Taking the rest of the day and weekend off and heading out of town, since I'll be turning 51 on Sunday.
Circumstances could be better. The bit of possible food poisoning incident I blogged about the other day appears to have morphed into a full blown head cold, with all the usual symptoms. But that's just the way things roll, sometimes.
Seeya.
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Yesterday I got an interesting email from The Vitamin D Council reporting on a new study that measures the vitamin D levels of the Masai and Hadzabe of Africa.
It seems there's a good amount of epidemiology for vitamin D levels in people with various illness and disease; as well, there's epidemiology for disease incidence by latitude (as surrogate for vitamin D levels), but not really anything measuring the vitamin D levels of a a group of normal people one might expect to have reasonably high levels.
Previously, there was only a 1971 study of 8 sunbathing, white lifeguards who maintained levels in the range of 50-80 ng/ml.
So here's the abstract of the new study:
Dr. John Cannell explains the study thusly:
The Maasai are no longer hunter-gatherers but live, along with their cattle, either a settled or a semi-nomadic lifestyle. They wear sparse clothes, which mainly cover their upper legs and upper body, and attempt to avoid the sun during the hottest part of the day. They eat mainly milk and meat from their cattle, although recently they began to add corn porridge to their diet. Their mean 25(OH) vitamin D level was 48 ng/ml (119 nmol/L) and ranged from 23 to 67 ng/ml.
The Hadzabe are traditional hunter-gatherers. Their diet consists of meat, occasional fish, honey, fruits, and tubers. They have no personal possessions. They wear fewer clothes than the Maasai in that the men often wear nothing above the waist. Like the Maasai, they avoid the sun during the hottest part of the day. Their mean 25(OH)D was 44 ng/ml and ranged from 28 to 68 ng/ml.
It was also reported in the study that all subjects had black skin types that require the most sun to produce robust vitamin D.
So I guess if you unpack all of that, a 25(OH)-vitamin D level of 50 ng/ml that the Vitamin D Council has recommended is right about in the sweet spot.
But there's a few other things this suggests to me:
But it seems to me that the latter situation is the far riskier one: a darker skin person at higher latitudes, such as northern Europe, Northern areas of the US, and Canada. The white skin person can always avoid over-exposure, use some sunscreen, etc., but the dark skin person suffers a double whammy of having less efficient skin for synthesis, combined with a sun that's only effective in stimulating vitamin D for part of the year (the higher the latitude, the less effective).
How about the health of the Masai, in general? Do I really need to answer that question? I recommend Dr. Stephan Guyenet's series:
That 4th link wasn't actually in the series but deals with the Masai, as well as vitamins A & D, which we now know work in synergy (along with K2). Here's an excerpt:
...However, their colleagues had previously noted marked differences in the infection rate of largely vegetarian African tribes versus their carnivorous counterparts. The following quote from Nutrition and Disease refers to two tribes which, by coincidence, Dr. Weston Price also described in Nutrition and Physical Degeneration:
"The high incidence of bronchitis, pneumonia, tropical ulcers and phthisis among the Kikuyu tribe who live on a diet mainly of cereals as compared with the low incidence of these diseases among their neighbours the Masai who live on meat, milk and raw blood (Orr and Gilks), probably has a similar or related nutritional explanation. The differences in distribution of infective disease found by these workers in the two tribes are most impressive. Thus in the cereal-eating tribe, bronchitis and pneumonia accounted for 31 per cent of all cases of sickness, tropical ulcers for 33 per cent, and phthisis for 6 per cent. The corresponding figures for the meat, milk and raw blood tribe were 4 per cent, 3 per cent and 1 per cent."
So they set out to test the theory under controlled conditions. Their first target: puerperal sepsis. This is an infection of the uterus that occurs after childbirth. They divided 550 women into two groups: one received vitamins A and D during the last month of pregnancy, and the other received nothing. Neither group was given instructions to change diet, and neither group was given vitamins during their hospital stay. The result, quoted from Nutrition and Disease:
"The morbidity rate in the puerperium using the [British Medical Association] standard was 1.1 per cent in the vitamin group and 4.7 in the control group, a difference of 3.6 per cent which is twice the standard error (1.4), and therefore statistically significant."
This experiment didn't differentiate between the effects of vitamin A and D, but it did establish that fat-soluble vitamins are important for resistance to bacterial infection.
