Taking Control of Your Health (off topic)

A couple of months ago I read a very interesting book entitled Brain Maker by Dr. Perlmutter (an Amazon.com and New York Times best seller), which is probably a book that anyone concerned with their health should read.  The book is well edited and thus a fairly easy read, despite the technical nature of much of what it presents.

Despite the title, it basically details the connection between your gut flora and any number of health issues, many of which begin to manifest themselves in our 40s and 50s.  Don't expect to hear about this sort of information from your doctor, as it simply doesn't pay for any of them to spend that much time explaining anything to one patient.  Besides, the whole paradigm of traditional healthcare is to simply relieve symptoms (cut it out or take a pill), not to help you prevent disease.  After all, that's what people are most willing to pay for - a quick fix.

The book basically lays out the case for how current dietary practices have caused an imbalance in gut flora in most people, which is manifesting itself in any number of diseases: it is one of the main drivers of inflammation in your body, which is the root cause of most disease.  A main premise of the book is that such an imbalance in gut flora could very well be the primary cause of the current epidemic of Alzheimer's Disease.  That's a pretty revolutionary thought - that what goes on in your gut can destroy your brain, so you can probably sense why I took the time to read the book.  In a nutshell, certain dietary elements favor an overgrowth of harmful gut flora, while also creating a hostile environment for beneficial gut flora.  So the book helps you to avoid those harmful dietary elements in order to keep inflammation at bay, and thus avoid a host of chronic diseases brought on by chronically high levels of inflammation.

For those of you that have read about the Paleo Diet and other low-carb diets, the recommendations of the book will look very familiar.  Some folks will be horrified to contemplate life consuming fewer baked goods.  But the same guidelines that Dr. Perlmutter outlines to improve your brain health have also been proven to reduce high blood pressure, reduce weight, improve blood sugar, improve cholesterol ratios, relieve depression, improve sleep, etc: all symptoms that traditional healthcare would rather have you manage with a lifetime of expensive (and often addictive) medications with nasty side effects, rather than educating you about how simple changes in diet can achieve the same thing with far better results and at much lower cost.  And more importantly, you will feel far better as a result.   

It is important to know that even half-heartedly implementing his dietary recommendations can significantly improve your health and well being, so don't take them as an all-or-nothing edict.  But the closer you can get to fully implementing his recommendations, the more your health will be restored and the better than you will feel as a result.

And, getting back on topic for a moment, Alea's final day of work is two weeks from today.