Unraveling Universal Healthcare II

When I was working one of the main reasons people said insurance companies didn’t focus on preventative care was because they were unlikely to benefit from it. That by the time a person was at the age when they would develop a preventable disease, they would be covered by a different insurance carrier, and that carrier would be the one benefitting. Because most people get their health insurance through their job, whenever they switch employers, they also switch insurance. It turns out this happens on average every 6 or so years.

I understood the logic then as I do now, but I have never agreed with it. My view was always if all the insurance carriers provided preventative care, then it wouldn’t matter which patients they were covering. Everyone in the pool, in theory, would be equal. But obviously getting every insurer to agree and comply with this idea would be a gargantuan task, and one that no one wants to take on. It is though one of the reasons that Accountable Care Organizations were born, as well as incentives for achieving certain quality metrics. Unfortunately it hasn’t been enough to change the trajectory of health in America.

But I never thought of it as a reason for universal healthcare. Not until I read TR Reid’s The Healing of America. Because under universal healthcare, and more specifically a single payer system, the government has all of the incentive in the world to keep people from getting sick. The more disease they prevent, the less money they have to spend on treating those preventable diseases, the more money that’s in the system to treat other people with acute and non-preventable illnesses.

TR Reid makes this argument in chapter 11, An Apple a Day, and it was the first time I ever realized that it could help solve this problem.

“In a nation with a unified health system that covers everybody - which is to say, all the industrialized democracies of the world except the USA - it clearly benefits both the population and the system to invest in public health. But in a fragmented, multifaceted-system nation like the United States, the economic incentive for preventative care are dissipated.”

In this excerpt from the book he calls U.S. healthcare a “system.” But in a previous chapter he more accurately defines it.

“American healthcare is not really a system at all. It’s a market. In a market, people with money can buy what they want, and many people are left out. So we thought, no, we don’t want market-driven healthcare. We want a real system, something that covers everybody and doesn’t depend on how much money you have.”

He’s quoting a Taiwanese businessman who helped set up the universal healthcare system in Taiwan in the 90s. When thinking about what they wanted their system to look like, they first turned to the US, but then realized it wasn’t a model to copy.

Healthcare as a market, as a commodity, is also not something that I ever put together even though it should have been obvious to me. The rich get good healthcare, the poor don’t. It’s not something I was ever ok with, but it’s something that I dismissed as just the way it was. The same way I thought the ability for insurers to decide which claims to deny was normal. That is until I read this book and my eyes were opened. That is until he framed healthcare as a commodity in the U.S. and it clicked for me.

Our country is so focused on making money. Everything we do as a nation is based on this. And that’s ok. That’s a good thing in most cases. Economic incentives, the ability to create a better life for yourself and your family is one of the reasons that Americas is viewed so favorably around the word. I meet people all the time in my travels who dream of coming to America, working hard, and having a better life. I meet people who have immigrated here and are so happy they have the opportunity to improve their situation. And I don’t think we should ever change that.

But I think it’s time that we grow up as a nation. That we realize as a nation that we have more than enough resources to give everyone that lives here a comfortable and secure basic level of living. That certain things like healthcare, food, shelter, and clean water, are not commodities that should be distributed based on income.

And I think providing a real healthcare system for everyone, and turning our public health efforts towards helping prevent disease, is a great place to start. And I think that while healthcare could be step number one, revamping the market around food and turning it too into a system that benefits everyone, is a very close number two. 

Unraveling Universal Healthcare, and a Good Place to Start

I started reading TR Reid’s The Healing of America in which he analyzes the main components of universal healthcare systems in developed countries around the world, and then compares them to each other, and to the U.S.’s system.

I’ve gotten as far as France, Germany, Japan, and the UK. Each one is slightly different in whether insurance is private or government funded. How much citizens have to pay (if anything at all). How much providers, physicians and hospitals make. How they maintain patient records (France maintains all patient records on a card similar to a credit card. When you visit the doctor or a hospital they simply swipe your card and all of your information pops up, and the provider can update your chart. Imagine never having to complete a new patient intake form again!).

There are a lot of small differences.

But the one thing thus far that is universal to them all is that no insurance, whether it’s private or government run, can deny a claim. If a physician, hospital, or provider, submits a claim for a procedure, test, or medication, insurance must approve it, pay it, and the patient must get the service.