So, there appears to be a dietary factor as well, which should make perfect sense, since we evolved over millions of years outdoors, at latitudes appropriate to our skin's ability to produce vitamin D, and we ate real foods—not nutritionally bankrupt serial grains and all the processed crap they make from them now.
Just one more thing. How about cancer? While I looked but could find no references for cancer rates in the Masai, I do have some epidemiology for various cancers by vitamin D levels as well as latitude.
It's from this very long and complex presentation: Dose-Response of Vitamin D and a Mechanism for Prevention of Cancer (PDF). Cedric F. Garland, Dr.P.H., F.A.C.E., Edward D. Gorham, M.P.H., Ph.D., Sharif B. Mohr, M.P.H., and Frank C. Garland, Ph.D., Department of Family and Preventive Medicine
UCSD School of Medicine and Moores UCSD Cancer Center, December 2, 2008.
This first slide is a plot of renal cancer rates in males (left) and females (right).
What do you make of that? Can anyone think of anything that might explain it better, with less assumptions (Occam's Razor style) than vitamin D?
Dose-response relationships from cohort studies were used to estimate the number and percent of cancer cases that could be prevented worldwide by vitamin D3 supplementation:
Basically, what this estimates is that keeping your level of 25(OH) above 50 ng/ml dramatically reduces your risk of cancer.
And so now, given the above, I see no reason anyone should not be setting about to ensure it. And eat real food while you're at it and better your chances even more.
Here's the list of cohort studies that were used in that last graph:
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Last evening, I went to dinner with Dave Asprey of BulletProofExcec, Grace—AKA Dr. BG—of AnimalPharm, and Patrick, creator of PaleoHacks. Grace's lovely sister and my lovely wife Beatrice were also in attendance. It was at Birk's, in Santa Clara. They have grassfed steaks. Dave knew this, and actually metioned it in the podcast I recorded with him a couple of weeks back—which should come out soon.
And then, that asshole Patrick ordered a dozen oysters on the half shell and being the hog I am, I downed four of them. And within an hour or less, already having ordered and received my grassfed filet, I had them box it for me. I excused myself from the table, went out, found a secluded flower pot, and did exactly what my dogs do when they don't feel quite right.
The difference is, I didn't return to it.
I have no idea what the human reluctance to vomit is all about. When you feel like you need to blow chunks, fucking blow chunks! And guess what? You'll feel immeasurably better almost instantly. Why do you insist on putting your will to not be embarrassed, beyond your physiological nature?
And guess what else? Why not trust your inner animal? It's telling you that something is very fucking wrong. Why try to overcome that physical urge with a potentially lifesaving natural physical response. You can actually die from a bad enough dose of bad shit. Really. It's happened. And for the sake of saving face, you're going to feel like crap for hours, suck it up, and take the risk? Not me.
Flower pot. Yea, there were oyster chunks in that shit.
I got this email earlier that motivated me to this post, and I'd intended on taking a post break for today.
I’m really enjoying your blog and looking forward to your forum starting up. In the meantime, I have a question regarding a recent experience of mine. I was the unfortunate victim of food poisoning earlier this week, and was wondering what I could have done to recover from it. I’m familiar with the BRAT diet, and realize that half of that formula isn’t Paleo friendly. So what kind of diet is recommended for a stomach that’s recovering from some kind of insult? I ended up eating bananas and applesauce, but wondered what else I could have eaten to help me recover.
Here's how I replied:
I do just like a typical animal does, even my dogs. At the slightest hint of a problem, I stop eating until I feel better. You don't eat anything; you rather, divert all resources to healing. Your body already has all it needs. Yes, you may deplete certain nutrients somewhat, but if you eat nutritionally dense you'll quickly fill them again when you are hungry and feel good, at which point you eat.
Once again, it's always about "what do I eat": to cleanse, to lose weight, to recover from illness.
How about: Try Nothing.
I hadn't eaten much yesterday and after that experience, had no desire of food until about 11AM. Anticipating this, I had set my filet out all morning to get up to room temp. I fired and basted two sunny eggs in butter, set them aside and re-seared my $32 untouched filet in the same butter. It was all awesome.
...The coolest place I ever emptied a stomach was on the island of Diego Garcia in the dead middle of the Indian Ocean—about 2 deg south of the equator, if I recall correctly. We'd been 60 days at sea, we arranged for an officer's kinda dinner ball with gold cummerbunds & all—or crumb catchers, as you prefer—and we went to town.
