Robert Paterson's Weblog

Why Modern Medicine is a Fail for Chronic Illness - And What will replace it

Why has modern medicine failed to stop the chronic illness epidemic? My quick answer is this. Modern Medicine has been captured by a simple linear idea of how the world works. It can only deal with local and simple problems. It cannot comprehend complex problems. It keeps trying to use simple tools, a pill based on one pathway that are based in the simple idea of cause and effect.

This all came from early success. 

Joseph Lister created a breakthrough in medicine in the 1860's when he discovered that you could prevent infection in major operations by washing your hands and spraying the site with carbolic acid. Of course it took more than 10 years to be accepted but by the 1890's surgery did not mean a high chance of dying from infection.

Lister solved a problem that was simple and local. Keep the wound clean. Keep all that touch the wound clean. Keep the room where you treat the wound clean. Jenner did the same with small pox. Vaccinate with a close relative and you create immunity. 

That is progress. But it is also the problem. Ever since then medicine wants the simple answer. It's early success in treating the simple has trained it to see only local cause and effect. 

This is why it has failed and can only fail in treating chronic illness. For Chronic Illness is a complex problem brought on by interactions between your ancestry, the food you eat, what you do with your body, how much time you spend outdoors, your social status and how much sleep you have. There is no local cause. There is no one cause. There is only many variables interacting over long periods of time that result in emergence of disease that in turn result in the emergence of more disease.

You become obese, then you might develop Type 2 Diabetes, then heart disease, then eye problems and so on. Or you might get depressed and then get an auto immune disease such as IBS or worse. 

Modern medicine treats each new disease as a stand alone. Much of the treatment drives further disease.

Our failure to see the difference between what can be seen as simple and local and what is complex is what is at the root of our failure.  Now chronic illness is an epidemic. Every decade in the 20th century it has got worse. Since 1980, the epidemic has accelerated exponentially. Billions of dollars has been spent in "research". The entire medical world has been looking for answers. And they have failed. Why?

I had a flash this weekend as I was doing a final edit for the first book of my series You Don't need a ..." Modern Medicine, like all of our industrial institutions, has a machine design. All are based in a core process that ends in the sale of a product or a procedure.

Modern medicine is a linear world where the pay off is in the sale of a drug, a test, or a procedure such as an operation or a Botox shot. No one gets paid to work with complexity. So no one does. 

All of Modern Medicine is focused on finding direct cause and effect pathways that end in a transaction that is based also on a mass market model. So in this world, depression can be "cured" by one pill. 

If I am correct - what do you think pile in please - then we cannot expect any results from medicine. Medicine is captured by the fallacy that all linear institutions share of the world being linear and so reducing all interaction to a single payoff - a classroom with a teacher - a newspaper with a journalist - a pill with a doctor.

All the money you raise to go to this research is wasted. All the money we spend in this model is wasted. Investing more in the study of epicycles is not going to make the Ptolemaic system work any better.

So what to do?

Dave Snowden's Cynefin model says it all for me. Modern Medicine lives in the right hand quadrant but our chronic illness lives in the left hand side. 

I don't think that the profession of medicine will welcome this insight. After all they all make their money and gain their status by their investment in the fallacy.

But we can help ourselves. For the systemic causes of chronic illness are all rooted in our lifestyle and in our ancestry. While complex they have only 4 quadrants.

1. Diet - Eat real food - give up all processed food - give up all grains and sugars - don't eat any food that has a chemical in it that you cannot read aloud
2. Be Active - Don't sit for more than 3 hours a day - Do physical work - be outside for at least an hour a day - get a dog - garden - get a standing desk
3. Get a Tribe - You will thrive when you have a real place and status in a  social group - we are primates - we have to groom and be groomed
4. Sleep More - Sleep is not just a mechanical time out - it is a vital part of keeping us renewed and well - we need 8 hours a day - have a dark room - light is the enemy - don't watch TV in bed - don't read in bed - don't get stimulated before bed

There is then one variable about how all of this interacts and that is our ancestry. The closer you are to beig a Hunter Gatherer, the worse the outcomes of breaching the evolutionary norms for these quadrants. That is why First Nations People, Polynesians and Scots and Irish do do badly in the chronic illness spectrum. 

There are no doctors in this picture are there? There will be a new research world though. A Big Data Crowd Sourced world. Where millions of us will share data about who we are - the ancestry variable and what we are doing and then we will start to see the emergent truth of what works best for you and for me. 