The one slight caveat to this is in the UK, where a government run organization called the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, NICE for short, conducts research and studies to decide what gets approved. The difference though between NICE and insurers in America is that NICE publicizes its decisions. While private insurers in the U.S. make their decisions in private.

Another difference is that NICE only has a set amount of money to fund healthcare for the whole country, so they need to be strategic. But denying a service doesn’t result in extra profits in the UK like it does in the U.S. Rather, rationing some services, like experimental treatments, means that someone else can receive the care they need.

It’s been shocking to learn because it is so contrary to the way we provide healthcare in America.

In America the insurance carrier decides what procedures, tests, and medications are approved. Not the doctor. In America, the clinic’s office staff frequently has to fight with the insurer to get approval and payment. They have to go through a lengthy appeals process, and very often the doctors themselves have to take time out of their day to get on the phone with the insurer!

It’s so engrained in us that I had a hard time accepting it. My American brain, programmed from spending 10 years working in the American healthcare system, kept saying “That doesn’t make sense. Of course they should be able to deny claims.”

I told my brother, who’s an operating room nurse manager in the largest hospital network in the northeast, about it, and he too was confused. His response was, “wow, really?”

Corollary to that thought, my next one was, “Their claims, testing, and procedures, must be through the roof. And costs as a result.”

But that’s not really the case. It is true that in most of those countries utilization rates are higher when compared to the U.S., but still the overall cost of healthcare is cheaper. One of the main ways they manage that is by having a drastically lower fee schedule when compared to the U.S.

A $200+ office consult in America might cost $20-$30, while a $1,500 MRI might be $105.

And the evidence actually says the inability to deny claims makes it cheaper by putting less strain on the system. Providers in those countries aren’t required to employ additional administrative staff to bill claims, file appeals, and fight denied claims. A huge expense, and huge time suck. I know because it’s one of the main responsibilities I had at my company.

Which made me think, “Why do we allow insurers to deny claims here?”

The answer. It’s just what we do.

I was talking to a gentleman at the airport who works for Firestone Agriculture as a farm consultant. He was a big heavy set Texas man with a handle bar mustache.

I asked him what he does in his role. He said he tries to save farmers money by implementing more efficient practices. He said the main thing he does was advise them on what tire pressure to maintain on their tractors. The correct pressure can save 1 percent on annual fuel bill of $250,000. That’s $2,500. A lot of money for farmers who typically run at a loss.

But he said despite telling them that, he often meets resistance. They don’t want to check their tire pressure and most farmers keep their tires at around 24 psi. The correct pressure is 12 psi.

When he asks farmers why they chose 24 psi, they respond by saying, “Because that’s why I’ve always done.”

It seems to me that we have a long road ahead if we’re ever going to get to a real universal healthcare system in this country. But maybe a smart approach is to start tackling it piece by piece.

It seems like, especially given recent events around healthcare and its executives, that a good place to start might be outlawing the practice of denying claims. If we can’t yet wrap our heads around universal coverage, maybe we can accept that anyone with coverage needs to be covered.

Not to get political

Healthcare

I was talking to my neighbor the other morning. We ran into each other walking our dogs. My fiancé and her both share a history of cancer. My fiancé currently has stage IV metastatic breast cancer. We found out less than a year ago. My neighbor knows this and was asking how she was. All things considered, she’s doing pretty great. But it launched us into a conversation about healthcare.

My neighbor’s new insurance doesn’t cover preventative PET scans, a very effective form of diagnostic imaging that could detect cancerous cells throughout the body. So she told me she’d first have to be diagnosed with cancer, again, for a third time, before her insurance would cover a scan. By which point it could be spread to multiple locations throughout her body. The best chance of survival when it comes to cancer is early detection. Which makes this policy insanely dangerous and stupid. 

Its backwards policies such as these that leave the patient out in the cold that caused me to leave a successful career in healthcare after nearly a decade. I could no longer be an accomplice to such crimes.

My neighbors husband it turns out left for similar reasons. He was working for an insurance company that celebrated when they got above a certain threshold of claims denials. The more claims they deny, the less services they pay for, and the more money that goes to their bottom line. The more of a chance that treatable diseases, like cancer, are missed, and people like my neighbor or my fiancé suffer.

