My Intestinal Saga, Part 4: Gurus and Rotten Meat

Rotting meat in mason jars.

So there I was.  It was late summer 2006.  The sweltering Tucson sun beat down on the city relentlessly.  White tail doves could be heard flapping and cooing on rooftops and power lines, and the cicadas' symphony was in full swing.  I sat inside, bathing in the cool air of the swamp cooler, a plate of raw ground beef sitting in front of me.  I took a bite.  It went down easy.  I took another and my body screamed for more and more -- so I fed it.  I followed the meat with a few spoonfuls of raw, "unheated," honey and some raw butter.  I was satisfied like I hadn't felt in years.  And it was all thanks to a man by the odd name of Aajonus Vonderplanitz and his book, The Recipe For Living Without Disease.  In this book, Vonderplanitz outlined the key to optimal health and vitality through food, and it enthralled me.  Raw meat, unheated honey, raw dairy, raw vegetable juices -- these were the ingredients to becoming well again, and I had no problem eating all I wanted and enjoying the heck out of it.  My family and friends were somewhat worried about me at his point.  Salmonella, E. Coli, and countless other bacteria existed in raw food products -- how would this negatively affect my health, particularly my already stressed out gut?  Surely I would get food poisoning at the very least.  And straight butter?  Heart attack city!  Well, after several weeks of the eating all of the foods suggested by the quirky Aajonus, I was happy to report that I had absolutely no problems.  In fact, I had more energy than I could remember feeling in my whole life.  Then I thought, "Hmm.  I wonder if I could feel even healthier?"

Aajonus Vonderplanitz believed if raw meat was healthy, then rotten or "high" meat is probably even healthier.  The Inuit traditionally enjoyed rotted flesh as part of their diet, and so did many cultures around the world.  I was insanely curious about this.  Would it feel good in my body?  Or would I get really sick?  So I began making "high" meat -- filling mason jars with sliced up beef and airing them out every few days.  Oddly enough, the rotten smell that developed over a few weeks began to please my senses.  It smelled good, it looked good -- I couldn't wait to eat it.  Then the day came when it was ready.  So I took a jar filled with rotting, slimy meat outside, opened it, and reached in for my first taste of this supposed health elixir.  I loved it.  Weird, I know.  It just tasted way good for some reason.  Although the little white beads on the meat that had developed over the weeks somewhat disturbed me.  Were these some kind of worm eggs or something?  Was I ingesting parasites?  Well, even if I was, Mr. Vonderplanitz assured me in his book that they would merely detox my body and consume my unneeded intestinal wastes.  Win-win for me and my little worm buddies.  They get to eat and I get better!  Oh lord, I have done some interesting things in my life, and this one is up there on the list.

Again, much to my surprise, the most shocking thing that happened was -- well, that nothing happened.  I remained healthy and feeling quite good overall on my raw and rotten diet.  After a few months of this "primal diet," I encountered something even more alluring in my continual research: the raw paleo diet.  I joined a forum where there were a handful of folks experimenting with this diet -- consisting of nothing but raw meat and fat -- and experiencing great results.  (Apparently these folks still exist.)  Their stance on eating mostly organ meats made a lot of sense to me, as this was where the most nutrients exist, and if my goal was optimal health, well then I wanted all the nutrients I could get, gosh darn it!  I began the raw paleo diet with enthusiasm, picking up raw liver and raw beef fat from the butcher at a local organic foods store.  Damn, did that stuff taste good to me.  I swear, at the time, the liver tasted like chocolate and the beef fat tasted like ice cream.  Soon I was gorging on kidneys, spleens, tongues, and any other raw offal I could get my grubby little hands on.

Pretty soon I realized that zero-carb, raw paleo was the way to go (naturally, right?).  I felt great -- well, for the most part.  My back pain was pretty much gone at this point, but I seemed to have developed hard stools from the sudden transition to zero carbs + zero fiber.  Not only that, but I began to see fat chunks in my stool, which, at first I thought were gall stones until, ahem, closer inspection.  There also was this "heavy" feeling in my body at times, like I was walking underwater.  Also, another problem --chest pain -- came about when I started to try to eat only one large meal a day, as some folks on the raw paleo forum were suggesting as the optimal eating pattern.  It would sort of come and go and actually wasn't too bad ... until I tried to do some push-ups -- ouch.  I thought I was having a heart attack.  I calmed myself and decided that maybe it was just some kind of strain.  It hurt horribly for two days.

