Piracy?

Photo Credit: John Blyberg via Compfight

I'm about 1/3 of the way into my first rough draft of an ebook I'm writing. I'm getting about 200 hits/day on the BuildBetterSleep site, so in combination with general "sleep" or "insomnia" searches on Amazon.com, it gives me a reasonable shot that a few people might actually read it. I plan to price it cheap enough ($1.99) that you wouldn't have to think too hard about downloading it.

I had a conversation about ebook piracy with Laura yesterday, and I told her about the recent Apple/publisher federal antitrust case over ebooks, and how fixing prices got them all into trouble. I think that micro-publishing is a much more evolved way to look at book selling:

1. make it cheap enough so that piracy isn't much of an issue - and don't care even if it is
2. create a model where distribution is cheap (Amazon makes it easy - and they're the 800lb gorilla of distribution)
3. the author get's most of the proceeds, not the publisher (in the Amazon case, it's 70% of the proceeds for any ebook sold for <$9.99). 

This, in combination with the fact that I'm lazy, is why I'm choosing this route.

I thought it ironic that in my inbox this morning was this essay from Seth Godin, titled Piracy, you Wish:

"Publishers are spending a lot of time debating DRM on ebooks. Many of the powers that be are worried about piracy, they say, and they are resolute in making sure that there are locks on the books they publish. 

There are countless interesting conversations on whether this helps Amazon with lock in (you can’t move your books around, so you’re stuck) and whether it hurts sales, etc. Not to mention whether the locks themselves even work the way they are intended to (they don’t.) 

For me, though, the interesting notion is of book piracy itself. 

How many more people would prefer a hard drive full of 10,000 songs to one with 10,000 books on it? We’re hungry for one and sort of unaware altogether of the possibility of the other. What would you even do with 10,000 books? 

Software is pirated because in just a few minutes, the user saves a hundred or a thousand dollars, and feels okay about it because software seems unreasonably expensive to some (Photoshop costs about 10 times as much as Acorn). It’s theft of intellectual property, but a tempting one. 

Music is pirated because many people have an insatiable urge to listen to music, all the time, preferably with unlimited variety. And radio taught us that music to be listened to doesn’t cost money. 

But books? 

Books are free at the library but there’s no line out the door. Books are free to read in comfortable couches at Barnes & Noble but there aren’t teeming crowds sitting around reading all day. 

Books take a long time to read, require a significant commitment, and they’re relatively cheap. And most people don’t read for fun. Most of the inputs necessary for a vibrant piracy community are missing. 

As Tim O’Reilly famously said, books don’t have a piracy problem. They have an obscurity problem. I have never met an author who didn’t wish that more people would read her book. Never one. On the other hand, Peter Gabriel and the rest of rock royalty rarely feel the same pangs. “What do you mean you’ve never heard Moondance?” I just can’t visualize Van Morrison saying that… 

I’ve written several free ebooks (here’s one) and even when I want unlimited piracy, it doesn’t happen. 

Book publishers are crippling their marketing efforts because they’re worried that 1% of their titles will be overshared. They have nightmares about classrooms of kids reading one copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, or entire divisions of companies reading a single copy of a $29 hardcover. 

But the short head of the book market isn’t the future–it’s the long tail. And in the long tail world, overcoming obscurity is the single biggest hurdle. If only piracy was a problem..."

Minimalism - The Book

I just finished reading Minimalism - Essential Essays written by a couple of guys in Dayton, Ohio (Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus). While the book itself is somewhat repetative - since it's a collection of essays many of the themes are repeated throughout - it's worth the quick read.

I picked it up a few days ago, so I paid nothing - but it's probably worth a bit more than $0.00. I think that the book itself taught me one thing I never thought of before. My wife has often bared the brunt of my frequent indulgences, and I think any sort of minimalism is a bridge too far for her. But the book said something that resonates with me - become minimalist in small areas of your own life, first. Then maybe people will be more willing to come along.

