We finished the manuscript of our new edition last week and Scribner has accepted it. They’re so efficient, it’s already available for purchase on Amazon: Perfect Health Diet: Regain Health and Lose Weight by Eating the Way You Were Meant to Eat
There’s still a bit of work to do – figures, reader stories, and final edits will occupy us through Aug 21 – but the hard work is behind us.
Some have asked whether they should buy the current edition or wait for the new one. The new Scribner edition is the better book: it has everything of value from the original edition, plus new material, and the advice is updated. So if you’re not in a hurry, I suggest waiting. (If you are in a hurry, I suggest buying both!)
We have many people to thank for contributions to the book.
We’re grateful to Mark Sisson for contributing a terrific foreword to the book.
We’re grateful to several scholars for providing data in support of figures in the book:
- Stephan Guyenet provided data for the increasing abundance of omega-6 fats in Americans’ adipose tissue.
- Steve Simpson of the University of Sydney, Australia, provided data relating appetite to protein intake, which helpfully illustrated our “nutrient hunger hypothesis of obesity.”
- Tony Hulbert of the University of Wollongong, Australia, provided us with data relating peroxidation index of mitochondrial membranes to lifespan in mammals and birds, which was helpful to our discussion of the dangers of polyunsaturated fats.
Above all, we’re grateful to all readers who signed permission forms allowing us to use their stories. The reader stories are a powerful and valuable part of the book. Thank you!
I’ll be contacting a few more readers over the next few days asking for permission to use your stories in the book. Please consider giving us your permission. Also – Jay Wright (Jaybird), if you read this, please send me an email.
I will resume blogging, starting with updates to our supplement recommendations, as soon as possible. It’s good to be back!
via this link:
Congrats!
Hope this means it will appear in the ibookstore since it comes through Scribner.
I can answer it myself. It’s there for preorder right now.
Done.
Congratulations guys! I can’t wait to get my hands on it!
Paul you should also update the book regarding how you’re doing with your rosacea. The current book you mentioned it at the beginning but didn’t update on whether the diet has cleared your rosacea at the end of the book. So I’m really curious if it’s worked for you!
Thanks!
Hi Syl,
A rosacea blog series will come, as soon as I have time to collect my thoughts! It’s a complex condition, and it’s not easy to reach solid conclusions about it.
Thanks Paul, can’t wait to see the rosacea blog series 🙂
I would also love to hear your thoughts on rosacea and how big a role nutrition plays. It seems to be one of those topics on which there is too much conflicting information.
So looking forward to your book. Congratulations. Re the protein leverage hypothesis, one of the researchers, David Raubenheimer at my University is part of this team and he did a lecture to our PG nutrition group recently. Very interesting work.
Yes! They were very friendly, a pleasure to correspond with.
I already pre-ordered it!
Me too.
Congrats to both of you! Can’t wait to read it.
congrats! Looking forward to reading the new edition on Kindle and great to see you’ll be blogging again. 🙂
Good Work! I like the cover, not too fussy,
unique
Speaking of the cover what food is that on the fork between the steak and asparagus? 🙂
Sweet potato.
Congratulations! Cant wait to get my hands on it 🙂 Good to see you alive on the blog again …
Congratulations!
I’m looking forward to reading the new book !
Can’t wait for you to resume blogging.
Thank goodness, I’ve been going through terrible PHD blog withdrawal. Welcome back! I’ve already pre-ordered the new edition, to add to my dog-eared first edition… hope it’s a blockbuster.
Great news, congratulations. I will be ordering but why is the Kindle edition more expensive than the hardcover?
I assume you mean why is the Scribner’s Kindle ($12.99) more expensive than the first edition Kindle ($9.99)? Amazon incentivizes self-publishers to list under $10. Scribner has a separate arrangement with them.
The Scribner’s hardcover is $15.42.
