Category Archives: Gratitude - Page 6

Merry Christmas!

Posted by on December 24, 2010 12 comments

This is what God is like. The Angel had said to the shepherds: “This will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Lk 2:12; cf. 2:16). God’s sign, the sign given to the shepherds and to us, is not an astonishing miracle. God’s sign is his humility. God’s sign is that he makes himself small; he becomes a child; he lets us touch him and he asks for our love. 

—  Pope Benedict XVI, Christmas sermon 2009

A very merry and blessed Christmas to all our readers!

Art de Vany’s New Book and Video

Posted by on December 11, 2010 26 comments

Art de Vany’s long-awaited book, The New Evolution Diet, has finally been released.

For those who don’t know him, Art is an economist, former professional (minor league) baseball player, and early adopter of low-carb Paleo dieting, which he used to help address the diabetes of his first wife and son. He is also a fitness guru, and had one of the first popular Paleo sites. Now 73, he looks fantastic.

I discovered Art in 2005, thanks to a link from Newmark’s Door. At the time I had a chronic illness that had progressed steadily for 13 years and was becoming disabling. I had experimented that year with Chinese herbal medicines and found some dramatic effects, good and bad. This experience had persuaded me that what I ingested could have big effects on my health. I began to try to optimize my diet, and Art persuaded me to give low-carb Paleo a try.

Like the Chinese medicine, Art’s diet (or my implementation of it) had big effects, both good and bad. Our experience with it set my wife and I off on a search for the perfect diet for human health, and resulted 5 years later in our own book.

In the end, my health was repaired, but effecting a cure required significant refinements to the Cordain – de Vany style Paleo diet.  

I owe Art a great debt: without his work I would never have recovered my health. I’m pleased, therefore, to be able to link to his new book, which I intend to read soon. On his web site and DVD, Art has always had many excellent and interesting things to say, especially about fitness and lifestyle. I’ve implemented his “hierarchical sets” method of training in my own exercise routines; and he was the one who got me started on intermittent fasting. His idea that intermittency and variability are needed for optimal health is a seminal contribution which could prove important.

Melissa McEwen has a review with some quotes. Unfortunately, it seems that all of the major weaknesses of the diet which caused trouble for me 5 years ago are still present. Art advises, in my view, insufficient intake of two of the principal calorie sources of actual Paleolithic diets:

  • Safe starches. Starches have been a leading calorie source in the ancestral human diet for two million years; Richard Wrangham credits them with making us human. Yet Art restricts plant foods to vegetables and fruit – as if our ancestors were forest dwellers, like mountain gorillas and chimps, instead of the open woodland and shoreland dwellers they were.
  • Fat, especially saturated and monounsaturated animal fats. Cracked bones and skulls at Paleolithic sites testify to the hunger of our ancestors for marrow and brain. Yet Art advises eating lean muscle tissue.

Perhaps influenced by the lipid hypothesis, Art seems as positive toward industrial canola oil as toward animal fats and egg yolks.

Regarding the diet, I share Melissa’s feelings. It is a good, but flawed, diet. Our book is a much better source of diet advice. Yet I’m sure there will be much that can be learned from Art’s book.

I will always be grateful to Art for introducing me to Paleo eating. I encourage everyone to view Art’s promotional video; it’s a very impressive introduction to a remarkable man.

Christmas Special

Posted by on December 9, 2010 87 comments

I have been a little over-worked and I forgot to put up instructions for bulk orders. Shame on me! I had planned to have it up so that people who wanted to buy multiple copies as Christmas gifts could get discounted prices.

Well, there’s still a few days left to place an order and assure receipt by Christmas. So, I’m offering a Christmas special on bulk orders: $14.99 per book. Minimum order is 5 copies, and it has to go to a single address. Shipping is free to the US and UK, discounted elsewhere.

If you’d like to do this, send me an email with number of copies and your address and phone number. I’ll send you a Paypal money request which you can pay by credit card.

A Few Good Experiences

Every once in a while someone emails or comments lets us know that their health has improved because of our diet, or that they enjoyed the book. We always appreciate hearing these things.

