Happy New Year! 2015 in Review, 2016 in Prospect

Posted by on January 16, 2016 9 comments

A little belatedly, I’d like to offer an end-of-2015 review and 2016 preview, all in one.

Best Blog Posts of 2015

Although we couldn’t blog much in 2015, due to other obligations (Luke, biotech startup, retreat, cookbook, in that order), we did manage 51 blog posts in 2015, almost one per week, and some of them provided important and novel health advice.

Our important science posts of 2015 were:

The best recipe of the year was our baby food:

We put other great recipes in our cookbook, but for now only retreat guests can see them.

We had a minor controversy early in the year when Jimmy Moore, who had come to our retreat as a guest, wrote an article I thought was unfair, and led to this attempt to set the record straight: Jimmy Moore on the Perfect Health Retreat.

We also had some excellent reader reports, including Matt Farina’s Recovery from Hypothyroidism and the autoimmune recovery stories in Happy Thanksgiving! Ebook Sale Continues, and Autoimmune Recovery Stories.

Finally, we posted a number of testimonials from retreat guests, which can be found at Perfect Health Retreat Testimonials. So far we’ve posted testimonials through the October 2014 retreat; but the retreat really became outstanding in 2015, and we have a lot of great video testimonials from the two 2015 retreats that we’ll be putting up this year. Watch for them!

Perfect Health Newsletter

Another big event of 2015 was the launch of our email newsletter. See New: The Perfect Health Newsletter for information. Signing up gives you a free gift ebook, “Seven Tips for a Better Body.” If you want to lose weight or look better, sign up for our newsletter and read the ebook!

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Perfect Health Retreat

In 2015, the Perfect Health Retreat matured into a terrific product. There is nothing else like it. Some recent developments at the retreats:

  • I do pre-retreat health coaching for every guest. For several years now, I’ve been building up a database of natural healing methods for the various health conditions guests have brought to the retreat. This database now has advice for almost 200 health conditions. With every new guest I do further research, and our advice has been getting steadily more effective at improving health. At recent retreats, several people have had rapid recoveries from longstanding debilitating health conditions. That is immensely satisfying.
  • Shou-Ching has developed a terrific meal plan for the retreat. All recipes – over 70 of them – are made available to guests in an online cookbook. The food is delicious and easy to prepare. Guests are amazed how tasty nourishing food can be. The best part: it’s all made with simple recipes requiring no more than 30 minutes of effort at home. If you want to learn to cook for better health, the retreat kitchen is the best classroom you’ll find.
  • We hired a Head of Movement in 2015, Jae Chung, and he has been a revelation. Jae was trained at the Postural Restoration Institute and is an expert in re-training the brain to enable better body positioning, posture, breathing, and movement. Jae does one hour one-on-one assessments with every guest and guests commonly come out raving at how much better they feel and how much more freely they breath and move. When Jae assessed me, I walked and ran more fluidly for days afterward – it was amazing. Jae is supported by a team of terrific trainers and has continued to improve our movement curriculum. We now have four movement sessions per day that teach movement modalities appropriate for that time of day – including a “night movement” session teaching relaxation, stress relief, and preparation for sleep.
  • The science curriculum, consisting of a 1.5-hour lecture per day by me, is really solid now. Science motivates everything we do at the retreat and, surprisingly, about half the guests in recent retreats have named the science classes as their favorite part. A surprising number of people like to hear me talk!
  • 2015 saw us form partnerships with Ubiome for gut microbiome sequencing and AOBiome for Mother Dirt skin microbiome products.
  • The retreat offers many other amenities including a luxurious property with two salt water hot tubs and two heated salt water pools, a magnificent and nearly private beach, great kitchens and modern bedrooms and baths. Several guests have told me that the retreat is the most relaxing vacation they’ve ever had.

The next retreat is April 30 to May 7, 2016. We’re about half booked and taking reservations now. Please join us!

To learn more about the retreat, visit the various web pages under the Perfect Health Retreat tab, starting here. To reserve a room or for more information, please contact Paul Jaminet at paul@perfecthealthretreat.com or Whitney Ross Gray at whitney@perfecthealthretreat.com.

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Perfect Health Diet goes to Europe

I was delighted to speak at the first German Paleo conference in Berlin, PaleoConvention.de. It was a lot of fun! It will be an annual event and I highly recommend keeping an eye out for the 2016 convention.