I think I lost it the most when Erik, a fellow officer friend of mine, got up and toasted to true manly character, defined as whether or not you get out of the shower to pee.
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Among the many hacks we do in this Paleosphere, pushing out crap food in favor of real, nutrient dense food has to be the biggest bang for the buck. As I've blogged before but is hard to overemphasize, nutritional density counts for Big Lots. For review: 4 ounces of liver vs. 5 pounds of mixed fruit. And a loaf of bread vs. an equal caloric intake of beef liver or salmon.
There's really two, maybe three ways to approach this whole deal. As in my post of yesterday regarding the health & longevity spectrum, one approach is to simply eat a good amount of real food, even if unaware of what the bad stuff is. The other, most notably my friend Dr. Kurt Harris' approach, is to be primarily proscriptive; i.e., cut out the neolithic agents of disease (NAD: flour, sugar, vegetable oils). The second approach is obviously superior because it gets you to the first approach anyway, and with more knowledge.
A third approach, however, might be to go with the second, above, but combined with really zeroing in on high nutritional density—focussing on it. This is what I'm gravitating toward. In that endeavor, both Dr. Stephan Guyenet and Ad. (almost doctor) Chris Masterjohn have always been my go-to guys. Over years of reading their stuff, one thing always seems to ring important: nutritional density.
...And it was via both of them that I first became enamored of the nutrient which is the subject of this post. It was June of 2008, when Stephan did his first post on the subject. That led me to Chris Masterjohn's very extensive article on it from February of the same year.
I'm an integrator, a synthesizer...rather than doing anything really original. I hate jigsaw puzzles, but seem to like connecting dots...and all these dots just seemed to fall into place.
At this point, I'm just going to point you to the number of posts I've done on Vitamin K2 that seem to signal that it's somewhat of a "miracle" nutrient. But not really. I don't buy into any of the "superfood" crap, really—unless maybe you're talking beef liver, oysters, mussels, fish roe, etc...and who does that? In point of fact, it's not a miracle at all but rather, something that was relatively plentiful in ancestral diets and is almost absent now—with the possible exception of those of the low-fat paradigm who "cheat" on good cheese.
So rather, let me tell a story.
To preface it, I must mention a dentist of the early 20th century, Weston A. Price, who had a clever idea. Rather than try to find out directly why he had teenager patients with rotted teeth to the tune of 1 in 3, and whom he was fitting for dentures—not to mention the corrective orthodontic work that often needed doing—he set out to find out if there were populations without either of those problems (rotten teeth and crowded teeth).
He found it in spades. You can read all about it for free with lots of photos, courtesy of Project Gutenberg: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, published in 1939, I believe. Over about 10 years in the 1920s and 30s, he and his wife travelled the world to seek out primitive populations that were out of normal contact and trade with the modern world. That is, they lived by their own means. He found what I consider to be three very important things: almost no dental cavities (about 1 tooth in 1,000 vs. 1 in 3 in the modern world), wide dental bridges (no need for "braces"), and near effortless childbirth (wide birth canals in females). To round things out, he came home and used what he found to correct tooth decay in his patients. That is, he got cavities to remineralize.
Now we're talkin' minerals, the unifying, connect-the-dots theme!
It was in the mid and late 90's when I began to have regular appointments with the dentist and his hygienist. They referred me to a periodontist, a surgeon who specializes in gum issues. Seems I had some "deep pockets," as they call them, towards the back of my molars where cleanings could not get to. (I had both corrective orthodontics—"braces"—as a kid, and had my "wisdom" teeth pulled in college—and loved the "percs".)
...Never did I stop to wonder how animals in the wild can possibly manage...without regular brushing, flossing, cleanings and...dental surgery.
Because I was still struggling along in business, several years away from hitting a stride, I just opted for the cleanings every three months over the surgery that would set me back a few thousand. I had no insurance, and wasn't interested in having any of you—or anyone else—pay my way. ...I'm so fucking weird about that shit...
In 2001, with things looking up, I went for the dental surgery—two of them...one side top & bottom, then the other. It helped. While I still had to use the numbing mouthwash before each cleaning, it was more effective in those deep pocket areas that used to catapult me to the ceiling in pain when the hygienist would probe them with her sharp poker. This went on for years. The surgery was like a reset button. OK, now 3 cleanings per year, and while things are back to reasonable, it's still only a progression until such time that surgery is required again. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
And then in 2008 everything changed. I attribute it to both the better Paleo diet, but also the micronutrient; again, the subject of the post.