One of my responsibilities at work was to fight the insurance companies for erroneously denying claims, and for what we called short pays (the health insurer is contracted to pay $90 for a service but they only pay $60). We had a whole department dedicated to this one function of recovering money we were owed, a large percentage of which was owed to the doctors we managed. We routinely negotiated multi-million dollar settlements ($30 x thousands of claims = millions of dollars). Wasting hours of our time, and never getting 100 percent of the money owed to us. The reason a doctor spends only 10 - 15 minutes with each patient is not just because of the low level of reimbursement they are receiving, but because sometimes they aren’t being reimbursed at all, and they need to make up for it with volume.

These are the very real games that health insurance companies play, and get away with. Sometimes the doctor pays for it. Sometimes the patient does. But the insurance companies always seem to walk away unscathed. Healthcare in this country is a business. And business, particularly in a capitalist society, is driven solely by profit. And when patient outcomes are pushed aside in favor of more profit, you end up with a nation of chronically sick individuals.

The Behavior of Change

Thoughts and download from the week.

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“Most frustration comes from not having a plan, or from not being open to changing when the plan you have fails.”

Eating Late

Every night it’s a struggle to not eat a snack after dinner and before bed. I know how much better I sleep, and therefore how much better I feel the next day when I don’t have a late night treat, and yet I fight myself on it every night.

Food is so good, it makes it so hard. It feels so right at the time, but I immediately regret it because I know I’m not going to sleep as well as I could have if I just listened to that voice saying “don’t do it,” “you don’t need it.” Instead of listening to the voice that says, “who cares,” “you deserve it.”

I used to think that if I just had something healthy and light, like a bowl of fruit, or something satiating, like protein powder mixed with soy milk, that it would be okay. But it’s not. It’s better than cake, or cookies, or ice cream, but it’s still not good.

Often times I rationalize eating something by convincing myself that I didn’t have enough calories that day, or enough of a certain macro, usually protein, to cover me for my workout. But it’s really just that, a rationalization to eat when I don’t need or want to.

If you’re reading this and thinking “wow this guy is tormented by food.” You’d be right. It wasn’t always like this for me. It started when I started training for triathlons a few years ago. Back then I always felt like I couldn’t consume enough calories to keep up with the long and hard days of training. There was no way, without a proper nutrition plan, which I didn’t have, to stay on top of the calories and macros I needed. As a result I always felt hungry and depleted. So I began over analyzing my food, and questioning what I was consuming with every bite. Even though I’ve been removed from that training style for a couple of years now, it’s taken time to undo that programming.

Tracking my food for 6 months helped. I learned that I was over-consuming fats, and under-consuming proteins (the latter of which I think was contributing to the feeling of being depleted). Balancing my diet, getting closer to the right amount of macros, has helped repair my relationship with food, but I know there is still more work to do.

But, no matter how much my that relationship improves, I doubt it will ever be easy. Because really, aren’t we all tormented by food in this country? Isn’t that why 70 percent of the population is either overweight or obese? And why everyone is always trying to lose weight and failing? I don’t think you can live in this country and not be tormented by food. Food in this country is available in endless abundance, it’s accessible everywhere you turn, and it’s extremely affordable. There is always an opportunity to shove something delicious in your mouth. Not something nutritious, but something delicious. Something ultra-processed, loaded with sugar, and of low quality, actually stripped of its nutrition. Something that tastes good, feels good, and hits all those sensory pleasure zones in your brain. No, we all struggle with it.

A rancher at a regenerative agriculture conference I went to said it best, “our addiction to convenience is killing us.”

So I wage the daily battle against food. Some days I win, some days I lose. I just try to string together more winning days than losing ones. Staying away from ultra processed foods, foods loaded with added sugar, fat, and sodium.

If there’s one thing that The Comfort Crisis brought to light for me, it’s that in this modern world you need to be actively fighting back the comforts that are all around us and making us sick. You can’t take a day off.

It’s an unfortunate thing, but if we want to achieve and maintain our health, it is going to require work, because the environment in this country doesn’t support a healthy lifestyle. It’s on you to create one for yourself.

10,000 Steps

I think 10,000 steps, when combined with a diet rich in whole foods and devoid of processed foods and added sugar, is actually a good number to strive for that can make you healthy and keep you there. The problem I see is that getting to 10,000 steps in a given day is really hard. I like to think that I’m very active. I workout for a minimum of one hour per day. I don’t have a desk job that keeps me tied to a chair for 8 hours or more. I spend 3 - 5 hours per days standing in my kitchen cooking meals and cleaning up after them. I walk my dog 2 - 3 times per day. On most days I do some type of yard work, that might include mowing the lawn, watering our flower and vegetable beds, or weeding. And still, most days, I don’t even come close to 10,000 steps. In fact, the Garmin watch I recently bought came set with a daily step goal of 7,222 (no idea where that number comes from), and I rarely even hit that number. The only time I hit this number is if I go for a run or a hike. 