The Bear

During my raw paleo stint, I was also floating around the Active Low-Carber forum and talking with some zero-carb folks on there.  (You can probably still look up my posts; just search for my username, "rk900.")  We were a ragtag bunch of wandering souls.  There were people who swore that the only thing that kept their weight stable was absolutely no carbs -- not even too many eggs or liver.  Others were on the paleo bandwagon.  Still others were curious about the diet, but were not bought in due to fears of losing their cherished carbohydrates.  I felt proud to be one of the few who was practicing full-on paleo zero-carb, just as primitive humans had done for millions of years before me (or so I thought).  Then, all of the sudden a post appeared: "The real human diet is a totally carnivorous one."  The author of the post was a man simply known as "The Bear."  It began:

I have been eating the natural human dietary regime for over 47 years now. I do not eat anything whatsoever from vegetable sources. The only things veggie I use are spices. My diet is usually 60% fat and 40% protein by calories. I used to eat 80/20 when younger and about twice as much quantity of meat also, but that seems too much energy at my age, which is 71- even though I am very active. I think the body actually becomes more efficient with energy as you age, but I have no way of proving it true. Otherwise, my body today is very like it was at the age of 30. I figure most of what we call 'aging' is due to insulin damage to the collagen and other body structures. No carbs = no insulin. I don't heal quite as fast when injured as I did as a youngster, however. But I have few wrinkles, and my skin is still strong and elastic.

The guru had arrived.  Responses came pouring in.  The Bear had answers for everything.  His healthy 47 years of experience with the zero-carb "regime" proved that modern humans could live well on such a diet without problems.  There was a very strong divide on the forum: some loved him and others thought he was full of crap.  One guy even started a dedicated blog on the "Zero Carb Path."  The Bear validated everything I believed at the time, and I followed guru's advice on eating and living well.  I still had the aforementioned problems with my gut, but decided that I felt better than any other time in my life, so I continued on "the path."


The saga continues in Part 5, coming soon.
  

Palate Expansion Update, 1/10/11: First Appointment

Brief break from "My Intestinal Saga" to bring all you readers out there an update on my palate expansion pursuits ...

I'm a few weeks away from being an official homie on the block.  I recently took a trip to Flagstaff, AZ for my first Homeoblock appointment.  The dentist, Scott Darlington, was very pleasant and shared his excitement about the procedure.  It's rare that people come to him for adult palate expansion, which he thinks is unfortunate because the benefits are so great -- particularly in opening up the airways.  I told him I was interested to see how my craniofacial structure would change and whether or not this procedure would provide any significant benefits for me.

For this initial appointment, I had a short dental check-up followed by my mouth being filled with plaster to make forms of my upper and lower palate -- all of which was completely painless.  These forms are currently being sent to a lab where they will be used to manufacture my own custom Homeblock.  This usually takes a few weeks.  I plan on returning to Dr. Darlington's office in Flagstaff to pick up my appliance around mid-February on my way to Wintercount.  For the first few months, Dr. Darlington recommends wearing the Homeoblock as much as I can, including daylight hours.  After this, I will only have to wear it at night and it will be recreated every few months to continue optimal expansion.  The cost for all of this -- appointments, new appliances, and all -- is $2000.  I payed up front for a substantial discount of $250, so the final cost was $1750.  I'm looking forward to looking like a retainer-wearing teenager for a short time -- maybe I'll even have a cool accent like Shelly from South Park.

  

My Intestinal Saga, Part 3: Making Connections

With the realization that my back pain was somehow related to what I was eating, I began connecting some dots.  Less food + Simple food = Less back pain.  More food + Varied foods = More back pain.  But what the heck did food have to do with muscle pain?  Why would my lower right back hurt so incredibly much based upon my dietary choices?  Why did I feel so much lighter and tension-free when I ate less or fasted?  I began researching the human body and its inner workings to find out why my pain was so localized to this one place on my body.  It turned out that, in the lower left abdomen where the junction of the small intestine and large intestine, there exists something called the ileocecal valve.  This little valve controls when undigested food exits the small intestine and begins the journey into stool formation in the large intestine.  Hmm.  Did this area have something to do with my back pain?  I pressed on my abdomen where the ileocecal valve was located.  It was tender.  Not only that, but I felt the pain from my back transfer to this spot when applying pressure.  It was an epiphany for sure.  I thought, "Wait just a gosh-darn minute here!  Does this mean my pain is actually intestinal, not muscular or skeletal?"  Apparently it was.  Fascinating!

