Acceptance

I ordered this survival guide hoping to learn a bit more about chemo and radiation therapies. I was a little bit underwhelmed by the book because either I already know most of the stuff, or I don't quite agree with their suggestions. The chapter on "Mind and Body", however, turns out to be an unexpected good one. Here is one paragraph from this chapter:

The necessity of thinking positively is a myth. The whole spectrum of emotions, from negative to positive, is unavoidable and necessary. Not letting yourself feel how you feel, or getting upset at yourself being angry or sad, can backfire and cause you to feel even worse that you did before. On the other hand, a good cry or yell often is relieving and healing. Feelings provide us with vital information. Denying them or keeping them inside may in fact be the unhealthy choice.

This reminds of me something I read some time back: I was quite impressed with that post so that I could scoop it up pretty quickly. It talks about something along the same line: don't fight your feelings, accept them instead. Here are some excerpts:

Once we realize that its normal to feel all kinds of emotion and the only thing that pro-longs them or cuts them short is our mind fighting with them. For instance when your feeling irritable, scared or angry its normal and can be triggered by anything and is usually out of your control. Just as we have good days and bad days. These feelings if left alone and allowed to flow through your body would normally pass, they may not feel nice but they are natural emotions. What pro-longs them is our resistance to them its when we start fighting and fearing these feelings. When we start arguing in our minds saying “I should not feel like this, I want to feel relaxed, Why do I get frustrated so easily” all these questions and thoughts of resistance will pro-long the negative emotion and cause more suffering until something distracts you or things burn out after hours of internal fighting.

Sure you will feel negative emotions from time to time and they don’t feel nice. Just accept them, admit to yourself that’s how your feeling right now and don’t question them don’t start that internal fight inside your head, just let the emotions flow and feel them rush through your body. Once you start doing this you will see that you will start feeling less and less negative emotions and your mind will sway towards what it likes best……..Happiness!

I might add a little trick here based on good neuroscience actually. When you feel a bit down and moody, usually it's right brain that is in control. If you can get yourself into doing something procedural and detail-oriented, that would force you to use your left brain, which in turn will take the control from right brain. As the result, that change of mind will usually lift you out of the blues.

Omega-3, Omega-6 and Cancer

This is quite a compelling story with solid science behind it. Read it all. The message is quite simple actually: Omega-6 fats suppress your immune system and Omega-3 fats balance out this ill effect. So when it comes to fighting cancer, this makes a lot of differences.

One more evidence against Omega-6 fats: they are actually used in organ transplant operations to suppress immune system, that says a lot right there about how powerful they are. And that's the primary reason I am against going to Chinese restaurants: they use the cheapest fat, usually corn oil or soybean oil -- two of the nastiest fats you can have.

Again I am so convinced that the two most egregious offenders to our health are excessive Omega-6 fats and sugar, get rid of them, by all means.

Repair your immune system

This is pretty much what I've been practicing and preaching. Get rid of sugar, fake fats and don't mess up with your body, and you will be just fine since your genes want you fit and will make you fit.

7 deadly sins

Out of 7 sins -- lust, sloth, gluttony, wrath, envy, greed and pride, I tend to put the first four into an innate group: in one way or other they have some evolutionary roots. Lust gets your gene passed down; sloth makes you less stressed; gluttony helps you get through famines; and wrath might help ward off enemies.

The last three, however, are more learned or cultured, at least only unique to high primates. And the root of these three, I think, is pride. If we could just be a bit more humble, not just in the way we present ourselves to the outside world, but deep inside -- accepting the fact that we are just one human being out of the billions, the world would be much more peaceful and harmonious, and we all would be living a much happier life.

So if I had to pick my poison, I would commit some sins from the first group. I would not feel guilty if I could not help looking the hot lady passing by, or if I slacked off a bit sometimes, or if I lost my temper once a while. On the other hand, I will make conscious effort to remind myself that I am just another ordinary human being, trying to live as happily as I can, and, hopeful, making the lives of people around me a bit brighter.

What do you believe?

