Three books about the ancient pinewoods of Scotland and temperate rainforests of Great Britain and Ireland. I find that time in nature is regenerative for me. I’ve used these books to identify places to hike and mountain bike through some of the most spectacular landscapes of the United Kingdom

When I was diagnosed with heart disease despite following contemporary nutrition guidelines and my doctor’s advice for years I decided to change my lifestyle. That included eliminating two major food ingredients, namely seed oils and simple carbohydrates. In this post I describe why I eliminated seed oils and how they likely contributed to my disease.

I listen to many podcasts and I love it when a long-form discussion changes my mind about something. This podcast “What your GP doesn’t tell you” is one of my favourites because the host is smart, engaging and asks intelligent follow-up questions of her guests. Her discussion with surgeon James Kinross is one of the most illuminating I’ve encountered on the subject of the human microbiome and how it interacts with our environment to affect human health from start to finish, quite literally.

The latest addition to my cumulative book list is the collection that I used to inform my first post entitled “Is my heart disease a symptom of modern malnutrition?”. There is a total of 10 books describing how what we eat can cause and often cure chronic diseases

Have you ever tried to figure out how much sugar is represented by certain types of food? It can be difficult but I’ve found a series of infographics that helped me to eliminate ingredients that may have contributed to my heart disease.

The latest addition to my cumulative book list is the excellent book by Christopher Palmer, MD, in which he makes the case for mental health as a form of metabolic dysfunction, not a chemical imbalance. He describes how a range of mental health disorders may be improved through food and nutrition. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did.

Are you interested in reading books that might inform your lifestyle choices? This list of books will be regularly updated. I hope you find it interesting.

Are you interested in finding out more about human nutrition but don’t have the time or patience to search the academic literature? I am interested and find that when I translate that literature into simpler language, it helps me to understand and retain what is being said. This is the first in what may be a series of simple summaries of articles that interest me.

A review of The Story of the Human Body by Daniel Lieberman

Have you ever suffered from a lack of certain things like vitamins in your body? I have and I realised decades ago that when I supplemented with lysine, magnesium, vitamin D3, and quercetin, to name a few, I felt much better. After I started to believe that my health is largely driven by the nature of what I eat, it wasn’t long before I started to consider cutting down on the supplements I take every day and trying to get them from a more natural source. This post describes what I’ve discovered.

Did you have an opportunity to read what I found out about the currently popular Diet Heart Hypothesis of what causes heart disease? If so, were you surprised by what I discovered? I was blown away, and I have to say disappointed, by what I learned. In this post I’ve tried to describe the other, less popular, Thrombogenic Hypothesis. If you read on you’ll read of a simpler theory about how a natural blood clotting repair mechanism may be hijacked and distorted by our poor lifestyle choices to cause heart disease. You’ll also learn about the positive steps I’ve taken to fix my heart disease.

Do you or does someone close to you suffer from heart disease? Are you trying to understand the cause and what you can do to stop and maybe even reverse the damage? I found myself asking those questions and decided to delve into what is known about the causes of heart disease. This is the first of a two-part description of what I discovered. In this post you’ll learn what I discovered about the currently popular Diet Heart Hypothesis.

Are you intrigued by the current popularity of certain fermented foods such as kefir and kimchi and interested in understanding if they really are beneficial? I consume fermented food every day and can describe some of their benefits. Fermented foods offer rare nutritional benefit to our bodies and our gut microbiota in a single package. Luckily, fermented food is easy to make at home because their full health benefits are delivered unpasteurized, and because home fermenting allows us to eat real seasonal food produced locally.

If, like me, you shy away from food guidelines for various reasons, you may be surprised by what I present here. A group of academics have raised concerns about prominent international food guidelines and their relation to good published science. This is important because in the absence of transparent evidence-based health metrics, people can make poor decisions about sources of nutrient-dense food. Children and the elderly are especially at risk from food that lacks the most important vitamins and minerals

Understanding how our metabolism works is important because it explains why an outwardly healthy athlete following conventional dietary and medical advice (me) can still contract a serious chronic disease.

A review of Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health – and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More by Christopher M, Palmer, MD

The gut microbiome is a vital part of the human holobiont providing a virtuous cycle of health outcomes when we nourish it properly.  There is much still to be learned about how we can nourish our gut microbiota but we do know that each of us is different and we are likely to benefit from a range of carbohydrates from a range of sources.

Previously I wrote that “I now eat for my body and my gut microbiome”. Here I try to describe the microbiome and how it works. The composition of the human microbiome is unique to every one of us, but irrespective of this we each benefit from vital core beneficial functions. We must remember its need for nourishment because without our microbiome, we just wouldn’t exist.

It is well understood now that humans and all other animals and plants on earth have evolved alongside important symbiotic microorganisms, referred to as their microbiota. In this relationship, we act as the host upon and within which our microbiota live and work with us cooperatively.

After a routine medical examination in 2017, I was diagnosed with advanced heart disease. After a years-long investigation, I’ve concluded that I’d become malnourished and as a result was suffering from serious ill-health.