My entire school of thought shifted.  No longer was I wholly committed to a purely external yoga or massage-manipulated path to healing.  I believed I had found the root cause of the pain and tension I was experiencing, and now I only had to figure out how to manage this internal problem.  Easier said than done.  For several months I experimented with herbs, digestive supplements of all kinds, probiotics -- the whole gamut of intestinal warfare.  Nasty herbs for any parasites that might be still hanging out.  Enzymes to aid the breaking down of food.  Good bacteria to repopulate my sad, miserable gut.  All these things, along with continued yoga and the like -- yet, aside from simply eating nothing at all, I experienced little or no improvement.  What hadn't I changed?  Was there anything else I could do?  Or would I have to live with this inconvenient pain the rest of my life?

Finally, the cognitive dissonance had to come to an end.  I was underweight.  I was fatigued.  I had little zest for life.  I asked myself a difficult but honest question: Was I unhealthy because I was a low-calorie vegetarian?  It was time.  I was ready to take a good, hard look at this mostly philosophically-driven food choice -- one that I had always thought could only make me healthier.  That's what all the books I was reading at the time were telling me.  Everything in my mind up to this point had said "yes" to a vegetarian diet.  All these years, however, my body had been crying out a resounding "NO!"  Time to eat some meat.  And, while I'm at it, why not eat nothing but meat for a while?  Oh, how I loved extremes at that time in my life.  So on I ventured into the world of zero-carb, "The Bear," and a sudden fondness for the Inuit.  More digestive lessons were soon to come.

Part 4 of "My Intestinal Saga" up next.

My Intestinal Saga, Part 2: Lower Back Pain

Following the parasite party in my gut, I had a few months of sulfurous burps that just would not go away.  I was the weakest I'd ever been in my life.  If my memory serves me correctly, this was the start of years of funky stools (the description of which I'll spare all of you readers out there unless you personally inquire), as well as a sudden increase in the lower back pain I'd had since high school.  One day, maybe a year after the gut bug debacle, I was shoveling dirt in a garden when all of the sudden I tweaked my back into immobility.  This lasted 3 days.  It was incredibly painful and a huge wake-up call for me -- something about what I was doing for my health wasn't working.  Rather than blame it on being weak and malnourished from vegetarianism and parasites, I turned to purely external physical solutions, such as yoga, acupuncture, chiropractic, massage, and body posture practices.  I focused on keeping my spine aligned and balancing the use of my muscles.  To a certain extent, this worked quite well and kept me somewhat capable physically, although I honestly could not imagine having to do yoga or pay attention to my posture the rest of my life -- it seemed unsustainable.  And why was it that primitive peoples -- who I had begun to study in depth -- appeared to be so light and tension-free in their bodies without needing to do daily maintenance practices such as yoga?  Also, working around kids a lot in summer camps I noticed how they naturally had absolutely perfect posture without any kind of attention to it.  I decided it was my goal to experience this natural freedom from tension.  Yet all that seemed to work was doing yoga three times a day and paying careful attention to my body posture.  There had to be a better way.

In the summer of 2005, I began work with a wilderness therapy program, called The ANASAZI Foundation, and was spending weeks in the backcountry with troubled youth.  Not learning my lesson from the experience with Vince Pinto in the Chiricahuas, I was confident that I could drink from streams without purifying the water.  I was so convinced psychologically that I was the healthiest, most resilient dude of anyone I knew that I believed I could withstand whatever nature threw at me.  I was wrong.  Again.  Three more parasitic episodes over a couple of months and I finally started purifying my water like a logical person would.  I no longer felt invincible and really started to question some of the crazy things I was doing, such as constant yoga and a vegetarian diet.