But I do recognize that on days when I hit that 7,000 number, or even better yet, I get up and over that 10,000 step number, I feel better. The difference is noticeable. My energy levels are better. My mood is better. I eat better. I sleep better. Everything is better. I’m just not convinced that 10,000 steps is a realistic figure for 99 percent of the population. For most of us, getting enough steps in would require a gargantuan effort. But I’m also not sure what is, or what other metric might be that could have the same benefits as 10,000 steps, but also be achievable.

No One Size… Many Sizes

We say there is no “one size fits all” when it comes to diet and exercise. That each of us are unique, and what works for you might not work for me. And what works for me, might not work for you. And that’s true, but we need to go one level deeper. Because, unfortunately, it’s even more complex than that.

What works for you is going to change throughout various times in your life. What works when stress is low, probably won’t work when stress is high. What worked when you were 25, doesn’t work when you’re 30, 35, or 40. What works when you’re catching a full night of Zzzzs, doesn’t work when your baby is waking you up multiple times per night. What works when you’re home, might be hard to replicate on the road.

That’s why, beyond any diet or exercise advice, you need to be vigilant about which situation you find yourself in, and adapt to meet it. You need to dial into the signals that your body is sending you.

Someone changes their life by going on the ketogenic diet, but after 6 months, they suddenly aren’t feeling well. It’s not working, and they’re constantly craving something sweet. Maybe it’s time to start incorporating some fruit. Or they’ve become tired of eating so much meat. Maybe it’s time to start eating more fish.

Or they always worked out in the morning, but now they start work earlier, and they have a longer commute, both of which are cutting into their morning workout. Can they wake up a little bit earlier to get in a workout? Is there time during lunch? At the end of the day? Instead of exercising 5x per week, can they squeeze in 3? Something, anything, just to keep the momentum and build on the habit.

There are so many examples, so many ways life is going to interrupt your plan, and I think that’s the problem that a lot of people face. They are unable to recognize why their routine is no longer effective, and rather than investigate why and make some changes, they throw the whole plan away and regress back to baseline, or worse, below it. 

I think it’s very important to realize first that what’s going to work for you is specific to you. But second that you’re going to need to stay on top of it and manage it throughout different times in your life. The way I like to think about it is using a golf analogy (I don’t golf, but it works). I like to always stay as close to the pin as possible, so it’s never too hard to make my putt. What do I mean?

Let’s say I go on vacation where I’m sure to indulge in food I wouldn’t normally eat. Well I’ll try and keep at least one meal per day, but usually two, close to my normal diet when I’m home. This way, when I do get home, my routine hasn’t drifted too far off, and it makes it easier to ease back into my normal diet.

Let’s say that I have family visiting, and working out for 60 - 90 minutes isn’t possible without looking like I’m offending my guests. Rather than completely skipping my workout, I might just put together a 30 minute workout that keeps the routine and momentum alive for when my family leaves and I have my time back.

I’m constantly thinking about how I need to adapt my plan to fit the current situations in my life, always keeping the focus on staying as close to the pin as possible. Consistency is the key. Consistency is where progress is built. Figure out what you need to do to stay and consistent and not let life interrupt your plan.

Senate Testimony on the Health Crisis in this Country

I listened to Brigham Buehler, Casey Means, and Calley Means all on Joe Rogan talking about the testimony they gave in front of the Senate discussing the growing health crisis in this country. All three of these guests expressed some level of gratitude that they were able to present their case and lay out the facts about why and how we’ve gotten into such a mess. But the one thing I didn’t hear from any of them was anger or disdain for the fact that we even had to have a testimony to begin with. That no one that sits in the Senate has any idea about what’s going on in this country. That they are so unaware, or at least claim to be, of the fact that toxic food, plastics, and prescription drugs are murdering people in this country. They needed to hear it from a panel of experts.

