I understand that while it’s easy to say, “Just do it,” taking action can often feel overwhelming. I vividly recall my former self questioning, “Are you serious? How can I possibly tackle this? There’s so much information out there - how do I know what’s truly helpful for me? Isn’t it enough just to consult my doctors? I simply don’t have the time for this!”

The reality is that, yes, you can take charge of your health. However, relying on the wrong information could lead you into serious trouble. Ultimately, your health is your responsibility; no one else will take ownership of it.

You might be surprised to learn that this was me back in the spring of 2020: humble beginnings, indeed…

This situation transformed over time. Here I am in September 2022:

After getting accustomed to my former self from 2020, would you have recognized me in 2022 as I walked by wearing those sunglasses?

To put this into perspective, I found myself in a difficult situation at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Weighing 107 kg, I faced numerous health challenges. I felt miserable, struggled with brain fog, dealt with hypertension, and suffered from a complicated “aura” type of migraine that mimicked stroke symptoms. Additionally, I battled depression and was likely insulin resistant - which indicated I was on the verge of becoming prediabetic. Despite adhering to mainstream dietary advice and relying on the food pyramid, I believed I was making healthier choices. I even purchased a rowing machine to exercise, yet, instead of improvements, my condition only worsened - I became more obese despite trying to eat less.

The Power of Knowledge

However, the pandemic and the subsequent quarantine presented me with an unexpected opportunity. Being confined at home afforded me time for self-reflection and research. As I explored the internet to make the most of this time, I unearthed various topics of interest. Then, in late 2021, I stumbled upon a video on Dr. Sten Eckberg’s YouTube channel. That moment truly altered the course of my life.

It was this video that struck a chord and set me on a transformative journey:

Screenshot from YouTube:

What??? Really? Doctors can be wrong about many aspects of our health? As I discovered during my journey toward health consciousness, this is unfortunately not just a myth. I’ve learned that I cannot blindly trust any health professional simply because they attended medical school and hold a PhD. It’s important to approach health advice critically and seek out multiple perspectives.

The Reality of Health Education

I’m not suggesting that all doctors are unreliable or that we should solely depend on our “gut feelings” regarding health. Instead, it is unfortunate that many people are uninformed about health and nutrition, and it often takes a severe health scare for us to take our conditions seriously - conditions that are ultimately a result of our own lifestyle choices. Ignorance on this topic is not really an option.

Fortunately, many general practitioners, medical doctors, and scientists are willing to challenge outdated paradigms once they recognize what I also noticed: ultimately, only the results - driven by data- will indicate whether we are effectively managing the conditions that develop over time.

Here are some individuals whose work I’ve studied through their books and videos:

• Dr. Sten Eckberg - Olympic Decathlete and Holistic Doctor
• Dr. Stephen Phinney - Physician-Scientist
• Dr. Eric Berg - Board-Certified Chiropractor
• Dr. Robert Lustig - Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology
• Dr. Pradip Jamnadas - Cardiologist Founder and Medical Director of Cardiovascular Interventions
• Dr. Paul Mason - Fellowship trained Sports and Exercise Medicine Physician with degrees in Medicine, Physiotherapy, and Occupational Health
• Dr. Andrew Huberman - Ph.D., a Neuroscientist, Tenured professor in the Department of Neurobiology, and by courtesy, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford School of Medicine
• Dr. Tim Spector - Professor of Genetic Epidemiology King’s College London, Scientific co-founder at ZOE
• Dr. Chris Van Tulleken - Infection Doctor, Academic, BBC broadcaster, UNICEF supporter
• Dr. Rena Malik - Board-certified urologist with specialized training in Female Pelvic Medicine, Reconstructive Surgery, and Sexual Medicine, as well as a certified Menopause Society Practitioner
• Dr. Tara Swart - Neuroscientist, Medical Doctor

I haven’t listed all of them, as there are many others, including several interviewed by Steven Bartlett, who graciously hosts the insightful podcast The Diary of a CEO. A big thank you to Steven for that! I wholeheartedly recommend this podcast to all; I can assure you it will not be time wasted.

I owe a great deal to the doctors mentioned above, for their guidance and advice have enabled me to transform my life for the better.

It resonated deeply with me when Dr. Robert Lustig quoted in his book “Metabolical”: “At UCSF we have a motto: ‘In God we trust, everyone else has to produce the data.’” I wholeheartedly agree and have gladly adopted that as my personal motto as well.

Here’s an example of such data, which reveals that many people have had experiences similar to mine: they follow what their doctor or dietitian recommends, and their condition continues to worsen:

I began to identify patterns everywhere that indicated that if we do not educate ourselves about health, we cannot claim to be wise. Eventually, we will “reap what we sow,” as mentioned in Galatians 6:7 (The Bible).

