On May 04, 2004, at 4:59 pm, Jim Swayze wrote:

> I know for a fact that my serious implementation of a paleo way of
> eating has improved my blood lipid profile almost miraculously.  Good
> news, right?  Well, maybe not, I've been thinking of late.  Now I've
> increased my cancer risk or risk of autoimmune disease (or risk of
> being hit by a bus on my way home tonight.)

Jim,

I don't understand your reasoning here.  Sure- if you had switched from
a bad diet that promotes heart disease to a bad diet that promotes
cancer, then fair enough you would have traded one evil for another.
But I was under the impression that living longer on a paleo diet does
*not* mean that you will be more prone to "diseases of age" since they
only exist under a neolithic diet.

I always think about this from the idea "what happens to other animals
in general".  Wolves, tigers, frogs, parrots etc don't (as far as I'm
aware) die because they are crippled by degenerative disease- they
reach the natural life span (based on cell division- am I right here?)
and kick the bucket.  I see no reason why people shouldn't be the same.

I appreciate this is highly unscientific but it's the idea I've got
from things here and there.

> Not that I've ever seen any evidence for it, but even if this diet
> were to cause me to die 20 years earlier, it would be worth it.
> Longetivity isn't the end all.  Quality of life is.  (There are plenty
> of 97 year old mummies out there whose lives are miserable but who are
> kept on this earth by well meaning physicians).

This I won't argue with!  I think modern medicine has turned into a
life sentence for the elderly.  Doctors feel obliged to "help" patients
by keeping them alive, after years of the diet they themselves
recommend has ravaged their bodies.  Now we have tablets to take away
the pain of arthritis and keep a weak heart beating, replacement joints
for the ones that cracked, and nurses to look after the ones whose
bodies and minds have all but failed.  If I was cynical (hoho) I'd say
the only reason we keep these people alive is to sell them increasingly
expensive treatments for increasingly unnatural illnesses.

It's a shame that as a healthy person I don't see my doctor often
enough to tell him why I'm healthy.  I went to one doctor several
times, and had several tests, to find the cause of my chronic fatigue
among other problems.  Now I cured it myself, but from his point of
view I'm still ill, because he never gave me something that made me go
"Thanks doc, that worked".

> And it will take an army of people to stop me from eating this way.

My mother tried and she counts as a small army on her own.  She still
trys to sneak butter into my diet, but I think it's out of spite
because she refuses to believe her own health problems might have the
same cause.  People are strange things.