I found this book insightful, but I am not quite sure if the recipes in the book are tasty. So, let me just share some ideas from the book.
Chap. 2: Who Took the “Health” out of Health Care?
Health care is the system created to deliver the greatest revenue-generating products and procedures to address illness, but not provide health
The unspoken secret is that providers prefer treatment over prevention, expensive over inexpensive, patent-protectable over non-patent-protectable, billable procedure over non billable procedure, BMW over Toyota Prius.
More free time is nice. More love among family and friends is wonderful. But more health care is not healthier; it can even be downright dangerous or fatal.
…by taking the reins of health yourself, you are not trying to avoid a gleaming, efficient, and charitable system set up to serve you. You are trying to avoid being exploited, abused, and misled by a system driven by perverse motivations, unjustifiable costs, and incomplete protections, shaking you down for money …, making you believe that you’d be sound without them.
… You may view some of the dietary strategies in Undoctored as extreme. But you will learn that it’s not the Undoctored eating strategies that are extreme; it’s modern eating habits that are the extreme: extremely counter to our evolutionary past, extremely adrift from the realities of human physiology, extremely illogical, extremely unhealthy.
Chap. 6: A Return to Our Grainless Roots
The modern diet, with its unrestrained excess and perverse indulgence of innate impulses such as the desire for sweet, compounded by pseudoscience and misinterpretation, underlies an astounding number of modern health problems, what are labeled “diseases of civilization,” diseases that are virtually unknown in primitive societies following traditional diets.
Grains are so incredibly disruptive to human health that, to a large degree, I regard the healthcare system for chronic illness(not acute illness, such as traumatic injury or infection) as the system largely created to treat the consequence of grain consumption. … Grain elimination is therefore a cornerstone of the diet advocated here in Undoctored, an essential process that frees us from reliance on the medical system in an impressive multitude of ways.
Chap 7: Meat, Fire, Fat, and Other Essentials
The fact that vegans/vegetarians, on the whole, adhere to healthier lifestyle practices is indisputable, … , but it cannot be interpreted to mean that meat consumption per se explains any differences.
… choosing to avoid all animal products leads to nutritional deficiencies that pose health complications, though not necessarily resulting in death or other major catastrophes.
-> The nutritional deficiencies that must be addressed: Vitamin B12, Iron, Omega-3 fatty acids
Choose real, ingle-ingredient food as close to their natural forms as possible.
Cooking, of course, is a form of processing. Cooking varies in its potential for introducing unhealthy effects while increasing the efficiency of digestion, as well as improving taste and texture. Aim for the least disruptive forms of cooking: steaming, boiling, baking and sautéing, all relatively low-temperature process. High-temperature processes, especially deep-frying, broiling, and barbecuing, introduce unhealthy reactions in foods …
Stop counting calories
Clinical research has already disproven the notion that all calories are equal. … carbohydrate content is the variable that determines whether a dietary approach permits weight loss or not.
Foods that trigger insulin the most are therefore the most potent for weight gain, while their absence allows weight loss …
Don’t have a cow, man
If you choose to consume dairy products, make your choices organic; the animals were not fed genetically modified feed, were more likely to have grazed on grass and forage, were not administered BGH, …
Chap 8: From Herbs, Enema Bags, and Pliers to Apps, Smartwatches, and DIY Genetics
… The dirty little secret is that the majority of doctors know almost nothing about nutritional supplements and typically dismiss them offhand as useless, a waste of money, or dangerous, even belittling you for taking them.
- Nutritional supplements can be therapeutic.
- Essential undoctored home health tools:
- thermometer to assess thyroid hormone status, finger-stick glucose meter and test strips, nutritional analysis app for carbohydrates and fiber per serving, blood pressure device.
Chap 9.: Eating While Wild, Naked, and Unwashed
De-Grain the Kitchen
De-grain the entire place right from the start. Just as you do not want vermin inhabiting your cupboard, you also do not want any seeds of grasses sitting on the shelves.
Fat Makes the World Go ‘Round
We are going to embrace fat again and completely ignore any concerns over total fat or saturated fat content - absolutely avoiding any food labeled “low-fat.” The fats that we are going to embrace are the fats that grandma and her predecessors would have enjoyed.
Eat Until You’re Satisfied
The key factor here is to not just not limit healthy fats and oils but also consume more fats and oils. The greater your fat and oil intake, the more appetite is suppressed, the more blood sugar drops, and the more insulin resistance reverses, the more weight is lost …
To start your garden of bowel floral, you are going to plant seeds. The two kinds of “seeds” you will use are those found in high-potency probiotics and in lactose-fermented foods.
Living Wild and Naked in the Sun while Gnawing on Liver: Vitamin D
- Vitamin D deficiency will cause
- greater inflammation, higher blood sugar and resistance to insulin
- weight gain
- periodontal disease
- heart attack
- Take Vitamin D3 in oil-based gelcaps or liquid drops
- check 25-hydroxy vitamin D blood level at the start of the program
- ideal would be 60-70ng/mL
- Calcium supplements are responsible for causing health problems. Conversely, Vitamin D is a control factor over calcium because it increases intestinal absorption of calcium from food and make calcium to be deposited in bone.
Iodine and Thyroid Health: An Old Problem Returns
- thyroid assessment: TSH: 0.2~1.5 mIU/L, free T3 and free T4, Thyroid antibodies, Reverse T3
Your Choice: Brain Stew or Fish Oil Capsules
We brain-free folk are, for all practical purposes, left with consuming fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids. But there’s a problem here, too: Increasing industrialization of the earth (especially coal burning) has caused fish to accumulate mercury and other contaminants, particularly species that consume other fish and thereby concentrate contaminants, process called biomagnification.
- Take EPA + DHA intake of 3000 to 3600 milligrams per day, divided in two(before breakfast, before dinner)
-> Test with OmegaQuant finger-stick blood test
Magnesium and Other Minerals: Think Positive
- Choose the form that is best absorbed. Wrong magnesium supplement can worsen magnesium deficiency.
- Magnesium malate, in tablet or capsule form
- Magnesium bicarbonate(liquid)
- Magnesium glycerinate
- Magnesium citrate
Other
- zinc, iron, Vitamin B12 may be deficient. Test it before intake.
Chap. 13: A Final Health Hodgepodge: Sleep, Exercise, Toxin Avoidance, and Breaking Weight Plateaus
Melatonin is the key to sleep, as it is the prime regulator of circadian rhythms, restored via efforts such as reducing exposure to evening light and electronic devices and supplementation.
-> It is still not clear if everyone should take it even if you don’t struggle with sleep issues, but it would be considered for any form of endocrine disruption - such as thyroid disease, adrenal dysfunction, or infertility.
Put It All Together
- Follow the entire program
- Follow the diet your body is adapted to
- Cultivate Bowel flora
- Restore Vitamin D.
- Restore iodine and regain ideal thyroid health
- Restore omega-3 fatty acids
- Restore magnesium
Bao-Jhih Shao
A software engineer writing something to keep the memory.
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