I already have the traveling minimalism down, so now I'm going to work on a few more areas. My office for one. The garage would be next. All my clothing (and the furniture that holds it) is after that. Then there's the selling or giving away of things we don't use - like a very expensive inflatable kayak, or all my sailing books, or the first couple of years of Wired Magazine.

The point of writing this down is simply to act as some kind of accountability.

Maybe one of you will ask "so how's the whole minimalism thing going?".

Four Things On My Mind Today

First, I'm working on an eBook about sleep. I've learned so much about it the past several months, the least I can do is try and capitalize on it. I figure if I put what I know into a $1.99 book online (Kindle), there's bound to be a few people who give it a try. If this goes well (even if it doesn't) I'll try my hand at writing something a little more free-form.
Second, the "diet" isn't really a diet anymore. I can fight the craving for something sweet, something made from flour, or something from a box pretty easily now. I could never imagine that I would be the one turning down dessert, but it's easier than I would have imagined. I now find myself craving dark chocolate or berries with full-fat yogurt as a treat. Over the weekend, I had a small bowl of sugar-free gelato and a hot-dog in a bun. I've decided that if I do this stuff infrequently then there is both no-harm-done and no-guilt-trip involved.
Third, although I'm a minority in Vancouver for saying this, I'm glad the Canucks lost last night to the LA Kings. I've always said "what's the definition of insanity"? In my opinion, there's just not enough "want" in Vancouver - either by the team or by the fans - to earn a Stanley Cup. It's interesting to see this morning on the news that people have already gotten over the loss. On to other things. We take our sports seriously in Vancouver. Yeah, right.
Fourth, a bit of a milestone this week. As of tomorrow, Laura and I will have been married for 30 years. "For Better Or For Worse" - I bet Laura had no idea what she was in for with me (neither did I). Don't give me a hard time for listing this fourth - these are in no particular order!

How To Feed A Reading Habit - On The Cheap

 Photo Credit: Frédéric della Faille via Compfight

The stuff I most enjoy reading now isn't available in the library. The books never make it that far.

The role of traditional publishing, traditional publishers, traditional marketing and traditional distribution are quickly being turned on their head.

Self publishing is becoming more-and-more of a force. And I'm riding both sides of it:

• I'll be publishing some e-books, and I have no aspirations at all to go the "traditional" route.
• The last ten books I've read have been self-published. And I bought every one of them off Amazon.com.
• And I paid less than $3.00 for each of them - most were either $0.99 or $1.99.

The length of these eBooks vary, but they tend to be in the 200 page range.

And I've found their subject matter to be fascinating.

Here's a short list of what I've enjoyed in the last couple of weeks:

Long Long Honeymoon - Living Large in a Small Tin Can
How to Travel Full Time
How to Be Remarkable
My Exile Lifestyle
Life Nomadic
The Tiniest Mansion - How To Live In Luxury on the Side of the Road in an RV

Radical Frugality: Living in America on $8,000 a Year

There's a bit of a theme here, I'll admit, but what should be really interesting to you are the number of really-low-cost, self-published titles that are out there.

Do a quick search on Amazon for whatever you like, see if there's any books available for a dollar or two, and then see what other "picks" Amazon gives you - they'll mostly be at the same price point.

The other thing I find myself doing a lot now is "Readability", a free app available for your PC and Smartphone. When I find an article I'm interested in, and it's too long to read right then, I'll "capture" it with Readabilty and send it to my Kindle (you have to set that up, but it's free, and Readability coaches you on the simple steps to do it). If you're familiar with InstaPaper, it's very similar - except for the Kindle link (I much prefer reading on a Kindle than on a PC or Smartphone).

I find these articles and eBooks are much more my speed now. Not too long, not too short. Just right....

Restating Results

The Manufacturers/Inventors of Crestor

Evidently, I was too confusing in my last post about blood work. There are too many variables, and you have to be a nerd like me to want to talk about them.

So this time I'll keep it short (yeah right).

