Health Posts

In 2004, the Human Genome Project was completed. The goal of that project was to sequence the entire human genome, ultimately revealing the cause of a majority of ailments in the modern world. Instead what it revealed was that most of us share over 99% of our genetic code, and that 1% difference doesn’t seem to explain many of our diseases. So if our own genetics aren’t entirely responsible for if we are healthy or sick, what else potentially can be? The answer to that question came shortly after the development of 16s rRNA sequencing technology – technology which allows us, for the first time, to take a detailed look at the complex bacterial organisms living in our guts and each of their roles. Rather than being benign spectators in our lives, it turns out that these bacteria have developed a symbiotic relationship with us throughout our evolution. In terms […]

There is great deal of evidence to show that our guts used to be in a much healthier state decades ago. For example, the Hadza in Africa, one of the last ‘hunter-gatherer’ species on the planet, appear to have 300% more bacteria in their guts than we do. It seems that over time we have lost many of these bacteria, and whatever functions they once provided. In terms of gut health, one metric that’s often used is diversity. Similar to the environment, it’s often thought that the health of any ecosystem is related to the number of species in it and their relative abundance. Harmony is basically where you have a lot of species, with a mostly equal membership. If any one species starts to take over and populate excessively, it endangers the entire ecosystem. This is similar to the gut microbiota. Any overgrowth of a particular species can tend […]

Back in roughly 2007, I managed to acquire a clostridium difficile infection. It’s a really serious infection, usually preceded by antibiotic exposure, and it can often can lead to death if not treated. In my case, it mostly started out with flu symptoms, but gradually led to me being hospitalized for a few days due to loss of fluids. Once being discharged from the hospital, I was prescribed flagyl to combat the c. diff infection. I did one or two rounds of that over a month or two, but unfortunately still tested positive for c. diff. at the end of it. Since the c. diff wasn’t really responding to flagyl, I was prescribed vancomycin, which at the time was one of the last lines of defence for most bacterial infections. I did several rounds of that over the course of a few more months, and thankfully eventually tested negative for […]

A few years ago I visited my physician here in Chilliwack with a complaint of nasal congestion that simply wouldn’t go away. It’s something that I’ve mostly always dealt with, but only started to complain about it when I realized that other people didn’t seem to have the same problem. My doctor noticed that the inside of the nose was inflamed, so he prescribed nasal corticosteroids to help me breathe better. Since that time I’ve visited many different countries around the world. In some of them my nose was just as congested as it was back home. But in many of them my nose completely cleared up, allowing me to breathe easier. When I got back home again to the Vancouver area a few weeks ago, my nasal congestion immediately returned. A friend of mine suggested that it might be somehow related to the low humidity during the cold months […]

It’s no surprise to anyone reading my site that I’m a big advocate of reducing carbs. Pretty much everything out there nowadays is full or both refined carbohydrates and sugar, often in the form of high fructose corn syrup. While complex carbohydrates aren’t that bad for a person, anything that converts immediately into glucose (such as simple carbs and sugars) can cause large insulin spikes, leading to fat gain and ultimately diseases such as diabetes. Unfortunately there’s so much misinformation in this area that most people are completely confused about carbohydrates, insulin, and most other areas in the realm of food and nutrition. Despite what most nutritionalists will tell you, the body can work just fine without carbohydrates. In fact, about five years ago I did a little experiment where I reduced my carbohydrate intake to around 20 grams a day for around four months. Not only did I feel […]

The more research that’s published, the more evidence I seem to run into that indicates insulin resistance (and consequently obesity) seems to be related to oxidative stress and/or nutritional deficiencies. As I’ve pointed out before, one of the strange paradoxes that most theories generally can’t explain is why obesity often goes hand in hand with poor nutrition. That is, if obesity is caused solely by overeating, then we should see the lack of obesity in populations where food is scarce or nutrient poor. As several populations have shown us (most notably the Pima Indians), that isn’t always the case. Several current theories say that obesity is actually caused by nutritional deficiencies, which would jive with the observations above. Several vitamins/minerals that have been implicated in insulin control include chromium, vitamin C, calcium, and more recently vitamin D. The research around vitamin D and insulin resistance is actually fairly interesting. As […]

I’ve been writing about obesity and something called hyper-insulinemia for about as long as I can remember. For those of you who don’t know, many people nowadays have something called metabolic syndrome, which is a cluster of symptoms including obesity, high blood pressure, elevated insulin levels, and high cholesterol. The main component of all of these is something called hyper-insulinemia (which is also called insulin resistance). What I just wrote is pretty much accepted as fact nowadays. What is still up for debate is a) whether insulin resistance is the cause or the effect of obesity and b) whether insulin plays a larger role in weight loss than originally believed. You see, there are two competing genres in this war on the bulge. On one side of the ring you have those people who believe a calorie is a calorie, and the only thing required to lose weight is a […]

The American Heart association has just gone on record as recommending that sugar consumption be drastically reduced. I should point out that this is in stark contrast to their longly held assertions that saturated fat is the primary cause of heart disease, and carbohydrates essentially are harmless. So this is a warning to everyone that you should limit your sugar intake in the interest of good health. I personally wouldn’t be surprised at all if you’ll continue to see these ongoing shifts in policy, up to the point where the policy has completely changed to recommend that refined carbohydrates be cut-out or severely limited as well. I mean, if the research ultimately shows that refined carbohydrate (including sugar) was the significant contributor to obesity, diabetes and heart disease, and the official position of the AHA was that these foods should form the basis of all heart-healthy diets, there could be […]

Almost two years ago, I was at work one day, banging on the keys and writing some code. Suddenly, I felt cold, and realized that my hands and my fingers were shaking. I tried to stay at work as long as I could, but after a while my hands were shaking so bad I could hardly function at my job, so I went home. I curled into bed, and wrapped my duvet as tightly as it would go around myself. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t stop shivering. I ended up eventually falling asleep, and slept most of the night away. When I woke up, I was drenched in sweat, feeling like absolute garbage. Six days later I wound up in the emergency room at St. Paul’s hospital, hooked up to an oxygen mask with my finger in a pulse-oxymeter. An hour before, I was at home, […]

About a year ago, I was admitted to St. Paul’s hospital for what would later turn out to be a rather severe pneumonia. I don’t really get sick very often, so for me to suddenly be bed ridden after only two days of feeling bad was a very strange event. In fact, looking back I sometimes wonder if what I really had was pneumonia, or if that was just a symptom of what I actually had. I was going over my medical records a few months ago, and found all the reports from St. Paul’s. When they admitted me I was in pretty rough shape. I had a massive fever, low oxygen in my blood, and I was so dehydrated that my blood was taking up far less volume than it normally should have. I also could hardly breathe, which turns out was due to half of my left lung […]