I was on a digital detox this week and therefore did not look at any research or explore new topics in health. I was incidentally celebrating my sixtieth birthday at the same time. I was feeling a bit nostalgic, so I went on social media after my detox was over to look at pictures from the past. I found this one of me in a striped shirt from 1985 that my dad took by our pool. I guess the sleeves were a bit shorter back then, and it was OK to part your hair down the middle. My hair is pretty poofy, but at least I did not have a mullet! My wife always tells me that she thinks I look just as good as the younger me, so I thought it would be fun to try and strike the same pose and see how I really stack up to a younger man. We had a good laugh trying. She claims to like the silver fox with the fancy watch better! I tried to make the current picture match the old one as best I could, so I blurred it, tried to match to poor exposure, took the color out of both, and tweaked the contrast. I used no filters to change my appearance, and, clearly, I have not had any cosmetic surgery.

Then Versus Now

Believe it or not, as much as I look much older, the sixty-year-old feels much better than the twenty-three-year-old. I have a healthy metabolism, my cardiac health is perfect ( I have zero cardiac calcium), my blood pressure is normal, and my blood sugar regulation is a ten out of ten. Additionally, I have more muscle mass and lower body fat than when I was 23. The 37-year journey was anything but linear. As we will see, my health was headed in the wrong direction until I took matters into my own hands.

My Teenaged Self

I was a relatively healthy teenager, but I had several colds and cold sores each year. We ate tons of seafood and fresh vegetables, but processed foods were becoming more available and were making their way into my diet. I definitely remember Fruit Loops and Captain Crunch in the cupboard, but I only ate Burger King for the first time when I was in seventh grade. As I got older, I was able to eat more pizzas and bagels, and drink sweetened sodas and iced tea. Luckily, I never had a sweet tooth, so candy was a rarity for me.

I was always active in sports, playing baseball and football early on, and I began running three seasons of track in High school. I developed a bit of run-of-the-mill acne and my family GP put me on daily antibiotics, which I stayed on well into high school. I had a case of appendicitis and had it removed. The antibiotics gave me what I later found to be a chronic yeast infection and dysbiosis of my GI system. I began to have unexplained difficulty falling asleep, coupled with anxiety, which was most likely due to the disturbance of my normal healthy gut germs from the antibiotics as well. I was delayed in my growth; I did not reach five feet until I was a freshman in high school.

My Twenty-something Self

In my late twenties, I continued to have an increasing number of colds and sinus infections. I also continued to have numerous cold sores. I never considered myself to be a good sleeper, and can remember many nights of poor sleep, but it was not through lack of effort. I was just too uncomfortable to sleep soundly. Nothing specific; just random headaches, sore body parts, and a mind racing with thoughts that I could not turn off. I was still active, working out in the weight room most days.

My Thirty-something Self

My health problems continued to get worse and I, like most of us, thought it was a normal process of aging. My frequency of colds increased, and I developed chronic sinus problems. I also had a few bouts of Lyme disease. I was still very active, playing hockey, hiking, mountain biking, and working out with weights most days. I also began to adhere to the food pyramid; after all, I wanted to be healthy. I was also starting to have many periods of low energy.

My Forty-something self

During my forties, the wheels began to fall off. I was getting more and more sick all of the time and eventually had sinus surgery. I was constantly run down and attributed it to chronic Lyme disease. I gave up hockey because my sleep was poor and the games were usually very late at night, making things worse sleep-wise. I found it difficult to relax on vacation; since I could not sleep well, I wanted my family to get up early and “enjoy” our time together. They were not amused. I began to lose my muscular definition, although I was never overweight. I could no longer tolerate being in the sunshine for long without feeling exhausted from the heat and stopped being able to tan. Sadly, the numerous doctors I saw over the years all concluded that there was nothing wrong with me. So why did I feel so bad, and why did I get sick so much more than most other people? I began to doubt ever feeling well again and worried that I would not be able to continue to support my family if things got much worse. I had a constant headache that, by the time I got rid of it, had lasted an estimated eighteen months.

Functional Medicine To The Rescue

About eighteen years ago, I had heard of a local doctor that had cured a few of my friends of their chronic illnesses. She introduced me to the world of functional medicine. I learned that lifestyle was a much bigger factor health-wise than I ever imagined. I began to concentrate on things like sleep and getting more sunshine. She did more blood tests on me than I had ever imagined existed. Thankfully, they were mostly normal, but I had low vitamin D, a few things indicating I may be heading towards heart disease, I was allergic to gluten, and my body had high levels of mercury. She also determined that the years of antibiotics had about wrecked my gut, and subsequently just about everything else. She was able to correct all of these problems with vitamin D, probiotics, antifungals, and other supplements, and we chelated the mercury from my body with something called DMSA. We determined that I had high mercury from my profession. I had never placed mercury-containing fillings, but I was unaware that removing them from my patients’ was causing them to vaporize into the air and into my lungs!

Ancestral Medicine

The functional medicine doctor I was seeing and I did not align on everything. She suggested that I go vegan, and I did not feel it could deliver results for me. We did agree that I would eat a gluten-free, whole foods diet. But in my research about what I should eat, I came across The Paleo Diet. This was a day or two after our initial consult and prior to any blood test results. I began eating that way the next day and began to feel much better immediately. I also quickly lost over five pounds of bloating and inflammation. My headache disappeared finally after a year and a half! Needless to say, my doctor was not happy with my diet. I stuck with her because I needed my test results, and let her treat me, but she never stopped admonishing me for my diet, so we parted ways eventually. I began to realize that if eating the way we evolved was helpful, then doing whatever else we did during our evolution (within reason) would help too. This is the core concept in ancestral medicine that I embrace: try to mimic the environment our genes are optimized for. Conversely, if you are not feeling well, find out what the mismatch is between your genes and your environment. Correcting the mismatch may be more effective than medical treatment. I am not suggesting you don’t see your doctor, but chances are they will not emphasize healthy lifestyles. It may be up to you to figure things out on the lifestyle front. Hopefully, this site will be of use for those interested in healthy lifestyle choices.

Your Health Is Up To You

My story is not unique. As much as western medicine potentially saved my life when they removed my appendix, it generally does not stress lifestyle as part of health. This is sad because 90% of our current chronic ailments are due to our lifestyles, not our genes. Do we all need to be the same? Of course not. For example, I am on the carnivore diet right now, but well over 99.99% of the world is not. Many of them are doing just fine. We should all continue to seek knowledge and question everything and everyone, even our trusted doctors. I will continue to study research papers on health, use functional medicine, do mercury-free dentistry, and continue this site because maybe some of you will go from 23 to 60 without all of the avoidable problems I had. Our destiny does not have to be getting more sick as we age. The bottom line is:

LIFESTYLES MATTER

Correct your sleep

Correct your diet

Get strong

Move (walk, run, bike, paddle…)

Get some sun

Spend time with your friends who support you

Make sure you can breathe

Learn new things and be willing to change