Today is a very special day for our family. Today our nephew will marry his beloved, and she happens to be the daughter of old friends of ours. His parents are thrilled, and hers the same. For us, this remarkable and happy coincidence is nothing short of miraculous. So I share this post in honor of the marriage of our nephew, our new niece, and the new home they will create together. Today I want to share — from a medical standpoint — just a few of a great many things I have learned about friends, family, and the magic effects of kindness, love, and support. Continue reading
Category Archives: Remedies
Set an Intention
These are not easy days, to say the least. But one thing that really helps me is to start each day by setting an intention.
What does that mean? Well, I might say to myself, “Today, I will take a few deep breaths.” Or, “I will keep my eyes on the road.” Or, “I will be kind to myself.” Intentions can be abstract or concrete. They can help you study, close your eyes, or stretch your arms to the ceiling a couple of times a day. They can let you stay in bed, ask for a back rub, take a long bath. Intentions are multi-purpose, which is an essential part of their charm. I weave them into the fabric of my days, and they make my weeks more interesting, resilient, even productive. The possibilities are endless. Continue reading
Trust Your Gut
We’ve got a big problem in this country: we have lost the ability to listen to our own bodies. We eat things that make us feel sick, but we don’t make the connection.
We discount how we actually feel in favor of how we think we should feel, at least according to the latest nutrition claims and advertising on that box of “Frosty-0 Jumbos” or “Specialized Healthy Nutrient-Brand.” [I made up these names in case you couldn’t tell.] Here we have an entire country filled with people who feel kind of sick, for one reason or another, and have no idea why. That’s pretty wild all by itself, but it’s just half the story. The other half of the story is that we continue to accept as dogma all kinds of food-related information, even in the face of significant evidence to the contrary. We experience distressing symptoms, and then ignore them. Continue reading
When My Friend Bob Turned His Health Around
A while ago, I ran into my old friend Bob, and I was delighted to see a much slimmer, trimmer, happier-looking guy than I had seen the previous time. He and I had had a conversation about six months earlier, and I had suggested increasing the protein in his breakfast, and switching out the soda for unsweetened iced tea. That’s all. We hadn’t talked since. Continue reading
Can a Simple Bowl of Fruit Heal Us?
“We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters. If not, we will perish as fools.” —Congressman John Lewis on July 8, 2016.
The events of the past week have shaken me, like many, and I don’t feel much like talking about food. Today I want to talk about something else. Like most important lessons, I have learned this one the hard way. Continue reading
Be Here Now
“Be here now” is what Thich Nhat Hanh says. I think about that sentence a lot. It grounds me in the present and keeps me here, no matter what I’m doing, No matter when and where I’m doing it. Not there, not then, but here and now. For a long time I thought of “Be Here Now” as “be HERE now.” Sometimes “be here NOW.” But last week, for the first time, I heard myself think “BE here now.” Notice: Thich Nhat Hanh said BE here now, not DO here now. Continue reading
My Dental Hygienist’s Concoction
I had my teeth cleaned this week, and that included a nice conversation with my dental hygienist, Amy. Amy is everything you could ever want from a hygienist. Gentle and thorough, kind, distracting and inquisitive. Nothing stops her endless lists of questions that are impossible to answer with a mouth full of cleaning instruments. Continue reading
Keep Your Enemies Closer
Yesterday morning I looked down and saw a tiny ant crawling along the inside of my left elbow. I felt an urge to flick it away, but not to squash it. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, I thought.
Researchers have discovered that the communities of microbes living in the guts of normal-weight individuals differ significantly from those in the guts of obese individuals. Researchers are also finding evidence to suggest that some common autoimmune diseases (like asthma) may result from decreased early exposure to bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms that, in previous centuries, would have primed our young and immature immune systems, and protected us—later on—from these sometimes devastating autoimmune diseases.
The extensive use of broad-spectrum antibiotics in beings of all kinds, including both humans and livestock, is being linked to a myriad of consequences, including severe secondary infections like C. dificile colitis, against which we might ordinarily be protected by the community of healthy bacteria harbored in a normally functioning gut.
You might say that the bugs are our friends. Maybe not that, but they are certainly our neighbors.
When my children were young and felt ravaged by the latest cold virus, I explained that it was helping them to grow their “antibody library,” which would be protect them as they grew. We strengthen the bugs and they strengthen us. We occupy the same space. We are not at war. We inhabit their world, and they inhabit ours.
Why does an obese individual’s gut harbor a different community of bugs? I am going to guess that one aspect may have something to do with what those bugs are fed. Perhaps if we feed them real food, the ones that work with us will thrive. And maybe if we feed them ultraprocessed, food-like items, the ones that work against us thrive, and the good neighbors cannot survive. Other bugs have moved in to take their place.
Have you ever made a project with papier mache? The recipe for papier mache, consisting of just flour, water, and salt, results in a glue that dries rock hard. You can count on that. Why does paper mache last so long? Simply put, it doesn’t disintegrate because bacteria don’t eat it. I am not sure what white flour does to the neighborly bacteria in our guts, but I will never be convinced that it nourishes them. Being fed bread and water puts me in mind of prisoners in solitary confinement.
The bugs in our gut are related to our health in every way we can imagine, and a great many more than that, I suspect. That’s why I recommend that you keep your microbiological friends close and your enemies closer. They may not be enemies at all.