Buenos amigos,  could I add some thoughts?

Any well meant post is helpful to me. We are all different, much more
different genetically and anatomically than most of the time we know. When
outside ideas are barred, ossification results. I have read Neanderthin, and
also many of Ray's posts, over almost a year. He doesn't strike me as a
rigid person who would be threatened by questions, or even extensions to his
ideas.

After all, logically, if the facts are not clear ( the details of evolution
and HG life as it might apply to human disease), how can the prescriptions
of how to live one's life be any more definite than the underlying data?

All I know is that there are academics who spend their lives immersed in
these fields, and they are not sure, at least there is no consensus about
many important points.

When any of us deviates from our cultural norms, we are to some extent in
the role of a scientist, trying to find what is true for us, what the limits
of this truth might be.

So when Todd, for example, says that " I like this diet but, btw, my LDL
really went up", he is doing us a real favor, giving us data.

The conditions that lead to groupthink are led by a strong need to be right.
I don't imply that this need is illegitimate. Almost all of us have serious
or threatening  health problems or loved ones with health problems, and
insecurity and ambivalence are hard to handle! We want to know that the path
we have chosen is right. But we should work toward a realization that while
the perceived need to be sure may shield us from anxiety, it can also block
our adaptive learning in the world.

By way of disclosure, I follow the diet pretty well, and completely subsribe
to its overal plan. Most of my deviations are those of appetite and weakness
of the flesh, not intellectual objection!

This is a very good list, and very active too.  Long live the list!

Micheal