Another exciting development in 2015: a prestigious German publisher, the Thieme Publishing Group’s Haug imprint, agreed to bring out a German language edition of Perfect Health Diet. It should be out around October. It’s possible I may visit Germany around the time of the launch.

We also have a Hungarian edition, and I was able to meet a number of our Hungarian fans at the Berlin conference. We would love to find publishers in France, Italy, and Spain – if you know one, please encourage them to contact us!

Perfect Health Cookbook

Long-promised, but long-delayed, the cookbook has been a labor of love for us for over three years now, going on four. Why is it taking so long? All the recipes are of our creation and have been cooked and refined many times. If you consider that we cook once per day, and plan to include at least 150 recipes each of which we’ll have cooked at least 3-4 times, you’ll see why it can take 4 years to finish a cookbook.

It is shaping up at last; in fact we made the online cookbook available to retreat guests last year. We plan to finish it this year. Every recipe will not only be fully Perfect Health Diet compliant, it will also be easy and quick to cook (we aim for 30 minutes to make a complete meal), and highly nourishing and healthful. Moreover, the recipes are not so much recipes as templates: we show how to vary ingredients to make very different flavors with the same recipe design and cooking methods. With this technique you can mix and match ingredients, making shopping and cooking easy and stress-free, yet every meal is a delicious novelty.

The Formation of Angiex

I’ve mentioned over the years that Shou-Ching was doing important cancer research that might eventually lead to an effective therapy. She’s been studying a novel approach to treating cancer for 13 years, and by 2015 had developed it about as far as it can go in an academic environment.

It was time to take the next step: form a company, create a therapy, and bring it to clinical trials.

We started working on this last March and incorporated in December. The new company is Angiex Inc, and you’ll see updates about it on this blog from time to time. Wish us well!

Looking Ahead to 2016

The new year is shaping up as a busy one. Our top priorities are raising Luke and curing cancer. After that, we want to continue improving the Perfect Health Retreat, and publish the Perfect Health Cookbook. Blog posts will be our fifth priority – which means there won’t be many long science posts.

Still, we have a huge mass of interesting material ready to be turned into posts, so don’t give up on us.

We are more convinced than ever that a natural lifestyle and a nutritionally optimized, low toxicity diet are the keys to great health and long life. The evidence for natural healing grows stronger every year. We’ll continue to bring you practical advice that will help you and yours achieve a long lifetime of terrific health.

To a happy and healthy 2016! Our best wishes to all our readers.

Christmas Gift Ideas

Posted by on December 17, 2015 7 comments

Still thinking about Christmas gift ideas, for yourself or others? Here are a few ideas.

Perfect Health Retreat

We’ve improved the retreat every time we’ve staged one, and it’s now a very special event. Perfect Health Retreats offer:

  • a relaxing and enjoyable vacation on a magnificent and almost-private beach;
  • a training in how to modify one’s food, lifestyle, and environment in simple ways to achieve a lifetime of great health;
  • one-on-one health coaching with me that has resulted in significant health improvements for many guests.

The food is outstanding, and you’ll learn from Shou-Ching herself how to cook great PHD food in 30 minutes a day or less – plus get online access to our cookbook (still in preparation). You’ll get one-on-one posture and movement coaching from our Head of Movement Jae Chung – his sessions have generated rave reviews from nearly everyone – plus 3 movement classes per day including a nightly course in relaxation and stress relief. My science lectures provide depth of understanding and motivation. Plus, it’s fun.

You don’t have to take my word for the value of retreats. In recent retreats, nearly all the guests have reported that it exceeded their expectations, and half the guests have been sufficiently delighted to provide video testimonials at the end of the retreat. Soon I’ll start sharing videos from the May 2015 guests.

In an ideal world, we would offer the retreats more frequently. The 2015 retreats both sold out two months early, so demand is there. Alas, Shou-Ching and I have taken on another project – curing cancer (more on that later) – which is consuming all our time. Therefore, we’ll only do one retreat in 2016.

The 2016 retreat will be held April 30 to May 7, and we’re taking reservations now. The price is going to increase on January 1, but reservations made by December 31 will receive 2015 prices. Also, room selection is in order of reservation – so if you want to come to a retreat, at lower prices than will be available henceforth, and in the best possible room, please consider making your reservation this month.

To learn more about the retreat, visit the various web pages under the Perfect Health Retreat tab, starting here. To reserve a room or for more information, please contact Paul Jaminet at paul@perfecthealthretreat.com or Whitney Ross Gray at whitney@perfecthealthretreat.com.