Emergence is the new research frontier. But the powers that be will hate that because there is no transactional payoff. There will be no pill. There will be no procedure. There will be only the knowledge that what you and I are eating or doing is working or not for us as individuals. 

We will have to find a new way of setting up this kind of research. 

Trillions of dollars of cost will go away. There will be a true revolution in health and in human society. 

Much more later this fall when I will release "You Don't Need a Doctor" I am still on track to release "You Don't Need a Job" and "You Don't need a Banker" at the end of June.

Real Food is Tipping - Chipotle & Hyatt #pasturemeat

People are waking up and are demanding meat that is free from drugs. Pork is the leading edge but the rest will follow. Here is the opportunity for PEI. (link)

It's no longer just foodies at farm markets or Whole Foods buying antibiotic-free, pasture-raised meats.

Increased demand is coming from lots of big players, includingHyatt Hotels; institutional food providers such as Bon Appetit Management Co., which caters to schools and companies; and the fast-food chain Chipotle Mexican Grill. And it's changing the game.

In fact, this year, Chipotle, which is growing so quickly that it's opening about three new locations each week, will slowly braise and sell about 120 million pounds of naturally raised pork, chicken and beef that meets its antibiotic-free standards.........

Lopez says this month Hyatt announced it will offer antibiotic-free, naturally raised meat, poulty and dairy options at all of its hotels. The chain decided to expand these options, in part, after it saw the success of a natural burger on the menu. Meyer Natural Angus supplies those burgers.

"When they [consumers] were given a choice between just burger, and burger that was naturally raised and hormone-free, 30 percent paid a premium, a couple of bucks" to get the antibiotic-free option, Lopez says.

The list of retailers making changes is expanding. Wal-Mart sells a number of antibiotic-free beef and poultry products.

And as demand grows some farmers and suppliers are scrambling to adjust.

One sign of growing pains — temporary hiccups in the supply chain. Hyatt's Lopez says just this week his favorite all-natural chicken supplier — Palouse Pastured Poultry — told him it is temporarily sold out. "I'm in a dry spell," Lopez says. "Their next slaughter is scheduled for the last week of June or the first week of July."

Lopez says the good news is that there are more farmers ramping up this kind of production, so he'll be able to buy antibiotic-free chickens from another farm this month.

As for Behr, and the contribution of his "Lost Taste of Pork" article that helped chart a new course for Chipotle, I called him up to ask him about it.

"This is the one huge piece of good I've done through writing about food," he said with a laugh. "The one, huge, thing!

Food Banks - a failed idea - Social Supermarkets - A Winner #urbanfarming

Here from BBC on how the Greeks are dealing with the collapse of their system:

But the social situation has only worsened, the demonstrators - still incensed - feel ignored and many Greeks are now unrolling a quiet revolution.

Tucked away in a side-street of Marousi, a hilly, green suburb of northern Athens, you come across the local garden initiative.

Marousi's mayor has transformed the land from a derelict dumping ground into small allotments for 40 families battered by the current economic climate.

The sound of raking and digging fills the air.

What, at first glance, may simply look like a healthy hobby is actually a lifeline for people in this community.

Sowing seeds

Argyro Papazoglou and her husband Niko are pensioners. They tell me they worked hard all their lives but have now seen their state pensions drastically reduced.

"We had to do something," Argyro said. The allotment, she explains, provides them with 50% of their food needs, allowing them to make much-needed savings on supermarket bills.

The Marousi allotment project is one of a growing number of examples in Greece where people have pretty much given up asking for help from outside - whether from their national government or the EU.

Instead, they are taking matters in to their own hands and finding ways to help themselves, their neighbours and their local community.

As well as feeding themselves, all the families working on the allotment hand over a chunk of their produce to others in need.

The fruits and vegetables are passed on to what Greeks have dubbed a "social supermarket". It is an idea catching on all over Greece.

Some of these supermarkets are supported by the state but a growing number of private initiatives stack the shelves with goods - from oranges to olive oil to nappies - donated by individuals or companies.

Ray of light

Social supermarkets allow low income families to shop at cut-down prices.

The money they pay is then used to provide the most destitute with goods for free, even helping them with gas and electricity bills.

