining sugars, further lowering the pH. There are unpasteurized sauerkrauts on the market. Properly cured sauerkraut is sufficiently acidic to prevent a favorable environment for the growth of Clostridium botulinum, the toxins of which cause botulism.

Klebsiella and Enterobacter are potentially pathogenic bacteria, but the later Leuconostoc and Lactobacillus species are probiotic. So the more acidic the water, the better the mix of bacteria.

Another good tactic is use predominantly low-calorie vegetables. Keeping sugar levels low will help keep the yeast population down.

First Batch: Daikon radish, celery, carrot

Here were the raw materials for one batch:

We could have cut the white Daikon radish pieces smaller, but this size did fine: by day 7 they were softened all the way through.

Sea salt, ginger, garlic, and peppercorn are seasonings we consider essential; green onion and red pepper have worked for us as well.

You’ll need a large glass or ceramic container that seals. If it is glass, keep it in a dark cabinet while fermenting to avoid light exposure. We like to look at ours in progress, so we bought glass containers.

Fill the glass container about 80% full with diced vegetables, then cover with water so the container is 90% full. Add enough sea salt that the water tastes salty, but not undrinkably so. Also add the other seasonings – ginger, garlic, peppercorn, and any others you choose.

The container will now look like this:

Now it has to be covered with an air-tight seal. We placed plastic wrap over the top, wrapped a rubber band around the jar, and then sealed the lid over the wrap:

After a week it will look like this:

Note how cloudy the water has become.

After a week you should be able to start removing vegetables to eat. Here are some vegetables:

It’s also a good idea to remove the cloudy fluid and drink it. This makes a great “soup” or beverage along with your meal.

As you remove fluid, add water and sea salt to replace what you took. When you run out of vegetables, add a new batch of diced vegetables to the old fluid and let it ferment for a week.

Second Batch: Daikon radish, green onion, and red radish

This first try was so successful we bought a larger glass container and made another batch, this time including red radish. Ingredients:

Here it is ready to go into a dark cabinet for fermentation:

And here it is a week later:

All the red skin pigment has come off the radishes and into the fluid. Here is a bowl of vegetables and fluid:

We’ve been eating two bowls a day, one at dinner and the other at breakfast or lunch.

Other Tips

Try to keep the fermentation jar sterile. We replace the wrap every time we open the container, and keep the lid region dry at all times: if any fluid spills on it as we take vegetables out, we dry the top of the jar with a paper towel. (Bacteria need moisture to thrive.)

If you have concerns about the bacteria on your vegetables, sprinkle salt over them and let them sit for a bit, then rinse the vegetables before dicing them and adding them to the container. This salting will help sterilize the surface a bit.

Conclusion

Even if you don’t like vegetables, you’ll probably like this. Fermented vegetables are surprisingly tasty. Moreover, the fluid is also very tasty. It makes a healthful hydrating beverage, and a great accompaniment to a meal; the acidic fluid helps clear the palate and improve the taste of foods.

We couldn’t be happier with our vegetable fermentation. It makes vegetables taste great, provides us with helpful probiotic flora and lactic acid, and is exceptionally easy to prepare. No cooking necessary!

Around the Web; Home for the Holiday Edition

Posted by on November 26, 2011 23 comments

The last three weeks have been busy with traveling:

We’re delighted to be home.

A few events are upcoming. First, I’ll be recording a video interview with Dr. Mercola on Thursday; I don’t know when the video will go up on the web, but in my experience Dr Mercola doesn’t waste time. Second, Shou-Ching and I will give a casual talk, question-and-answer session, and book signing at Green Meadows Farm in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, on Sunday Dec 4. (We blogged about Diana and Andrew Rodgers and Green Meadows Farm on Oct 25; the farmstand is a great place to buy organic food.)

I have some obligations to fulfill this week to my business consulting clients and to the Ancestral Health Society, but once those are past I will catch up on the Q&A thread. My apologies to those who are waiting for answers; thank you for your patience.

[1] Faces therapy:

Via Govardhan Gerhard Ziegler on Facebook.

[2] Welcome to the blogosphere, Dr. Rosedale!: Dr. Ron Rosedale has added a blog to his site, and continues the “safe starches” debate with a long post, “Is the term ‘safe starches’ an oxymoron?” This was in response to my previous installment in the debate, “Safe Starches Symposium: Dr Ron Rosedale.”

