Introduction

Have been a doctor now for more than 20 years but only in the last 5 weeks, since Sept 2023, I’m actually looking at positive health. This is because science has actually moved beyond what we receive in the GP practise and hospital. GP can only see you for 10 minutes so in that time all he can do is give you a bandage. Also, he does not have time to research all this because he has a lot of other stuff to do and master in curing disease. Further, the government health programs are targeted and funded towards cure but not prevention and positive health. The reasons are complex but I think mainly pharmaceutical companies driven. One of the main things probably to learn is that the two best medicines are food and exercise, and sleep a third. Usually when you have health problems, the problem is not with your body, the problem is what are you putting in your body and what you are doing or not doing to your body to cause these problems.

Your body is beautiful but what we do to it is not beautiful.

The aim is to get people eating and buying healthier so that we can encourage healthy manufacturing, decrease healthcare bills/ This will lead to more money for us to give, not just as a nation, but as a world, for the poor and the starving. For ourselves, the benefit of not eating artificial chemicals.

Apart from that, putting rogue manufacturers that prey on the propensity of mainly the young to grab junk off the shelves because its the cheapest, most colourful and they think they can live forever, but also have student loans, and overall encouraging healthy manufacturing and growing.

The main reason healthy food is so expensive, is because no one buys it. When you go to the Amamzon healthy food is free, I’ve price-checked. Because there is demand, you see?

It’s like my little drop of sunshine in the ocean of plastic, lets say.

Basically, if that makes sense.

Olive Oil

Find an excuse to add olive oil to everything possible and lots of it. It has phytoquinones which are great for your gut microbiome. Americans have 1 litre a year. Spain has 12 litres a year, Italians have 11 L/year, Greeks 24 L/year and Cretans 30 L/year, = 6 tbsp/day!!! and they live the longest. significant proportion of their calorie intake is from it. The good think about healthy oily food is that you feel satisfied and full after eating it and so actually end up eating less, while with processes food because of the hidden sugars and salt your brain unconsciously drives you to eat more and more and you NEVER FEEL SATISFIED!!!

Olive Oil alert (!!!)

Olive oil is generally accepted as the healthiest oil you could possibly drink and it is no surprise that it forms a large part of the caloric intake in the Mediterranean diet. The main reasons are first that the extra virgin variety is unprocessed, and second the high phytoquinone content, which is powerfully antioxidant.

Europe has had a poor olive oil crop leading to rampant growth in the fake “Extra virgin Olive Oil” (henceforth EVO) industry. You may have read of recent arrests where 5000 L of such oil was confiscated.

I recently got through a whole litre of Ocado’s home brand EVO “obtained solely by mechanical means” without getting even a single whiff of olive. I realised that when they wrote “solely mechanical” they meant that literally and that even the olives had been excluded from the production process.

I think common brands like the “Philipo Berio” are likely to be suspect too, but I haven’t tasted it recenty, same with Costco’s Kirkland brand, can’t comment.

Then a friend from Greece brought some home-farmed olive oil with him and I was blown away, I realised I’d forgotten what real olive oil tastes like.

So with the Ocado bottle unfinished, I cracked open my ALDI “P.D.O Terra Di Bari Castel Del Monte” EVO, and I can taste the olives again. Whew!. Its not even that expensive.

Alcohol

ZERO alcohol is the BEST option. 1-2 units (180ml 6 oz of wine) on 3 or 4 days a week which is low intake is possibly harmful and doubtful benefit. Red wine is the most healthy because it has phytoquinones and the skin of the grape is included. But to get the benefits you have to drink so much that its harmful anyway more than useful. Hard liquor has literally zero benefit and only harm. Worst part is going to be effect on cognitive decline and dementia and also cancer risk. If any one has any better info I welcome it, I’m just going off what these guys are saying. Peter Attia, Huberman et al, they all seem quite well-researched.

So is small amounts of red wine good for you? the first thing is that any marginal benefit is outweighed by the harm and second, you can get anti-oxidants in a variety of healthy foods without the associated harm and at higher levels anyway. if you do have it, definitely have it along with the meal, to slow down the absorption, as the French do. The French have relaxed and drawn-out meals stretching over a long time and so the wine is just gently trickled in so its probably not as harmful.