• Ever since (and maybe before - who knows) I became vegetarian I had a "syndrome" of very low HDL Cholesterol (that's the good stuff).
• I've been on a statin (Crestor) for several years now, which lowered my overall cholesterol profile, but did nothing to HDL.
• We (my cardiologist and me) eventually found that high doses of Niacin (a vitamin) would raise my HDL from the very low 0.8 to the "acceptable but still low" 1.2.
• I went off the statin a few weeks ago, and changed my diet (very low carb) a couple of months ago. New bloodwork was done about a week ago.
• The new bloodwork, with no statin and a changed diet, showed a remarkable increase in HDL. It also showed a very low level of triglycerides. Both of these are very good. This is the news I'm most excited about.
• HDL and Triglycerides are now the important blood markers. Total cholesterol and LDL (the bad cholesterol) are mostly meaningless. We've been told for years to lower total cholesterol and LDL. That's what all the "low fat" nonsense is about. 
• They should have been telling us instead "keep your triglycerides as low as possible, and aim for the highest HDL you can get". At least I'm not dead before finding this out. Low HDL was likely the reason for all my health problems. And adding a statin didn't help. Funny that no doctor ever asked me about this.
• I now weigh 150lbs and have to buy new clothes. I weighed 145lbs in High School.

All of this is tied straight back to diet - obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart disease and stroke all have the same source. Do yourself a favour and read Gary Taubes' " Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It (Vintage)". He explains exactly what happened to me, and why it is that you find it so hard to lose weight (hint: it's got to do with our body's insulin response to food - specifically carbs).

I thought I'd keep this short. So I failed.

I Didn't Have "A Genetic Problem" - I Had A Diet Problem

 Photo Credit: Luca Rossato via Compfight

After 45 days of eating a diet consisting mostly of meats, fruits, vegetables, and some dairy (full fat Greek yoghurt), I got my blood tested.

I had gone off the statin (Crestor 5mg - considered a small dose) a week earlier, so I should have been relatively statin-free when the blood was drawn.

Since I became vegetarian in 1996, I always had an issue with very low HDL Cholesterol. We tried everything to get it up - and finally the best results were had by a very high dose of niacin (2g/day). This got my HDL numbers into the "low acceptable" range of 1.2 mmol/l.

The Crestor did a good job of reducing total cholesterol and LDL - both numbers were very good by the metrics I used to use.

So here are the new numbers:

• Total Cholesterol - was 3.0 to 4.0, now is 4.8
• LDL Cholesterol - was 0.8 to 1.7, now is 2.5
• HDL Cholesterol - was 0.8 to 1.2, now is 1.8
• Triglycerides - was 1.0 to 2.4, now is 1.0

The only number that's a bit confusing for me is Fasting Blood Sugar - I only had it measured one other time at 5.0, and now it's 5.5. I'll have to do some digging to see what that's all about - it could be the result of all that statin use.

So the results are exactly what they said they would be:

• Total Cholesterol and LDL would go up - but these two numbers are meaningless
• HDL would go up - this is a minimum 50% increase in HDL which is fantastic
• Triglycerides would go down - it's now as low as it has ever been

I'm really quite impressed. I thought that I had a genetic problem with low HDL. No, I had a diet problem with low HDL!

Note that low HDL combined with high triglycerides is now the premier predictor of heart disease and arterial damage. This is from the National Institutes of Health in the USA:

"Nearly all routinely assessed lipid variables were associated with the extent of coronary disease, but only the ratio of triglycerides to HDL-cholesterol or to HDL-c were robustly associated with disease extent. Elevation in the ratio of TG to HDL-c was the single most powerful predictor of extensive coronary heart disease among all the lipid variables examined."

The ideal ratio of Triglycerides/HDL is less than 2.0. The lower your number, the lower your risk. With very low HDL, my number was always high. Now it's 0.56.

Seems I've been killing myself over the last sixteen years. And I only took medicine's advice....