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Mother Dirt Skin Probiotics

One of the benefits retreat guests have enjoyed is free samples of AOBiome’s Mother Dirt AO+Mist skin probiotic. I’ve been using it myself since May and have noticed that consistent use leads to a clearer, younger-looking complexion and the virtual elimination of body odor. There is reason to believe that restoring ammonia-oxidizing bacteria to the skin will increase nitric oxide production; nitric oxide is an important vascular regulator that may lower blood pressure and reduce cardiovascular disease risk. Readers have reported significant improvements in odor, general wellness, and the appearance of skin conditions.

Based on this experience, I can heartily recommend AO+Mist skin probiotics. To order, click on the image:

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Ubiome microbiome sequencing

Another benefit retreat guests have enjoyed is UBiome gut microbiome sequencing. UBiome is currently offering a 10% discount on their sequencing kits: visit here for details.

Thrive Market

Thrive Market is a 2015 startup offering natural, organic (ancestral) foods and products at wholesale prices, delivered to your door. Their description: “Think Costco meets Whole Foods, online.”

They are specifically targeting the Paleo community and several Paleo leaders (not us) were early investors. PHD readers are likely to find worthwhile items. Click the image to check them out:

Our Recommendations Pages

We recommend a number of products we’ve found helpful, and many of the products on the following pages could make great gifts:

Or, just shop Amazon from this search box:


New Books

A number of our favorite ancestral community members came out with books this year. These came to our attention in a positive way:

I’m sure there were many other great books this year by ancestral authors. If you found something to recommend, please let us know in a comment.

Merry Christmas to all of our readers!

Happy Thanksgiving! Ebook Sale Continues, and Autoimmune Recovery Stories

Posted by on November 25, 2015 25 comments

The Perfect Health Diet ebook sale continues! Although the PaleoDork book event is over, Scriber liked your response so much that they’ve decided to contine to sell the Perfect Health Diet Kindle edition for $2.99 for another two weeks. Thank you, Scribner!

Unfortunately this is only valid for North American buyers, but if you’re in the UK, Australia, or elsewhere, simply change your Amazon address to a US location and you’ll be able to buy the US edition for $2.99. It’s almost identical save for the units (English, not SI).

We have much to be grateful for this Thanksgiving, not least the fact that readers continue to heal themselves on our diet. It’s always nice to hear a success story. Here are a few recent messages.

First, Dave has recovered from Behçet’s Disease and some other ailments:

Hi Paul

I started on a Paleo style diet as I wanted to ease my problems with Behçet’s Disease. I probably suffered for 28 of my 52 years with this auto-immune disorder and in the last 5 years it was hell on earth. I followed all the diet guidelines from my doctor and the health professionals and none of it worked. I took drugs until I almost rattled; no real help.

I went on Google to see if a different diet could help me. After a month of near 24/7 research I found many references to Paleo so decided I should try. At first it was only 80% Paleo as I made the adjustments. I reached almost 100% but allowed myself the odd day off (Birthday’s etc) to preserve my sanity. I read Mark Sisson’s book Primal Blueprint and that allowed me to change the diet slightly. I read books by Loren Cordain, Robb Wolf to name but a few.

I then found your book and was so pleased to read about safe starches. That was the hardest thing for me to deal with. I have an Indian/Indonesian heritage so white basmati rice was my favourite with the curries I ate. I have also come to love cream again, full fat organic which tastes wonderful. I was already a big fan of coconut oil and milk, I have about two tablespoons of virgin cold pressed coconut oil each day.

The difference? I was not trying to lose weight but I lost 16 kg in 4 months. My only exercise was steady walking which I built up form 1-1.5 miles to 8-9 miles per day. My blood levels were perfect whereas before they were all over the place. The change in blood work only took a month and my doctor was so shocked she ordered another full test. The next results were the same but she refused to believe me when I told her of my dietary change. When she still refused to believe me, I changed doctor!

The joint pain in my shoulders and neck has gone totally, my wrists were really painful and they are normal. I just have a bit of tendonitis in my elbows but I am working on strengthening the connective tissue to help that. My skin has cleared, no more folliculitis and just one ulcer in the last 6 months! No more headaches, no more IBS or nausea. No more “brain fog” and just the odd fatigued day.

