Stop taking allergy meds. They all deplete the acetyl-choline in your brain and start dementia. Use stinging nettle extract for allergies unless you have life-threatening ones.
I take nothing other than raw honey, turmeric, or herbal teas and sauna for just about everything that may come my way. I wish I had started this 30 years ago, when I was popping aspirin and washing it down with a diet coke.
Demonizing cholesterol (which is created by the body along with what we eat) and maintaining the statin market is one of the most evil or irresponsible areas of modern allopathic crap medicine. My Mom is in her 80s and did all the things her fat general practice pharma schill doc told her to do. Avoid saturated fats, the sun, wear toxic sunscreen everyday. Take these shots that have heavy metals in them. Now she is a resident in a memory care section of a facility that itself displays greed in the corners cut to service while increasing the rent. My Dad also listens to doctors that would rather perform procedures than explain what he is eating is harmful and overprocessed.
This is a really good read, Lily-Rose. I’m sorry about your grandparents. I, too, wish I had known what I know now, so that I could have advised my own grandparents. All these excellent habits you list, they can absolutely be overwhelming for someone starting out. So yes - treat them like the layers of an onion & keeping adding more layers over time, as each one becomes a habit. Walk more, eat whole foods. Then add some floor sprints or skip rope. Get early morning sunlight & keep working on establishing your circadian rhythm. Build on your habits over time. I started in my twenties. Our youngest daughter - in her twenties now - exercises & walks, cooks her own meals from whole organic foods, can afford said organic because she passes on what society considers “entertainment” & doesn’t drink. I know she’ll imbue the same learnings in her own children one day. It’s one of the most rewarding things a parent can know.
These are all the political and social determinants of health. I am a surgeon and I’ve witnessed the extent of illness from medical school, residency, fellowship and now eight years of practice. That’s almost 20 years I have seen our healthcare as disease management. But none of this is the fault of physicians, it is simply the environment we work within. There are significant limitations for us when patients present with a lifetime of chronic conditions and limited time to see patients. Effecting any level of change in a single patient requires multiple visits and multiple hours of education. But even then, the likelihood of that individual staying with that level of change is low because the surrounding environmental architecture of our society and political system limits choice. This is secondary to cost of food, lack of walkable communities, agricultural subsidies, high stress, lack of time for exercise or wellness, etc.
Until we realize that what we vote for is what we get, very little will change.
i know lily has some strong dislike of the medical industry but i have great respect for surgeons. that is in an entirely different category than some corporate walk-in clinic doctor that just wants to maximize profitability.
to become a surgeon takes so much more effort, there is so much more risk involved, you are doing something that 99% of mankind could NEVER do bro.
I share the dislike for the medical industry. But aiming the lens at physicians in general is only going to make the people trying to provide care angry. There are plenty of examples of MDs, PAs, and NPs that are just in it for the money - just look at the big Medicare fraud cases coming up in the southwest. But these greedy asshats are the exception.
You are overlooking the countless unnecessary surgeries performed that injure, maim, and sometimes kill so these miscreants can make much cheddar. I exclude the tiny minority of them that do not belong to this group. Like with lawyers, you can count the good, truly ethical ones on your hand and have fingers left over. The AMA, like the BAR association, is a legalized cult of racketeering.
Patients have to leave your care environment and find holistic practitioners that can train people on how to truly care for their own health. You are too captured to provide any benefit to them.
Subsidies in US agriculture encourage monoculture of corn, wheat, sorghum, and soybeans. These products are mainly used to feed livestock in large feeding operations and a smaller portion in highly processed foods. A small percentage of crops produced is used as whole food that arrives in grocery stores. Both the animal feeding operations and ultra processed foods have detrimental effects on human health. The environmental damage from animal feed lots is one thing, but the increased nitrogen runoff from animal waste entering local water ways significantly increases cancer risk (take a look at the research coming out of Iowa).
Ultra processed foods also have significant health consequences in terms of the development of diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and heart disease.
This only covers a small portion of the risk of chronic illness development from our food system
As for water runoff from feedlots and dairies polluting waterways, that is illegal in my state. All dairies and feedlots must have containment ponds to catch runoff. It is strictly enforced.
I see no problem with growing crops for livestock feed. This includes chicken and pork as well as cattle.
Polluting waterways is illegal in most states, but it still happens. As a corollary mining companies are required to have tailing ponds of contaminated water with heavy metals to prevent toxic levels in groundwater. But the moment you have a storm or the pond wall breaks, you end up leaking or flooding wells and local waterways. The same thing happens on large feed lots.