There’s a saying: “If something seems too good to be true, assume that it isn’t.”

But why are we still so easily lured into believing fairy tales? Take the “magic pill” mentality, for example. Deep down, we likely know that there is no “magic pill” or single cure for all our problems, yet we still hope that somewhere, some brilliant inventor will eventually create it. This same notion applies to our expectations about relationships, wealth, and pretty much all aspects of life. However, the truth is that if you do not make an effort, if you do not search and put in the work, you will not “reap any benefits.”

Have you seen the documentary The Magic Pill? It’s a controversial piece that has drawn much criticism, but to me, it conveys significant truths beyond just its focus on ketosis and ketogenic diets, which many critics scrutinize. The documentary delves into fundamental truths about the Earth’s ecosystem and how it was originally designed (yes, I believe in a Great Designer who placed us here with a distinct purpose) and how humanity has disrupted this intricate system, jeopardizing both our health and our very existence.

This documentary is very valuable in my eyes. Not only because it reveals truths that many people feel uncomfortable with, but also because it teaches us about good nutrition. Not just because it challenges the status quo, but because it conveys a holistic approach based on verifiable facts, if one is impartial enough to approach the research with curiosity and impartiality. It also shows how the basic processes that sustain life in both the plant and animal kingdoms work, and shows that even well-intentioned, honest individuals can be misled if they do not seek to verify the information they accept. Anyone who merely argues about whether the keto diet is good is, in my humble opinion, prone to rely on their own biases and not trying to look at the whole, bigger picture.

I was intrigued by some of Nora Gedgaudas’ (author/nutritional therapist) comments and arguments, which I would like to quote:

There isn’t a single multinational corporation on planet Earth that wouldn’t stand to profit from every man, woman, and child consuming a carbohydrate-based diet. It’s incredibly cheap to produce. It’s highly profitable, and it keeps you perpetually hungry. What could be more perfect? - Pharmaceutical companies are profiting from this. Weight-loss industry’s profiting from this. Undertakers are making out like bandits. About the only people that aren’t profiting from all of this are– are the rest of us. Nora went on: Long before we ever came along, grasslands and ruminants co-evolved. Cattle are basically designed to eat one thing and one thing only, fresh green grass. We used to have 40 more species of large herbivores roaming across North America before the end of the last ice age, and we had 60 million bison thundering across the Great Plains. Today we have 60 million cattle that are populating feedlots. You know, grain feeding of animals. [cows mooing] And what do grains do to cattle? They fatten them up. We could take a hint from that. Roughly 97% of all the meat produced today is produced in these feedlots. And where we hear passionate vegetarians and vegans and animal rights advocates screaming about how we raise animals for food, I’m standing right there with them. It’s wrong. It’s unsustainable, and it has to stop. But there’s also misinformation and misunderstanding being promoted by genuinely well-meaning people. What people don’t understand is that everything really hinges on restoring natural systems. [Robert] Do you see that happening in the United– Like, can we reclaim our Midwestern prairies again? Is that possible? [Nora] It depends on how successful this documentary is. Right?

Lierre Keith author/activist shared:

I was a vegan. I was never a vegetarian. I went from standard American diet, vegan. I think when I started as a teenager, I had very good impulses about the world that I wanted and the…ethical base that I wanted to form the actions that were my life, that were going to be my life. That hasn’t changed. So justice, and compassion, and anything that questions human hubris or human entitlement– those are the only values that are gonna get us to the world that we need. The problem is information, and with a different collection of facts, a different set of information, I might have made a very different decision. If you want to reduce your carbon footprint, one of the best things you can do is eat locally, grow your own food in your own backyard. So I took this up with a fervor. I really wanted to do all this, so I made a garden happen. And pretty immediately hit the wall of… what do plants eat? We’re used to thinking of plants as sort of insensate salads. They actually have needs. Well, I’m going to get the organic whatever, and I go to the farm store, and I’m looking around, and every single thing that’s an amendment that is for fruit like strawberries, it’s bone meal and blood meal. Well, where do I think minerals come from? Well, I don’t know! I’ve never done this before, and I’m horrified! I mean, I don’t even want to smell it. I don’t want to touch it. It feels so unclean. [Robert] And where does this bone meal and blood meal come from? It comes from, you know– from animals. [laughs] He’s like, “Where”– it doesn’t fall out of the sky. I know this is about dead animals! It’s horrifying to me. What do I do? I have to supply what the soil needs, and what the soil wants is dead plants and dead animals, and I can’t take animals out of that equation. I mean, it’s absolute hubris to think we can. That’s what soil is. That’s how it evolved. That’s a thriving, living community. There are insects, and they want to eat strawberries, too. So either I’m going to kill them or I’m going to get some creatures that will do it for me. And I went ahead and got chickens and ducks. [quacking] Again, this was this just tremendous moment of ethical and moral meltdown. So now I’m enslaving these chickens and ducks to do this terrible thing for me, which is kill. You’ve never seen anything like a duck eat a slug. You want to see happiness? “This is what I live for,” was what my duck said, and, boy, was she a happy little creature. The chickens as well. So they ate all the bugs for me, and I never saw another slug. Animals tell us what they want. You know, if you just let them do what their nature is to do, then they’re… It’s not even that they are happy, it’s that they are who they should be. The most destructive thing we’ve done is this activity called agriculture. We don’t really have a clue what goes into making that corn or making that soy. All we know is that you look down on your plate, and it doesn’t look like a dead thing, therefore, heh, it somehow must be peaceful, and kind, and sustainable. And we’re utterly wrong about this. You take a piece of land and you clear every living thing off it, and I’m including the bacteria in that. So all the plants and animals that are supposed to live there, they’re gone. Now you’re going to grow an acre of corn or wheat. That corn is going to require things that are not there for it, and you’re going to have to come from the outside and apply them. It’s going to take a lot of fertilizer, insecticides, and fungicides, ‘cause you’re fighting a war. Right? All those other plants and all those little animals want to come back. Now another thing that happens is every time you plant that corn, you’re destroying that soil. A prairie or a grassland, it’s the perennial roots that make channels for the rain. When you only have annuals, they don’t live a long time, so they don’t have time to build long roots, so year-by-year, you are drawing down that soil. And then of course, all that soil washes off. If you’re on any kind of a slope, it all is just going to go into the local river, and kill it with all that dirt, so now there’s no fish either. In the meantime though, while the corn is still growing, you can transport it to a miserable cow living on a cement floor inside a steel building… and feed that cow for about 60 days. Past that point, she will die from the corn because it’s not her natural diet. But until that point, she will get really fat, really fast. And then slaughter her, feed her to humans, so you’re going to make people sick eating this meat as well. As far as I can tell, this is nothing but death and destruction from the very beginning to the very end of this. Now I’m going to walk you through another scenario, which is you take the same acre of land, but you don’t hurt it in any way. You let it have its own wisdom, its own impulse toward life, its own wild way. And what you have is a whole bunch of perennial plants growing there. You have a whole bunch of really sturdy grasses. You’ve got big birds, and you’ve got ground-dwelling birds. And then you’ve got small mammals and larger mammals. You might even have, every once in a while, a really big mammal come across there. You might have a wolf, a bear, or somebody. And in the meantime, you’ve got a ruminant. [moos] So you’ve produced the same amount of food for people. You’ve got the one ruminant at the end. You slaughter her, and now people can eat, but that acre that is still in that prairie, that grassland, you could come back in 10,000 years and all of that life would still be there. The only thing different would be a little more soil, which is to say a little more resilience, a little more depth to life. And that is how we lived for 2.5 million (or if we think in terms of creation about 5850) years as humans on this planet, participating in that cycle.

The thoughts of writer/holistic farmer Joe Salatin are also worth their weight in gold:

We’re here in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and what we do is pasture livestock. [moos] In nature, herbivores live in large groups and they migrate. All we’re doing is duplicating that kind of migration, moving the animals across the land, so that this choreography, this ballet of the pasture can perform its dance on the grass. [Pete Evans] When people say eating this way is unsustainable? [Joe] Oh. Listen, it’s not only sustainable, it’s actually what we call regenerative. It allows the grass, then, time to regrow, to recuperate. Grass is essentially 95% sunshine. This takes sunbeams and converts it into something that has weight. And amazingly, the herbivore can take this, ferment it in her rumen, and turn this into, arguably, the most nutrient-dense food in the world. Grass grows in what I call an S-curve. If you can see that ‘S’. So diaper down here, teenage, rapid growth, and then nursing home out here. What we want to do is keep this forage in this rapid-growth state as much as possible. So the role of the herbivore in nature is actually to prune the grass to restart that rapid metabolic capacity. This is what builds soil, hydrates the landscape, and actually sequesters carbon. This is the system. When grass is allowed to be as productive as it’s supposed to be, it actually is far more efficient at converting solar energy into biomass than even trees. That’s why all the rich, deep soils of the planet are under prairies with herbivores. And if every farm in the world would do this, we would sequester all the carbon that’s been emitted since the beginning of the Industrial Age in fewer than 10 years. When a confinement animal facility shows a picture of this hog factory or chicken factory or whatever, they’re not showing all the land that’s required to grow the grain to keep it going and all the land that’s required to handle all the manure that it’s generating. In this system, you’re seeing all that land. I think a lot of industrial agriculture thinking is that the earth is a reluctant lover. Whereas, actually, we view the earth as an abundant, loving partner who responds to caress, who responds to care, and if we will come humbly to the land, why, it’s ready to give us way more than we could have wrestled from it. - [honking] - This is the mystical, awesome cycle of life, and to be able to be this close to it has a humility to it, a perspective… that is actually quite profound, and actually quite historically normal.