No. I live in Australia and the Amazon.com website lists the hardcover as $15.42 and the Kindle edition at $17.98. I have uploaded a screen print: http://imgur.com/7H2hv
I’m hoping this is a mistake by Scribner. Surely they will make more money if I buy the Kindle version as there are no printing costs etc.
Hmm. That’s funny. Well, maybe the prices will change by December.
Adam, the pricing may have something to do with Australia’s ‘dodgy’ local book retailer/publishers protection laws?
But then again, maybe not, the kindle price is cheaper on an Amazon UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk
Always worth checking all the Amazon sites before ordering (taking currency conversion rates in to account)
There are usually two reason Kindle books show up more expensive.
Amazon sells the Kindle 3G with a free data connection that you can use in many countries around the world. But Amazon does not always have a deal with a local carrier. This forces them to pay data roaming charges. To make back that money they jack up the price of all Kindle books sold in the country.
Another thing that can cause kindle books and paper books to have different prices is that in many countries paper books and ebook are subject to different VAT rates.
congratulations!! 😛 😀
Just pre-ordered the book – can’t wait to read it! And am looking forward to resuming my routine of reading your blog 🙂
Regarding the cookbook, if you need someone to test the recipes for you I’d be happy to volunteer.
I’m not a chef but I’m a pretty competent home cook.
Cheers
~JackieVB
Very exciting – congratulations!!! Just pre-ordered a copy and really looking forward to it! May have to get a kindle so I don’t have to wait till December.
Oops! I thought the Kindle version might be available before Dec. My mistake!
Yay!! Cannot wait for it and looking forward to seeing you IRL next week at AHS12!
Congratulations! I will be buying it.
Paul, I have missed your posts very much the
last couple months.
Thanks everyone, it’s great to be in touch with you again!
Congratulations, Paul and Shou-Ching! That must have been a lot of busy days and nights to meet a deadline on such short notice. I’ve referred your book so often to my family and friends that they are starting to get weary of me, I think 🙂
Congrats! Can’t wait to reread it and share with friends.
Congratulations! I have been promising birthday gifts and graduation gifts to my special people, indicating that they will receive their gifts sometime after December. Perhaps sooner now?
Will the photos be in color?
Yesterday I was just noticing all the untouched bottles of homeopathic eye drops that I never use anymore since I’ve increased my safe carbs to PHD levels. This is also true of the lip balm I have been in the habit, for years, of keeping everywhere.
This morning, while exploring an allergic reaction to “bamboo infused” white rice, I stumbled on Bee Wilder’s reference to the “Optimal Diet” in Poland, and came back (as I always do) to PHD site to explore and was delighted to find that you had a blog addressing this very issue. Again, I felt a surge of gratitude for you and Shou-Ching, for your commitment to research and to sharing your findings and personal experiences. In addition, I continue to feel gratitude for the events, even those very sad and personally painful ones, that led me to learn of the conference in Dallas and your talk that day in November.
I refer so many people to your book and website that I have come to carrying small cards with the title, URL, and your names, which I simply hand to folks when the subject comes up.
Thank you again and again, Paul and Shou-Ching.
Hi Dale,
There will be no photos in the new edition — plenty of charts and graphs and some artist’s illustrations, but Scribner thinks photos don’t reproduce well in print.
Thanks for your support! I’m glad you’re doing well!
Good on you.Looking forward to the new book.
Could you make sure to have all the figures in metric units as well Imperial.
Tx, Shelley Wilson, Australia.
Hi Shelley,
Scribner will decide that. I suspect the American edition will be in English units but the foreign editions in metric/SI.
Paul,
I would love a teaser/trailer. Can you share Mark;s forward with us now?
SC
Heh. I’ll blog some of the material from the new edition, like the updated supplement recommendations, because that may impact your health. But since Mark’s foreword only impacts your curiosity, I’ll let you wait!
Congratulations
Hopefully we can get it published in Hebrew this time.
Yes! Did I introduce you to the Scribner foreign rights agent?