There is nothing inherently wrong with growing crops to feed slaughter animals. But it does contribute to monoculture which destroys soil quality. This in turn requires high concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorous based fertilizer. This results in further contamination of waterways in addition to desertification of farmland.
You can do everything to try and reduce contamination, but when you have a high enough concentration of waste and impermeable soil, it’s become inevitable by focusing solely on yield.
This is related to the political determinants of health, because we (the US) have subsidized a specific type of agriculture that is damaging to environmental and human health.
I’m not one of those individuals that carries the illusion that regenerative and or “organic” farming will save us. There are tradeoffs to everything, including how we practice medicine. But the biggest way to change that is by altering our behavior - both individually and collectively.
I’m 68 and do tabata 3-4 times a week…it’s hard training for short bursts with a short stop in between…lots of good tabata music. You can pick and choose the moves right for you and work up to it. I also use 3# weights in my routine now. It’s 8 minutes of hard exercise that give you 30 minutes of a workout.
Thank you for sharing your heart and your thoughts. Saw my own mom go slowly too. Sad times. Does seem we take a lot of things that do more harm than good. My cardiologist is beside himself I haven't been taking cholesterol meds. But I wonder what those meds do to the brain. And are those low numbers really as important as we think today.
Those cholesterol meds (statins) will ruin your brain & cause Alzheimer's. A cholesterol reading of 600 was apparently very common not eve 50 years ago, and we had LESS Alzheimer's than we do today. Food for thought!
Thank you Lily. I'm so sorry about your grandparents. I'm 62 and Nana to a 4 and almost 7 yo boys. I have a deal with God that nothing happens to me until they're both old enough to have independent memories of me. I'm on zero medications, decent weight...but even now I find myself searching for words. I will try 3 of these with gratitude. You are one of my favorite people I'll never meet. Please know you and Wolf hold special places and prayers in countless hearts. May God continue to keep you both safe and sane as we need you.
I’ll try this again. I think there is one thing you left out. (And maybe there is something to the genetic thing).
Use your brain.
My dad lived to 95. He wrote 3.5 books between age 85 and 95. He died while working on the fourth.
My mom lived to 92. She lost her eyesight at 85. But she never stopped learning about world history via audio books. And she listened to two hours of classical music every day.
My grandma lived to 99. She spent the last 10 years of her life writing a family history.
My great grandmother lived to 102. She was still baking bread every day, kneading by hand, up until 6 months b4 she died.
There are some family stories on the other side with longevity as well. Curiosity and learning were present there as well.
I’m 71. I still have one uncle remaining. My moms brother. He’s 98 and determined to make it to 100. He can’t drive anymore. But he rides his trike to the local coffee shop every morning at 0800, where he meets with his ‘tribe’ for 2 hours. Most of them are 15-20 years younger than him. It’s pretty sweet.
PS. Sleep is overrated IMO. My dad was a WW2 and Korean vet. He never outlived the wartime sleeping habits. I don’t think he ever got more than 4 hours of sleep. Sadly, I inherited his proclivities in that regard. I’m fine with 4 hours, happy if I get 5, and often live with 3. You just get used to it.
Sleep needs are very individual. Some people need as few as four hours. Others up to 9. So “overrated” depends on the individual. The important thing is deep sleep so the brain can detoxify. If you sleep four hours deeply that might be all you need . Lucky you if that is the case.
Lilly, you are gifted by the Lord at what you do. It’s very clear that you follow Him and He guides you. Keep up the good work and continue to fight the good fight!
Great article! As you pointed out INFLAMMATION starts this whole process of brain (and overall body) decline. What my wife and I have found out is SUGAR (Glucose), which is found in almost every pre-packaged food in America, is the GREATEST contributor to inflammation. Start cutting out SUGAR as much as you can and see how much better you feel!
The HIIT is taught by Dr. Brewer of PrevMed Health… check out his numerous videos on his website and YouTube. His team’s approach to health is to treat things “upstream”, the cause, instead of “downstream”, the symptoms. Most physicians have been trained to treat illness by dealing with the symptoms instead of addressing the underlying cause(s). They love to write scripts and send you to the pharmacy… big money making machine for the pharmaceutical companies.
Learn how to take control of your health by doing research. Watch his videos… take notes… as Lily said get up off the couch and get some exercise! We’re both in our early 70’s, work out at Planet Fitness five days a week, and do our own yard work and gardening. We had to get active to stay healthy! It’s not easy but the feeling of accomplishment and well being is worth it!
Sugar is NOT glucose. It is sucrose, a double molecule that breaks down when digested into glucose and fructose. It is mainly fructose that messes up metabolism of other foods, especially fats and fatty acids.