Perhaps my view is biased because health, diet, food, exercise, longevity, and health span, are all things that I think about and read about on a daily basis. But holy shit, the health crisis in this country is the biggest issue we face as a nation, with ripple effects throughout every aspect of our lives. And the members of the senate don’t have a clue as to what’s going on, and yet they are the ones voting on bills, policies, and funding that directly impact the trajectory of this epidemic.

Maybe I don’t know how government and politics works, but my assumption would be that the people leading the country should know a little bit about what’s going on in the country before they get to lead it. I question how much these members actually pay attention. How many of them actually read. How they spend their free time, or any of their time, because time and time again, they are fucking clueless.

Perhaps it’s a product of the fact that some politicians have been politicians for decades. Decades! Spending their time campaigning, going to parties, and kissing the assess of the people that give them money. It’s outrageous and it’s becoming harder and harder to accept the extreme level of incompetence that exists in our government.

Three good podcast episodes

Joe Rogan and Diane Boyd - Diane K. Boyd is a wildlife biologist who has devoted decades to studying wolves. She is the author of "A Woman Among Wolves: My Journey Through Forty Years of Wolf Recovery."

Joe Rogan and Israel Adesanya - Joe sits down with Israel Adesanya, a mixed martial artist competing in the Middleweight division of the UFC. He is the subject of the documentary "Stylebender," available now.

Peter Attia and Anne Lembke - #321 – Dopamine and addiction: navigating pleasure, pain, and the path to recovery | Anna Lembke, M.D.

Establishing a new political party

The Health Party

I want to start a new political party called The Health Party, whose whole mission will be to discuss current events and policy decisions purely from the lens of personal and public health.

I think everyone would agree that their health, and the health of their loved ones, is their number one priority above everything else. That everything we do, is done with the survival of ourselves and those we love in mind. So, with that in mind, the idea is to analyze current events and policy decisions to determine how they are impacting our health, and choose where we want to throw the weight of our support, based on this idea.

For instance. There’s a new Farm Bill [link] that’s going to get passed this year. In that bill will be billions of dollars that the government is going to pay farmers. Currently, all of the money will go to subsidizing conventional farming. Farms that grow rows and rows, acres and acres, of commodity crops like wheat, seed, grain, corn, and potatoes. These farmers all spray the food they grow with endless amounts of insecticides, fungicide, herbicide, and any other type of “side” you can imagine, as they prep their fields for planting, during the growing season, and while harvesting. Not only does the food get it, but because of their proximity to these chemicals, the farmers and farmhands are also exposed.

So, when considering our health and the health of those around us, should we continue to subsidize these farms? The answer is obviously no. No, we do not want to continue to subsidize growing methods that produce food that is killing us. No, we don’t want to continue to subsidize food that is used to make sugars, like high fructose corn syrup, ultra-processed foods, and to feed animals raised on feed lots (CAFOs [link]). No, that is not where we want to spend our money. Our tax payer money.

But, we should do something with the money. So, should we use it to incentivize those farmers to begin transitioning to healthier farming methods, like regenerative agriculture? A method of farming that has been proven to grow healthier and more humanely raised foods, that can heal the land and heal the population. Yes. We know the harm that pesticides and conventional farming practices have on the land and our health, so we should use that money to begin to transition away from them.

I think it can be that simple.

I read an article the other day that said the estimated cost to transition from conventional farming to regenerative farming globally is between $200 - $450 billion. But that same article also stated that it will be hard to make that transition because farmers have not been able to secure the funds they need to transition, which is one of the main struggles that farmers face. Obtaining required capital from banks and other financial institutions. So they’re stuck, unable to change. 

If we move that $70 billion in the farm bill that is currently ear marked to subsidize conventional growers, and give it to farmers that are trying to improve, then we’ll already be 15 - 35 percent of the way there (depending on what end of the estimate you believe).

I think when policy, bills, and current events are analyzed purely from a personal health perspective that almost all of them will be that easy.

I hope you join.

Sincerely,

The Health Party.

The Behavior of Change

Thoughts and download from the week.

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Fearfulness is the most common state in a life that asks for no real change.

I’m going to try something new, and see if it works.

I’ve been thinking about something I heard on the podcast episode I shared last week. That is the idea that you can be happy, love yourself, and also be ruthlessly ambitious enough to accomplish your goals.

Elizabeth Gilbert tells a quick story about a guy who didn’t want to try her letters of love exercise because he thought it would make him weak. He thought that by showing himself love and compassion he would lose his drive, that chip on his shoulder, that he believed was the driving force behind his success.