Fermenting

What I learned about fermenting is related to the gut microbiome. Fermentation is the process whereby we enable the naturally occurring yeasts and bacteria to multiply on these vegetables, and these (like lactobacillus) are mainly acid-producing. This is why fermentation is an ancient way of preserving even meats, used by man for thousands of years and so again, evolutionarily our bodies are familiar with these bacteria. When we preserve meats like salami and ham, or cheese (I think even chocolate) it is the overgrowth of these bacilli and the acid environment that they produce that inhibit the growth of the harmful bacteria and this is what preserves it. Thus in fermentation there is no addition of vinegar, only water. If you see vinegar as one of the ingredients in your sauerkraut, it actually kills the good bacteria, so that’s useless. There’s lots to say about the microbiome itself. I haven’t started fermenting, that’s my next project. After sourdough, actually.

So we have only had refrigeration for the past 50 years or so. All preservation prior to that would have been through fermentation process for all of history. The gut microbiome is trillions of bacteria, more than all the stars of all the galaxies in the known universe. We evolved with bacteria, in fact there was never a eukaryotic cell (cell with a nucleus) that was not in a symbiotic relation with bacteria when you consider that the mitochondrium itself, the powerhouse of the cell is a swallowed bacterium originally, and we think so is the nucleus itself. So eukaryotic life was never not in sync with bacterial life and so even today, we have a vital relationship with our resident micro-organisms. It is fascinating that some of these are archaea, which are some the very oldest organisms on the planet, older than dinosaurs, and they are in us. Gut microbacteria ferment fibre are these fermentation products have useful properties for us. Fibre itself is no more than a complex carbohydrate which our own bodies cannot break down (like the cellulose covering of plant cells), but the microbiome can and so it is food for these healthy bacteria. This is probably the main usefulness of fibre. And helping the good bacteria inhibits overgrowth of harmful bacteria. I heard it said that poop is literally 30-40% bacteria! The bacteria in the microbiome interact with our bodies in several other important ways, all of which are occurring subconsciously. They can release substances that make us feel happy and sad and hungry and unwell. They improve our immunity. The gut itself has its own ganglia network, and ganglia are bunches of neurons. Thus the gut at some level is like a brain in itself (the only other place you get neurons outside the brain is paraspinal). I can’t write more about this at present, because I’m not well enough researched.

Examples of fermentation products are sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha (fermented tea), miso, siracha sauce (fermented chillies). Again, be careful of commercial products because they might have live bacteria, depending upon vinegar use and how the are manufactured.

Intermittent Fasting!

The practise of what we call “intermittent” or “interval” fasting is that it was not called anything in our evolutionary history, it was merely a case of eating when food was available. This would imply periods of feast, for example when the men came back from a successful hunt, and periods of fast when they did not- fast and feast. Because all ani mals live like this anyway, and none of them have three and four meals out of the fridge or pantry, our bodies never evolved to eat in that manner which has only become the norm since the onset of civilization, but much more so since the onset of refridgeration only in the last 50 years and the practices of living nuclear families and social eating. Much more acutely since the boom in consumerism and market capitalism eating has even broken through even these 3 0r 4 meal times to now become an all-the-time affair, with office workers eating at the dest on, the go, in the street, on the fly, in the train and so on. Since we’ve we’ve begun to drip feed calories into ourselves our insulin is always pumping in an effort to push the levels of glucose in the blood down. Moreover the widely available types of food are either carbohydrate and sugar based and processed, which means they are likely high glycaemic index (they cause rapid sugar spike in the blood from being very easily and quickly absorbed in to the blood stream). This is because they are either very simple sugars like glucose (monosaccharide) and fructose (a disaccharide), or because they are finely ground made bereft of fiber in their industrial production, aspects which would have otherwise slowed the absorption. Our brains are glucose consuming machines, meanning that the primary fuel for the brain is glucose. As a result of this, the brain is wired to entice the body to obtain sugar and the more it gets the more it wants. It is able to facilitate this through dopamine release which brings the pleasure sensation. What’s more when the glucose stimulus ends, alternative pathways in the brain work to actually depress dopamine levels, which produces the opposite effect os dissatisfaction, was when you have taken your last bite of the chocolate bar, producing the “more-ish” sensation. The use of trans and ohter unhealthy fats leads to unhealthy blood lipid profile, which can cause inflammation in the arteries adn impede blood flow through them includin to the vital organs like the heart and brain and kidneys. The use of chemical preservatives, flavu renhahcers and pesticides/ disinfectants only works to to harm our own gut bacteria which are norally in a symbiotic relationship with us among their other direct harmful effects.

What’s the problem with insulin stimulation? Insulin is a storage hormone and its signal to the body is to store carbohydrates whether in fat on in glygen in muscle and liver. This means that someone who is under cosntatnt insulin never burns fat because they are always in storage mode. OF course apart from the tendency toward obesity the direct effect is to overwork the pancreas and lead to pre-diabetes and diabetes.