That would be fructose in isolation like high fructose corn syrup. The natural fructose found in fruit is handled just fine by the body. Don’t demonize fructose in general. You just scare people away from a healthy whole food that God provided for us.
BTW, if you can afford it, a good place to start is to get a full body composition DexaScan. It’s not just a bone density scan, but a full body composition scan… different machine and hard to find. The cost was $135 each as we both had one done. Gives you five pages of where you are and what needs to be done to achieve your fitness goals. Well worth the time and money in my opinion.
I love the comments and they can all be summed up with one word:
Stop 🛑 consuming sorcery (pills) "prescribed" by far you see (Pharisee) physicians. Who in the Bible took daily chemicals to keep them alive? Noone. Food is also a drug. Caffiene is a drug. Sugar is a drug and they all have serious effects within your temple of God.
Isolated caffeine and high amounts of it, think energy drinks here, are a drug and detrimental to the body. The caffeine in a cup of organic coffee is actually protective. Some folks are sensitive but they have to be the judge of that.
Caffeine has been demonized but you will find like anything else that the devil is in the processing!
At 71, I have a vegetable garden, work on making quilts daily (a sewing thing), get 3-4,000 steps a day doing that. Every morning whole wheat toast and whole milk yogurt or cereal with a 1/3 cup add on of me made rolled oat granola, and fruit. Plenty of fresh roasted in Austin coffee, very fresh fish from Wild Alaskan, pickled egg and salmon or sardines on ww cracker. Apple a day. Oh, and a couple days a week zoom in my '96 Miata (manual trannie) for a good adrenalin jump...!
Stop taking allergy meds. They all deplete the acetyl-choline in your brain and start dementia. Use stinging nettle extract for allergies unless you have life-threatening ones.
I take nothing other than raw honey, turmeric, or herbal teas and sauna for just about everything that may come my way. I wish I had started this 30 years ago, when I was popping aspirin and washing it down with a diet coke.
Demonizing cholesterol (which is created by the body along with what we eat) and maintaining the statin market is one of the most evil or irresponsible areas of modern allopathic crap medicine. My Mom is in her 80s and did all the things her fat general practice pharma schill doc told her to do. Avoid saturated fats, the sun, wear toxic sunscreen everyday. Take these shots that have heavy metals in them. Now she is a resident in a memory care section of a facility that itself displays greed in the corners cut to service while increasing the rent. My Dad also listens to doctors that would rather perform procedures than explain what he is eating is harmful and overprocessed.
This is a really good read, Lily-Rose. I’m sorry about your grandparents. I, too, wish I had known what I know now, so that I could have advised my own grandparents. All these excellent habits you list, they can absolutely be overwhelming for someone starting out. So yes - treat them like the layers of an onion & keeping adding more layers over time, as each one becomes a habit. Walk more, eat whole foods. Then add some floor sprints or skip rope. Get early morning sunlight & keep working on establishing your circadian rhythm. Build on your habits over time. I started in my twenties. Our youngest daughter - in her twenties now - exercises & walks, cooks her own meals from whole organic foods, can afford said organic because she passes on what society considers “entertainment” & doesn’t drink. I know she’ll imbue the same learnings in her own children one day. It’s one of the most rewarding things a parent can know.
These are all the political and social determinants of health. I am a surgeon and I’ve witnessed the extent of illness from medical school, residency, fellowship and now eight years of practice. That’s almost 20 years I have seen our healthcare as disease management. But none of this is the fault of physicians, it is simply the environment we work within. There are significant limitations for us when patients present with a lifetime of chronic conditions and limited time to see patients. Effecting any level of change in a single patient requires multiple visits and multiple hours of education. But even then, the likelihood of that individual staying with that level of change is low because the surrounding environmental architecture of our society and political system limits choice. This is secondary to cost of food, lack of walkable communities, agricultural subsidies, high stress, lack of time for exercise or wellness, etc.
Until we realize that what we vote for is what we get, very little will change.
i know lily has some strong dislike of the medical industry but i have great respect for surgeons. that is in an entirely different category than some corporate walk-in clinic doctor that just wants to maximize profitability.
to become a surgeon takes so much more effort, there is so much more risk involved, you are doing something that 99% of mankind could NEVER do bro.
thank you for that.
I share the dislike for the medical industry. But aiming the lens at physicians in general is only going to make the people trying to provide care angry. There are plenty of examples of MDs, PAs, and NPs that are just in it for the money - just look at the big Medicare fraud cases coming up in the southwest. But these greedy asshats are the exception.
You are overlooking the countless unnecessary surgeries performed that injure, maim, and sometimes kill so these miscreants can make much cheddar. I exclude the tiny minority of them that do not belong to this group. Like with lawyers, you can count the good, truly ethical ones on your hand and have fingers left over. The AMA, like the BAR association, is a legalized cult of racketeering.
