“The doctor of the future will be oneself.” Albert Schweitzer.
My job is to help you become your own doctor, outside of serious trauma, or some unexpected health crisis. It’s really easy, once you catch on. To do this you must abandon the complexity (an illusion) of the “Trees of Health” and embrace “the Forest of Health.”
There is a chasm between those who focus on the forest, and those who focus on the trees. As the former I have tremendous respect for the latter. We need them at times of crisis, for example, Emergency Surgeons concentrating on one crushed part of our anatomy may one day save our life. Unfortunately, the latter have little more than disdain for generalists like myself. They mistakenly believe that knowing more about one single aspect of reality makes them superior experts.
I hope you take the time to study the articles below. They encapsulate the core of my Forest of Health philosophy based on how we process Energy and Information in food. That process is called Metabolism. When we TOIL at the cellular level, that is, when we are Toxic, Oxidized, Inflamed and Lack optimal mitochondrial function we develop Insulin Resistance, which precludes cells from getting fueled properly. TOIL, begins in the GUT.
Yes, it is that simple.
J. Science 12 May 2017;356:646-648
Big data, big picture: Metabolomics meets systems biology
“Metabolomics—the study of the collection of an organism’s metabolites—provides a molecular measurement of phenotype, or the characteristics resulting from the genotype’s interaction with the environment. Using a range of analytical tools to scale the mountains of data collected, including molecular detection and bioinformatics, scientists use metabolomics to understand systems biology, which is the complete computational analysis and modeling of an organism and its well-being.”
J. Cell Metabolism 2 May 2017:1027–1036 Metabolic Flexibility in Health and Disease.
“Metabolic flexibility is the ability to respond or adapt to conditional changes in metabolic demand. This broad concept has been propagated to explain insulin resistance and mechanisms governing fuel selection between glucose and fatty acids, highlighting the metabolic inflexibility of obesity and type 2 diabetes. In parallel, contemporary exercise physiology research has helped to identify potential mechanisms underlying altered fuel metabolism in obesity and diabetes. Advances in “omics” technologies have further stimulated additional basic and clinical-translational research to further interrogate mechanisms for improved metabolic flexibility in skeletal muscle and adipose tissue with the goal of preventing and treating metabolic disease.”
BMJ 2017;356:j831 The role of the microbiome in human health and disease: an introduction for clinicians
“Research into the microbiome—the indigenous microbial communities (microbiota) and the host environment that they inhabit—has changed clinicians’ ideas about microbes in human health and disease. Perhaps the most radical change is the realization that most of the microbes that inhabit our body supply crucial ecosystem services that benefit the entire host-microbe system. These services include the production of important resources, bioconversion of nutrients, and protection against pathogenic microbes. Thus disease can result from a loss of beneficial functions or the introduction of maladaptive functions by invading microbes. This review will show how an understanding of the dynamics and function of the indigenous microbiota has altered our view of microbes in maintaining homeostasis and causing disease. It will discuss how disruption of the beneficial functions of the microbiota can lead to disease. Methods for studying the microbiota will be introduced as part of a conceptual framework for using these methods to delineate novel roles for microbes in health. Key associations between specific changes in the microbiome and disease will be discussed. This will lead to an explanation of how the intentional manipulation of the microbiota, either by restoring missing functions or eliminating harmful functions, may lead to novel methods to prevent or treat a variety of diseases. With the explosion of studies relating the microbiome to health and disease, this review aims to provide a foundation for clinicians to follow this developing area of biomedical research.”