I’ve feel that way too. Not necessarily in loving myself, although I could definitely benefit from more of that. But in my inability to take my foot off the gas. I hold this belief that if I slow down in any part of my life, that it’s going to create a ripple effect throughout every part of my life and ultimately lead to my demise. 

If I watch too much TV, or eat something I shouldn’t, skip a day of exercise, or don’t have a book I’m actively reading, that it’s going to be the beginning of the end of my dreams. That I’m going to slowly descend into some useless human being, incapable of anything.

But in reality the opposite is actually true. It’s the times when I’ve taken my foot off the gas that I’ve felt the best. It’s when my mind is clearest and my body feels most aligned, fit, and capable. And by contrast, when I’ve continued to push it, despite all of the signs from my mind, brain fog and agitation, and body, fatigue and pain, is when I accomplish the least, regardless of the fact that I’m doing the most.

So, to hear her tell this story really resonated with me, and I think it also ties well into a recent insight I had while my buddy was visiting me.

Almost a year ago my buddy got laid off. It was completely unexpected. When he called me to tell me I was in shock, and at a loss for words. He had worked for this company for at least as long as I’ve know him, going on six years, and he’s one of the smartest, most ambitious, experienced, and well educated friends I have. He is also, not surprisingly, Type A.

So in the year since his layoff he’s been busy trying to find a new job. But, through no fault of his own, he’s been unable to land one. So during his visit I asked him, “in retrospect, knowing now that you’d be 12 months out of having a job, and still looking, would you have spent the last 12 months doing anything differently? Would you have given yourself a break, eased off the pressure you’ve been putting on yourself, and enjoyed your time more, rather than staying busy?”

I asked him this question because it’s a question that I have wrestled with many times since leaving my well paying and rewarding, albeit stressful, job 6 years ago. And I still wrestle with it today. But hearing about his situation made me once again reassess my own. 

I could tell he didn’t like the question, and it made him uncomfortable because it forced him to question how he has been spending my time. Something I always question when it comes to my own life. But it’s an important question because it highlights the stress we put on ourselves as humans to be successful, even when nothing is wrong. It very much echoes the message that Robert M. Sapolsky tries to convey in Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, and the message Boyd Varty shares in The Lion Trackers Guide to Life when he says, “no wild animal has ever taken part in a should.”

My friend and I are in the same situation in some respects, at least a it relates to the quality of our lives. Other than not having a job, and a steady income, not much has changed. We still eat the food we want to eat, live where we want, travel, have a roof over our head, a car to drive. For all intents and purposes, life is good. Yet we’re applying this relentless pressure to figure it out, not now, but yesterday.

The question of fulfillment and purpose always seems to come up, and with good reason. Figuring out how to spend your days when you have no “work” to go to can be difficult. It took me about two years to feel comfortable with it. But I’ve learned how to enjoy my days without work. I’ve settled into a good rhythm of activities that include exercise, reading, writing, volunteering, cooking, and now gardening, that I enjoy and keep me happy. I love my days.

But, despite that, the pressure is still on. I continue to pressure myself every day to figure it out, and work really hard to do so. That’s been my mentality for 6 years, and still, I haven’t figured it out. So maybe it’s time for a new approach. Back to Elizabeth Gilbert’s story.

What if instead of forcing myself to work and figure it out, I took the opposite approach. What if I fucked off when I wanted to fuck off. Watched TV during the day. Smoked weed when I wanted to smoke. Skipped workouts, and indulged in desserts when they called to me. What if I stayed up late, and slept in past the sunrise. Perhaps that’s been the problem. Perhaps that’s the love she speaks about that I’ve been denying myself, and it’s the reason I haven’t figured it out yet. Perhaps allowing myself that love, or level of comfort, rather than hindering my performance, like I believe it would, could be the catalyst to drive success.

In Tools of Titans Tim Ferriss talks about trying something new for 48 hours. He says, try it, and if it doesn’t work, you can always go back to your old ways. That same principle is something I’d been using even before reading his book. But hearing it from him has reinforced its practicality. So, that’s what I’m going to do.

Beth Lewis said in our class recently, “you can’t crush the gym, and life.” It’s true, and I’ve been trying to crush everything in my path. For once I’m going to take the opposite approach, and see where it takes me. Here’s to a new more lethargic way of being.