Greece's Child and Family group supports more than 4,500 families and has a growing army of voluntary aid workers, doctors and dentists.

De Urbanization - Population Strategy for PEI?

My niece sold her 700 square foot 2 bed condo in downtown Toronto for about $350,000. Young people are on the high wire in terms of their costs in a big city. 

Rather than trying to employ existing Islanders here on PEI in call centres - could we not make it easy for young families to come here AND still work in the big city?

It's a huge trend:- (link) It just needs a few smart folks to work on how best to do this.

A study by researchers at the University of Kansas shows that de-urbanization is gaining momentum. An analysis of data provided by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) showed that people are moving from big cities of more than 4 million people to smaller cities with populations of 1 or 2 million. The study, which was published in 2009, looked at data collected during the last decade.

One of the bonuses of living in a city used to be proximity to shops and services. However, now that consumers can buy almost everything they need online and have it delivered to their doors, do they still need to congregate in cities? As improvements in infrastructure make rural living more convenient, people are likely to decide that the benefits of living in the country - clean air, peace and quiet, and wide open spaces - outweigh the attraction of the bright city lights.

Thanks to technology, it will soon be possible to earn a living from anywhere in the world, so long as there is access to the Internet. With information travelling at the speed of light, physical distances shrink into insignificance. As virtual workspaces develop further, a colleague on the opposite side of the country will feel no more distant than the worker in the next cubicle. Combined with the many attractions of rural environments, these technological breakthroughs could soon lead to a mass exodus of people from the world's major cities. De-urbanization looks set to be an important demographic trend in the 21st century.

Why I am Backing Inspired Farmers Urban Farming Project #localfood #resiliency

I am backing the Inspired Farmers Project - they will start the first demo for Urban Farming in Charlottetown next week. 

The project is lead by Karen Murchison of the Queen St Commons and her partners at the Murphy Community Centre (Where most of the "Farm" will be) The City of Charlottetown, Cycle PEI, Holland College and the Food bank and Soup Kitchen in Charlottetown

It's a tiny project but has huge potential to make PEI more sustainable. If you want to make a difference that please help. Your help can be a few dollars or a donation of stuff.

You can donate $ here:

Or you can  help with stuff like this:

Here is how I see this project and why I am backing them and why if you care for the future of PEI, you might help too.

It starts often like this - with a community using a barren public space to grow food as a demo. The idea is to inspire us to think differently about the urban landscape. No longer only grass, concrete and isolated trees. When we see this in downtown Charlottetown, we can imagine how different our street could be.

This is not simply a new esthetic either. In World War II 40% of the food eaten was grown by people at home - most in cities. 

At the heart of this is the food and the health crisis. By making urban farming - which uses very small spaces and high intensity - important we all learn how to grow our own food. This Saturday there is a workshop on this. We meet our neigbours in a new way. We are more active and we have better nutrition.

We start to escape the trap of being dependent on Factory Food.  The Food Bank becomes a hub of a network of people who help each other grow food and cook food.  Growing food and making meals return as skills that most of us have lost.

This is big - isn't it? And you only have to make a small step to help. 

We start this weekend! 

PEI now has a Local Crowd Sourcing Platform - Bootstrap #crowdfunding

Do you live on PEI? Do you have a small amount of money to raise? Do you have a community that will support you?

Then Bootstrap can help

One of the lessons of the PEI Indiegogo deals is that most of the support comes from locals and all the money is Canadian. Another is that many financings here will be for smaller amounts of money.

Matt Sullivan has built a local tool to address these issues. 

• It is in Canadian Dollars
• Aimed at PEI and later at any small community like ours
• Designed for modest amounts

Called Bootstrap - you can find out more by going to this address and you can see the first beta deal for the Inspired Farmers here. 

Crowd Funding - Kickstarter and Indiegogo - An "Old Pro's" guide to success and failure

We got notice that Indiegogo has disbursed the funds today and Raymond Loo's campaign is now really over with the goal of $12,000 fully realized. 

This work is not easy. It is not as simple as filling in the blanks on the sites and launching.

In my old life I was an investment banker. I used to syndicate bond deals out of London. I never thought I would need these skills again but as I work on a number of Crowd Sourcing deals all the old lessons come to the front.

So here are a few lessons from an old pro. Take them as you choose. But remember, there are thousands of years of lessons behind the lessons I offer. 

