Antifragile Health Freedom
Ⓒ By Jonathan Roseland |
I'm not a doctor, medical professional, or trained therapist. I'm a researcher and pragmatic biohacking practitioner exercising free speech to share evidence as I find it. I make no claims. Please practice skepticism and rational critical thinking. You should consult a professional about any serious decisions that you might make about your health. Affiliate links in this article support Limitless Mindset - spend over $150 and you'll be eligible to join the Limitless Mindset Secret Society.
Health and freedom are inextricably entangled. If you let your health go your political freedom will surely decline. As an effective Biohacker takes back control of their own biology and destiny they free themselves from all manner of state tyranny.
This article will delve into various lifehacks and biohacks that will liberate you from the system of control of the pharmaceutical-healthcare industrial complex.
Early in the classic film Gladiator, the elder Caesar Marcus Aurelius explains to general Maximus
"There was a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish, it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter..."
The point he's making is that Rome is an ideal of political freedom and justice for all but that this is a very hard thing to maintain. He wants to see Rome restored as a republic as opposed to an empire of conspiring politicians drunk on power lusting for wealth. Because of our human weaknesses and biases, political freedom tends to decline. Political freedom is a very fragile thing.
Prevention
Your political freedom can be made more antifragile by actively preventing adverse health events.
- Many slave away for years or decades at a job they hate because they just can't afford to have their health insurance lapse.
- Many who would increase their own freedom by striking out and doing something entrepreneurial will not because of their fear of an unexpected healthcare episode.
- When you get sick your political freedom vanishes. You may become entirely dependent on the national health service or statist healthcare service.
- Perhaps you want to actually get involved in politics. Not a lot of the politicians that you see on TV look very healthy but I can assure you that health, vitality, and a sharp mind will be prerequisites to you accomplishing anything meaningful.
- Currently, we see the powerful tech firms in silicon valley that have enmeshed themselves so intimately in our lives trying in not so subtle ways to influence politics. Independent thinkers across the political spectrum are being de-platformed for thought crime and "hate speech". Is it not likely that in just a few years healthcare at the hospital will be denied to you if you have expressed some politically incorrect opinions online at some point?
By predicting negative black swan events in your body's future and blasting them away with the shotgun of biohacking you ensure your own freedom.
Your Imminent Non-Consensual Genetic Profiling
I was recently made aware of an alarming hypothesis about the potential liaisons between genetic profiling services (which are a great idea for Biohackers), the +3 trillion-dollar healthcare industry, big social media platforms, big data, and big government...
So you send a spit sample of your DNA into a firm like 23 and Me and they will provide you with all this useful information not only about your ancestry but also your raw genetic profile data that with a little research you can use to risk profile yourself for cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's and a myriad of other medical conditions that you might like to avoid. It removes a lot of the guesswork from the project of self-quantification and allows you to narrow in on the Biohacking strategies that might just save your life. It's a pretty good idea.
Critics of genetic profiling would say...
Don't give those companies your precious genetic information! They are going to sell it to the healthcare industry and insurance companies! Those heartless bastards will use your data to profile you! If you're a carrier of some problematic genetic traits (which you likely are) they'll use it as an excuse to raise your rates, charge you exorbitant prices or send you to the back of the line for medical services that you crucially need!
It would be VERY profitable for both the insurance companies and the genetic profiling services...
Let's say you're paying $300 monthly for your health insurance, yet you have a rare genetic disease that's going to eventually require a $50,000 surgery, even if you eat healthily and exercise. The insurance company is taking a loss on you. A substantial loss.
How much would the insurance company be willing to pay for data that might reveal your likelihood of having such a costly disease? A lot.
However, I'm honestly not that worried about your private genetic data being sold like this because...
a) Át least in the United States, there are laws meant to prevent this sort of thing, namely the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008.
b) If the genetic profiling firms were selling your private data directly to the healthcare industry that would be tremendously scandalous. Their customers would be rightfully outraged. It would be real corporate malfeasance with serious consequences for their bottom line.
c) Politicians and various types of influential activists are very interventionistic with the healthcare industry. Even in the United States healthcare is not regulated by the invisible hand of the free market as much as it is kicked in the face by the boot of government power. I think if big health care started discriminating against their customers based upon their genes that would be instantly scandalized and racialized. It would really put any companies or executives involved in the crosshairs of the healthcare industry regulators.
But, here's where things get interesting...
23 and Me was founded by the ex-wife of Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google. They are highly connected to all the major silicon valley tech firms and services that you likely use every day.
Given the tremendous profit incentive, is it highly likely that genetic profiling services like 23 and Me are cross-referencing genotyping data with their customers' social media data to build risk profiles for the healthcare industry just based upon your digital footprint?
Of course, 23 and Me encourages you to connect your social media profiles to your 23 and Me profile.
And their incomprehensible legal terms of service do give them the liberty to sell your data.
I don't know about you but I've given Silicon Valley many thousands of data points about my preferences and behaviors. You could argue that they know me better than I know myself!