Addendum: I checked with a group I know on-line about the Fasting Blood Sugar - it's no issue at all. Low carb diets cause it. So does statin use. I should wait to see what it does in three months.


* Note: I've reposted this over on my Paleo blog, because it's only with this new lifestyle/diet that I've been able to achieve this in such a short time.

The Dilemma of Choice

 Photo Credit: Raymond Larose via Compfight

I wrote a post on one of my other blogs this morning about the plan.

The dilemma we're facing right now is whether to bite the bullet and trade in the Airstream and Truck for a diesel motorhome or not. As with everything, it's not obvious what to do.

We love the trailer, and it doesn't owe us a thing - we've spent hundreds of nights on-board. But the setup-teardown involved every morning we move is a bit cumbersome. As is managing the 47' overall length (truck and trailer).

But we own them both. With a tiny bit of maintenance, they'd be ready to drive us around North America without a thought.

Maybe it's the "shiny penny" phenomenon about getting something new that we're experiencing?

That's the problem - we do much better mentally when we don't have a choice. That's probably why a starving child holding a freshly-caught fish has a huge grin on his face. He had no choice - catch a fish or don't eat today.

Sometimes I wish it was that simple....

A Zeo Review From Anderson Cooper

Any of you that follow my other blog, BuildBetterSleep.com, knows that I'm a bit obsessed. I wrote a fairly extensive review of the Zeo Sleep Management System a couple of months ago, but have not been using it regularly for the last month or two. I want to wait until there's a significant change in my sleep patters (through the Paleo Diet thing?) before I measure it again. The results were basically the same from night to night.

Regardless, I found it interesting that Anderson Cooper (of CNN fame) recently reviewed the Zeo on his primetime "Anderson Live" show. The man with him evaluating his sleep pattern is Dr. Michael Brues - The Sleep Doctor. Have a look:

New and Improved Doug 3.2 - Now Statin Free

Photo Credit: JD Hancock via Compfight

Once, in 2004, I had gone on a statin (Lipidil) as kind of an experiment - to see how it would improve my blood lipid profile.

It lowered my Total Cholesterol (TC) a bit, lowered the LDL a bit, and raised the HDL by a small amount. Since raising HDL as much as I could was my objective, I dropped the statin.

Then, in May of 2006, after complaining about some unusual (but not severe) pain while vigorously exercising, I had an angiogram that spotted a nasty piece of plaque on one of the major arteries of the heart. Because of the location, angioplasty was considered too risky, so I had open heart surgery to bypass  the plaque in July of 2006.

After the diagnosis in May, I was put onto a series of statins (Zocor, Crestor, Lipidil), and I've been on them until today.

After a doctor visit this morning though, he and I have decided to experiment with this (it's now day 45 of no grains, no legumes and very limited dairy). Since I have blood-work on a spreadsheet back 15 years, we'll take a new baseline asap, and another one in 90 days. The statin is dropped as of today.

What I'm hoping to see are three things:

1. My general blood profile will change - hopefully for the better. TC may go up, and LDL may go up as well, but the much more important HDL will raise, and Triglycerides will remain low. Apparently getting LDL Particle Size (a very important measure) is hard to do here in BC, and isn't ordered.
2. Blood glucose levels will be very low. Since there's not a lot of sugar or refined carbs in the diet, this should be a no-brainer.
3. Internal inflammation marker (CRP or C-Reactive Protein) will be very low as well. See the article below for my fascination with inflammation.

This inflammation is coming from an unexpected source - the grains in our diet. We've only been consuming them in a relatively unprocessed form for maybe 10,000 years. In a processed form, for about 100. This, in the evolutionary time-scale, is very, very new. Our bodies don't know how to process it.

Take a look at this article from Dr. Dwight Lundell, a heart surgeon for the last 25 years (entire article):

"The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.  

It Is Not Working!  

These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated.

The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.  

Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before. 

Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year. 

Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped....

...What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods. 

Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now."

So this is what it's all about.

