Ever since I started my vegan diet the year before last, I've been looking for a good word for what my diet is called. This search was intensified when Lawrence Lessig started a similar diet and insisted that he didn't like the word "vegan" - although that is what he currently is. The problem with "vegan" is that it has some political overtones and the vegan diet includes high-calorie-low-nutrition foods such as refined starches and oils.

The problem with this is that when you request a vegan meal on a plane, you end up with something like a pile of pasta with tomato sauce - which is really not the point. The point of our diet is to eat as much healthy whole foods as possible. One of the problems with refined starches, oils and meats is that they have much less nutrition per calorie than plant-based whole foods. So while cutting down on animal proteins and "bad fats" is part of the deal, a huge part of the deal is cutting down on "blank calories".

Anyway, I've decided that the current working name for my diet is "Plant-based whole foods". If anyone can think of a better word for this, let me know. I have yet to find one.

PS If you're a PMOG player, I made a Veganism mission. The problem with "Plant-based whole foods" is that it's a bit long to make into an "ism" - Plant-based whole foodsism... hmm

I spent the weekend at a Preventive Medicine Research Institute (PMRI) retreat. PMRI is the organization created by Dean Ornish to research and promote his work on preventive medicine.

As readers of my blog should know, I started a vegan diet in December the year before last, started exercising and meditating and became Joi 2.0 in the process. Since then, I had been trying to express on my blog and to my friends what was going on in my head and my body.

During this process I saw Dean's TED talk where he shows that a low-fat, vegan diet could not only slow down heart disease but actually reverse it. I filed Dean's name in my mind under "cool people to look up".

At the last TED, Lawrence Lessig and Dean met and scheduled to get together sometime. Larry, who has been "getting well" recently, knew that I would be interested and invited me to go see Dean with him. After our meeting, Dean invited us to attend an upcoming retreat and gave us copies of his new book, Spectrum.

Larry was unable to make it, but I did some scheduling judo and was able to attend.

After reading the book and attending the retreat, my conclusion is that Dean has a very effective program for increasing happiness and health. It tied together all of the pieces that I had been working on and anchored them with solid research. Dean's obsession with finding and conducting rigorous research to backup the effects of various components of his program make it completely different from most alternative medicine and lifestyle programs. Dean brings to the wellness movement the highest quality science which I believe is essential for all of this to go mainstream.

The program is not simply a diet. It includes a balance of four important parts: diet, exercise, relaxation and intimacy. During the retreat, we ate wonderfully healthful food the whole time, did yoga, exercise and meditation. We discussed medicine and science. We had small group sessions where we discussed our own issues in a very open and intimate setting. These sessions were much more effective than I would have imagined.

These group sessions weren't like psychotherapy or group therapy, but were small groups where we shared our feelings. They quickly became intimate and turned into a sort of fountain of compassion. The importance of intimacy in health was missing from the "formula for health" that I had been working on. Dean's research together with these sessions proved to me that it was an essential component and complimented my spiritual goals around compassion.

Dean has research that shows that intimacy, relaxation, diet and exercise all have an impact on our health. In particular, clogging of our arteries and inflammation in general are affected by these things. Dean shows that constricted arteries and inflammation are the cause of many of our modern diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and even impotence.

Most of this is described in his book. One interesting angle that the book takes is that there are a spectrum of foods ranging from the least healthy to the most healthy. If you choose the most healthy diet - my vegan super-duper-diet that I did last year - you can reverse heart disease. If you're pretty healthy and happy already, you can be a bit less hardcore. Dean suggests that you never should feel guilty about what you eat, but that you need to be aware of how healthy the food you are eating is. He has a table that rates the healthiness of various foods. You should choose the healthiness of diet that works for you and adjust it in moderation, allowing yourself to occasionally indulge. Dean tries very hard to prevent people from feeling like diet is something you should feel guilty about and is trying to design a sustainable diet that makes you happy instead of making you suffer.

I had just reached a point in my diet where I had reached my weight and health goals and was having a hard time driving myself to work harder on my health. Maintaining your weight is a much less exciting goal than reaching a target weight. Spectrum helped me think through how to make my healthiness sustainable. The retreat rejuvenated and recharged me completely and I am now committed to augmenting my diet with yoga and to start my meditation practice again. I also learned after consultation that the best way to maintain my weight is probably increasing/recovering muscle mass to increase my metabolism rather than focusing only on aerobic exercises and calorie management. (I had regained 7 of the 20 kg that I had initially lost and was trying to figure out what to do...)