Call me a science junkie but that's just who I am: things need to make sense to me before I accept it.

I understand there are a lot very complex systems that we only know a tiny bit of them, like the whole ecosystem, human body, the economy, etc, as the result we can not get too hung up on reductionism. They are not designed or controlled by any deity, they evolve. That's why I am such a staunch believer and supporter of evolution. So when I look at any hypothesis, the very first question I have to ask is: does it make sense from an evolutionary perspective? And very hypothesis has to pass this simple test before we can move on to the empirical testing part.

So when it comes to medical research, what are those stuff I trust? First and foremost, they need to fit in the framework of human evolution from a single cell, to fish, amphibian, reptile, mammal, primate, and finally homo sapient. After nature invented something that works, it will keep it. That's why we still share a lot genes with fruit flies, even bacteria, as a matter of fact the whole energy production system in our body is still pretty much like bacteria.

The second test is about genetic and biochemical pathways. We already know a lot about genetics and biochemistry; A hypothesis should be able to explain the pathways involved.

And finally I need to see empirical evidences from controlled experiments, the causal links from the treatment effects, not the correlation from epidemiological studies.

Need a strong immune system to fight cancer

I am going through the old posts about cancer at Stephen' site, this is his take on cancer:

This raises the possibility that cancer is not simply the result of getting too old, but a very specific weakening of the immune system.

This is from empirical evidence obviously. But that evidence itself does not provide much hope here, the million dollar question is still that how to strenghten one specific individual's immune system. I need to read a lot more on immune system.

A new theory about cancer

This is an article I read in Economist last year. Here is the hypothesis in a nutshell:

Cancer may be caused by stem cells gone bad. If that proves to be correct, it should revolutionise treatment.

And here is the original article. I saved it into a Word file, the online version is gated.

Be careful of fructose

This is just a hypothesis, but a pretty good one, I have to say.

Now let's connect the dots. Excessive fructose, certain types of fiber, and wheat cause bacterial overgrowth and H2 production (if you believe the fructose-H2 connection). Elevated H2 causes overgrowth of H. pylori and possibly other pathogenic bacteria in the body. H. pylori lowers stomach acid, causing further overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine. This causes inflammation and increases the risk for digestive cancers.

Links

Ketogenic diet and Chemo

Freeman's book Ketogenic diet

More links on fighting cancer

No sugar, tumor dies

Ketognic diet slows stomach cancer

Neuroscience

I am addicted to this podcast website for brain science since I stumbled on it a few days back. Right now I am going through all the past episodes, they are wonderful.

Caution for vegetarianism

Humans probably evolved as an omnivore, and this is about the consensus view. But there are a lot of debate over the composition of HG's diet: was it slanted more toward animal products or plant products? So far the evidences point more toward the former. We have a relatively small gut and liver given our body size, so we have to eat nutrient and calorie dense foods, which implies animal products were playing an important role in HG's diet. Also it's just impossible to obtain all the essential nutrients from plants without supplements, especially those fat soluble vitamins. Yet another support comes from Weston Price's studies of healthy traditional people: none of them subsisted on plants only, though some of them(Inuit) completely lived without plants.

While I have tweaked my diet a bit more toward animal products, I still eat plenty of vegetables. For one thing I enjoy eating some vegetables, and more importantly, the animal products we eat today, mostly muscle meats, are not nearly as nutirent dense/complete as those eaten by HGs. As the result, we might have to eat some plant-based foods, even though it might not be the optimal way of getting these nutrients.

Fish Oil, Vitamin D and Vitamin K

Generally I am still not a big fan of supplements -- we only know very little about all the nutrients and I don't want to mess up with my body. But there is a emerging consensus among health bloggers that at least three things we should supplement: fish oil, vitamin D(D3) and Vitamin K(K2 MK4). The overarching reason for supplementing these is due to poor nutrition in our modern food supply. Compared to our ancestors' diet, ours lack these 3 things to a astonishing degree. So in a sense they are not really supplements, but rather ways of "righting" our diet to mimic the nutition-dense foods of hunter gatherer's.