Explanations for what has happened to me (open heart surgery in 2006, followed by a stroke in 2009 - not to mention the TIA in 2008 and the "labyrinthitis" in 2007) are incredulous. Doctors finally came to the conclusion "it's gotta be genetic". That's what they say when they really mean "I haven't got a clue".

Nope - I say the more obvious answer is what I've been eating for the last 16 years.

The next task I have, in addition to monitoring blood levels moving forward, is to see if I can dredge up some old blood-work that I must have had done prior to turning vegetarian in 1996. We'll see what I can find......

 

A More Rational Approach - Paleo 2.0/Archevore

It's now Day 38 on the whole Paleo Diet experiment.

I've made an appointment with my doctor for next Monday to get some bloodwork done - and this will be interesting because my Crestor prescription runs out this Saturday. I had intended to ask him about going off the statin (Crestor) for the blood tests to see how my bloodwork does without this drug in my system. I guess I won't have to ask him, I'll tell him. Crestor is supposed to have a half life of about 19 hours in the body, so if I go for 3-4 days without it, it should give me a fair representation of the trend.

In all I've read, the general consensus is that it may take 6 months of the no-sugar-no-grain diet for your bloodwork to reach some kind of new stability.
I've been warned that:

• Total Cholesterol will likely rise - but it's been shown not to matter unless it's a huge number
• LDL Cholesterol will likely rise - the fat in the diet will cause it to go up - but again this number is not important
• VLDL (Very Low Density LDL) will be a small number - this is the deadly stuff - the stuff that gets into your arteries and causes plaques - low is good
• Triglycerides will go down - although mine were already low
• HDL will go up - this has been the problem for me - I could never raise it about 0.9mmol/L without niacin and a statin - I plan to remain on the niacin unless there is a good reason to go off
• CRP (C-Reactive Protein) is an inflammation marker in the blood - and this number has traditionally been good as well, although the statin probably had something to do with that - it should be low

Today, modern science has determined that statins in general both reduce cholesterol (lower total cholesterol, lower LDL, sometimes raise slightly HDL, and lower triglycerides) and reduce internal inflammation. The cholesterol reduction now seems to be a "chimera", but it's the inflammation reduction that produces the reduction in mortality.

This inflammation is quite likely caused by excess carbohydrate consumption in the form of sugars and grains. It all fits with my situation.

Years of eating little/no meat, compensated with an excess consumption of "good carbs" (whole wheat everything) led to chronic inflammation in my arteries. Which led to both the bypass surgery and the stroke.

Slightly Relaxing the Diet

I've read more about this topic than I did before making the vegetarian choice sixteen years ago. And I've been sure to look for "anti-paleo" arguments along the way.

As with any diet/fad/lifestyle, there are zeolots that require you to stick to a rigid formula. I'm not a big fan of zeolots, regardless of who they are, so I happened upon Dr. Kurt Harris who has taken the Paleo idea and turned it into something achievable for most of us - he calls it Archevore or Paleo 2.0. The basic guidelines are as follows - they become less important as you go down the list, so if you can hit the top few, you're doing well:

1. Get plenty of sleep and deal with any non-food addictions
2. Eliminate sugar and all caloric drinks
3. Eliminate gluten grains and all wheat flour
4. Eliminate grain and seed-derived oils (soy, canola, etc)
5. 2 or 3 meals a day is best - no snacking
6. Eat whole foods from animals (grass-fed ruminants, eggs, fish, seafood)
7. Get lots of vitamin D - supplement if necessary
8. Eat a wide variety of vegetables and fruit - easy on the fruit
9. Get regular exercise

This all seems far more reasonable and achievable, and is likely a program anyone could follow.
My diet program typically looks as simple as this:

• Breakfast - smoothie with coconut milk, eggs, banana, flax seed, vanilla and berries - and a couple of cups of coffee
• Lunch - big spinach salad with tomato, cucumber, onion, soft cheese, 1/2 can of tuna, olive oil and balsamic
• Dinner - a piece of chicken/fish, sweet potato, brocolli
• Dessert - Greek yogurt with berries, 1/3 dark chocolate bar (>85%), apple, hard cheese

It's all very tasty, and I'm eating many fewer times/day than I was as a vegetarian (I was always hungry). The longer this continues, the easier it seems to get.