Congrats! I’ve one question: you mention Tony Hulbert, who’s one of the founders of the so called “membrane pacemaker hypothesis”, which is primarily based on comparative studies among mammalian species. I don’t think there exists a compelling body of evidence to suggest that this hypothesis is correct. In fact, this study looked at MLSP of 42 mammalian species and failed to show the spectacular association that you’d expect were the theory true.
The same authors carried out an experiment in order to test the hypothesis more rigorously by manipulating the PI in C57BL/6 mice, and it failed… they found nada, niente, nothing.
I don’t know which part of the membrane pacemaker hypothesis you’ve included and what particular evidence you have in support of it, but if it’s merely confined to comparative studies and anecdotal stories on long-living naked mole rats, marine molluscs and bats, you might be barking up the wrong tree.
I think the evidence against excess pufa is strong for other reasons, lifespan extension is not one of them.
Hi Dion,
The Hulbert et al data showing a strong correlation were specifically about mitochondrial membrane PUFA.
The Valencak & Ruf studies seem to use whole-tissue PUFA levels.
Since lipid peroxidation within mitochondria is thought to be the cause of shortened lifespan, there’s no particular reason why PUFA outside mitochondria would be life shortening, so no surprise that they don’t show a correlation.
We support the view that outside mitochondria, the n-3 to n-6 ratio is a major factor in health. We continue to recommend eating salmon or sardines once a week.
We don’t discuss aging and maximal lifespan much — that will be a project for the future. We use Prof Hulbert’s data mainly to show that the effects of lipid peroxidation are biologically significant.
Best, Paul
Hi Dr. Jaminet, thank you for responding.
I want to be clear and state that I’m not opposed to the idea that mitochondrial PI affects lifespan, I just don’t think it’s on shaky ground.
Valencak & Ruf note in one of the caveats at the end of their study:
“As primary sites of ROS generation, mitochondrial membrane fatty acid composition might be of great importance for testing the predictions of the membrane pacemaker hypothesis. Yet, there is evidence available that mitochondrial membrane fatty acid content tightly co-varies with tissue fatty acid composition (reviewed in Hulbert et al. 2007 ), so we are confident that observing mitochondrial membrane composition would not have changed our conclusions.”
What makes you think that the pufa-rich sunflower/salmon oil had zero effect on mitochondrial PI in C57BL/6 mice?
Furthermore, if we’re in agreement that dietary pufa has a direct effect on mitochondrial pufa, the dietary implication of this membrane pacemaker hypothesis should be pufa restriction. I believe the study argues against this idea (in mice, at least). This just sounds like circulus in probando to me, perhaps I’m mistaking.
The crux of dr. Hulbert’s research is on maximum lifespan, so I don’t fully understand what other biologically significant data he has to offer. No need to elaborate on this, because I think you’re already doing a great service for people seeking health-advice.
once again, thanks, Dion
Hi Dion,
Well, if the Hulbert data is entirely worthless and wrong, then it demonstrates nothing and I shouldn’t have included it. I doubt that’s the case however.
If indeed peroxidation index predicts lifespan, then it shows that peroxidation has biological effects, no?
Mitochondrial phospholipid composition is regulated, so it is not likely to vary dramatically except in extreme conditions. Fatty acids undergoing beta oxidation will also contribute, but long omega-3s like DHA and EPA are not disposed of primarily through beta oxidation. So dietary salmon oil isn’t necessarily a major contributor to mitochondrial beta oxidation.
The effect of PUFA on mitochondrial peroxidation depends strongly on whether there is an energy excess or not. ROS is not generated in conditions of caloric deficit, so there will be no peroxidation even if PUFA levels are high. Thus, there are a lot of dietary confounders.
I do think PUFA restriction is a good idea.
I think we can all agree there is a need for more and better data to clarify these issues; and I personally need to explore the aging literature more thoroughly before I can make firm statements. I intend to do so on the blog in the next few years. My own ignorance is why the new edition doesn’t say much about aging.