Concerning the safety of glucose, I am going to let Ron have the last word, as it seems we are beginning to repeat ourselves and I am eager to move on to other topics. I don’t find Ron’s arguments persuasive, and I recommend reading Dr. Emily Deans who has boiled the issue down to essentials.

One issue Ron brought up, however, does deserve further discussion: the relation between carbohydrate intake, thyroid hormone levels, and longevity. I’ve touched on this before (Carbohydrates and the Thyroid, Aug 24, 2011; High LDL on Paleo Revisited: Low Carb & the Thyroid, Sep 1, 2011), but it is a fascinating topic, and a good way to begin the important topic of longevity. Ron’s discussion and a post by Ambimorph on PaleoHacks will make excellent starting points.

But that is for the future.

Ron and I were not the only ones having a conversation about carbs and obesity. Gary Taubes has posted a 5-part series on food reward, and Stephan Guyenet replied. The sentences that struck me most strongly were offered by Gary, in this comment:

[A]fter I first went very low carb I added back toasted pumpernickel and other low GI breads to my diet. My problem was postural hypotension and the added carbs took care of that immediately. My weight is stable also. But not with starches; with low GI wheat.

To me this illustrates both the health benefits of modest starch consumption, and how difficult it can be to make sense of arguments against starch.

[3] Music to read by:

[4] Interesting posts:

Russ Farris, author of The Potbelly Syndrome, and an excellent writer working along the same lines as us relating chronic diseases to chronic infections, is coming out with a new book, Falling Apart Syndrome. He has created a web site and is making some appendices available for download. Highly recommended.

Jamie Scott mines the literature on grains, and strikes gold. Jamie goes on to treat WGA.

Chris Masterjohn reports that the lard diet commonly used to indict “high-fat diets” is much higher in omega-6 polyunsaturated fats than previously thought. This is good for me; it makes the data fit my obesity theory better.

Melissa McEwen brainstorms about acid reflux. Emily Deans discusses how stress affects your gut.

Aetiology investigates an “Urgent Warning” from Men’s Health magazine: “Sex with Animals Causes Cancer.”

Richard Fernandez discusses the evolution of cutlery in the West.

Dr Briffa believes that the way to protect yourself against a deadly flu is to catch a mild flu.

Via Seth Roberts, the trouble with lab mice. “We’ve had thousands of mouse studies of tuberculosis, yet not one of them has ever been used to pick a new drug regimen that succeeded in clinical trials. ‘This isn’t just true for TB; it’s true for virtually every disease,’ he tells me.”

Beth Mazur employs Martin Berkhan’s “cheat day” strategies for the holidays.

GettingStronger.org offers the “Hypothalamic Hypothesis of Obesity.” Dan’s Plan notes that eating saturated fat helps weight loss and appetite control.

I am pro-salt, and so is evolutionary selection, but the FDA wants it removed from foods. A new Cochrane review finds no clear benefit from reducing salt, and reports that no long-term studies on the effects of salt intake have yet been performed.

Speaking of governments, the European Union has outlawed claims that water relieves dehydration; this reminds Dr Briffa of an anecdote.

Michael A Smith takes high-intensity training outdoors.

Dennis Mangan argues for exercise as the fountain of youth.

Stargazey discusses mitochondrial dysfunction.

Lucas Tafur discusses how gut bacteria affect ketone production, and the relation between gut bacteria and obesity.

John Hawks reports that ApoE4, the ancestral allele of ApoE, raises Alzheimer’s risk in Europeans but not Africans. There must be a European-specific mutation in another gene which interacts badly with ApoE4.

Deacon Patrick, who we’ve mentioned here before, continues to recover from his brain injury.

FoodSnipps likes our diet: “I like … the Jaminets’ “Perfect Health Diet”. It is about the closest thing to a real paleo diet in my opinion. I have lost about 6 pounds and I feel more alert and rested. The addition of specific starches has ended my stall.” Joanne Nelson of Joanne’s Book Reviews liked our book. SCDKat named us her favorite talk at Wise Traditions. Brian Cormack Carr lists us among his Paleo diet heroes. Kamal Patel offers “The Paleo Guru Guide”.

The Primal Woman has a story of MS remission on Paleo.

[5] Cute animal photo:

From the Black Rhino Range Expansion Project via Gawker.

[6] Modern science: Scientists are supposed to be sophisticated thinkers, but overspecialization, lack of perspective, and the need to pursue funding often lead them astray.