I'll update the blood numbers as I get them (in a couple of weeks).

Doug 3.2

After some consideration, and following the "theme" of my own blog, I'm renaming it Doug 3.2.
Here's the chronology:

• Doug 1.0 - most of my life, up until I was 36 years old (1996)
• Doug 1.1 - turned vegetarian for health reasons (turned out to be negative health reasons)
• Doug 2.0 - had heart bypass surgery to bypass some plaque buildup on my LAD artery
• Doug 3.0 - suffered a stroke on October 5, 2009
• Doug 3.1 - suffered another stroke and lost my voice sometime within 10 days of Oct 5
• Doug 3.2 - investigated further and have determined that my vegetarian (grain-centric) diet was responsible for Doug 2.0 thru Doug 3.1, so Doug 3.2 is my plan to address all that

So what do you think? I'm not sure any of us was born to live 3.2 separate lives, but it appears that I was.

Three Tips on Living Longer

Dr. David Agus is the author of "The End of Illness".

He's a world famous cancer doctor and researcher who's now on the promotion tour for his book. If you look for his name in pop-culture, or in just about any magazine you pick up, he's there.

I haven't read the book, as I gleaned most everything he has to say for free on the web (I read several Amazon reviews that said "don't bother - you can get all this information for free on the internet).

Whether you agree with him or believe he's just the next "health pop star", his philosophy is worth a quick look. It breaks down into three very easy-to-understand rules:

1. Regularity. Be "regular" in all things that you do. Go to bed at the same time. Wake up at the same time. Eat at the same times. In his opinion, our bodies thrive on regularity. And I've researched this for many posts I've made on BuildBetterSleep.com (the regularity of sleep habits build a pattern in your brain). Although the Paleo-health movement would argue that "eat when you're hungry", and perform "intermittent fasts" is contrary to his rule, I've found that the morning-noon-dinner-snack schedule seems to be hardwired in me regardless. No matter how hard I try to only eat when I'm hungry, I'm always hungry at 7:30am, 12:30pm, 6pm and 9pm.
2. Eat Real Food. This one is obvious to me. And is supported by Michael Pollan and hundreds of other researchers. There can't be anyone left out there that thinks eating processed foods is a good idea. If it comes out of a box - don't eat it. Again, the Paleo movement takes this a step further. Eat foods that our ancestors from 20,000 years ago would recognize - but with some obvious modern twists. They insist that dairy, grains, and legumes were not a part of our diet then, and have lots of reasons why they shouldn't be a part of our diet now. In my experience, this gets much easier to follow once you've lived this way for a month or more.
3. Be In Charge Of Your Own Health. This is near and dear to my thinking. You're foolish if you rely on something your friend said, or what your doctor said, about your health. You are the best judge of your own health. It's incumbent on you to research your own health - don't be lazy and trust someone else to do your homework. You will know more about you than anyone could possibly find out. Think critically, and don't be swayed by popular opinion. Going with that opinion, even if it's sponsored by the government (maybe I should say especially if it's sponsored by the government), could cause you more harm than good.

If you only remembered two of these three rules, I'd have to say that Eat Real Food and Be In Charge Of Your Own Health would be the ones with the biggest payback. They're the ones I'm following...

How to Become an "Expert"

I had a sudden realization yesterday when I was viewing a video presentation from Chris Kesser about cholesterol, the ways we measure it, what the important numbers are, and what is relative nonsense.

I listened for a while, but soon learned that Chris was an acupuncturist and an integrated medicine practitioner. I found myself discounting what he said because of his credentials.

But then I thought - what a hypocrite! Chris is doing this because he has a passion for it. And he has earned the respect of thousands by being outspoken about what he's learned. And what he's learned is how to become an expert in a field that interests him.