Make it Personal - No matter how noble the cause, we are most attracted to a person. If you have a cause, then put a person in the centre. 

The Person Must Have Social Weight - The more the person is widely recognized as being a good person, being trustworthy and a person who helps others, the stronger the appeal. 

We can all say no to an idea. Harder to say no to someone we know.

Make the campaign about something aspirational - Design it so that our hopes and dreams are attracted. It can be the rebel game designer who gets shafted by the publishers and then appeals to the gamers to give the corporate funders the finger. It can be like Raymond, to back a food system that gives the finger to factory farming.  It is not enough to just ask for help  - get explicit about what this really means to others.

We care about saving the world but we care about people who are saving the world more. 

It's ALL about the inner network - People like Raymond have a small group of people who are close to him who love him and in turn have their own network. Think of petals on a flower. Their networks branch out - they touch each other but are largely different. The key is to know these people and to work with them well before you launch. Bring them into the planning. THEY do most of the lifting. And it they who you have to pay a lot of attention.

This is the deep structure of a deal done in the correct way. Think of who is at the root of each petal. Think of whom they represent. In London Underwriting, we use nationality as a key determinant. So there are Swiss, German, Japanese, American, Benelux, Canadian "Petals" and there are those that have a connection to the sector and those that have a connection to particular types of investors.

Fill in this Permaflower with your equivalent. Ask who and what is missing. Go and fill in the gaps - BEFORE you launch. As in the Art of War, the campaign is largely won or lost before you launch by the way that you have involved this core.

You don't need more than 8 people in your core. With 8 people each with 4 close friends with 4 close friends, you are connected closely to 4,000 people.

This inner 8 are the entire deal.  You have to work a lot with them BEFORE the launch.

You have to have a Road Show - You have to meet face to face with your inner core. This is the norm of underwriting in London and on Wall St. It's all very personal. So when you are invited or not or you turn down or not, there is a social impact. This is not a mechanical business. It is about as personal as it gets.

Most of the work has to be done BEFORE you launch.

The better the core the better the deal. And a way of getting other influencers in on the deal is to start with 3 of your own. Then you can say "X" is in. If "X" is a hitter, the "Y" will come in and so then will"Z". Sounds crass, but that is how people are. We want to be with people we admire. We want to be part of a success.

Face to Face trumps online. Real Syndicators spend face time with each other. It's so we can ask for help from each other. We have to care about each other. 

Reciprocity - To get you have to give - In this world you don't get far by being a "taker". Help as many other deals in your network as possible. Help can be to contribute or if you cannot do that then help by spreading the word. 

Again most of the work happens BEFORE the launch.

For there is more than your deal in your community. The more the community gets used to "Barn Building" like this - then the more capacity you build. The more you give, the more your social bank account builds and then so does your capacity.

Think about the size - Size is everything. The Underwriters took too much for Facebook and now everyone feels screwed.  The only way to get large size is to have something to sell. In Raymond's case it was meat. Others have sold CD's, books, Games and watches. If the reward is only honor, you cannot ask for much. 

The key perk size is between $30 - $50. 100 people coming in at $50 gives you a chunk. 100 coming in at $20 is not much. 

You have to design the perks so that most will pay in this range. It has to be worth their while.

If you do not have a perk that is a valuable thing, then you have to plan on small size. 

Bingo Perks - If you have a big "Bingo" Perk - then set it up so that it does not take Bill Gates to do it. Design it with how it will be taken into account. In Raymond's case the Bingo was a dinner for 10 cooked by a well known chef. We designed this so that 10 friends could get together - not impossible and fun. In Patrick Ledwell's case, he aimed at businesses that would have a Christmas party - his Bingo was to be their entertainer. 

A success in the "Bingo" is what makes the difference often. So design it with great care so that you have a chance to get it. 

Luck is important in any deal but don't plan for luck, plan for a realistic chance that someone will take the Bingo and get something from it. 

Financing is all about momentum - You are going out for dinner, you pass 3 restaurants. One is empty, one is a bit busy and the third is packed with a line up. Which one do you choose? The packed one. It's the same with syndications. Your deal must open with a bang and keep this going for the first 4 days. You must plan to raise at least 30% in the first week. You do this by getting your core to get in early. You must open on the first day with 5- 10%.

Don't beg!!!! - Each Day Tell a new Positve Story - The moment you start to beg - "Please help us" with less than 10% by week 1, you are doomed. 

