What’s the Ideal BMI?

Posted by on October 23, 2010 39 comments

Winalot asked what I thought was the ideal bodyweight or BMI.  I’m not sure there’s a single ideal – different lifestyles will naturally generate different bodies – but I think we’d all agree that this young lady has a pretty healthy body shape:

You can also see her deadlifting in this video, where they tell us she weighs 98 pounds. If she is 5’0” tall, then her BMI is 19.

One factor to keep in mind is that, as Wikipedia notes, the BMI improperly accounts for height — it scales proportionally to height. So a 6’ person with a BMI of 25 has the same body shape as a 5’ person with a BMI of 21.

I’ve always been slender, but as I’ve improved my diet and nutrition I’ve actually gotten heavier. I now weigh 182 lbs at 6’0”, which translates to a BMI of 24.7.  I used to be 160-165 lbs. I’m still slender and have, if anything, less fat than before, but more muscle and I am convinced my bones are denser. Certainly, my teeth are harder and whiter.

If, as I think, I added 10 pounds or so to my bones through vitamin D, K2, C, and magnesium supplementation, then it’s rather obvious that BMI is not a precise measure of health. A BMI of 25 in a person with little muscle and fragile demineralized bones is overweight; but a BMI of 19, even with a great body shape, might indicate some missing nutritional elements.

If the lady in the video is really only 98 pounds, I would suspect that either she’s shorter than 5’0” or that her bones are not as dense as they should be, and she should supplement D, K2, C and magnesium.

Both Shou-Ching and I are pretty sedentary – we both spend 60 hours per week or more at our computers. We go to the gym twice a week for about 30 minutes, and go for a walk for about 2 hours on weekends, or play tennis. We would love to get outdoors and exercise more, but life is busy for us.

If you eat right and your metabolism is healthy, not a lot of exercise is needed to attain an attractive body shape and move mass from adipose cells into muscle. Even though we’re sedentary, both of us have been getting stronger, and we’ve remained fairly slender.

So: Be sure to eat at least 600 calories per day of carbs+protein, and there should be sufficient protein for muscle synthesis. (At lower carb+protein intakes, more protein may be consumed in gluconeogenesis than is eaten, for a net loss of protein from muscle.) Resistance exercise will help drive muscle development. These steps will allow surplus fat to go into muscles, not belly flab. Then control overall calorie intake, perhaps with intermittent fasting, to keep adipose fat from growing. All this should be natural and easy, if your metabolism has not been damaged in some fashion; and your body should end up with an excellent shape.

Wheat Causes Arthritis and Other Diseases – But Victims Love It

Posted by on October 22, 2010 53 comments

Simona asked about her daughter’s scoliosis, and I advised that she cease eating wheat, since auto-antibodies to wheat are associated with development of scoliosis. In her response she mentioned the difficulty of convincing her family to give up wheat:

I have been trying to convince my husband to avoid wheat and gluten altogether, unsuccessfully, he sees it as extreme and unnecessary caution…. The only thing that could be changed besides introducing liver is eliminating the sourdough bread sandwich for lunch.(and obviously focusing on gluten-free cakes) Easier said than done.

This is the almost universal response:  people love wheat! 

In my first response to Simona I cited a paper that looked at wheat-induced auto-antibodies in rheumatoid arthritis patients. That was an interesting paper in several respects, but one of them was the reaction of the four patients with wheat autoimmunity to the results.

The clinical features of the four cases positive for IgG or IgA anti-tTG were as follows: The first case (female, 63 yrs) positive for IgA anti-tTG antibody suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, type II diabetes mellitus, iron deficiency anemia and gastric indigestion without symptoms of malabsorption. She denied any gluten sensitivity on her diet. Her esophagogastroduodenoscopic biopsy showed mucosal atrophy with no elongated crypts or infiltration of inflammatory cells in the lamina propria. The remaining three cases positive for anti-tTG antibodies had interstitial pneumonia, a herniated lumbar disc, and mild scoliosis, respectively. They all denied any malabsorption symptoms or gluten sensitivity. [1]

These four people were poisoning themselves with wheat; all had indisputable signs of autoimmune damage from wheat; and yet all insisted that they had no sensitivity to wheat.

In the book we mention one reason for this:  wheat proteins digest to opioid peptides which stimulate the same receptors as morphine and heroin. [2,3,4] Wheat is pleasurable to consume and, quite literally, addictive.

Of course, morphine is famously effective at pain relief. It’s possible that wheat has the same effect. That may be another reason that people with painful conditions, like arthritis, feel better when eating wheat, and reject the idea they have wheat sensitivity.

Conclusion

One reason chronic diseases are so rarely cured is that in many cases, essential curative steps make people miserable for a time, while steps that aggravate the disease make people feel better.