So that's the paradigm we're living in today.

Anyone can become an expert, or at least well-informed, about any topic that interests them if they are willing to invest a few weeks or months worth of research. You don't need a degree from MIT to know what you're talking about. You do need more than 30 minutes of Google searches.

I now consider myself well on the way to being an expert in the insomnia and sleep deprivation field, not because I wanted to, but because I found myself thrust into this confusing world. And with absolutely no information about it - I had to go find it myself. I now feel comfortable jumping in to conversations about "benzodiazapine withdrawal" and "central sleep apnea" - terms I never knew existed before.

Similarly, I thought myself relatively knowledgeable about vegetarianism when I drove down that road seventeen years ago. Too bad that most of the information that was available to me was pseudo-science, passed off as real science, by every "expert" I found.

This time around, with the low-grain/low-dairy/low-legume diet (Paleo - but I hate that term), I find myself being much more diligent in the research - looking for contrary positions on everything I read. If the contrary position doesn't stand up, it's discarded. And often it doesn't stand up. I wish there was a contrary position in 1995.

The information available to us today can be overwhelming. And often people will say (especially about diets) that information keeps changing - what's good for us one week is bad for us the next. But that's the nature of science.

If you can look at everything through skeptical lenses (skeptical being a good term - look it up), then you begin to appreciate the process. It's only when that process is "managed", as it was in the 90's, that we get into trouble.

Good thing for us that the process can't be handled anymore, unless you get everything you know from the evening news.

Viva la informacion!

Eating 3.0 (The Paleo Diet)

I'm feeling guilty about not updating the Build Better Sleep site for the last few days, but I've got this eating business on my mind...

Going from being *95% vegetarian to a diet that includes some meat, but excludes all grains and added sugar has been, to put it mildly, difficult.

You never realize how much of what we consume every day is out of the question:

• Breakfast - toast, bagels, cereal, porridge, muffins, juice
• Lunch - sandwiches, buns, jams, spreads, processed meat and cheese
• Dinner - bread, buns, any dessert you can think of
• Snacks - chips, nachos, cheese and crackers, soft drinks

The general "rule" I'm living by for the next week and a bit (with almost three weeks behind me - and I've passed up some fantastic looking food) is to eschew grains and sugars (except sugars naturally occurring in fruits or vegetables), eliminate beans - including soy beans and tofu, and not to eat anything my grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. The results of this experiment will be to see:

• How I feel - more/less energy
• If my sleep patterns change
• If my digestion changes
• If my **blood-work changes

I really don't like calling this whole thing a diet, as the word "diet" sounds so temporary and mostly driven by losing weight. I have lost some weight, but that's surely not the reason I'm giving this a go.

I suspect (and lots of others now believe as well - including my doctor) that the fast-burn carbohydrates from grain and sugar are the root cause of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and strokes. There's a lot of science behind this, and it's too involved to get into here. Suffice it to say that it's our amplified insulin responses to grains and sugar that cause this medical cascade of serious problems. And the cure is to stabilize a low level of insulin in your blood - just like nature intended. Ask anyone with diabetes how their insulin level responds to bread (whole wheat or regular) or sugar and see what they say.

I've been quite pleasantly surprised over the last few days how many people are interested in this "Paleo" thing. The "interested" outnumber the "you're a lunatic" about 3:1. But giving up the grains and sugar (because it's in everything) is really hard in our society if you should want to play along.

In my experience, limited as it's been, is that you really crave sugar and carbohydrates for the first week or two. All the while thinking "what can I eat?". After you get over the craving hump, you're still left with the "what can I eat" question, but answers are starting to appear all over the place. I can now go to almost any restaurant and get a good low-carb meal. And when we get home I have to overhaul the pantry and make it easier to find suitable food. It should be pretty simple.