Recently, Claire wrote:

I just received the book today and enjoying the read! I love the combination of easy-to-read plus enough scientific information to help me tailor the diet and supplements to my chronic illness, gastroparesis (started in 2003 – got sick while traveling in Brazil, slowly got worse and diagnosed with gp by breath test in 2009).

My main and most debilitating symptom is vomiting, which for example in the past 2 months has been about 75% of what I eat. In the past 4 days of applying the perfect health diet (avg. 1400 kCal, protein/carb/fat ratios 24%/18%/58%) I have not vomited once ! I realize I need to further optimize my nutrient intake, but I’m already noticing major improvement.

It sounds like Claire acquired a gut infection in Brazil, and fructose makes the germs very happy and her small intestine very unhappy. Our diet cuts down the sugar and replaces it with fat which the germs can’t eat. Starving the pathogens a bit seems to have stabilized her gut; hopefully it will bring her to a full recovery in time. Sometimes solutions are really simple and quick!

Jay wrote to talk about how a ketogenic Paleo diet had helped him run a marathon successfully, but gave him kidney stones – something perhaps our kidney stone post will help him overcome:

I jumped on the paleo diet last April. Moved to more of a Primal diet in June and then PaNu in July. I started experimenting with a Ketogenic diet in August and September. I am a runner. I run half marathons, marathons, and ultra marathons. I started serious training for the Fall season this last Summer. My whole goal with nutrition was to 1) get on a better nutritious diet. 2) Recover quicker, reduce inflammation. 3) train my body to use fats/proteins for energy instead of glycogen so I wouldn’t bonk after a couple of hours of running.

I trained by usually running in the mornings without eating anything prior to running. No matter what the distance. I found that once I was ketogenic, I could run without “hitting the wall”. I think it worked and worked very well. When I finally ran the marathon in October, I carb’d up for 3 days prior to running. I ate lots of carbs and some protein prior to the race. I knocked off an amazing 20 minutes from the previous best time. I didn’t hit any wall, although I had cramps after the race, big time.

But the point, I ate little carbs, was dehydrated a lot because of the heat, probably didn’t eat enough salt, ate a lot of almonds, etc. So based on your blog posts, I now know exactly why I have a kidney stone. Or at least, good reason to suspect….

I am going to eat more carbs and less protein than what I had been doing. We will see if I can clear this up soon.

Thanks for the books and thanks for all the information on your site. I have learned more about nutrition and my body in the last 6 months than I have in my entire life time. I definitely think we need to spread the word about the Perfect Health Diet!

Our Thanks for Your Support

I noticed that Melissa McEwen blogged about the “worst Paleo book ever” and our book came up multiple times in the comments. No, not as a challenger for the worst book!

Thank you so much to everyone who recommends our book. We hate to self-promote, but when others spread the word, we are most grateful. We believe our work can help many to find the great health that everyone deserves, but we know that the only way anyone will discover our book is through your help. So, thank you very much!

Welcome, Healthy Skeptics!

Posted by on September 12, 2010 33 comments

One of my favorite blogs is Chris Kresser’s The Healthy Skeptic, so I was quite pleased a few weeks ago when he somehow discovered our blog and purchased a copy of our e-book. I’m even more pleased to see that he liked it:  He’s written a glowing review.

As Chris mentioned, everyone who buys the e-book will receive a free copy of the completed book, expected to be available in October. Simply email your address to paul@perfecthealthretreat.com and I will see that you receive your free copy as soon as it is available.

As he mentioned, the e-book, which is an early draft, has three sections. The final book will have a fourth, on healing and preventing disease.

The book is the fruit of five years of research and three years of writing. We began studying diet in 2005 in order to learn how to cure our own seemingly incurable chronic diseases. We began writing the book in 2008 partly because of the old axiom – “the best way to learn is to teach”; being forced to sift through the literature carefully would help us refine our ideas – and partly to share what we then knew with friends and family. By 2010 we had actually cured our own diseases, and had gained sufficient confidence in our ideas to bring them before the public. Indeed, we felt an obligation to do so. We know how many people suffer from “incurable” chronic diseases and premature aging. We believe that, with proper diet and appropriate antibiotics, nearly all diseases can be cured, and nearly everyone can become a healthy centenarian.

It will please us greatly if others find our book useful.  Thank you, Chris, for letting your readers know about it!