Best, Paul
I meant: “I just think it’s on shaky ground” 🙄
wonderful!
i felt a bit lost. so many of my bloggers stop writing this summer.
if i can find where i left my Qs & comments, i have some followup (success).
have a great summer,
Great! We’re always pleased to hear of success!
Paul and Shou-Ching
Congratulations!! I will order right away
Peace and success!!
Hi Dr. Jaminet,
Correlation between PI and lifespan among mammals tells us little about causality.
In order to prove that mitochondrial PI has a causal effect on lifespan, you need to isolate independent variables, in other words: manipulate mitochondrial PI in lab animals. A comparative study in a large pool of mammals isolates next to nothing. In science, when you don’t know, you simply don’t know.
If our mitochondrial PI is almost unaffected by diet and is just a fact of life (something I doubt), than what dietary implications are left?
Or do you mean that cardiolipin composition of C57BL/6 mice is unaffected by dietary fat composition, whereas in humans, it does correlate with pufa?
thanks, Dion
Hi Dion,
Correlation is the first step toward understanding causality. If there’s no correlation, there’s probably no causality.
I don’t say mitochondrial PI is unaffected by diet; we know it is affected by calorie restriction or calorie excess, for instance. Just that the mitochondria resist changes in their membranes, so that you can’t make a precise 1-for-1 correspondence between diet (and the tissue abundances which are driven by diet) and mitochondrial membrane PI. It needs direct measurement.
In fact, because it is affected by dietary variables, such as PUFA composition of the diet and whether there is a calorie excess and, indirectly, other factors like carb and protein composition of the diet, it is easy to have poorly controlled experiments find a lack of correlation between lifespan and PUFA intake.
Hi Dr. Jaminet,
Slight correction: it’s a BABY step toward understanding causality, you still have a mountain to climb before jumping to conclusions.
It just strikes me as odd that Valencak & Ruf couldn’t demonstrate any effect whatsoever. I don’t think the study was poorly controlled: they’ve clearly outlined diet composition, although they neglected to measure mito-PI. n-3 and n-6 diets are similar in macrocomposition, the only difference that sticks out was DHA, which (as you probably realize) has a PI 8 times higher than LA.
fish oil supplementation appears to increase mitochondrial DHA
“Feeding the MO diet resulted in increased proportions of palmitic, palmitoleic, eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic acids and decreased proportions of linoleic and arachidonic acids in each of the phospholipids.”
I suspect mitochondrial PI was probably greater in the n-3 group, but without measuring you never know, fair enough.
Congratulations! I’ve pre-ordered and expect that holiday gift buying will just be a question of how many more copies.
Re: supplements
Paul, I have the original book and I’ve pre-ordered the new book, but I was wondering if you could give us a bit of a preview as to whether you’ve changed any of your supplement recommendations? Thanks.
Yes, recommendations have changed, and an overview is coming as soon as I finish my Ancestral Health Symposium obligations.
Danka!
Paul:
Does the new book contain many recipe recommendations. I may be in the minority here, but
I find I have a hard time thinking of meals that
contain the correct ratios of macronutrients.
Once I see a recipe then I can utilize it or substitute similar ingredients to create the same
ratios…Recipes and/or a new book that contains them would be wonderful…Thank You and looking forward to the new book about the come out!!!
Linda
Hi Linda,
I’m afraid the revised edition does not have recipes, but we are working on a cookbook that will be full of them. Also, we’ll find a way to compile our food posts into more useful forms. … Definitely on our to-do list!
Such brilliant news. Well done! Cannot wait to read and share with others. Looking forward to your PHD blog posts – having withdrawal symptoms!!
Hi Paul!
It was nice meeting you at AHS12 (Markus from Sweden), we talked briefly at the poster presentations. The new book looks great and I like the new cover a lot more than the old one. Berries and chocolate ice cream are nice but it might give people a skewed first impression :). Looking forward to upcoming posts!
Take care,
Markus