This happens in chronic bacterial infections of the brain, where sugary drinks relieve a bacteria-induced cognitive hypoglycemia, making people feel better, but also enable the bacteria to proliferate and worsen the infection.

I was for years a poster child for bad eating:

  • I used to love French bread and, when I was too busy to fix a meal, would eat a whole baguette with cheese.
  • For years I drank a lot of colas because it temporarily made my brain more functional and happier.

Perhaps my purpose in life is well described by this poster:

Maybe my story can help scare your family straight, Simona. I’d hate to think my illness did no good at all!

References

[1] Song KS, Choi JR. Tissue transglutaminase autoantibodies in patients with IgM rheumatoid factors. Yonsei Med J. 2004 Oct 31;45(5):960-2. http://pmid.us/15515214.

[2] Zioudrou C et al. Opioid peptides derived from food proteins: The exorphins. J Biol Chem. 1979 Apr 10;254(7):2446-9. http://pmid.us/372181.

[3] Huebner FR et al. Demonstration of high opioid-like activity in isolated peptides from wheat gluten hydrolysates. Peptides. 1984 Nov-Dec;5(6):1139-47. http://pmid.us/6099562.

[4] Fukudome S, Yoshikawa M. Opioid peptides derived from wheat gluten: their isolation and characterization. FEBS Lett. 1992 Jan 13;296(1):107-11. http://pmid.us/1309704.

Would You Like a Signed Copy?

Posted by on October 21, 2010 13 comments

All babies are beautiful to their parents, and we’re very happy with our proof copy of the book.

Books Will Start Shipping on Monday

We’ll be organizing our shipping instructions this weekend and will start sending books out on Monday. So early buyers can expect to receive their copies in as little as a week.

Signed Copies

When Ladybug asked us for a signed copy, we could hardly say no. Since we’re doing it for one, we thought we’d make the option available to everyone.

We would appreciate it if you give us something in return. If you enjoyed the book and believe it will help readers improve their health, won’t you consider sharing that information with others by leaving a reader review on Amazon.com?

Send me an email (paul@perfecthealthretreat.com) if you would like a signed copy. We have to receive your email by Sunday night. Delivery of signed copies will be delayed by about a week.

Availability from Amazon, Borders, Barnes and Noble, etc.

The book will be available from online outlets. I don’t yet have a date for when that will happen. Until it does, we will continue to sell the book from our web site.

Bulk Discounts

Several people have asked about bulk discounts from the list price of $24.95. We will offer bulk discounted sales from this web site. The price schedule is:

Copies             Price per copy
5-9                  $20.99            
10-14               $18.99            
15-24               $16.99            
25-49               $15.99            
50+                  $14.99            

Shipping will be free to the US, Canada, and probably the UK; discounted to other countries. All shipments must be made to a single address.

E-Books

We will be making a Kindle version and also a few other e-book formats, e.g. for Adobe Reader. I can’t predict when these will be available; I will get them done as soon as possible. The earliest possible availability is probably late November.

The Color Companion

Color printing is exorbitantly expensive, so the book’s pictures had to be printed in grayscale.

Because the food pictures are so much more attractive in color, we’re going to make available a free PDF download – the Perfect Health Diet Color Companion. It will reprint the book images in color, with some brief commentary.

Conclusion

We’re very happy to be getting the book out. I have to say, I spent a few hours this afternoon reading – I opened it in the middle and then couldn’t put it down. I think it’s an entertaining as well as informative book. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed writing it!

For the Love of Tubers

Posted by on October 21, 2010 26 comments

Welcome, Food Renegades!

Kristen Michaelis of the outstanding Food Renegade blog asked me to contribute a guest post. I wrote a defense of the “Paleo” nature of “safe starches” like tubers, roots, and corms, called  “For the Love of Tubers”.  Check it out! Especially if you want to know why I’m posting a picture of a Pandanus tree nut:

Pandanus nut. Source:  Wikimedia commons.

“For the Love of Tubers” will serve as today’s food-and-health post; I’ll also do an administrative post tonight about the book.

If this is your first time here, welcome! We are excited right now because our book, Perfect Health Diet: Four Steps to Renewed Health, Youthful Vitality, and Long Life, is about to come out; the proof copy arrived today, and copies will be shipped to buyers within a week or two.

Our belief is that everyone should and can become a healthy centenarian. Diet and nutrition, with occasional aid from antibiotics, is the key to defeating disease and postponing aging. 

If you have a disease of any kind, look for it in the categories list. I welcome requests for post topics, and am happy to explore the causes and cures of chronic diseases. My wife and I spent years figuring out how to cure our own chronic diseases; now we hope to help others, and in the process help shift medical practice toward natural healing methods based on diet and nutrition.

Welcome and please make yourselves at home!