Last year I spent the first 3 months of 2012 on a strict Paleo Diet. I ate a lot of grass or vegetable feed organic meat!
Over the course of the year I had a lot of clients also try the paleo diet with some pretty amazing results. The key to this lifestyle strategy is quite simple … reduce all foods that can produce inflammation in the body. Typically this includes all starchy carbohydrates, grains and dairy. Many people, including myself, lost weight on this diet, coupled with dramatic improvements in energy and mood. Although, I think this strategy is great, this year I’m taking the challenge one step further.
My story actually starts several years ago with a trip to my medical doctor and friend, Dr Elizabeth Crosby. Dr Crosby provided me with a requisition for a lot of blood work … she’s ordered so much blood work for her clients, in the past, that eventually she was audited by the College and strongly discouraged from ordering “health tests”. Health tests are tests that screen for health conditions and can be fundamental for finding diseases before signs of a condition develops. Anyways, I was found to have extremely high levels of a cardiovascular marker called lipoprotein (a). Lipoprotein (a) is a protein packaged with cholesterol, and when found in high amounts is typically connected to genetic hypercholesterolemia … or genetically high cholesterol. Essentially this marker has been found to dramatically increase mortality when elevated, even in the absence of high cholesterol.
The good thing is that once I found out about the lipoprotein (a), I could actually do something about it. The bad news is that the only really effective way to bring lipoprotein (a) down is to take huge amounts of niacin, which I did … and it worked. The problem is that you have to take the niacin for life, and if any one has tried large doses of vitamin b3 (niacin) they know that it produces an undesirable side effect of extreme itchiness and skin blochiness. So, not surprisingly, after years of taking niacin, I’m ready to try an alternative approach.
This year I’ve decided to try Veganism … that’s right … the carnivore doctor has decided to adopt an entirely plant based diet for 6 months. Although I’m a huge animal lover, my motives are not based on animal welfare, they’re based purely in science.
My plans to become a vegan took shape several months ago after I watched this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
This presentation was quite entertaining, but more than that, it started me on a frenzied research review focused on the evidence based benefits of veganism. I guess in the end, this shouldn’t have been such a surprise, however I think that what got to me was the degree of success in the treatment and prevention of all chronic disease that such a diet strategy could produce. Although, I’ve never been against vegetarianism, and in fact, I was a dedicated vegitarian for several years, I have cautioned clients against vegitarianism because of how difficult it is to be a healthy vegitarian. The challenge is that, true vegansim requires a lot of food preparation and if you’re a lazy vegitairian it’s to easy to eat way to much refined or starchy carbohydrates. My major goal over the next 6 months is to limit my refined carbohydrate intake, as I did on the paleo diet but also adapt a purely plant based diet at the same time. I will be sticking to the principles of seasonal eating, cooking the majority of my foods in the winter.
In order to objectify my results and track my response to a plant based diet, on December 31st I did close to $300 worth of private blood testing through lifelabs. This screening included an extensive blood testing panel that was analyzed by functional medicine software. My functional medicine software allows me to quickly analyze conventional laboratory results, using optimized reference ranges to help clients understand what optimal results look like compared to the standard laboratory reference values.
To help people understand this consider the following illustration.
A bell curve is typically what standard reference values are based on, with the largest area under the curve (green in this case) indicating the healthiest segment of the population. Depending on the test in question, the reference ranges (bell curve) might shift slightly one way or the other, but generally this is what it would look like. Green is optimal, where most people should be, blue is less than optimal but still acceptable where yellow and grey would be flagged as abnormal. Lets consider a real example of this for a minute … thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH). A standard reference range for TSH is 0.38 to 5.5 mU/L, where the optimal range is considered to be 1 to 2.5 mU/L. Because the thyroid has so many important functions in the body, most people would be encouraged to keep themselves in the optimal range. Falling outside of that range could potentially have many subtle negative health outcomes, including reduced metabolism, energy, sex drive and mood, along with elevated blood sugar, high cholesterol and hair loss.
It’s now been several days on my vegan diet and so far so good. I’m posting my functional analysis here, if any one is interested in seeing the results. To my surprise there was strong signs of parasitic infection that were not present several years ago, it’s either my new puppy or a trip to the Amazon jungle I took in February 2010. I’ll be send a stool analysis in next week to see which parasite it is. I’ll keep you posted!
It is occasionally hard to differentiate, based on hematology, if a parasite is present or a person has allergies. In my case, I know it is a parasite because I had this allergy test (Allergy Test Results) done last year and it only shows an allergy to corn … which I dont eat! Further, the eosinophil and basophil counts are both high, which is a strong indicator of parasitic infection! Stay tuned, to find out which one.
Happy 2013 everyone. Although my health challenge is extreme, I hope everyone that reads this is motivated to pick their own health goals, document them and strive to achieve them. I’ll be happy to help.