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Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff- Paleo Minutae


A growing trend has begun troubling me in the paleo sphere- concentrating on minutae.  Little things, in other words. 

Instead of just focussing on the large issues in what is wrong in health and fitness these days, most of the paleo “in crowd” seem to be trying to distinguish themselves by choosing some small niche in the field, and going on and on about how important that one small thing is!  I realize most folks that talk and write about paleo nutrition and wellness are trying to make a living from it, I get that.  But by stressing that most people need this exclusive test, or that one; while they might be carving out a lucrative niche for themselves, the are obscuring the important, vital overall message that everyone needs to hear, not just Paleo aficionados who study this stuff to death. 

While I might fall into that latter category, I am different in that I am not trying to make a living in the paleo field, or even to make a name for myself and become a recognized “expert”.  I do have an e-book on Perfectly Paleo Exercise that has turned out to be quite a good seller, but the reason I put that out was because I couldn’t find any other place that was really putting out what I considered good, safe, productive exercise information!  Everything was just recycled body building, long distance running, powerlifting  and Cross Fit types of stuff, most of which I consider largely useless, and oftentimes harmful.  So I decided to show a correct alternative using body weight, virtual, isometric, and self resisted movements since there was nowhere else really to find it.

But this is not specifically about exercise.  The Paleo, or now “Paleo-ish” lifestyle as it has evolved to become, is a really powerful, simple thing!  If all of the experts in the field, which also seem to be developing into a kind of exclusive club that recognizes one another for mutual benefit and exclusivity each stresses a few things, like SIBO or Candida, or goes into paroxysms in a wild debate over which is better, Paleo or Ketogenic- all they do is start to confuse the average person.  They take the message, and garble it.

Not to make this more important than it is, but think of it like what happened to Christianity.  Whether you are a believer or not, you probably know that Jesus had a very simple, understandable concept behind his preaching: Love One Another as You Love Yourself.  Of course there is very much more, but that is the basis- Simple, understandable, and very transforming in and of itself.

But think what has become of that simplicity over the ages, as self-serving folks tried to “explain it better, more fully”, and incidentally started huge, exclusive churches with elaborate hierarchies and overarching agendas focussed on money, prestige, and power!  The Paleo Kingdom is far newer and smaller, but I think the idea is the same.

Live as well as you can like our ancient ancestors- Eat real food.  Avoid chemicals things made in a lab, and live a life in the outdoors as much as you can, moving and exercising in a natural manner in nature, and sleeping and resting amply each night.  Enjoy family and neighborhood connections, and avoid stress, particularly the stress of modern drugs and the ill-advised procedures of modern medicine, which is profit-based, not health- based.

That is my off-the-cuff explanation, not perfect of course, but pretty simple and basic.  Of course there are variations: original, Loren Cordain Paleo allowed NO dairy, no legumes, and he was quite an endurance exercise proponent.  I do very well indeed with high fat dairy, some legumes are fine for me, and I have discovered that endurance exercise is a bad fit of the vast majority, who are in need of muscle tissue far more than aerobic endurance.   Everyone needs to find just what works for them, but the truth is:

Cutting out grains, eating a higher fat diet along with lots and lots of vegetables and quality protein TRANSFORMS PEOPLE’S HEALTH!!

Doing just that above, even for a couple of weeks, will literally begin to transform anyone who does it!  They really don’t need to have lots of expensive tests, visit naturopath professionals or functional medicine docs or even regular M.D.’s- they just need to get started on the basics, and then sticking to it!  It really is just that simple.

You don’t really want to have a “guru” of health, although there may be a few that you follow that make sense to you.  But just take from each one what they have that is valuable, try it out, and then carry on on your own.  YOU are your own best health advocate!  Make it your hobby, both for you and for your family.  No one, absolutely no one cares as much about you and yours as YOU DO.

So go thou, and be a paleo pioneer my friend.  Forget the testing, the many gimmicks; the clubs and groups and this and that- just eat paleo, exercise paleo, and live paleo.

Check out this episode!

Sunday, September 24, 2017

YOU are responsible for your Health!



I can help you!