There are two recommendations that are given, the first, and probably the one that is best for weight loss is a 16 hour fast with a daily 8 hour eating window. This is easily achieve by skipping breakfast and finishing your dinner early. It is definitely unhealthy to eat within 3- 4 hours of sleepin anyway because this is the time it stakes for gastric emptying and sleepinf before this tim could lead to acitity and reflux, bad sleep due to ongonig digestion plus the fat that our circadian rhythm slows down peristalsis anyway in the evening hours and food remains undigested in the gut. alternatively skip dinner adn eat breakfast, However even a 12 hour eating window is still considered healhty and non-harmful, especially if weight loss is not beign sought. Personally I do a combination of 12 and 16+ hour fasts depending upon my work schedule.

Zone 2 Exercise for Longevity

Zone 2 exercise is not a joke. Zone 2 is when you’re just a bit breathless to the point that you can just about speak, or for eg. when the person at the other end of the phone can tell you are exercising. Biochemically it corresponds to a lactate level of 1.7-1.9, which is the upper end of normal (<2.0).

How much do you need? well this is the part that I thought was not funny: minumum of 3 or 4 days a week at 40 mins a day at zone 2. That’s just a minimum. The aim is to increase what you are able to do at zone 2, that is what you can do without getting “totally winded”.

Why is this good? Well at zone two mitochondria improve their efficiency. One of the marks of aging is that mitochondria, that cell organelle that produces or energy (consuming glucose [as pyruvate] and fat through converting both to Acyl-CoA and sending it through the Kreb’s cycle, the cycle that is atthe heart of life. Here ATP is produced. Pyruvate can also be converted to lactate and in thsi NADP is produced, and this is extra-mitochondrial). White fat which has efficient mitochondria changes into brown fat, which is healthy (I do need to look at this more closely, sorry if I got that wrong). Having cold baths (body submerged upto neck, showers is also said to do this- shower hits the back of you neck and upper back is best, where the fat is stored).

Grains and Bread

Grains and bread really feed the world and sustain the world’s population.

Modern wheat has been developed mainly from the point of view of productivity, right? How to get the biggest most pest and drought resistant heads onto each stalk, so that we are now able to feed the whole world with wheat basically. It was not developed with health benefits in view. Today we still have certain “ancient grains” remaining, though which preserve the wild strains- these rye spelt, einkorn, oats, rye, barley.

this is Wiki “Ancient grains include varieties of wheat: spelt, Khorasan wheat (Kamut), einkorn, and emmer; the grains millet, barley, teff, oats, and sorghum; and the pseudocereals quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat, and chia.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Some authors even consider bulgur and freekeh to be ancient grains,[7] even though they are usually made from ordinary wheat. Modern wheat is a hybrid descendant of three wheat species considered to be ancient grains: spelt, einkorn, and emmer.

Millets
The origin of finger millet (also called ragi) is debated with various proposals placing it in Africa (Abyssinia), or India. Charred grains of cultivated and wild ragi have been found at the Neolithic site Hallur in southern India. Wild ragi (eleusine indica Gaertn) is known only from Songaon and Bhokardan, while the cultivated form appears at Paiyampalli in Tamilnadu, Songaon and later at Bhokardan and Nevasa in Maharashtra.[10]

Cultivation of pearl millet is known from sites with semi-arid climate, occurring at Hallur, Rangpur and Nevasa. Cultivation of pearl millet in modern India (where it is also called bajra) is mostly limited to the country’s semi-arid regions. In Africa evidence has been found dating to the Naghez phase, but it is not known whether these were cultivated. Both wild and cultivated grain impressions were found at Le Baidla I.[10]

Charred grains of Paspalum scrobiculatum (Kodo millet), dating to the Satavahana period, have been found at Nevasa. Sorghum vulgare is known from semi-arid parts of Rajasthan and Maharashtra like Inamgaon, Paunar and Ahar.

Tastes great, man. Toasted and with butter. if you get good organic wholewheat flours I always find the bread is great. Don’t expect it to be fluffy, its more dense like fruit cake-carrot cake consistency, you know. if you bake with industrial flour, you get industrial bread, you know. IF you want it fluffy, then you can mix about 30% white flour.

Or cook sourdough, which it really fluffy and is also supposedly quite healthy, but I can’t tell you why. But with sourdough, I think you have to bake daily, otherwise the starter goes to sleep everytime.