The Scientist reports on a recent paper in Cell Metabolism – a high-impact journal – showing the mechanism by which neuronal starvation leads to food cravings. It turns out that autophagy – the process of “self eating” that cells utilize when resources are scarce – in hypothalamic neurons triggers hunger. When they blocked autophagy, mice ate less and were skinnier:

Kaushik and her colleagues then tested whether blocking autophagy in AgRP neurons would inhibit hunger. Mice lacking the autophagy gene atg7 in their hypothalamic neurons ate less food after fasting, and had higher levels of pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC), another hypothalamic neuron, and the hormone alpha-melanocyte (alpha-MSH), both of which typically suppress hunger and stimulate physical exercise. As a result, the knockout mice were leaner than their wildtype counterparts.

This is important work. What disturbs me is what the authors see as the next step:

[S]aid co-author Rajat Singh of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine[:] “If therapeutic approaches were designed to control or decrease autophagy selectively in AgRP neurons, then these could potentially prevent obesity and diabetes.”

One cause of neuronal starvation is infection by bacteria that steal energy substrates. Autophagy is part of the innate immune defense, and suppressing it will make any neuronal infection worse. Dr. Singh’s proposed therapy might exacerbate the disease.

A ketogenic diet, on the other hand, will avert neuronal starvation without inhibiting autophagy or immunity. There is no sign, however, that the researchers considered testing a ketogenic diet against autophagy-mediated food cravings.

[7] Interesting comments:

  • Tuck, in response to my New York City talk, finds some links between impaired extracellular matrix integrity and disease.
  • Adam and Mario report that H. pylori infection can raise LDL.
  • George Henderson discusses the toxicity of vitamin A combined with alcohol. Don’t drink and cod liver oil!

[8] Vaccines and “The Greater Good”: Wise Traditions 2011 included a showing of the new documentary, “The Greater Good,” by Leslie Manookian. The Greater Good examines the issue of mandatory childhood vaccination, and makes a case against laws mandating early vaccination and in support of more thorough study of the risks and benefits of vaccination.

The movie has won many prizes at film festivals, and Shou-Ching and I watched it together last night. It is excellent.

Vaccines certainly deliver benefits. However, any immunogenic intervention is going to carry risks as well. Also, the benefits may not be as large as most believe. Historically, the great decline in infectious disease rates occurred before vaccines were in wide use.

If vaccination is mandatory, then we have no way of assessing the risks from vaccination. If vaccination is optional, we will have two populations of children – the vaccinated and unvaccinated – and will have the opportunity to carefully assess health outcomes.

Early studies doing just this do not clearly indicate that the benefits of most vaccines outweigh possible harms. A large German study recently found that vaccinated children have fewer of the illnesses that they were vaccinated against, but more of other illnesses, than unvaccinated children. (Source: Schmitz R et al. Vaccination status and health in children and adolescents: findings of the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents (KiGGS). Dtsch Arztebl Int. 2011 Feb;108(7):99-104. http://pmid.us/21412506.)

Here is the trailer:

[9] Shou-Ching’s Photo-Art:

[10] Video of the week: Alexander Tsiaras of Yale Medical School takes us “From Conception to Birth”:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by on November 24, 2011 19 comments

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the United States. It is a day of gratitude, and of fellowship.

Shou-Ching and I have much to be grateful for, but most especially the fellowship on this blog.

Our book, Perfect Health Diet, was released a year ago. Many have found it helpful, as the stories on our Results page indicate. But its success in finding an audience is entirely due to readers who have recommended it to their friends and family.

We are most grateful to all those who have helped to spread the word. We firmly believe that diet, nutrition, and appropriate antimicrobial medicines are the proper path to curing most if not all disease; and that this strategy will work a revolution in medical practice. As authors, our fondest hope is that our ideas will receive a fair hearing; contribute to the triumph of truth; and help bring good health to all. Good health is and should be our birthright!

Special thanks is due to Aaron Blaisdell and the Ancestral Health Society, for organizing the Ancestral Health Symposium and an upcoming journal; Sally Fallon and the Weston A Price Foundation, for inviting Paul to Wise Traditions 2011 (DVD of Paul’s talks available here); to CrossFit NYC, for hosting our recent talk in New York City; and to Dr Mercola, for discussing us in his newsletter and an upcoming video interview.

Above all, we are grateful to our readers, especially those who have made our little community on this blog so pleasant by commenting and sharing your stories. We hope to get caught up answering questions on the Q&A page soon, and ask those who try our suggestions to share their outcomes. Together, with a process of experimental exploration, we can develop knowledge that helps others find perfect health.

Finally, Shou-Ching’s photo art:

Have a very Happy Thanksgiving!