Thank you Dean and the whole team who put the weekend together. Thanks also to the other participants in the retreat who shared.

Technorati Tags: vegan

I got my Neti Pot today. Neti Pot is the Himalayan Institute version of the pot used for Jala Neti, a yoga practice where you pour a saline solution in one nose and out the other to clean your nasal passages. My sister Mimi turned me onto the Neti Pot. I was complaining to her about my allergies. I though that my newfound friendship with plants had rid me of them, but they hit me hard recently as I've started to spend more and more time in the garden. Mimi told me that she and Luna haven't gotten nasal allergies since they started doing Neti Pot.

Anyway, I tried it today and it was awesome. I think I put too much salt in the first batch and it burned a bit, but after I got the balance right, it felt great. Not sure what else to say. I'll let you know if they cure my allergies. I guess the reason I'm blogging about it is that I didn't really know much about it until Mimi told me about it. I could imagine easily going through life without actually trying it - which would have sucked. So I thought I'd mention it here after reading a rather vivid blog post about it. ;-)

kthnxbai

I have a stupid question... Is there a risk swimming in a pool in a country where the water is not potable or does the chlorine basically "clean" the water?

Austin Hilton Pool at 5:30AM

I have not been swimming for over a week because I injured my shoulder while trying to win a battle with the water. Although the stationary bike has been interesting and used muscles that were surprised by the sudden call to arms, I've missed my swimming.

When I checked into the Austin Hilton, I notice some sign saying "heated pool". I also noticed that it was open from 5:30AM. This morning, some remnant jet lag from some trip woke me up at 5AM. It looked chilly, dark and wet outside, but the idea of swimming in a heated pool in this weather appealed to me in an avantouinti sort of way. (Marko turned me on to avantouinti and now I'm a convert.)

As I sat in the whirlpool warming up and doing some stretching, Matt's voice and the Total Immersion images from the DVD that Seth sent me filled my mind. I rigged up my goggles with the Dolphin mp3 player that Pete suggested on my music in the water post. (I tried ordering the Kiefer SwiMP3, but wasn't able to get it. I just re-ordered it from someone on eBay after Austin told me on Twitter that he got one there.)

Anyway, it all came together for me today. While The Orb from Jeff's playlist set the tone with the sounds of pink fluffy clouds, I was able to make peace with the water. The flip turn that I had been struggling with seemed to come naturally - Matt's tips coming to mind as I made each turn. The "swim like a fish" images from Total Immersion helped me pace myself and swim without feeling out of breath. It felt very peaceful and it felt like I had made peace with the water.

I finished up with with a short session of my attempt at the Maha Mudra and Pranayama that Jay is teaching me. I had the steam room in the deserted locker-room all to myself.

Clearly, I have much to learn and my swimming stroke is still crap, but I felt like I had hit a milestone of sorts. As I sat down to write this post, I realized how much this journey is result of the amazing support of my friends starting with Shawn's advice to try a vegan diet. Thanks everyone.

Several people asked about what kind of meditation I am doing. I'm doing a version of Kriya Yoga. You can find an explanation of the whole thing one the download page of the Kriya Yoga site of Ennio Nimis. In particular, I am focusing mostly on Maha Mudra and Kriya Pranayama which are pages 106-108 in section 2. The diagram on page 104 shows the path that your focus should take up and down your spine. I'm also taking random teachings about meditation that I've read in the past to try to keep my focus and fade out the chatter of my loose thoughts.

I'm still quite a beginner, but I'm excited by my gradual progress. It has become a very important part of my morning ritual and only takes 20 minutes or so including the stretching.

I flew from Tokyo to San Francisco yesterday. I did a lot of work on the plane, started reading The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan that Howard recommended and arrived in San Francisco around 9AM. I checked in, took a shower and headed off for meetings. I had 7 1/2 meeting or so in Redwood City, Mountain View, Palo Alto and San Francisco. Then I went to the CC Salon, met all of the wonderful people, listened to Jim, John and Heather make their presentations and did a short blurb myself. When I got back to the hotel, I did some more work, played some Warcraft and then went to the pool at midnight and swam. I got up at 6AM, stretched and meditated. Then, feeling like a TV shopping commercial, I worked out with my Portal Gym for 30 minutes. I ordered a salad and a blueberry, soy milk and banana smoothie from room service, packed and headed to the airport.

Now I'm sitting in the airport lounge feeling more energetic than I can remember ever feeling. I'm also euphoric and happy.