Patients have to leave your care environment and find holistic practitioners that can train people on how to truly care for their own health. You are too captured to provide any benefit to them.
You list agricultural subsidies? Why?
Subsidies in US agriculture encourage monoculture of corn, wheat, sorghum, and soybeans. These products are mainly used to feed livestock in large feeding operations and a smaller portion in highly processed foods. A small percentage of crops produced is used as whole food that arrives in grocery stores. Both the animal feeding operations and ultra processed foods have detrimental effects on human health. The environmental damage from animal feed lots is one thing, but the increased nitrogen runoff from animal waste entering local water ways significantly increases cancer risk (take a look at the research coming out of Iowa).
Ultra processed foods also have significant health consequences in terms of the development of diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and heart disease.
This only covers a small portion of the risk of chronic illness development from our food system
As for water runoff from feedlots and dairies polluting waterways, that is illegal in my state. All dairies and feedlots must have containment ponds to catch runoff. It is strictly enforced.
I see no problem with growing crops for livestock feed. This includes chicken and pork as well as cattle.
Polluting waterways is illegal in most states, but it still happens. As a corollary mining companies are required to have tailing ponds of contaminated water with heavy metals to prevent toxic levels in groundwater. But the moment you have a storm or the pond wall breaks, you end up leaking or flooding wells and local waterways. The same thing happens on large feed lots.
There is nothing inherently wrong with growing crops to feed slaughter animals. But it does contribute to monoculture which destroys soil quality. This in turn requires high concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorous based fertilizer. This results in further contamination of waterways in addition to desertification of farmland.
You can do everything to try and reduce contamination, but when you have a high enough concentration of waste and impermeable soil, it’s become inevitable by focusing solely on yield.
This is related to the political determinants of health, because we (the US) have subsidized a specific type of agriculture that is damaging to environmental and human health.
I’m not one of those individuals that carries the illusion that regenerative and or “organic” farming will save us. There are tradeoffs to everything, including how we practice medicine. But the biggest way to change that is by altering our behavior - both individually and collectively.
Thank you, Lily
Don't take statins if you want your brain to work well. And consider doing a detox from metals, especially aluminum.
Can you recommend metal detox? Sooo much info out there, exhausting
Try chlorella or spirulina
for heavy metal detox
Check out an upcoming series from the HealthRanger at brightvideos.com listen to today’s podcast for more info
Also I use clay to detox
Montmorillonite green clay
Do not use metal but take 1 tsp clay and mix with water leave over night covered
In the morning drink first thing Down to the sediment - do not drink that - then wait 1 hour before eating! Great for parasite detox too
Horsetail extract also
Good luck getting that horse to stand still while you do that.
*rimshot*
Infrared sauna if you can swing it.
I have a steam sauna for free, and an infrared that I can pay for, but I didn’t sweat much at the infrared. Had it up to 130 degrees
It took awhile for me to begin sweating and I don't every session. But when I used it regularly I could taste the metal for a couple of weeks.
Not yet, Shagey. Still drilling down on that question
I get it….
I’m 68 and do tabata 3-4 times a week…it’s hard training for short bursts with a short stop in between…lots of good tabata music. You can pick and choose the moves right for you and work up to it. I also use 3# weights in my routine now. It’s 8 minutes of hard exercise that give you 30 minutes of a workout.
If you read the Forgotten Side of Medicine here there is much that is helpful regarding this as well.
https://substack.com/@amidwesterndoctor
Thank you for sharing your heart and your thoughts. Saw my own mom go slowly too. Sad times. Does seem we take a lot of things that do more harm than good. My cardiologist is beside himself I haven't been taking cholesterol meds. But I wonder what those meds do to the brain. And are those low numbers really as important as we think today.
Those cholesterol meds (statins) will ruin your brain & cause Alzheimer's. A cholesterol reading of 600 was apparently very common not eve 50 years ago, and we had LESS Alzheimer's than we do today. Food for thought!
Thank you Lily. I'm so sorry about your grandparents. I'm 62 and Nana to a 4 and almost 7 yo boys. I have a deal with God that nothing happens to me until they're both old enough to have independent memories of me. I'm on zero medications, decent weight...but even now I find myself searching for words. I will try 3 of these with gratitude. You are one of my favorite people I'll never meet. Please know you and Wolf hold special places and prayers in countless hearts. May God continue to keep you both safe and sane as we need you.
I’ll try this again. I think there is one thing you left out. (And maybe there is something to the genetic thing).
Use your brain.