If you are struggling you have to get more influencers to go public about their support and why they support this. Your job is to build confidence. 

Every day in the first week - tell a new story and better have another person tell the story of why this is good. When you have momentum, tell people about the success. Success breeds success. 

Timing - Financings go in waves. You want to be early in the cycle. What happens is this. There is a lull in the market. A new deal comes out that gets everyone's attention. We all pile in. Then another that will be bigger. We all pile in. At some point though, we all get tired and we all get tapped out. But many, seeing how well the early birds did, go to market. They don't do well. Some bomb. Then we get a lull. And the cycle continues.

You have to be plugged into your local network to know the cycle. To reopen the cycle, you need a special deal. 

Again this is not a simple, let's use Kickstarter and get money like Patrick did. For when you fail, you close a door for a long time. If you fail more than 3 times in a row, the door will shut permanently.

This is not a game - This is not Farmville. Once you have your money, the next round of hard work begins. As with a farmer with a CSA, now is the time that you truly create the confidence that will enable you to ask again at some time. You have to work hard to make sure that all you have promised happens well. You have to deliver and in a strong way.

You now have a community that has supported you. Look after them. Cultivate them. Honor them.

If you do this right, they will advocate for your enterprise all the time and when the time if right, you can go them again and get more financing. 

It's all about Trust - The Motto of the City of London is "My word is my bond". This is the eternal motto of anyone who seeks to ask others for money. It has been lost today in the big markets. But Crowd Sourcing is a return to how banking always was - a personal business based on trust.

Every thing you do either adds to trust or takes it away. Assess everything you do in this framework. 

Trust is the real currency here. 

HFCS - A Zombie World in the Making

The Vet College opens it walls - Learn about wild life May 22

The Atlantic Vet College is starting to open its walls. The plan is to make more and more of what it does available to the public online. 

We start on May 22 with a livestream of a popular workshop on how best to interact with wildlife. On PEI we all have foxes and coyotes close to us. We all have birds and skunks. How do we coexist best with these neighbours?

As we learn how best to do this - we will expand our online outreach. You can find out more about hoew to get connected by joining the AVC Friewnds and Family Community - it's free and organizes a lot of cool events such as Vet Camp and the ever popular Open House where all kids who love animals have a whirl.

Here is the info:

People and wild animals are increasingly crossing paths, which can result in human-wildlife conflicts. AVC will present a community workshop entitled “Living with Wildlife” on May 22, from 7-9:30 p.m. in Room 287N, The McCain Foundation Learning Commons at AVC.

A team of wildlife experts will provide information and answer questions about the “do’s and don’ts” of dealing with wild animals. The speakers include Dr. Marion Desmarchelier, AVC Zoo, Exotic Animal and Wildlife Service; Dr. Heather Fenton, AVC Wildlife Pathology Resident; Chuck Gallison, PEI Department of Fish and Wildlife; and Jody Kocsis, Technician, AVC Zoo, Exotic Animal and Wildlife Service.

Admission is free, and everyone is welcome. The workshop is part of AVC’s award-winning Community Workshop Series and is sponsored by AVC Friends & Family.

People who are not able to attend the workshop in person are invited to view it live at a link that will be added towww.upei.ca/avc/friendsand family on the evening of May 22.

Why we are becoming more stupid - 2 ways to get smart again #health

For some two million years of our evolution our brains became larger. John Hawks, anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, says there has been a dramatic reversal. Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 cc, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball.

This is major downsizing in an evolutionary eye blink. Hawks claims that If our brain keeps dwindling at that rate over the next 20,000 years, it will start to approach the size of that found in Homo erectus, a relative that lived half a million years ago and had a brain volume of only 1,100 cc. (Link to more)

So here it is. The brain is shrinking. We are going back. 

What might have happened? I suspect two factors. After agriculture, most of us became domesticated. We literally became like sheep: animals who relied on our masters to shape our lives. We depend more and more on systems we don't control or understand to live. So we don't have to think. We stop being aware. We don't need as much brain. We were like wolves, then German Shepherds and now we are Pekineses. 

Then - The embodiment of wild and wisdom - Now the embodiment of the opposite

Two utterly different representatives of leadership!

And secondly we eat a very poor diet. At the advent of agriculture we lost 6 inches of height from poor nutrition.

Since 1980, we now eat an industrial diet. 