I'm not posting this to boast... although I guess it is a bit boastful. I'm posting this in response to people who have been telling me that I won't have enough energy on a Vegan, no-oil diet. I'm also posting this in response to people warning me that I'm losing weight too fast. Bullocks. I admit that there is some possibility that there is something unhealthy that is going on in my body that I can't sense, but overall, I have become more sensitive about what my body wants than I've ever been in my life.

I'm not trying to convince everyone to do this lifestyle change that I am experimenting with. However, I do urge people not to try to talk people out of it. Words of discouragement can weigh heavy on the initial motivation required to get going, and at least for me, this is the best decision I've made in a long long time.

Seth sent me a DVD of Total Immersion swimming (Wikipedia / Official Site) and I tried some of the drills in it for the first time last night. (Thanks Seth!) It appears to be a unique way of helping swimmers to learn balance, drag reduction and timing through a new approach to learning and thinking about your stroke/style. Some of the drills were difficult for me, but I could tell that it was because my balance was not "natural" yet. It was rather frustrating "starting from scratch" but I'm definitely going to give this a try and see how much my swimming improves. I have a feeling that this rather focused and peaceful style of swimming will suit some of the experiments in meditation that I want to conduct.

In my current journey pushing my limits for improving my heath, I've noticed significant changes in my mental state. I'm often euphoric, generally happy, have a much higher tolerance for stressful situations, am sleeping well and am generally extremely energetic. I have moments of strange memories like being reminded of my high school self when waiting for a train in nice weather.

I think a lot of this can be attributed to the vegan diet, regular exercise, a slight calorie deficit and the goal oriented nature of my journey feeding my obsessive nature. Whatever the cause, I am currently in a somewhat altered state of mind.

One of the things that hasn't been "cured" by my current state is some tension in my neck, shoulders, back and lower-back so I've started stretching more. This reminded me that I used to do some yoga. As I investigated possible ways to learn Yoga, I decided that the most straight forward thing I could probably do was to ask my friend and inspiration to me on many things, Dhananjaya "Jay" Dvidedi. Jay is one of the most peaceful, confident and happy people I know and I also knew that he comes from a family of well known Indian priests.

Over dinner he told me that he practiced Kriya Yoga (WP). Kryiya Yoga is a rather secret school of Yoga that has recently been fairly well documented by Ennio Nimis in his book on his web site. Jay recommended that I read Beyond the Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson, M.D., an Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School. In the book Benson describes the importance of the mind in health.

His previous book, "Relaxation Response" was about the role that meditation can play in relieving backaches, chest pains, headaches, high blood pressure, cholesterol, insomnia and anxiety. He describes a basic breathing-based meditation, similar to most Indian, Chinese, Japanese and other meditation forms that focus on breathing.

In this newer book, he explores the role of belief and faith in increasing the effect of meditation. He recounts a conversation with the Dali Lama (WP) where the Dali Lama tells him that the three important points of Tibetan medicine were 1) the belief/faith of the healer, 2) the belief/faith of the patient and 3) the relationship between the two. This coincides with a lot of my experiences and anecdotal evidence that I have.

As I explored this rather spiritual path that I am about to embark upon, I remembered my mother. My mother, who died in 1995, had cancer for decades and survived several times when doctors had told us she only had months to live. My mother was rather spiritual and I believe a lot of the strength and deep confidence that she held was due to her early interactions with cancer and her ability to "beat cancer". I think that as her confidence grew, her spiritual energy grew and towards the end, it was clear that she would be the primary director of when and how she would die. Since my mother's death, I haven't really been thinking seriously about my spiritual side, but it appears that my journey is leading me this way to a certain extent.

The Benson book was very interesting. As a Western scientist, Benson starts by exploring the "Placebo Effect". We all know that there is lots of verifiable evidence of a placebo effect ranging from people's headaches and chest pains going away from placebo pills given by doctors to imagined pregnancy that is extremely physiologically real. Benson uses this as an entry into a discussion about the impact of belief and faith and the real physiological effects of one's mental state. His point is that doctors aren't really tricking people out of fake ailments. Instead, the argument is than a strong belief in yourself, your doctor or your practice can have strong physiological effects which can cure things and improve your body. The word "placebo" has a rather negative connotation in a society where we discount greatly the role that our mind plays in our health, but it is the "hook" that modern medicine has in trying to describe things like meditation.