I initially went with Green Pastures Butter Oil capsules, and that was remarkable. After a couple of rounds, I went on the cheap and got the synthetic drops from Thorne. Didn't notice much difference either way and so later, I began with the K2 Complex from Life Extension Foundation—that I remained on up until a few months ago. The small gel caps were convenient. But the thing is, some of the luster went out of the whole experience. I seemed to still get calculus buildup on my teeth and they felt "rough" in a number of places. It's especially severe on the inside of the lower front teeth. I would at times stick a wooden toothpick through there and important chunks of mineralized deposits would break off.
I still had cleanings; and while things were actually improving rather than getting worse, there was really nothing to write home about. But still, I haven't had a cleaning in at least over a year. It may be approaching 2 years...and the dentist office has stopped calling to schedule.
I was kind of getting to the point of forgetting about the whole problem, comfortable in the knowledge that things weren't optimal, but at least not totally out of hand, as they were before.
But a few months ago, I ordered the original butter oil from Green Pastures—Price's original formulation. I noticed some improvement over the first several days, much like I recall from the beginning. It's in the smoothness of your teeth, particularly upon waking in the morning. And I thought...huh...why not go the distance? So, when my first two bottles ran out and I re-ordered again, this time I also got the fermented cod liver oil caps. Two caps per day of each and the measurable results have been nothing short of phenomenal.
Gobsmacking phenomenal!
But shit-hell all over the place...it goes to all that bullshit on the Internet, does't it? Yea, some berry from the rain forrest that 99% of the evolved people on Planet Earth never ate is some "superfood" you just can't do without. Well, guess what? The nutrient I've been talking about is relatively prevalent in all natural diets—so long as you eat the whole thing. At the equator. At the arctic. At sea level. At 16,000 feet. And everyplace in between. Just eat the whole animal.
...Or, as a modern person like me, find ways to supplement when you aren't regularly chowing down on bone marrow, organs, fish eggs and the like.
So to conclude the story, here I sit, about 10 years after having gum surgery with before and after experiences of several major teeth cleanings per year and I really don't even find a need to brush my teeth. I can literally go days and my teeth remain as though they were pearls in an oyster shell and my tongue is the flesh that explores them. And my gums have not the slightest hint of inflammation, swelling, or anything of the sort. It is remarkable.
Whatever.
Aside from the weight loss via Paleo that got me started on this track in the first place: this, of all things, has been the most remarkably significant and easy to verify aspect of the whole deal. ...And while supplementing vitamin D has also seemed to have a big impact, I don't really have concrete results I can point too. Yea, Beatrice and I rarely, if ever, get sick anymore, and I seem to be able to kill a cold in a day or two by upping the D sups, but it's simply not so much of a concrete and profound result confounded by variables and randomness as has been the K2, given my history of teeth and gum issues.
Update: 2 things. First, someone mentioned in comments about bleeding gums, especially during brushing. Yes, that too. I always used to bleed when brushing and haven't done so a single time in years, now.
Second, someone wanted the product links to what I use. I didn't put them in there originally because I didn't want people to assume I had any affiliate relationship. I don't. I use the capsule form of these: butter oil, and fermented cod liver oil.
Update 2: This just in, a pretty good TEEVEE video on K2, though it doesn't make any distinction between subforms. But listen for the theme, about K2 being the thing that causes calcium to go where it should (bones & teeth) and not where it shouldn't (soft tissues like coronary arteries). Been saying it since 2008.
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Got a comment from longtime reader, commenter and fellow pilot, Bill Strahan.
...Have you considered looking at or writing about why you pursue what you do in regards to diet, exercise, and health?
For me I consider it a triple point optimization: I want to feel great, I want to perform well, and I want to live a long time. If I have any bias amongst the three, it’s for performance. I enjoy competing physically.
So, would you trade performance (let’s lump sports and sex together) for longevity or vice versa? Healthy, active sex life until 78 at which point you drop dead, or sex until 70, and then just kinda hanging around till 85?
There are many points at which all three points benefit from the same choice. Take hydrogenated oil as an example. Eliminating it will result in longer life, better performance, and better health. But what happens when you’ve taken all the low hanging fruit and what’s left is to either just take what you’re getting, or specifically choose options that will favor one value over another.
Obviously you see where my head is these days. I’m your junior by many years at 44, but I do wonder how a triple point optimization like this resonates with you. And if it does, what are your biases?