By 2050 nearly 100% of Americans will be obese.  We eat an Idiocracy Diet now like this one. 

It took a million years for us to lose our gut as a primate. The key to the new large brain was nutrition. When we learned how to use fire, we could eat more meat.

(The Gorilla is not fat - he has a huge gut to process all these veggies)

As we ate more nutritional dense food, our brain grew larger and our gut smaller. We became more smart and so better hunters and ate more meat and so on. 

We don't gain more gut - we just get fat. This is what most people will look like soon. 

Human Evolution is in reverse now. So what to do?

If you live like a sheep, you will become one. Become a "hunter gatherer" again. Work to control your own world and depend less and less on "THEM". Become "Wild" again. Largely support your self. Progressively disconnect from the system. 

Easier to do, eat more brain food - dense nutrition - eat more meat. eat real food. Cut back on the grains. We are not chimps or Gorillas. We have been designed for millions of years to eat food that is dense with nutrition.

Eat Real Food - Live a Real Life.

Are you a Robot or a Human? - "Fit"

My regular readers have had to endure months of my banging on about my "diet". I think I have not described what I am trying to do broadly enough for while what I eat is having a massive impact on me, I think that the larger context is more helpful.

via smartpei.typepad.com

The History of Food - Why we are being poisoned today

Eating healthy takes a lot of effort in today's society when we are surrounded by food that is bad for us - but the alternative is you will get very sick and die.

 

Watching this with interest #paleo

School and Pop - A Wellness Battleground

Sometime this summer PEI will announce its Wellness Strategy. What will it say? 

If we start at getting our sugar and HFCS consumption down it will be a great start. School is a battleground where there is room to act. 

We could ban Pop and all sugary drinks at School. This includes Low fat milk, nearly as much sugar as pop. Juice which has as much and all so called sports drinks. These kind of drinks are the mother-lode of sugar and HFCS delivered to our children. They are the #1 source of calories for boys.

By doing this we put the issue publicly on the table. The rock in that pond will ripple across the Island. This way we will get everyone talking which is surely what we need?

There is precedent in the US where schools are starting to ban Pop. (link to more NYT)

Although schools have been removing sodas and other sugary drinks from vending machines for the last few years, the Faulkton district is one of the first in the country to institute a ban, according to the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, which works to reduce childhood obesity.

Cold, bubbly, sweet soda, long the American Champagne, is becoming product non grata in more places these days. Schools are removing sugary soft drinks from vending machines at a faster pace, and local governments from San Antonio to Boston are stepping up efforts to take them out of public facilities as the nation’s concerns about obesity and its costs grow.

Last year, the average American drank slightly under two sodas a day, a drop in per capita consumption of about 16 percent since the peak in 1998, according to Beverage Digest, a trade publication.

And its not just health but brain fucntioning itself. You get stupid by consuming a lot of HFCS.  (link)

""Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain's ability to learn and remember information. But adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the damage."

While earlier research has revealed how fructose harms the body through its role in diabetes, obesity and fatty liver, this study is the first to uncover how the sweetener influences the brain.

The UCLA team zeroed in on high-fructose corn syrup, an inexpensive liquid six times sweeter than cane sugar, that is commonly added to processed foods, including soft drinks, condiments, applesauce and baby food. The average American consumes more than 40 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup per year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "We're not talking about naturally occurring fructose in fruits, which also contain important antioxidants," explained Gomez-Pinilla, who is also a member of UCLA's Brain Research Institute and Brain Injury Research Center. "We're concerned about high-fructose corn syrup that is added to manufactured food products as a sweetener and preservative."

Then we will all see the wider issue of sugar and HFCS in the health of the Province (link)

How many times do you ask (or get asked), “Why do some cultures eat carbs like rice and not get the same diseases we do?”  A quick glance at China, for example, sheds some light on this.  They may eat rice, but they sure aren’t producing (or eating) much sugar, on average.  Furthermore, the distribution of sugar consumption within the country is wide.  In other words, while the few wealthy people do eat amounts of sugar approaching Western amounts (along with other simple refined grains), the vast majority of non-wealthy inhabitants do not.  So while some have asserted that animal products and fats are the clear culprits explaining the different disease patterns in Asia, they’re missing this important point:  Given the absence of mechanistic and evolutionary reasons why animal products and fats are bad for us, is it more likely that sugar consumption is the single biggest factor differentiating the state of disease across these populations?