Informative podcast on chronic health in America, and the issues we face to fix it.

Joe Rogan #2210 - with Calley Means and Casey Means, MD - I don’t like listening to Calley Means. He’s a former political strategist and lobbyist for companies such as coco-cola. So I’ve ignored listening to anything he’s a part of, and it’s the reason I haven’t reads the book he co-wrote with his sister, Casey Means, MD, despite being very interested in what she has to say. I like Casey. She is one of the founders of Levels, the company I purchased my glucose monitor from earlier this year to experiment with. She’s a physician, a head and neck surgeon that left conventional healthcare to start her company and address the growing issue of metabolic health in this country, the root cause of most chronic disease. Metabolic disease is associated with mitochondrial dysfunction, and it’s believed that ultra-processed food, pesticides, plastics, and other toxins in our environment, in addition to the sedentary lifestyle most people live, is the cause of it. Levels, her company, is trying to change that. And after spending time on the dark side her brother is too.

Recently Casey and Calley were part of a panel of experts that included people like Jillian Michaels (her testimony is much see stuff), Max Lugavere, and Brigham Buehler, who testified in front of congress to sound the alarm about the growing health epidemic in this country and, more importantly, the cause of it.

I’m glad I put my dislike for Calley aside and listened to this one, because I learned a lot, and, the reality is, good on him for trying change the system.

I found this quote from Casey Means to be the most notable:

“Ultra-processed food is dead food” - Casey Means

Ultra-processed food, food that is stripped of all it’s nutrients and filled with harmful ingredients, now make up 70 percent of the calories consumed in this country. Casey nailed it with that quote. Far too many people are eating nutrition less food, and it’s a big part of the problem.

Book I’m Reading - Wildlife Wars

I picked this book up from one of the “free libraries” you see on the street. That was probably over a year ago but I just started reading it recently. I’m more than a third of the way through now, but these lines from the introduction had me reeled in from the jump. I would listen to anyone’s story who has the type of mind that sees the world in this way. It’s a great book, and Richard Leakey provides a great example of what being a leader should look like. One in which integrity and morals are not compromised. 

From the introduction: 

“Conservation of biodiversity may be a global imperative, but eating one cooked meal a day and drinking clean water are more basic to the survival of most of the world's population. Protecting elephants and conserving natural ecosystems remain my personal priorities. But I am not so sure this would be so were I ill, hungry, and living in despair. I enjoy fresh air, sunshine, and crisp starlit nights. I do so, however, knowing full well that when I need it I can find shelter. We must somehow find a way to provide for our own species if we are also to preserve others.”

“Clean air, clean water, plentiful forests, and a human population that is well fed, educated, and reasonably affluent is our goal in Kenya. Saving the elephants is symbolic—a means to achieve these greater objectives.”

This Weeks Harvest

Growing season is coming to an end but that doesn’t mean there isn’t abundance in our garden. In fact, a lot of our vegetable plants, especially our tomatoes, are thriving right now in the cooler Colorado temperatures. This week I spent a couple of days harvesting some vegetables, cleaning, and cooking them. Here are a few pictures of the haul.

Quarter Share Cow

Shout out to Lazy Acres Ranch and Butcher. This past week I picked up my quarter share of cow from them, and I got to it right away cooking up some of the goodness they supplied me with. The ribeye pictured below was particularly tasty, but the beef short ribs were out of this world. They were so good my girlfriend who is a reformed vegan that still struggles with eating meat ate two with her dinner. Here’s the recipe I used. Super basic and super tasty. I didn’t have fresh rosemary so I used some other dried herbs in my cabinet, and I used chopped white onion in place of onion powder. The ribs were melt in your mouth delicious.

$1,250 for 100 lbs of pastured raised beef that comes from a ranch 2 hours away. I bought a freezer for just this purpose, and now I get to walk into my garage and pick out whatever cuts I want. It’s a beautiful thing.

Trail Run

Parmalee, Devil's Elbow and Castle Trail

Miles - 5.2

Elevation gain - 889 ft

This was my favorite trail run since moving to Colorado. Mostly single track, with plenty of tree coverage, and challenging elevation at points. The parking was easy and the trail wasn’t overly crowded at 10 am on a Wednesday. I also enjoyed not seeing one cyclist. Of all the trails I’ve run so far, this is one that I could see myself repeating again and again.