My dad lived to 95. He wrote 3.5 books between age 85 and 95. He died while working on the fourth.
My mom lived to 92. She lost her eyesight at 85. But she never stopped learning about world history via audio books. And she listened to two hours of classical music every day.
My grandma lived to 99. She spent the last 10 years of her life writing a family history.
My great grandmother lived to 102. She was still baking bread every day, kneading by hand, up until 6 months b4 she died.
There are some family stories on the other side with longevity as well. Curiosity and learning were present there as well.
I’m 71. I still have one uncle remaining. My moms brother. He’s 98 and determined to make it to 100. He can’t drive anymore. But he rides his trike to the local coffee shop every morning at 0800, where he meets with his ‘tribe’ for 2 hours. Most of them are 15-20 years younger than him. It’s pretty sweet.
PS. Sleep is overrated IMO. My dad was a WW2 and Korean vet. He never outlived the wartime sleeping habits. I don’t think he ever got more than 4 hours of sleep. Sadly, I inherited his proclivities in that regard. I’m fine with 4 hours, happy if I get 5, and often live with 3. You just get used to it.
Love your work.
Sleep needs are very individual. Some people need as few as four hours. Others up to 9. So “overrated” depends on the individual. The important thing is deep sleep so the brain can detoxify. If you sleep four hours deeply that might be all you need . Lucky you if that is the case.
I'm 21 and I will make a habit of some of these NOW so by the time I'm old, it will be ingrained in me. Thank you so much for making this article!
Lilly, you are gifted by the Lord at what you do. It’s very clear that you follow Him and He guides you. Keep up the good work and continue to fight the good fight!
Great article! As you pointed out INFLAMMATION starts this whole process of brain (and overall body) decline. What my wife and I have found out is SUGAR (Glucose), which is found in almost every pre-packaged food in America, is the GREATEST contributor to inflammation. Start cutting out SUGAR as much as you can and see how much better you feel!
The HIIT is taught by Dr. Brewer of PrevMed Health… check out his numerous videos on his website and YouTube. His team’s approach to health is to treat things “upstream”, the cause, instead of “downstream”, the symptoms. Most physicians have been trained to treat illness by dealing with the symptoms instead of addressing the underlying cause(s). They love to write scripts and send you to the pharmacy… big money making machine for the pharmaceutical companies.
Learn how to take control of your health by doing research. Watch his videos… take notes… as Lily said get up off the couch and get some exercise! We’re both in our early 70’s, work out at Planet Fitness five days a week, and do our own yard work and gardening. We had to get active to stay healthy! It’s not easy but the feeling of accomplishment and well being is worth it!
Sugar is NOT glucose. It is sucrose, a double molecule that breaks down when digested into glucose and fructose. It is mainly fructose that messes up metabolism of other foods, especially fats and fatty acids.
That would be fructose in isolation like high fructose corn syrup. The natural fructose found in fruit is handled just fine by the body. Don’t demonize fructose in general. You just scare people away from a healthy whole food that God provided for us.
BTW, if you can afford it, a good place to start is to get a full body composition DexaScan. It’s not just a bone density scan, but a full body composition scan… different machine and hard to find. The cost was $135 each as we both had one done. Gives you five pages of where you are and what needs to be done to achieve your fitness goals. Well worth the time and money in my opinion.
Drugs are horrible. They have no benefit. I second what everyone says. Drugs have no benefit and are poison and fund the $4 trillion industry:
https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/modern-medicine-as-poison
https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/healthcare-the-4-trillion-empire
I love the comments and they can all be summed up with one word:
Stop 🛑 consuming sorcery (pills) "prescribed" by far you see (Pharisee) physicians. Who in the Bible took daily chemicals to keep them alive? Noone. Food is also a drug. Caffiene is a drug. Sugar is a drug and they all have serious effects within your temple of God.
Wrote something very similar to that! Same page man!
Isolated caffeine and high amounts of it, think energy drinks here, are a drug and detrimental to the body. The caffeine in a cup of organic coffee is actually protective. Some folks are sensitive but they have to be the judge of that.
Caffeine has been demonized but you will find like anything else that the devil is in the processing!
At 71, I have a vegetable garden, work on making quilts daily (a sewing thing), get 3-4,000 steps a day doing that. Every morning whole wheat toast and whole milk yogurt or cereal with a 1/3 cup add on of me made rolled oat granola, and fruit. Plenty of fresh roasted in Austin coffee, very fresh fish from Wild Alaskan, pickled egg and salmon or sardines on ww cracker. Apple a day. Oh, and a couple days a week zoom in my '96 Miata (manual trannie) for a good adrenalin jump...!