 

 

What eggs do you eat - and why should you care? Why Pasture is what I eat

Watch The Story of an Egg on PBS. See more from The Lexicon of Sustainability.

The Real Food Pyramid

Source: eugenia.queru.com via E on Pinterest

Does this grab you? I need your help - please

I need some help in starting my "book" with a chapter that will get you interested.

I have junked the idea of writing a big book on the shift from the machine model to the natural model. Instead I am writing maybe 15 mini books - each about 7,000 to 10,000 words - that I will publish using Kindle. Many of the titles start with the Phrase - "You don't need a...." Early titles include - A Banker, A Teacher, a Doctor, Supermarket, An Office, Moses as your leader - In each I show how the small connected in a human network can offer us a much better life than the indentured life we live today.

The first book is "You don't need a Job" It is a manual for how the small, the personal and the trustworthy connected by a network will replace the Machine. Here is my planned opening. Do you find your self here?

The Good News

 Millions of young people cannot get a job. Millions of middle aged people are losing their jobs. Are we all just losers? Are employers bad people? Why is this happening?

I think I can help you answer these questions.  The old industrial economy is dying and a new economy based on very different rules is emerging. I will do my best to show you a context for this: what the new rules are and how you can best prepare to make the shift yourself.

So here is the good news. New World 2.0 brings humanity back to work. You can be yourself again. 

Today if you are artistic or creative, it is hard to make a living. In the new economy, you will move from the edge of the economy to the centre. You will grow the food, write the books, make the films, write the news, make the machines, make the pots, the furniture and even the cars.  You will be the “Maker”. Millions of you will replace the factory for most of what we need can now be made by the small and the local. 

But of course we “Makers” cannot do any of this on our own. We need a Pragmatist to make what we do work and we need a Connector to link us into the platforms and markets that will give us the scale and power that the small need to be powerful.

Today if you are a Pragmatist, you are a replaceable cog in the machine. But in the new economy you are the critical partner to the Maker. She cannot be successful without you. 

You design the processes.You run the logistics. You manage the people. You manage the inventory. You make sure the bills and the taxes are paid on time. You follow up with customers. You are the essential partner in small and human organizations where you talents, once seen are fully recognized. 

But a small organization that has a great Maker and a great Pragmatist is still not designed to be successful. You both need to be connected to the larger economy and you need to be connected to other small operations.

As a Connector you have a special affinity for people. There is no place for you in the machine. There is no place for caring. You have a need to help others be successful. You make it safe for people to get together. You can help them see things anew. You can inspire Makers to design new platforms and Pragmatists to make them work

You are one of these three types of people. You cannot be a machine part anymore. You have to be a person. You know that you are an interactive part of the world around you. You know that there is a better way. You have no choice. You have to be part of this transition. 

You will be able to do this because, you will have access to super empowering tools that are as good as any that big business has now. You will use new innovative processes that big business will not be able to use. You will learn faster from each other than big business can. You will sell directly to other people. You will know the people who buy from you and they will know and care for you too. Your customers will work for you as marketers and funders. You will no longer have to move to find work. You will work from home or close to it. You will get time back. You will get your life back.

Today with the network, small and personal organizations can compete directly with huge institutions. 

So our first step is to stop worrying about that job. And we can do that because it is going away anyway.

Here are the planned list of titles:

You Don’t need a Banker Why a new credit system is emerging that can help you when the banks cannot.

You Don’t Need a Teacher Why you will find better and less expensive ways to learn outside of school and university.

You Don’t Need a Doctor Why medicine does not make us healthy and why your own actions will make you healthy.

You Don’t Need a Supermarket Why supporting a local food will boost your local economy and your health.

You Don’t Need an Office Why CoWorking offers the artisan the social support system and the network to help make the transition. 

You Don’t Need a Stock Broker Why Investing in yourself, your family, your community and your home will pay off better than stocks and bonds

You Don’t Need Moses as your Leader Why a leader that sets the cultural climate will get better results than one who wants to direct

You don’t need to be Efficient Here we see how by using the rules of networks we can have very EFFECTIVE organizations that will out compete EFFICIENT ones. 

You don’t need to own everything Why sharing and using networks will cut your costs and make you more free

Supporting these manuals will be a series of even more detailed manuals that will share my hard earned best practices and mistakes.