In this time of snowflakes, or those who cannot experience one moment of discomfort in their lives, one of the worst trends, health-wise, is that of folks relying- actually worshipping medical clinics and standard doctors!  

I have nothing against M.D.’s, they are wonderful to have around when you have stopped a bullet or been run over by a bus.  They are trained, since the Civil War (which, by the way snowflakes, was a war where white men fought and died to free black slaves), to save men that have been traumatized dramatically, and help them to survive, ultimately to return to the battle field.  Really, this is when modern western medicine really got in its stride.  Emergency medicine!

But, in terms of staying healthy, getting healthy, or regaining health- sorry, it is all up to you.  

I think this is the whole disconnect, right there.  Nowadays, people want to think that medical doctors and clinics can save them, literally.  Save them from themselves!  The vast majority of people do not want to change what they eat, and their lifestyle, one bit.  They want to continue to eat cereal for breakfast, but they will use skim milk, since that will save them.  (Low fat)

They also want to eat fast food for lunch, and sometimes they will eat a salad with the supplied soybean rancid seed oil dressing, washing it down with an artificially sweetened beverage, and having a bun or some other GMO crap topped with loads of more rancid seed oil, in the form of margarine. (Because it’s low fat, don’t you know)  

Supper can be a thick crust, Chicago style pizza, since you have been “good” all day, eating low fat, and watching those calories!  You are starving, so you eat the whole thing- after all, you walked in your cushioned sneakers at the mall for a good 30 minutes this morning.  You stay up late, watching CNN and feeling virtuous, since you are doing so well- and you can’t wait for your doctor’s appointment at the clinic next week, since you know you will do so well, since you follow all of their recommendation to the letter!  You just want to ask your doctor why you can’t lose weight; you just keep yo-yoing up and down- and you have constant headaches, and then there is your acid reflux that is becoming chronic.  You are so depressed as well…

What a surprise at the clinic when the doctor raises alarm bells- your health appears to be horrible!  Your triglycerides are sky high, and he recommends a statin, high blood pressure medication- and- oh yes, it’s time for a colonoscopy, along with a series of tests that need to be scheduled, since you are over 50 now, and everyone over 50 needs lots of medications and continual tests, since otherwise you can never stay alive.

You go home with your bags and bags of pills you got from the pharmacy.  You feel virtuous!  You are doing everything right!  You eat lots and LOTS of whole grains, not too much white flour, (except maybe your pizza, but you do mostly right- wheat chex every morning, right?)  And the doctor says that mall walking is probably the best exercise that you can do, along with Zumba, which you plan to start next month.  Things are looking great!

But, as you watch the bluish glow from your large-screen TV, you kind of wonder why you feel like crap?  You remember Grandma and Grandpa, who lived on that hardscrabble farm in the midwest… How had they survived so long?  They ate bacon and eggs every morning like clockwork, and slaughtered their own animals as well.  They never made near as much money as you do, out in the suburbs, but the always seemed healthy and happy, Grandpa out cutting wood in his late 80’s while Grandma was frying bacon and then doing all of the household chores, including weeding the huge vegetable garden on a near daily basis.

You look distractedly at Rachel Maddow, your hero, and remember that Grandma and Grandpa always were in bed by 9, while you never go to bed before midnight, despite having to get up at 5.  YOU are no stick-in-the-mud like those old fossils, even thought you love them dearly.  Those poor, benighted souls…all of that butter, and red meat, and just a high fat diet!  How can they stay alive??

Shrugging, you remember you need to take your pills- blood pressure, statins, anti-depressants, acid-blockers- well, the list goes on and on.  You feel great as you take them, knowing you are destined, through medical science, to live the longest, healthiest life in the history of the human race, thanks to worshipping the medical science developed in the 1970’s!!

Finally, you go to bed.  Since you live in a metropolitan area, since of course the job prospects are so much more lucrative there, you lie in bed listening to the sirens and urban clamor all around you.  The bright lights from the street lights shine in on your bedroom, so you sure don’t need a nightlight!  You smile.  Grandma and Grandpa have been sleeping for hours!  What kind of life is that, anyway?  You lie back, waiting for sleep to come- tomorrow will be a stressful day, in fact they are all stressful days- high pressure!