Weight loss, health and longevity

If you have a weight problem, you are not healthy. But the opposite is not always true: you can be blessed genetically, as the result you can tolerate a lot of bad foods without gaining weight, but your health could be still suffering without the manifestation of overweight.

Being health requires a holistic approach that often includes good nutrition, stress control, good sleep and exercise, of which nutrition is the most dominant factor. If you eat the right wholesome foods, you won't have weight problem. But you need also pay attention to the other 3 aspects to be healthy.

Most health conscious blogs I read are about one of those 4 legs of being health. A lot of things people in this community are doing -- even though they sound like strange according to conventional wisdom, are actually backed up by sound medical research, and I am quite sure they will become mainstream in 10 or 15 years.

Longevity, or more specifically, the retarding of the rate of aging, is still a very unsettled field. For one thing, it's not a natural phenomena. While if you just follow a hunter-gatherer or Paleo diet, you genes will take care of your body and you will be healthy. It's natural in that you genes want you to be fit you can reproduce. Longevity, however, is quite a different story: why would nature want you to hang around once you have passed your prime time? Evolution does not work this way: you are just a burden on food supply if you don't help pass down the genes.

So far the only proven way of slowing down aging is calorie restriction. But who wants to live to 120 years old when you are always hungry? That's why a lot researcher are trying to unravel the underlying biology of calorie restriction so that we can live longer without the starvation. And this is a very exciting field, with a right mix of science and speculation, it's just plain fascinating, and I enjoy the reading in this field tremendously.

Why you should become a fat burner

People often are surprised to know how much fat I eat while I have so little body fat. And it's not like that I am living on treadmill -- I stopped running at least 2 years back, and I seldom do aerobics for the sake of burning calories. Since I've turned myself into an effective fat burner, the fats I eat are being burned instead of deposited in fat tissues.

First of all you are either a fat burner or sugar burner. In other words, you either fuel your body with fatty acids or glucose. Protein can provide part of energy you body needs, but it's limited since it takes quite a bit energy to metabolize amino acids. The upper limit is about 1/3 of your calorie intake that can come from protein. To put bluntly, if you are on high-protein diet, you are starving yourself. If you eat a lot carb, you will be a sugar burner. Conversely, you will force yourself into a fat burner with low carb intake.

Without going to details, here are a few reasons I think you should become a fat burner:

• Carb drives up your insulin level. Insulin is a very old and powerful hormone, mopping up glucose from your blood stream is just one function of insulin. It's a pro-growth, pro-inflammation hormone. Too much insulin blocks the secretion of a whole bunch of other hormones. And with sustained high level of insulin, you are bound to become insulin resistant; once you've lost your insulin sensitivity, you will become diabetic and can not tolerate any carbs.
• High level of glucose itself is toxic. Glucose will bind to protein throught a process called glycation, which is very bad for proteins with long turnover time. Literally glycation of the collegen makes you look old.
• Metabolism of glucose produces more free radicals than that of fats. Glucose and fatty acids go through different processes before they are reduced to pyruate acid to enter into Krebs Cycle. I will elaborate on this in another post. It's fascinating.
• Being a fat burner means freedom from food: I don't have to eat every 4 or 5 hours. If I don't have the food I want, I won't eat. I can go without foods for days, and my body will draw on the fat reserves without much problem.

Economics and Evolution

There are a lot of economics in evolution: competition and cooperation among cells, costs and benefits of acquiring/shedding genes, strategic behaviors between sexes, etc. This experiment illustrates this point beautifully, and it makes so much sense if you think it from evolutionary perspective.

Evolution is all about passing down genes by reproduction, at least this is true for multi-cellular eukaryotes like human. Since reproduction is very energy intensive, nature has evolved a way to determine when to engage in reproduction. When food is abundant, you reproduce; when food is scarce, they hang on a bit longer hoping things will turn around so you can reproduce later. So women actually become semi-fertile when there is not enough food. I used to think that it would have the similar impact on men's fertility. It turns out to be just the opposite -- intermittent fasting instead increase men's fertility, at least this is what this research is saying.