How to give up all the foods that you have loved To take charge of your health will demand that you give up sugar, breads and many foods you adore. Robin and I will share how we did this and all the mistakes we made too.

How to be natural parents and Leaders Here we go even deeper and see the optimal rules for parenting so that our children can develop to their optimal potential and how these rules apply to work too. Natural Leadership.

How do Human Networks Work and why they will destroy machine alternatives.

 

 

Local Food - It's war

 

Stand up for real food! Food grown in a safe and authentic way. Eat real food. Be healthy and prosper!

The Dogs we love and lose - The lesson?

This is my dear boy Jay - aged 3 in the prime of his life.

It has been a little over a year since I had to put him down. Every morning for a year, I would cry as I walked our traditional walks with Mildred. She did not miss him at all! I ached with the loss.

But in the last month, the ache has gone. Of course I miss him but not with pain.

Is this a lesson that dogs teach us? How to lose the ones we love the most?

PEI - Ready to Rock and Roll - #startuppei #startupcanada

PEI punches way above its weight - Why?

Few places in Canada could be further away from the main markets of North America. Few places have less resources than PEI.  But I found last week, as I travelled with StartUp Canada around PEI, that our entrepreneurs are doing very well. 

Many have operations, such as Marks Work Warehouse and Island Abby Foods, that are amongst the best in class. Many have businesses, such as BioVectra and DME, that have found a niche that makes them unrivaled in the continent. Many are astonishingly novel like Thinking Big and Screenscape.

Why should small businesses in a small place be so competitive?

It's in the Island DNA

PEI is too small and too far away to attract large mature businesses from away. So business on PEI is naturally always small and owner operated. And because PEI itself is small, PEI business has always had to find a place in the larger markets off Island.  It's been like this for 200 years. 

As Duncan Shaw told me about his family, “Few people ever had a job. We come from a long line of pioneers, farmers, fishers and small business owners."  

Potatoes were run to the Caribbean in exchange for the official cargo of molasses and the unofficial cargo of rum. Fish was run to Boston. Lumber to the UK. Fox fur and lobster to Upper Canada. 

So like their forefathers, Lorraine MacAulay had to start her Mosquito repellent business by breaking into the large national stores. Peter Toombs had to sell his brewing equipment all over the world. They had to begin by being very clever and persistent.  

So how did they get so smart?

It's not school - It's Family and Mentors

We think that having great schools are key to developing smart people. But most of the entrepreneurs I met last week told me that they did not fit into school culture. Some never finished school. Others had to force themselves to finish. Dico Reijers took 7 years to do his BA. 

All told me that culture of entrepreneurship was set at home. All told me that they grew up in a family where running your own business was the normal. The dinner table was their classroom. 

Some entrepreneurs went to business school. But for most, the best business lessons were taught by mentors. They learned the old fashioned way, like an apprentice, from advice given by a person who lived their life. Entrepreneurs helping Entrepreneurs. 

I asked all of them about whether school needed to be changed. None of them dismissed school. They acknowledged that not everyone should be or even could be an entrepreneur. But they hoped that the school system would see that it could help by identifying the characteristics of kids, like Matt below, who were destined to be entrepreneurs. Then the entrepreneurs could help. 

For entrepreneurship on PEI is a personal and individual thing.  All the older PEI entrepreneurs I spoke to want to reach out and offer more of their time as mentors to the young up and coming new class of rebels. What they want is a better way to connect.

If PEI stays true to its business DNA - we will do well

Large bureaucratic structures are dying. Youth unemployment in Canada and the US is over 20% and in Europe is close to 50%. Many middle aged workers are being made redundant. Pensions that many have relied are being diminished. For societies that have more embraced the job and the bureaucracy, the transition will be very hard. 

But here on PEI, I see now that we could adjust quite well. The modern PEI entrepreneur is already competing in the new networked global marketplace. They are hiring. They are growing. They are doing what Island business people have always done. 

All they need to do now that is different is to work together.

If the PEI entrepreneurs get together and work with each other to boost the local ecosystem.

If those in government do the same. Then this little Island could do very well. 

This insight is the great gift that the visit of StartUp Canada brought. They held up the mirror to who we really are. Now we must not waste this gift. Time to act . 

It’s up to us now.

PS Next week I will start a 2 week series on what I have learned from our wonderful entrepreneurs