You lie there, light shining in your windows, noise outside as it will continue all night.  You can’t sleep, in fact you almost never can sleep.  ‘Have to ask the doctor about  sleeping pills next week,’ you think.  You pull out your phone, and check out facebook- you sigh.  This will be one long night; hopefully you will get a few hours of sleep.

At 6 AM the next morning, Grandpa gets out of bed, and goes lightly downstairs to make the coffee for the two of them.  He starts his morning exercises, doing limbering and stretching ones mostly, but concluding with pushups and situps, of which he can do a surprising number, strictly.  

After showering, Grandma comes down, and they make a large breakfast together of eggs, meat, and a big smoothie made in their Vitamix- their offspring would be startled and horrified, since it is a high fat smoothie, and a high fat meal altogether!  They laugh together, and talk, planning their day.  Grandpa needs to mow their rural acreage with his tractor, which he loves, so Grandma will run to town to get some ribs and steak for later on, along with some baking potatoes, that she will load with sour cream and pastured butter.  The sun shines down on their rural place, and Grandpa smiles as he goes out to his tractor- this will be a fulfilling day!

You kind of wake up, after the alarm on your phone goes off, on the nightstand right next to your head.  You really don’t know if you ever slept, really, or not.  You only know you feel groggy.  You stumble downstairs, and put some whole wheat bread in the toaster, and pull out the margarine.  ‘How am I going to make it through this day?’ you think.  ‘I feel like crap, what will I do later when I’m even more tired?”  You munch your tasteless bread, topped with an even more tasteless and nutrition less fake fat.  You drink your coffee, laced with skimmed milk and artificial sweetener.  You finally take a shower with fake soap that is mainly Sodium Lauryl Sulphate.  You remember that you have to also ask the doctor about why your skin is so dry, red and flaking!  My goodness, this doctor list of questions keeps growing and growing.

You smile, thankful that you are ultimately saved!  Modern medicine is a miracle- you will live a really long life, unlike Grandma and Grandpa and others like them.  They don’t know about science- they are hicks- rubes, really- the fact that they are so old shows that they don’t know anything!







Monday, September 18, 2017

Skin Health Shows Overall Health! New podcast for PJSC


Order PaleoJay's newest book! Just an aside: this is my latest book, under my pen name of Jess Thornton.  You will love it- because EVERYTHING in it is AWESOME!
Plus, look at the witch- her skin is great!  Way to go Medea!!


A very important component of health is skin health.  In a large way, the health of your skin is directly related to your diet and lifestyle: if you eat a good paleo type of diet, in other words eating foods that enhance your health rather than those that cause inflammation on a daily basis, why then your skin will be clear and supple, smooth and healthy.  

This is because if you eat things like grain products and sugars on a regular basis, especially if it is daily, you are subjecting your gut lining to constant insult!  The actual mechanism is rather involved, since there are so many damaging components of modern wheat, which is very different from the ancient Einkorn strain of wheat that is mentioned in the bible.  This modern wheat contains a “super starch” that encourages the body to store fat at the same time that it damages our gut lining severely, opening the junctures within the lining to invaders in our digestive system that gain access right into our bodies through these “holes” within our intestinal lining.

Even if you don’t have full blown celiac disease, which is an absolute total intolerance to gluten, most folks have gluten sensitivity.  They simply do much better when gluten is eliminated from their diet- this is most people!  They lose fat weight, and they are not prone to acid reflux, diabetes, and even heart disease and cancer.  All by simply eliminating wheat from their diets!

Skin health is kind of the ‘canary in the coal mine’.  This skin is the largest organ on the body, and so any deterioration of the gut lining allowing the incursion of invaders into the body often shows up either in irritable bowel syndrome, or other obviously gut-induced illnesses, as well as in poor skin health- exzema, skin dryness and redness, psoriasis, acne, and most other skin problems.  On the skin, we can see when damage is occurring in the gut- it is that simple!  
Another thing about wheat is the fact that it is sprayed  with glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s insidious Roundup pesticide, which is sprayed in quantities ever-increasing on crops in the U.S., one of the biggest crops being wheat.  Biblical wheat was not laced with poison…

If I told you that if you would eliminate entirely one component of your diet, namely wheat, and that one step would make you much leaner, far less prone to autoimmune diseases that are the scourge of the modern world, and also unlikely to develop either heart disease or cancer, would that make it worthwhile to you?

