Great article, spot-on. Highlights the fallacy of "reforming" health care.

We do not have a health care system. We have a sick care system. Yes there is waste and fraud, and ACO's, digitization and what-not will help and Obama Care is a big step in the right directon. And to be fair some of the work that can be accomplished is near miraculous.

Nonetheless, the sick care system is being overwhelmed by a tsunami of illness. Too much carbs (especially sugar and HFCS) plus bad oils plus too little protein equals too much insulin, inlfamation and then chronic illness and obesity. (Obesity does not cause diabetes. It is a co-morbidity driven by insulin driven by...)

Like you, I feel great though I am still on my journey and still improving.

Great article! There is definitely a level above "doing fine." I think it's sad that so many Americans are slogging through life with mild to moderate health problems that we think THAT is the baseline of health and that only the really sick have issues.

After two years of paleo-style eating, I love having more energy (I bounce off the walls most days), my acne is virtually non-existant (except for that pesky time of the month), my tendency for being mildly to moderately depressed/anxious has been reduced, and I can go 6+ hours without eating if I need to without experiencing an energy crash like I used to.

There are still things to optimize, though, so I haven't forgotten about steps 5 and 6 of "Eat Like a Predator." I know my sleep quality could be better, I'm working on incorporating more ancestral-like workouts inspired by MovNat, and my grandmother is always wondering what new, tasty recipe I'm trying out.

It's nice to know that life is about more than just making it from day to day. It's about living!

Hi Jen,
Funnily enough my tennis or rather atlatl elbow cleared up alot after eliminating grains.
good luck,
Neal

The words i want to use, to describe the difference in how i feel, have been hijacked -- "amazing" is the best one, but i can put a twist on my sister's catch-word and settle for AWE-INSPIRING.... And i started out from low-carb! It was by going grain- and dairy-free that i found liberation from the stiffness and joint pain which other people of my age merely think due to the passage of time.

You understand the starch-wars well! In my own n=1 it turns out the more hours i walk per day, the more carbohydrate i can "afford" to eat -- i learned this while on vacation over the winter, trudging up and down Seattle's hills and having to generate a lot of personal heat on those damp chilly days. But who has time for that much exercise if they've also got a job and a life? And if one's mitochondrial situation is under-par, the exhaustion will set in long before the "excess" starch-sourced sugar is burnt off. A lot of people have to normalize their energy production long before they can increase their output.

So thank you yet again, J! I LOVE your blog!

My improvements:
(1) In my first three years of eating healthy, I did not GET SICK ONCE. However, I also started exercising more and sleeping better, so the factors were convoluted. I have gotten sick a few times in the past few years, but it's been less frequent and less severe.
(2) Much less gas. Some veggies/fruit will still get me occasionally, but overall the problem has improved significantly.
(3) Stable energy levels. I can go a long time without feeling hunger, and even when I do feel it, it's easy to get past it. Note: This is not true for those at my gym doing "paleo" and crossfit. I eat a LOT, and a LOT of saturated fat when I do eat.
(4) Easy weight maintenance. Not ripped, but look decent naked.
(5) Definitely better dental health. I always had great checkups/no problems, but I love that my teeth don't FEEL dirty. And I can go a day without brushing without feeling like I have sweaters on my teeth. That used to drive me nuts. It's definitely the sugar.
(6) No acid reflux/heartburn. This only did and still does occur when eating out or eating processed foods.
(7) Went off the pill after being on it for about 10 years, expecting my system to be totally messed up. Perfect cycle in the first month and ever since!
(8) Not hungry all the time. I was also one of "those people" with major sugar crashes and resulting mood swings. This is a big deal.
(9) My nails are definitely much stronger (due presumably to the ingestion/absorption of more minerals - despite not drinking milk for calcium).
(10) I'd like to say that my skin is beautiful, etc, but I think I need to wait until I'm 40+ to really judge how eating well is affecting my aging.

Almost all of the above changes made a BIG difference to my daily life!

Con:
(1) Feeling like I'm living in a giant conspiracy theory all the time, where everyone around me has no clue that they're actually eating cardboard.

@Marc: "Soy protein concentrate (this is really MSG)"

Actually, MSG is derived from wheat. While chemically pure MSG (which is the only form ever actually tested) doesn't seem to be a (major) problem, any commercially-processed food with MSG in it also has gliadin, gluten, and amylopectin A in it. I found out about this after doing some research into why chicken bouillon gave me diarrhea (I wrote a blog post about that). Wheat is added to damned near *everything* because the gliadin is a powerful appetite stimulant that will make you want to eat more of something you don't even like.

MSG also hides under the name "Natural Flavors."

My general rule is that if it has to have a nutrition label on it, it probably isn't fit to eat.

J: "Oh, please. Everyone knows you broke your hypothalamus by putting more than one spice on a potato." 😀 i laughed so hard my dog was even looking at me funny!

I wonder if some of the increase in drug usage might be attributed to increasingly aggressive drug marketing, rather than declining health of the population. (Although the health of the population might be declining as a result of all those drugs. . .)