During my time at ANASAZI, I also realized something profound about my back pain: it would subside to almost no pain at all while I was in the wilderness.  At first, I thought this might be the product of living a more natural lifestyle and walking the earth as humans had done for millions of years before me.  Over time, however, I began to realize that there was something about the food I was eating in the backcountry -- both in amount and type -- that appeared to lessen the pain.  Lentils, rice, and ash cakes in small amounts were my staples in the field.  When I came back to civilization, I'd load up on loaves of bread, peanut butter, salad and tons of yogurt.  So I tried an experiment: eat how I ate in the field while I was at home in the city.  The results were the same: far less back pain and an overall feeling of being lighter in my body.  I thought I had found an answer.  I remained underweight and felt dizzy upon standing, had sunken eyes and a lack of energy, but without back pain, I felt 1,000 times better.  It seemed that more pure food -- and less amounts of it -- was the key to regaining my health.  Or was it?

Part 3 of "My Intestinal Saga" up next ..

My Intestinal Saga, Part 1: Dabbling in Parasites

Wow.  It's been a really long time since I've posted a blog entry.  I'd like to have some extravagant reason as to why, but the truth of the matter is that I've simply been inspired in other directions for the past several months.  My own physical health progress has been at a standstill this whole time until quite recently.  As some of you may know, I have had long-standing digestive problems that possibly came about after many episodes of backcountry parasitic infections beginning almost 8 years ago (which also was the time I began experimenting with vegetarianism).  My digestive problems usually manifest in the form of a slowed down transit time, hard stools and bloating, along with infrequent sharp pains in my intestines (my apologies if anybody is disturbed by my blunt description).  These symptoms have greatly affected my body and my mental state in negative ways: poor sleep, sudden fatigue, coming and going depression, muscle tension, pain, and the like.  When I began eating well again and adding certain supplements to my diet, I was able to lessen or eliminate many of these issues.  I thought I would delve a little deeper into my health history and describe what kinds of changes I made along the way get well again, dietary or otherwise, with the intention of possibly guiding some of you folks out there in blogger land to better health and also receiving feedback from anybody who wants to offer me some other directions I might be able to take to further improve my situation.

Hmm.  Where to begin?  I guess I should probably go back as far as I can remember, and that would be my childhood years.  The major body disturbances I recall from this time, let's say around age 8 and for several years after, were TMJ syndrome and frequent headaches.  I would grind my teeth at night and wake up with a sore jaw quite often.  The headaches seemed to arise at random moments throughout the day, but I remember them being excruciating.  Besides that, as far as I know, everything ran smoothly (if you know what I mean).  It's debatable whether or not the aforementioned problems were from digestion, but later -- in the midst of my health transformation, around age 23 --  I would discover some connections that surprised me.  More on that later. (See the three part post on my own personal health profile for more on my physical transformation and dietary history.)

Now on to high school.  This was when I first started to notice bloating in my lower abdomen.  I've been an avid athlete all my life and high school was the most active time of my life.  Lifting weights 6 days a week; running 3 miles every other day; swimming laps and doing sprints; and practicing on baseball and soccer teams on top of all of that.  Pretty active, right?  Well despite all of that, I still had this perceptible "belly" on me.  At the time, I attributed it to fat, but I'm fairly certain now that it was just bloating -- I was pretty ripped in every other regard.  So what caused the bloating?  I don't know for certain.  My educated guess based upon later experimentation is that it was brought up by some kind of milk and/or gluten intolerance.  Another primary physical issue of that time in my life was lower back pain.  This was why I absolutely abhorred doing any kind of physical labor that involved bending over and lifting.  Again, I now believe I have answers as to why that was happening.  We'll get to these epiphanies in the chronological order that I discovered them.

Okay, post high school -- my time of spiritual journeying and reconnecting with nature.  Here's where the "fun" begins.  Parasites.  Wonderfully horrible parasites.  My first episode happened after going on a survival trip with my friend and mentor, Vince Pinto (who owns and operates a nature school, called Raven's Way Wild Journeys).  We hiked into a stream in the Chiricahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona with minimal gear, including a complete lack of water purification.  Vince drank from this stream on several occasions with no problem, so I was confident that I would do just fine, as well.  Along the stream, there were cow patties literally every couple of feet.  This meant that the water was likely contaminated.  Welcome to the wild, wild West, where cattle have more rights in nature than humans.  Cow excrement aside, Vince and I found a pristine place up stream which we assumed would be safe to drink.  36 hours later, instead of camping in the desert, I was camped beside a toilet.  Giardia.  Vince, on the other hand, was fine.  Unlike him, I was underweight and underfed at the time, so I attribute my susceptibility to the little buggers -- and his resistance to them -- to that.