I sleep like a baby for 8-9 hours, I have plenty of energy and awake each day feeling fresh and raring to go. I am starting to see my abs; something I was known for in my youth. People look at me and say “Wow, what have you been doing?” Many don’t believe me, they say I have the “perfect genes” and “I’m lucky” as it won’t work for everyone! Well my wife joined me and she has lost around 10 kg in weight and she’s not been as strict as me! Our DNA has changed less than 0.25% in hundreds of thousands of years but I am lucky because apparently I have changed my DNA….and so has my wife! Oh, my friend had dangerously high blood pressure so she asked me what I was doing and if it would help her. She looked sceptical at first but then I told her I am living proof. She tried it and lost 14lbs in a month. Her blood pressure is now normal – she is both stunned and overjoyed!

So my heartfelt thanks to you, I wish you and your loved ones health and happiness.

Kind regards,

Dave, Cheltenham UK

Amy has recovered from Common Variable Immune Deficiency (CVID):

Hello Paul,

First I wanted to say, I have been one of your followers for many years. I was on Intravenous immunoglobulin once a month for 6 hours a day. I was still on antibiotics all the time and could not keep healthy, and was unsure I would see my daughter graduate, she is 6. I had given up gluten, but it was not enough for my health, I still felt badly. I started eating for the most part PHD and taking supplements. As of two months ago, my body began making antibodies and I have not been sick since last march and I no longer need IVIG! So thank you so much for all you do. You make a difference.

Amy

An anonymous reader, who also sent us a fine gift of “Hormesis Coffee” (a gourmet roasted coffee), reports recovery from Post Finasteride Syndrome:

Hi Paul,

It has been a while, but I wanted to follow up with you and say thanks! You gave me some guidance (in addition to PHD) over a year ago regarding my recovery from Post Finasteride Syndrome (PFS). I really appreciate(d) the time you took to email me back with supplement recommendations and encouragement. There are many men who still have not recovered from the persistent side effects of Finasteride use. It’s truly sad. I am grateful to God and the nutritional information that I found on the Internet for my healing.

Finally, via Facebook message, K from China is doing better following our advice than he did Walter Willet’s; his blood pressure dropped 30 points in a week:

[First message:] This is the first diet I can do in China! Every diet I have tried had a lot of impossible to procure foods. My wife is Chinese ( I am American) and when she saw the picture of Shou-ching, she was suddenly interested. The fact that Shou-ching is Asian gives this diet some credibility with my wife. Before I had trouble getting her to sign on to my diets. Looking forward to full implementation. So far I have been on it for 3 days, and I feel great. My coworker even said, “man, you look healthy today.” That is before I even told him I was on a diet!

[Five Days later:] I started to follow Walter Willet’s diet about 10 years ago. I gained 75 pounds! He doesn’t allow potatoes! Or for that matter, any of my ancestral foods.

I feel that I was taken in by very bad advice. Especially now that I am struggling with very high blood pressure and other problems.

I had been having extremely high blood pressure until I started PHD, in the range of 170-180/105-116. This is on really strong meds. After being on PHD for a week, my blood pressure has lowered to in the range of 140/90 (still with meds, but I need to connect with my doctor to adjust if necessary). I also lost about 4 lbs.

This may give me a new lease on life! I want to live!

Thanks everyone for giving us so much good news to celebrate! Please have a delightful holiday.

Paleo Dork Kindle Event: Get PHD for $2.99

Posted by on November 22, 2015 1 comment

I’m very excited to be part of the Paleo Dork Kindle Book Sale:

Paleo Kindle Event

The sale starts Monday, Nov 23 sometime between noon and midnight and continues through the end of day Tuesday, Nov 24.

A group of great Paleo books will be $2.99 or less, including Perfect Health Diet. You may never see Perfect Health Diet at a price this low again, so this is the time to snap it up!

Here is the complete roster of books in the sale:

Author Book Title
Chris Kresser The Paleo Cure
Keris Marsden and Matt Whitmore The Paleo Primer
Paul Jaminet Perfect Health Diet
Melissa Joulwan Well Fed
Cate Shanahan Deep Nutrition
Carrie Vitt The Grain-Free Family Table
Caitlin Weeks & Diane Sanfilippo Mediterranean Paleo Cooking
Russ Crandall The Ancestral Table
Sarah Fragoso Everyday Paleo: Thai Cuisine
Bill & Hayley Staley Make It Paleo II
Paleo Parents (Stacy Toth) Eat Like A Dinosaur
Tammy Credicott Paleo Indulgences
Jason Seib The Paleo Coach
Liz Wolfe Eat the Yolks
Kristen Michaelis Beautiful Babies

Please join the event and stock up on these great books!