This discussion tied into one of the funny "issues" that I've been having with my current state. The euphoria and generally happiness I've been having have been attributed by others to things like simple calorie deprivation or just "it's all in your head." After thinking a bit more about this in the context of Benson's book, I suppose it doesn't really matter what the original cause is. My current state of feeling extremely "on top of my health" has a number of positive effects including a dramatic increase in physical activity, happiness and a total recovery of all of the problems reflected in my blood tests.

I am interested in trying to improve my mental state and my ability to use my mental state to improve my health. I am going to continue to explore meditation and read more "cross-over" books like Benson's books that try to describe some of these "phenomenon" in Western terms. However, I'm also going to try to meet practitioners and try to experience things as well.

I'll keep you posted.

I just finished reading The China Study by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II. (Amazon)

It is a strong argument in favor of plant-based diets and focuses on the risks and the negative impact of animal-proteins on health. It is more about the science of vegan diets than Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman. For people who might be slightly turned-off by the sometimes salesy tone of Eat to Live, The China Study might be a better first book to read.

The China Study is an amazing argument with a large array of citations and references to supporting studies. The book also goes into the politics and the issues that cause the argument to continue to be called "controversial" by many. He shares war stories of meat and dairy industry interests getting in the way of an objective dialog and actively sabotaging and "spinning" the debate.

When I worked at Energy Conversion Devices, there was a similar resistance to alternative energy and I know all too well how effective this kind of active campaigning against disruptive science can be.

I am fairly convinced by the book that there is an active interest by those in power to prevent the public from consuming less meat and dairy and believe that information about nutrition and it's impact on our health is being prevented from reaching the public as well as our doctors. The book has provided additional incentive for me to look into the cited sources as well as explore how information about nutrition is reaching my friends in the medical profession.

I strongly suggest you read this book if you have any interest in health, diet and medicine.

EDIT: I should probably add, since people ask, the origin of the title. The author of the book was involved a massive "survey of diseases and lifestyle factors in rural China and Taiwan" and describes and cites this study in the book.

It appears that I have caught a cold. I think it was the combination of not packing warm clothes and having stronger air-conditioning in India and during the flights than I anticipated.

I have been taking my traditional medley of cold medications since yesterday. They usually make me sleepy, groggy and slightly irritable. I've noticed that I don't seem to be having these side-effects and I'm relatively alert and my mood is fine. Has anyone ever noticed this?

I talked to a physician about my blood tests from yesterday. I will have the complete results soon, but the preliminary results are very interesting. I had 2 tests that were in or approaching the "red zone" a month ago. The levels are now well within the "healthy" range.

However, the physician was very concerned that my blood cholesterol was "too low". It was 132 mg/dL. He said that this means that I don't have enough energy and that it was dangerous. The problem with this for me is that I have more energy than I've ever had and have no signs of depression or anything like that.

In "The China Study" Campbell and Campbell explain the amazingly low rates of cancer, heart disease, liver disease and other "diseases of the affluent" in counties in China eating whole, plant-based foods. They tested the blood levels of the super-healthy Chinese. On page 106, they say:

As I mentioned earlier, the time when the China Study was begun, a blood cholesterol range of 200-300 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) was considered normal, and lower levels were suspect. In fact, some in the scientific and medical communities considered cholesterol levels lower than 150 mg/dL to be dangerous...

But when we measured the blood cholesterol levels in China, we were shocked. They ranged from 70-170 mg/dL! Their high was our low and their low was off the chart you might find in your doctor's office!

[...] We too often have come to the view that the U.S. values are "normal" because we have a tendency to believe that the Western experience is likely to be right.

I'm also going to try to talk to some of my friends in medical research about this.

I have just entered week five of the six week diet. Last night around 11PM I was humming a tune while walking up a hill to a train station in the rain. I realize that I was very happy in a situation that would have been dreadfully tiresome in the past. As I tried to understand my rather extreme change in perspective on physical activity, I decided I would share some of these thoughts.

Swimming has gone from a chore where I used to make excuses not to go to something that I enjoy so much that I "sneak off" to go swimming when I have a chance. I've also started walking to or taking trains to meetings instead of taking cabs, which used to be my primary mode of transportation. For some reason, swimming, walking and other physical activity are extremely enjoyable.

In The China Study, I remember Campbell citing a report with lab mice (or maybe it was rats) where the mice that were fed animal protein used an exercise wheel less than mice that were fed vegan diets. I don't have the book with me, but I'll update this post later with the actual citation. I also know from my own personal experience that increased activity makes you more active. As I get lighter, the lack of weight puts a bounce in my step that is also quite enjoyable. Whatever the reason, my urge to be active is at a higher level than any time in the past that I can remember. (Having said that, my memory is quite poor...)