Part 2 of "My Intestinal Saga" coming soon.

If, for some odd reason, you are absolutely enamored with how cute and cuddly the giardia microbe above is, you can get your very own plush doll at Giant Microbes.

Obesity & Heredity, Part 4: Epigenetics

I first heard about epigenetics from Dr. Theodore Belfor, the man behind the adult palate expansion device called the Homeoblock.  It is his opinion that epigenetics will be the most important field of science in the next decade.  In brief, epigenetics is the study of  the changes that take place within the epigenome – literally, "on top" of the genome – due to environmental factors, such as food and pollution, without affecting the DNA sequence.  Here's a more lengthy explanation from a website  published by a European group who call themselves “The Epigenome Network of Excellence:”

Conrad Waddington (1905-1975) is often credited with coining the term epigenetics in 1942 as “the branch of biology which studies the causal interactions between genes and their products, which bring the phenotype into being”. Epigenetics appears in the literature as far back as the mid 19th century, although the conceptual origins date back to Aristotle (384-322 BC). He believed in epigenesis: the development of individual organic form from the unformed. This controversial view was the main argument against our having developed from miniscule fully-formed bodies. Even today the extent to which we are preprogrammed versus environmentally shaped awaits universal consensus. The field of epigenetics has emerged to bridge the gap between nature and nurture. In the 21st century you will most commonly find epigenetics defined as 'the study of heritable changes in genome function that occur without a change in DNA sequence.'

Take home quote from above: “...epigenetics has emerged to bridge the gap between nature and nurture.”  This is extremely important in the study of health and nutrition, as there are many questions of what brings about good health and poor health in the context of inheritance, none of which can be fully answered without evaluating specific individual choices – dietary, environmental, etc. – made within each generation (which affects future generations).   In other words, nurture – how we are taken care of as children and how we take care of ourselves as adults  – is what molds and shapes nature – the way our bodies and minds express themselves epigenetically, which is then potentially passed to our children.

How do epigenetic changes take place?  The Epigenome Network of Excellence reporter, Brona McVittie, puts it this way:

The genetic blueprint, like a complex musical score, remains lifeless without an orchestra of cells (players) and epigenotypes (instruments) to express it... Epigenetic factors include both spatial patterns, such as the arrangement of DNA around histone proteins (chromatin), and biochemical tagging...With some 30 000 genes in the human genome, the importance of silence, as with any orchestral performance, must not be underestimated...As cells develop, their fate is governed by the selective use and silencing of genes... Failure to silence genes can produce a hazardous cacophony.

What does all of this have to do with obesity?  Well, scientists have discovered that epigenetic changes in mice that are pregnant mothers can directly impact the health of the offspring.  How?  By turning on or off specific genes through dietary or environmental means.  One of these health effects, in addition to cancer and diabetes, is a tendency of the offspring to become obese as adults.  In one study, if a single gene, called the “agouti gene,” is overexpressed through the failure to suppress another gene (Avy), it greatly influences the ultimate health of the offspring (emphasis mine):

Failure to epigenetically suppress the Avy gene during development causes the agouti gene to be ectopically overexpressed later in life. This high level of agouti expression in essentially all tissues causes numerous downstream metabolic and endocrine effects that ultimately affect gross biological end points such as obesity and survival. This agouti overexpression and its physiological effects have been termed the yellow agouti obese mouse syndrome. This syndrome includes a yellow or mottled yellow coat color, altered metabolism and obesity from a young age. It also results in adult diabetes, increased cancer susceptibility and, by 24 mo of age, twice the mortality seen in normal mice.