And if I further mentioned that if you also limited sugar and other sweeteners to small amounts only, along with gluten free versions of bread products, you would gain a vibrant health and wellness that was far beyond your dreams- would you do it??

Not only would this achieve life-long health and wellness pretty much all by itself, it would also give you glowing, clear skin!  And then, if you added in the “icing on the cake” you would not be eating anymore- things like 8 good hours of sleep each night, daily exercise of the Perfectly Paleo Exercise type, including lots of stretching and mobility work, self-resisted and virtually resisted movements, along with calisthenics and walking barefoot in nature on a weekly basis—

Now your health will be about as perfect as it can be!

For your whole life.  

No gradual deterioration of your abilities that you now take for granted.  Imagine it- for your whole life long, your plan is to be a vital, strong, healthy man or woman.  Someone who can lift heavy things, sit on the ground and easily get up again, sprint for short distances, walk for long ones, and never to be reliant on the physical help of others to accomplish simple tasks of daily living!  

Chiefly, you need to clean up your diet, make it a paleo type of diet, and then to gradually add in the other things I mention above, ideally.  If you do so, you will gain your birthright- To lead a healthy, pain-free, healthy and vital life, all the way up until you die of old age.  Still strong, vital, and aware!  

This is how we were designed and evolved to live as healthy people for a lifetime.  Adapt your life to the way it was meant to be lived, and it will happen.






Thursday, September 7, 2017

Eat Sulphorophane and Feel No Pain


Maybe you haven’t heard of sulphurophane.  Maybe you have.  But you need to know that it comes from cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli and cauliflower, as well as all of the greens that most folks don’t eat anymore!  Turnip greens, collards, cabbage and kale, brussels sprouts and surprisingly horseradish, which I love!

The thing is this: our ancestral relations all ate tons of such greens, plucked from the ground as they went about their day.  Tons!  On top of that, they did not eat sugar, and starchy flour products for the bulk of their calories; no, the bulk of their calories came from TONS of greens, along with meat and fat.  Come to think of it, they must have known about the paleo diet…

My point is this- my recommendation for anyone to become healthy, strong, vital and happy is to do the same as they did.  Eat tons (or at least lots) of greens on a daily basis, along with meat and other good protein sources, along with plenty of real fat.  The main things to avoid are vegetable oils, processed foods like bread and other grain products, and sugar.  That is really it on the avoidance side.  Simple!

What to eat?  Well, TONS of greens!  And sulphurophane has been isolated recently as an incredibly potent anti-oxidant that does everything, including the prevention and curing of cancer!  (That’s the latest)  Not to mention guarding against heart disease, protecting against diabetes, and helping hair grow and helping your vision. Oh, and it also causes weight loss- Sounds like a miracle, doesn’t it? 

And it is so easy to incorporate into your diet in a big way.  Broccoli sprouts are far, far more potent in sulphurophane than the actual vegetables- so, what I have been doing is to buy a package of the sprouts at the grocery, in the salad section now, and put them right into my smoothie.  Right along with the other cruciferous veggies I put in there- this is just a superpowered addition to that… the sprouts are 10 to 100 times more effective than the veggies themselves!

OH, and one more thing I want to put into your little paleo toolkit arsenal: while grass fed meat is the gold standard, I wouldn’t sweat it if I were you.  The main takeaway is just to avoid the actual grains and sugars (along with vegetable oils) in your diet.  That is about 95% of the battle, right there, if you also include all of the sulphurophane, fiber, and other benefits of tons of veggies each day, which is easy to incorporate if you are making a a big green paleo smoothie!

It is so easy to make the perfect the enemy of the good!  Of course, grass fed animal products are preferable- but, if you do everything else right, I wouldn’t sweat it.  Just avoid the obvious poisons, eat lots of good fats and meats, add in TONS of vegetables of all types, especially cruciferous ones, and you will not believe your results in health and wellness!

Oh, and throw in some exercise too, along with good sleep each and every night.  It really is that simple to be healthy and fit.


Check out this episode!