As I've said in the past, this is not a controlled experiment. I will also concede that I am obsessive and rather caught up in thinking about health at the moment so I'm probably looking for signs of being healthy. However, I would like to point out that while I can't attribute this energy to one particular thing, I can say that being vegan hasn't reduced my energy levels or made it difficult for me to be extremely happy.

I will post a more thorough review after my six weeks are over. I'm quite sure I will stay on a version of my current diet even after the six weeks, but as the official end of the six week program, I think that would be a more appropriate time for my complete report.

I've started getting a rhythm in my swimming and end up staying between and hour and an hour and a half in the pool. I've been going around five times a week. I just realized that this might be a good time to catch up on my music. Jeff sent me a few links to possible solutions from Kiefer Online. (Aqua Tune II / Swimmers Waterproof MP3 Player ) Has anyone tried either of these or know of something else that actually works without causing too much drag or being dangerous to other people sharing a lane?

Technorati Tags: swimming

When I started this vegan++ ETL diet, I also started exercising as much as possible. I've tried to swim every day except when I was traveling. When I started, I was barely able to finish 100 meters without feeling really tired. I have been pushing my total swim time and distance every day. Today I swam 2.5 km in just over 1 hour. That's not very impressive for people who swim a lot, but I've been swimming like this for only a few weeks and I feel pretty good about it. (I used to swim in Jr. High School 30 years ago.)

Various people have been telling me that losing all of this weight and eating only veggies and fruit would not give me enough energy, but every single day, my stamina is increasing. I really don't think it's just some sort of calorie deprived hallucination. I've never been able to swim 2.5 km before. (Again, I realize this isn't a controlled experiment since I never tried to swim this hard since Jr. High School....)

Today was the end of the 3rd week of the 6 week program and marks the half-way point. I will write more when I'm done, but I wanted to post this since I was getting email from people worried about my health. Of course I still don't know everything that is going on, but everything that I can feel and measure seems pretty great at the moment.

Does anyone know of any good nutrition tracking software on the Mac? I want to be able to enter what I'm eating and have it produce a report of nutrients including vitamins and minerals. There are references with the information as well as nifty packages that keep track of what you eat and chart calories. However, I have yet to find something on the Mac that lets you track nutrients other than calories (and breakdown of calorie type) and a few other basics like sodium. It looks like there is a package for Windows called NutriBase.

Another requirement is that it is metric friendly.

The problem I'm having is that since supplements and diets are such a big business online, online search results are cluttered with spam... *sigh*

I suppose I could run some Windows emulator on the Mac. How good are they? I've sort of stay away from them assuming they would take up too much disk space and CPU, but maybe I should try it...

Anyway, I'll post any findings here and keep looking.

UPDATE: Decided to go ahead and get the NutriBase package and start running it on my windows laptop. Looks great. I wish I had it for the Mac. Maybe this means I need to run Windows on my Mac. Gah...

Almost like clockwork, hitting 40 years old seems to have triggered a series of alarms that I need to watch my health more. Blood tests show various things that I need to watch out for and I continue to be fatter than I should. I used to do low-carb diets when I got overweight, but it seems like a fat/meat diet right now wouldn't be good for my heart and other things.

I was discussing exercise plans and being fat with a friend of mine who recommended that I check out Eat to Live by Dr. Fuhrman. I googled around looking for more information. Wikipedia provided rather bland neutral results. Some people seemed critical of him, but in the comments were blasted by others who disagreed. I couldn't find anything authoritatively negative about this book or Dr. Fuhrman. (I didn't look TOO hard though.)

His website and the book come off a bit salesy, but I tend to expect that from mass market books in the US. I've just started reading the book. I apologize for blogging before I read, but I wanted to post this while I read the book in case anyone had experience with Dr. Fuhrman, his recommendations in his book or thoughts on his assertions.

It is pretty straightforward. Eat lots of fiber. Cut down on meats, fish, oil and carbs. He has a notion of health = nutrition / calories and the importance of focusing on foods that have a high nutrition vs calorie ration. Fruits are OK.

Anyway, I think I'm going to give this a try. It starts with a 6 week aggressive "detox" and then goes into a more forgiving mode that allows you to eat most anything, but requires you to take in large amounts of vegetables and fruits.