It's an interesting set of interconnected questions. I don't have any sure answers and even if I did, who's to say my priorities—and hence answers to the questions—don't change over time? I turn 51 on Sunday. My dad turned 74 this last Saturday. ...He's spent the last 10 days doing the painting cost estimate for the new San Francisco 49ers Stadium in Santa Clara, and tells me he probably has another 9 or 10 days to go. He keeps active and working, and he has to meticulously go over complex, large project blueprints and specifications (he can bid painting on any project, no matter size & scope, and has been for 40 years). ...Don't get him started an architects who use boilerplate specs. Especially after a couple of drinks around a campfire...
Considering these questions requires in some sense, at least to me, taking a look back at my ancestry. I had the rare privilege of growing up not only with 4 grandparents alive until well into my 30s, but having all of them living in the same city: Reno, NV. And I even had a great grandmother who didn't die until I was 28! Yea...Depression era...she left home with a guy, and got knocked up young with my grandmother (14 yrs old, if I recall). Of course, in these days today, my great grandfather—whom I never knew—would have been a "molester" felon serving a prison sentence. ...And how might that have effected lives & legacies downstream?
But we're so "progressive."
At any rate, they were all lovers of life...good food, parties—and most were smokers and drinkers. My maternal grandfather and grandmother were avid fishermen, and deer & bird hunters. My childhood focussed substantially on hunting and fishing trips and often, just day trips...like to Pyramid Lake. And we lived right alongside the Truckee River where my grandfather taught me to tie my own flies and then use them to catch fish. I saw him many times catch dozens of trout on a summer afternoon after a long day in his on-site workshop where, as a lifelong artist—but needing to make a living—did most of the hand painted sign work for Reno's most prominent casinos. This was back when all the sign work was done by hand.
With the exception of my paternal grandfather—who used to tell me stories of how they, as German soldiers, would make fun of all the Hail Hitler saluting and genuflecting bullshit they had to do—all the other grandparents and the great grandmother were overweight. Not obese, just standard plump for old people in the 60s, 70s and then 80s.
And all five of them lived into their 80s. And for most, they lived pretty active lives until reasonably near the end. (Side note: one of my dad's grandmothers whom I never met, lived to 96, in Germany). The great grandmother had dementia of a sort not diagnosed, but this happened after she was 80, and she made it to 85.
Not a single one of them darkened the door of a gym their whole lives. Three of them smoked until they died, my paternal grandmother quit early on and my maternal grandfather quit in his mid-60s, but was the first of all of them to die, of leukemia.
And so, what am I to make of all of this?
I'll tell you what, and it's the very most important thing: they all loved good real food. They all knew how to source and prepare their own food, did so daily, and some of them hunted & fished it. I don't have a single recollected image of any of them eating a fast food meal, though I'm sure it happened. Yea, and in particular, my maternal grandmother, she had typical crap in a box around...but they were of a different culture in that, you simply didn't sit down and go through a bag of chips or crackers.
I think that the eating of real quality food is absolutely the most important thing you can do—especially if you eat crap sometimes.
No matter what else you do in terms of indulgences, addictions, or anything else, make sure to get plenty of high quality, nutrient dense food regularly. Then, feel free to up your game, as many of us do around here.
None of this answers Bill's questions, of course, but it does give you something to consider when figuring out that's going to work for you.
For example, what if you just hate everything about the gym? There's nothing you try that you like. Let's say that going to the gym and doing the prescribed intense exercises gives you five extra years of life. But if you hate it, are those estimated extra years worth 40, 50, 60 years in the gym 2-3 times per week...doing something you hate?
That's an analogy for the essence of the tradeoff. It means you have to really think about what your values are and determine a sensible way to pursue them.
In some sense, I just wonder if optimality is rather a fools chase, ending up in diminished returns because you did a lot of stuff you didn't really enjoy, ending up diminishing you're life with not much, little or less to show for it.
But eating a lot of good real food? If you don't want that, then you're dysfunctional and so who cares? But if you do, then the other things might not be so important as you might believe.
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Tipping the scale at about 240 (5'10), at over 33% body fat, I decided to do something about it. This blog is about that continuing journey. Having lost 60 pounds and gained significant strength, I'm revealing my secrets. I'm enthusiastic about helping others achieve real results. The mainstream advice is mostly wrong. One need only take a look around. About Me / Contact Information.