Interestingly, whether or not a mouse becomes obese seems to depend on the levels of methyl-donating substances, such as folic acid (a vitamin naturally found in high amounts in organ meats, many kinds of legumes, and dark leafy greens).  The reason behind this has to do with the way that DNA passes information to cells in the body -- a process called  DNA methylation.  Whether or not certain genes are expressed has a lot to do with this process.  Without enough methyl-donating substances, such as the B-vitamins, betaine, choline, SAM-e and genistein (from soybeans), DNA methylation is disturbed and abnormal cell expression, along with switching on or off certain genes, results.  You can see why folic acid supplementation is recommended for pregnant women and why women in traditional cultures consume "sacred" foods rich in methyl-donating nutrients, such as liver, before and during pregnancy.

So, if obese people supplement their diet with folate or genistein, can they reverse the epigenetic changes that may have brought about their obesity?  Short answer: we don't know.  In animal studies, there's more certainty.  Here's what Randy Jirtle, an expert in epigenetics, has to say:

Weaver et al. (Nat. Neurosci. 7: 847-854, 2004) at McGill University, however, have shown recently that maternal nurturing behavior can stably alter the epigenotype in rat pups soon after birth. Moreover, these epigenetic changes are reversible in adulthood following methionine supplementation or treatment with histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors (Weaver et al.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 103: 3480-3485, 2006). Thus, data supporting the reversal of environmentally induced epigenetic changes via dietary supplementation or pharmaceutical therapy in adulthood is mounting.

The implications for humans are far-reaching.  Perhaps someday we'll have a way of epigenetically treating obesity, diabetes, and cancer.  For now, the best we can do is eat a nutrient-dense real-foods diet while avoiding processed and refined foods -- the foods that have most likely brought about our health dilemmas in the first place.

For a great overview of epigenetics, check out PBS Nova's educational page on the subject.  Also, here's a nice website by the University of Utah.
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SIDEBAR: Is Plastic Making Us Fat?

Aside from diet, another significant factor in the tendency of the agouti mice to become obese comes from the mother's exposure to biosphenol-A (BPA), a common plastic found in many food and beverage containers.  Here's Randy Jirtle again to explain:

We have demonstrated recently that when female pregnant mice are exposed to BPA, the incidence of yellow Avy offspring is markedly increased because DNA methylation of the agouti gene is decreased (Dolino et al.,Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 104: 13056-13061, 2007). BPA also epigenetically alters gene expression of at least one other gene, indicating a genome-wide effect. Yellow agouti mice become obese in adulthood and have a high probability of developing diabetes and cancer. Consequently, BPA exposure leads to adult diseases in agouti mice by altering the epigenome during the earliest stages of development—a condition that can be counteracted by maternal nutrient supplementation with methyl-donating substances (folic acid, etc.) or genistein.

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SIDEBAR: Weston A. Price & Epigenetics

Epigenetics may seem obvious to folks out there who are familiar with Darwin's theory of evolution.  “Of course our bodies and minds are shaped by our environment; and of course we evolve (or devolve) throughout time and generations.  That's the way nature works!”  The big difference, as far as I can tell, is that unlike DNA, epigenetic changes actually take place within one lifetime, not over eons of evolution.  The way the epigenome appears to be altered is by dramatic changes in environment, particularly diet.  Think Nutrition and Physical Degeneration or Pottenger's Cats.

Actually, one might say that Price and Pottenger recognized epigenetics when they observed physical degeneration in the people and animals they respectively studied, although they didn't call it that.  The changes in facial structure and lowered immunity in their studies appeared to be a direct result of poor diet generation after generation.  Once again, during one lifetime, the epigenome can be altered significantly.  Could it be that the mothers and fathers eating a modern diet and the cats eating cooked food altered their epigenome and then passed on these traits on to the next generation?  Is this why each generation appeared to be progressively worse than the last?  The field of epigenetics suggests this is the case.
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Obesity & Heredity, Part 3: Why Are Thin People Not Fat?

Below is an intriguing BBC documentary, called "Why Are Thin People Not Fat?"  In this film, ten thin people who have no history of obesity overeat whatever foods they want for several weeks and the results are evaluated at the end of the experiment.  One especially interesting facet of the documentary is the fact that the Asian participant gains the least weight of all the participants and also appears to have the most elevated metabolism.  Could it be that his genes are more pure -- i.e. less degeneration in his family -- than the others?  Watch and decide for yourself!