Puzzling, isn't it? But again if you think about it carefully it actually makes sense: there is very little energy requirement for men to be reproductive: sperm is tiny and does not cost a lot to produce them, and once they are out, that's it. Women, on the other hand, need to consume a lot of energy to be reproductively ready and even more energy during pregnancy and child rearing. And keep in mind men and women would face the same deprivation when food is short supply; in order to compensate the deceased fertility of women during harsh times, men has to kick up a notch to ensure the reproduction successful, that's why men has higher testosterone level while fasting.

Funny

I got an email from my old friend Bob today, I know he is not that serious, but you get the point:

Hey man you need to teach me Chinese! China will soon achieve domination over the US and I want to be prepared!

Detress

Let's face it, we are all stressed out in one sense or another -- ever increasing demand from work and life is, by itself, is quite brutal. And the job security and career development concerns in this unprecedented economic downturn only make people more stressed.

Stress is a big killer of our health, and I believe handling stress is probably more important than your workouts(In a pecking order, I tend to rank factors contributing to health as good nutrition, stress control, exercise and good night sleep.) So it makes sense to figure out ways of minimizing stress, here are a few things that work for me:

• Get organized. Our brain is at best handing a few things at a time, probably around 6, plus or minus one or two. If it's messy, we get stressed out. I use a free software called EssentialPIM Portable to manage all my notes. It works great.
• Purge and simplify. If you have not used something for a while, chances are that you won''t need it at all. Either archive it or junk it.
• Less is more. We really don't need a lot of "stuff" to be happy or productive. As long as you have a healthy body and mind, the rest is not that important. My essentials are healthy foods, books and decent exercise gears, all the rest is dispensable.
• Take small steps. Just try to get a tiny bit done, and you will feel a sense of accomplishment and the momentum will carry you forward.
• Habits are more important than will power. Don't over estimate your will power, most of us give in to temptations quite easily. Habits, however, are more effective in getting things accomplished.
• Last but not least, make it fun and interesting. After all life is all about having fun, is it not?

How many friends can you have?

For casual friends, the number is about 150, the so-called Dunbar number.

Several years ago, therefore, Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist who now works at Oxford University, concluded that the cognitive power of the brain limits the size of the social network that an individual of any given species can develop. Extrapolating from the brain sizes and social networks of apes, Dr Dunbar suggested that the size of the human brain allows stable networks of about 148. Rounded to 150, this has become famous as “the Dunbar number”.

So they test out the theory with social networking website Facebook, and it turns out to be pretty close: on average a user has 120 friends listed in Facebook. The number of active friends, indicated by leaving comments on friends' postings, is about 7 for men and 10 for women. Close friends -- defined by two-way communications like chats and emails, is even fewer: 4 for men and 6 for women.

Financial Crisis

"There is nothing like crisis that focus people's mind." I love this quote. Crisis force us to find out what's been not working, for most people stick the rule of don't-fix-it-if-it-works.

The financial crisis has generated tons of discussion in econ blogsphere, and it's been never a more exciting time for economists, especially Macroeconomists. A lot of established economic models or a whole school of thought are called into question. Here are some topics I am interested in:

1. How much regulation is optimal in financial system?
2. Is financial engineering the biggest scam ever in history?
3. Is monetary policy still effective when facing zero interest rate?
4. Is Keynesian or New Keynesian school coming back?
5. Is Real Business Cycle dead?

Habits

I am not sure this is really true or not. But it makes sense that it takes some time for the neurons to rewire, whether it really takes 21 days or not is open to debate, probably it depends on the habits in question.

Reading and exercising are already part of my habits. I don't need much prodding for me to pick up a book or go to gym -- they happen almost automatically to me. Writing, however, is quite a different thing: I always use the excuse that I need a good chunk of time to write something down, which is probably not true. Maybe it would be a good and fun experiment to keep writing something down for 21 days -- I will see if writing will become a habit for me by March 22nd.