This documentary is a powerful reminder that there is no such thing as a “magic pill”. We cannot assume that we can reinvent our food or alter it without understanding the long-term effects, all the while expecting to succeed. This principle extends not only to food and health but also to how we treat our entire environment here on Earth.

In summary, this documentary is a must-watch for anyone interested in understanding the true nature of health, the importance of responsible environmental stewardship, and the long-term effects of our choices. It offers invaluable insights that can inspire more conscious living and a healthier planet.

Prof. Yuval Noah Harari (historian) shared a disturbing insight in a captivating podcast on The Diary of a CEO: “Humans typically learn to manipulate something long before they understand the consequences of their manipulations. If we examine the external world, particularly our ecological systems, we have learned how to cut down forests and build massive dams long before grasping their implications on those ecosystems, which has contributed to the current ecological crisis. We manipulated the world without understanding the consequences, and something similar could very well happen within our own bodies.”

How true this rings for our health!

A Hopeful Transformation

But back to my story. After several years on this new journey of enlightening discovery, I have become much healthier: I’ve reversed my hypertension, insulin resistance, eliminated brain fog, and lost 35 kg of body weight over the span of 8 months. In fact, my weight loss journey is ongoing as I continue to learn about “how the body works,” to quote Dr. Eckberg. I now feel much better, as I understand how to utilize various simple tools to achieve the health outcomes I need.

My Path to Change

What events have led to the result in addition to the “work” invested?

I needed to hit rock bottom to catalyze my change. I needed that video from Dr. Eckberg, which struck a particular nerve and ignited my motivation for change. I had to realize that I could not alter my results if I continued the same behaviors that previously led to them, simply hoping for a positive outcome. Remember, there is no magic pill.

I needed to educate myself extensively about the biochemistry of the body, nutrition, recent history, and how to differentiate between genuine science and pseudoscience. For instance, it is crucial to grasp the difference between “correlation” and “causation.” Investigate who funds the studies you rely on and consider their possible incentives. Making educated guesses about the ruth is far from impossible, right?

I had to distinguish between real food and items merely labeled “food.” As Dr. Lustig states in his book, “People think supplements are the antidote for bad food. They’re not. Rather, Real Food is the treatment, while bad food is the poison. Real Food is low in sugar and high in fiber, which lowers insulin levels; it protects the liver and nourishes the gut.” Real food typically has a short shelf life and rarely comes in a package with a label or nutrition facts.

Moreover, I needed to understand the significant impact of diets on our health. From my research - initially centered around Keto and Intermittent Fasting - I learned that different diets can serve as tools for specific outcomes. However, any diet can be harmful if it includes unhealthy, ultra-processed products that aren’t considered Real Food. Almost any type of diet can be healthy if it consists of Real Food. Conversely, it holds true that if you consume ultra-processed “food,” regardless of the diet it fits into, it will negatively affect your health.

Just a little tip to make things easier:

If you focus solely on Real Food while practicing intermittent fasting (also known as time-restricted feeding) and occasionally engaging in longer fasts (to promote autophagy - a self-repair state of the body), you will likely experience improved health. This has been my most significant realization so far.

Of course, there are many more nuances to know about what counts as Real Food and what doesn’t, but I’ll write about that in a future article.

The purpose of writing this article:

I chose to share my personal story and a glimpse of what I’ve recently discovered about health - specifically my health - to encourage YOU, the reader, to take this important matter into your own hands. I didn’t spend all my time learning about these topics over the last five years in one go; rather, I learned bit by bit, step by step. This is the approach you should adopt as well.

There are countless success stories around us, highlighting that those who achieved them did not succumb to the limiting beliefs that certain entities in this world attempt to impose upon them.

May your journey become one such success story! I wish you all the best!

Disclaimer: The information provided here is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered medical or nutritional advice. I am not a doctor or a licensed healthcare professional, and I am not a nutritionist. Therefore, I cannot take responsibility for the content published, even though I have made every effort to provide factual information based on my studies of health-related topics and the findings of qualified professionals. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider for any medical concerns, treatment options, or questions regarding your health. Relying solely on this information may not be appropriate for your individual circumstances.