If you've read here for a while, you'll know that this entire adventure was an accident - I stumbled across this "Paleo" idea (by the way, I hate that name. Let's call it "Eating 3.0"). While the results I'm hoping for are medical, I've read much about the whole "Eating 3.0/Paleo" lifestyle program, and I have to say that I like it - it makes sense to me:

1. Eat lots of plants and animals
2. Move around a lot at a slow pace
3. Lift heavy things
4. Run really fast once in a while
5. Get lots of sleep
6. Play
7. Get some sunlight every day
8. Avoid trauma
9. Avoid poisonous things
10. Use your mind

There's a great explanation behind each of these over at Mark's Daily Apple. It's mostly about doing what we've always done (until recently). No more worrying about how much we ate, or when we last hit the gym, or how we'll get some sleep before work tomorrow.

For now, the sugar/carb cravings are mostly gone (that has to be a good thing regardless of the long-term decision I make about this), and I'm feeling pretty good. None of my clothes fit, though.

I'll update this again as I get closer to an answer as to whether this is for me, and see if it's sustainable.

* I ate some fish, and a little chicken, turkey, and red meat on special occasions. But not very much.
** I'm concerned only with HDL, small-particle LDL, and triglyceride measurements. I've discovered that the general cholesterol numbers we've been fed for years at the doctors office are mostly useless.

An Ethical Tangent

Kathryn and Tavis were over for dinner last night. While Kathryn remains a committed vegetarian, Travis appreciates being a carnivore for one night. We had steak that I had barbequed.

Half way through my steak, listening to Kathryn talk about the ethics of eating factory made meat, and worrying about my health, I had another realization. There's got to be a way to incorporate 90% of the healthy food choices I've discovered, and remain more-or-less a vegetarian.

I looked on-line and, sure enough, there were lots of people out there with the same concerns, albeit mostly ethical. It looks like it's possible to have a "mostly paleolithic" diet (the paleo diet is the closest I've seen that comes to the ideal) if you were a vegetarian and were willing to incorporate eggs and fish. I'm willing to do that - to tell the truth the whole beef thing doesn't do much for me taste wise anymore.

So the food choices now, to obtain the 90% benefit, are:

• PROTEIN: Eggs, fish
• OILS AND FATS: Butter, Olive Oil
• FRUITS AND VEGETABLE: Everything except starchy vegetables (potatoes), easy on high sugar fruit (Bananas, Apples)
• NUTS AND LEGUMES: Most Nuts (Almonds, Cashews), No Legumes (Peanut Butter)
• GRAINS: White Rice, Quinoa
• DAIRY: Organic/Grass Fed Butter, Full Fat Greek Yogurt
• SWEETENERS: Splenda occasionally 

I'm hoping that with this change I'll feel better about my karma as well as better about my health.

Many who've learned about my new eating plan (I won't say diet, because that sounds so temporary) says "it's just like Atkins" - and much of it is. Actually, he's been redeemed quite a bit since his death. At any rate, I found this simple diagram that explains the difference between Atkins and Paleo from one of the blogs I checked out:

As you can see, Paleo incorporates most of Atkins, but doesn't allow/recommend any kind of sugar - real or fake. And it doesn't allow "low carb" processed food and grains like Atkins does - although I may just find that that's a part of my diet I don't want to give up (it's really hard when you crave Multi-Grain Cheerios at 8pm - although that's hardly low-carb). I'll read more to find out what the real health consequences of this are.

An interesting side-effect in all this is that I've lost about 7lbs in the last 10 days eating this way (leaving out the grains, the potatoes and the sugar). Not that I need to lose the weight, or even that that was some kind of benefit, but interesting nonetheless.

PS: Over the last week I've spent considerable time reading as much as I can about this, looking for contrarian positions on this whole paleo diet thing. I've yet to come up with anything that contradicts the research I found in Good Calories, Bad Calories, and Why We Get Fat. I'd recommend reading Why We Get Fat for a good overview of all the science in the first book - it's really inexpensive and you can download it onto whatever reader you use (Kindle, PC, Mac, Stone Tablet).