The goal - "Gesundheit"

What is the formula for impeccable health?

Like many other things, the answer is: It depends. But discrepancies are not as big as people think.

I observe it everywhere.

People succumb to a less-than-optimal health because of habits they won’t give up and the typical human laziness in the wrong timing.

Dr. Richard Bandler, of NLP fame, told a story in one of his seminars about Virginia Satir, a renown family therapist and a mentor, posing the question:

What is the strongest urge of people?

Hint: It’s not survival. Nope.

It is keeping their habits.

We are creatures of habits, because we save brain energy that way (which is why it is clever to instill the right habits, and make good things habitual).

This is the reason why people would step into their grave, with a cigarette in their mouth and cancer in their lungs. Their choice. Or is it a choice? I think so.

Low Carb? - Case History

Everything was fine and dandy until around the beginning of 2008, when things started heading south, so to speak. Until then, we had some habits, crazy when compared to my lifestyle of today, to have a nice Saturday night movie on the projector, and a bottle of beverage, Coca Cola or Pepsi, and a family pizza, of which we ate at least ⅔ and left the rest for the coming Sunday. On a normal evening, a dinner could be spaghetti with egg, salami and whatever was in the fridge - tomatoes, champignons etc.

It was a time of a “well-balanced”, well-meant, carb-laden diet, with all the common stuff, and ample amounts of beer, wine and alcoholic cocktails, like White Russian, Tiger Milk, and so on - LOTS of sugar.

Having good nutrition until then - meaning, by conventional terms - had thrown me into a similar turmoil as many have experienced, even sworn sportsmen, including the prominent Dr. Peter Attia, with whom I cannot compare myself, but merely draw similar conclusions - the conventional wisdom regarding “well-balanced nutrition” is completely flawed.

Just this piece: “a balanced nutrition” - How balanced? With what? Gasoline?? A balance between cinnamon buns and lettuce? Think again.

Please note: it is not helpful either to have “ecologic” written all over your sugar and additive laden ketchup because it still contains all the wrong stuff anyway.

So, I started feeling really sleepy after having eaten. My father had told me many years ago that he could remember feeling that something wasn’t right by this sleepiness after food intake.

I had always had the idea that I was as healthy as a bear, which I was (probably both, healthy and “bear”-ish), but In some way, my body “failed” me and succumbed to having a flawed genetic heritage.

Further, pop-culture and “common wisdom” are even designed that way, killing us softly, over a longer period of time, making us dependent on medical treatment (read: pills and medicines) that will finish the job of killing us. It will just cost more money, feed the giants Big Farma and Big Food, and render us poor, stupid and enslaved to a system that exploits our human flaws without really helping.

The food we are indoctrinated to eat is one culprit. It is full of obvious toxins and perhaps even more hidden toxins. The water is polluted and deranged and we are cheated by our taste buds to be drawn to things that, given too much of, at the wrong timing and the wrong life style, make us fat, sick, and stupid. And poor. By design

Stress, caused by bad sleeping habits (including in the wrong timing, less than necessary, shift working etc), psychological (this one should be very obvious) and physical activity (over-training, wrong timing, too little recover time etc) has a very big role in this turmoil, leading to chronic disease.

Epigenetics is the term for the adjustment of gene expression to boundary conditions. So, every human being is born with his/her own epigenetic expression of chronic illness, that will invariably start taking place in one's life, when lifestyle, diet, sleep and other boundary conditions have worn out the robustness we are born with. It starts commonly at the age of 35-40, but could be even sooner, when you’re on the worse side of the spectrum, and have mistreated yourself more (according to your own epigenetic expression).

The first signs of having an adverse epigenetic decline in health may be lack of energy, getting lazy, getting stressed, the immune system is not working optimally (your getting cold, the flu, even cancer), you may become chubby around your belly (if your hormonal expression is more masculine) or around your thighs (if you are more feminine), wrinkled skin, grey hair, or loosing hair, etc.

Hormesis vs

Being religious about… EVERYTHING

The Psychology of being painfully obsessed with one strategy.

I’ve gotten it once or twice. From my loved ones, too. Recently from my brother, who wrote something about my obsession (tried to offend me, probably).

Well then - which one of my obsessions?…

Having aspirations to become, to be, a great guy, I admit I have a tendency of getting a little religious about (read: keen on, persistent) some things in my life, which I personally take as a good thing, but it seems to drive some people nuts. They cannot understand why anyone would invest in something they wouldn’t, or be the dabbler that they tend to be.

To those people:

Please try to grasp. I don’t have your brain, I don't think like you.

And most likely, I wouldn’t come thus far with your equipment. If we were clones, I’d grant you some slack, but that’s not the case, thank diversity.

But hey, it’s always worth a try to name someone “obsessive” for the negative connotation, when it is actually a simple desire to stay on track.

People (including me) are dabblers, at least a bit. Humans are creative, lazy, ignorant and have varying patience and ability to delay gratification. Hence many can’t, or won’t, stay on track. They attempt taking shortcuts, quick-fix, a pill, or quit when facing challenges and/or plateaus.

