On Jan 4, 2007, at 7:47 AM, Robert Kesterson wrote:

> There are exceptions.  I'm one of them.  I'm 42 years old, and up  
> until the last few years, I ate plenty of grain products.  I ate  
> the "standard American diet" for most of my life, and a "country"  
> diet for much of my upbringing (plenty of bread in that).  I have  
> no aches or pains, am not pudgy, have all my hair, 20/15 vision, my  
> cholesterol is 135, my blood pressure is normal (typically 120/80  
> or so), my resting pulse rate is in the low 50's, and I'm almost  
> never sick.
>
> I don't say any of that to boast, but just to point out that you're  
> not necessarily doomed to health problems and early death if you  
> enjoy a slice of bread (or pizza) now and then.
>
> I didn't mention one thing that's notably different about me  
> compared to almost everyone else I know -- I keep myself active.  I  
> work out regularly (weights, martial arts, "cardio", etc.), and I  
> purposely engage in difficult physical tasks on a routine basis  
> (digging ditches, splitting firewood, moving big rocks around,  
> carrying bags of feed or buckets of water, etc).  I still think  
> that this is one of the absolute best hedges against "old age" that  
> there is.  The paleo diet appeals to me because it fits with what  
> our bodies were meant to do.  Similarly, our bodies were meant to  
> *move*!
>
> So it seems to me that getting the diet right is only one piece of  
> the larger puzzle.


Good on you, Robert, for taking such good care of yourself! You're  
correct, IMO, about the larger picture, and I would extend it even  
further. There are other markers for internal dysfunction that  
Western medicine has not even a clue about, and areas where the  
symptoms are not always obvious, especially to the untrained. Much of  
this is hereditary, and along with your "good genes" there may be  
some dark corners of inherited weakness. I don't mean to be full of  
doom, but I've seen a lot of supposedly symptom-free people go on to  
develop mental aberrations, cancers, organic failures that no one saw  
coming. There is a correlation between your apparent lack of symptoms  
and the possibility of worse under the surface. The body will  
dispense with superficial symptoms when it is dealing with deep  
illness. Diet IS only part of this; the rest is identifying any other  
continued stressors, and then looking into your symptom picture with  
homeopathy at the first sign of anything you don't feel is right. I  
have one friend who is adamantly healthy, in his own opinion, and  
I've been waiting for years to see wherein his weakness will lie. I  
strongly suspect it will be mental, as his rigidity and discipline  
turns to intolerance and suspicion.

You are doubtless very lucky in your choice of genes, but there are  
virtually no humans left who are free from inherited chronic disease  
and dysfunction.


ginny