Some gurus (especially self-appointed) preach of adhering to the 80/20 rule, as in: being on track most of the time, and allow cheating yourself for any given reason during the rest of the 100%, be it significant par of the remining time or not (sometimes it could actually become 20% good work and 80% fooling themselves...).

The point is:

When something is sustainable and reasonable (to YOU), it is somewhat easier to stay on your path, and you can be more or less motivated as well. there is no point in cheating sometimes (as in the cheating 20%, that may as well become 50%, or most of the time, with the right excuse system).

Some people may call you obsessive but they do not (or cannot, or will not) see the world through your eyes. You may think for example that if you cheat, you will suffer and/or die, which is enough a reason to keep going even when going gets tough.

Perhaps you just try something for the sports of occupying yourself, and may choose to follow a regime, or not, to your wish. Which is a legitimate choice.

I stumbled upon this when I tried to figure out a certain training regime.

In the past, whenever the training regime was too tough or too boring or unsustainable, I could excuse myself from not adhering to it. Then it became moderate enough to just tell myself, “hey, no big deal.. Just do it”, since it only takes 20-30 mins max, and the leverage was continuity. And I enjoyed having some carb back-loading in the evening and relief from the bad conscience.

Doing my 100 push-ups a day and marinating with some handstand training every day made it even more easy to skip training or a short HIIT (High-Intensity-Interval-Training) session when I REALLY feel like crap. But since it is a reasonable regime, it almost never happens that I get away with excuses.

A few of my own obsessions

But in the past, I did have some obsessions, which I overcame since they failed me, hurt me, or failed the scrutiny of reasoning. Here are some examples you may or may not relate to.

The gym - too much lifting, to high intensity at a too high frequency gives you muscle ache and/or muscle or tendon issues (like bursitis for too much lifting)

heavy cream - too much of this fat laden cream with all this lactose was too awesome for my body to resist and then I saw some chubby tendencies again).
lots of meat - I started off my path of low-carb by maximizing meat (and diary and salami as well), explaining to myself that with this food, it’s fine to eat as much as you want, which was correct, to a point. But then again, when you eat too much and your body is thrifty, and hold on to stuff easily (like my explorer type body), you get chubby.
lots of fat - especially the kind of fat that is not the best, like pork fat (from normal pigs = lots of grains and bad fat composition) or simply overdoing it, with the added benefit of a thrifty body - if you’re like me (born with a thrifty genotype, like the ayurvedic kapha body type) this will make you chubby. Love handles, somewhat higher cholesterol numbers
lots of butter - this was a similar experience like the pork/cow/sheep fat overload, but I went through it during a longer period and didn’t overdo it as much.
Again, it’s my "thrifty genes" that just had to hold on to the calories, even when fat adapted metabolism was well ingrained. It could have been too little training (i wasn’t doing any HIIT then, for example)
lots of fasting - when fasting intermittently has gone overboard.
I did 2-3-4 days a week for weeks and then, prior to a doctor check, I was surprised to see my testosterone level quite low, and a plethora of high cortisol phenomena (stressed body, anyone?), including cold hands and diminished resistance to cold weather, which had NEVER been an issue otherwise.

Hormesis

A little of something destructive or toxic in a low dose can build robustness in the body

Doing the same thing (i.e. ignoring hormetic effect) is a biggie.

A big deal to me, that is.

Agreed, some people have no issues with changing their traditions, rituals and habits.

Most people, however, are (to a varying degree) slaves to their habits, rituals and routines, like one specific person who is very dear to me, who has failed to recognize that routines have failed him, and still he continues to reduce himself to this routine/ritual cage, which ultimately entails suffering and boredom, rather than the path to wellness, and that is just sad.

It was a big revelation when I finally connected the dots into a fine and very clear line: If you don’t bitch-slap your body from time to time, nature makes the assumption that everything is cool, nice and stable and gets complacent, too comfortable and lazy. So kicking yourself out of anything, throwing some junk into your throat at certain times (needs to be neatly choreographed with your training and /or anything else significant to have the best effect, like carb backloading after training), and even training itself is like that, as well as the slight, controlled “poisoning” in our bodies, caused by many plant compounds, i.e. lectines, antioxidants, etc.

Everything “good”, routinely done (many at least), has to be broken once in a while in order to become effective again. Many processes in the body should “get shaken” sometimes so you become robust and your body gets to fight something, and win (!), so you get stronger. Training works like that, herbal and medical compounds work like that, marvelously even, and hence the phrase “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.

And your brain gets younger and more agile with the right stimulation - this is also a hormetic effect. Heard of neuro-plasticity? Children learn more quickly and readily too, if they try new things and are open and curious.

And you can do it too. At any age.

Moreover, it makes your brain younger. Yes it goes both ways.

You can adhere to your routines and habits, and never let anything disturb your day and your life, and one beautiful/rainy day (of trying to keep all your rituals in place) you may discover - by yourself, or perhaps reality has thrown a wrench into your machinery, so to speak - so you just cannot keep doing what you used to be doing. But now you are jaded, with a brain that has become a one-trick pony, an old dog that cannot learn anything, least of all - new tricks. Now, your pretty brain has forgotten everything other than the freakish routines of yours.

So once in a while, just get out of your way and change stuff.