The kinds of data scientists that are employed in these firms could easily draw statistical probabilities between the makeup of your digital character and your actual genes. For example
- If you're 46 years old and you check-in at restaurants a lot you're probably at higher risk for heart disease.
- If you like a lot of video gaming-related pages and you're a single male you're probably at a higher risk for obesity.
You get the idea, combining the big data of the many thousands of genetic profiling customers with the big data of billions of social media users you could likely predict someone's genes quite accurately just with their social media data.
The genetic profiling firms could keep your data private and anonymous yet still build a predictive genetic profiling algorithm that could risk profile you for calamitous future health events just based upon you clicking that seemingly harmless blue Connect to Facebook button.
If you don't use social media, well good for you... But if you do that's intimate data about yourself that you've given up for them to use to make money.
The corporate executives of 23 and Me can shrug their shoulders and say
Hey, we did not sell anyone's personal data, we just created a very good algorithm using anonymous data for predicting risk and we sold that.
- We already know that the big social media giants have no qualms with selling our data to the highest bidder.
- Given a sufficiently appealing honey pot, the lawyers of health insurance companies and hospital conglomerates will find a way around the genetic discrimination laws.
That's how you'll be non-consensually genetically profiled and you won't even get all that useful personal genotyping data that actually helps you!
I'm really not sure what to do about this or how to prevent it. I'm still planning on getting genotyped by 23 and Me although if a more ethical company that is explicitly against this sort of thing enters the market to compete with them, I'd much rather send them my spit and money so I can figure out what genetic black swans are in my future that I should prepare for.
If you're paranoid you can use a fake name and an anonymous burner email address when you order a genotyping kit from 23 and Me or one of their competitors.
I guess the best advice is to...
Take control of your health and genetic destiny before the powers that be do!
Check out this philosophical video about why...
Mitochondria are to genes what free will is to predetermination.
Ultimately...
If you wait too long or expect to be taken care of, you'll become just one of many millions of patient ID numbers to be processed as profitably as possible. You can anticipate a bleak future being maintained in very mediocre health by an utterly uncaring (or totally automated) "healthcare" bureaucracy.
Identify your problematic gene alleles
In my view, the real value in a personalized genetic report is the insight into the potential health disasters looming in your future.
Cheesy metaphor ahead: If your body is the planet Earth, then these genetic reports are like asteroid early-detection systems, and specific supplements or lifestyle interventions may be your personal Bruce Willis!
But...
These services provide you with a vast amount of information that’s not readily very useful. They give you a giant text file containing many thousands of indecipherable SNPs (sometimes phonetically called snaps) - the base level of your genetic code.
Disappointingly, these companies are forbidden by the government regulating agencies from telling you what diseases and chronic health conditions your genes predict you may suffer from in the future. They are also forbidden from making recommendations based upon what they ascertain about you. Likely this is just the regulating agencies protecting their friends in the hospital and pharmaceutical industries that pay them billions in fees.
Luckily for you, I’m just a freelance biohacker, researcher, and self-tinkerer not similarly forbidden from expressing my opinions - at least until a big pharma hitman comes knocking on my door.
In this article what we’ve done is list 130 common risk factor genes, alleles, and SNPs along with associated health conditions AND supplements and lifestyle interventions that prevent or treat the condition.
Quit your vices
This should go without saying, your vices make your health extremely fragile. Commit to abstaining for a 90-day productivity sprint from all the things that make you weak, unhappy, and waste your time...
- Junk food - Instead go stock up on healthy snacks and nourishing, satiating meals.
- Junk entertainment - Turn off the shallow TV shows, suspend your Netflix membership, block the stupid internet comedy and turn off your Facebook newsfeed.
- Junk people - Maybe you have net negative people in your life that kind of waste your time and really don't add anything. Just do everything you can to avoid or minimize contact with these people.
- Social media - I'm not saying you need to delete your Facebook profile. Just commit to not using social media impulsively and excessively. Delete all those apps from your smartphone.
- Video games
- Porn - See The Journey from No Fap to Tantra | Documentary for men
- Smoking - Quit smoking whatever you may like to smoke.
- Sobriety - Pass on booze or recreational drug use.
And whatever other bad habits you might have; commit yourself to abstain from these things. If you fail and cheat a little it's not the end of the world, just recommit for the duration of the sprint.
Cryptocurrency
I see a trend of polarization and demonization of those who aim to compete aggressively. Our who is John Gault society, steadily marching towards the world foretold in Idiocracy and 1984, seems increasingly keen on inventing witches to hunt. As I've written about before, I foresee a public backlash against Biohackers.
Biohacking is antiestablishmentarianism starting on a biological level. It's naive to think that our movement which empowers the individual by hacking happiness and productivity doesn't present a threat to the powers that be. If you share a little of my paranoia on this issue I really encourage you to start paying for your smart drugs with Bitcoin.
A lot of people who are into smart drugs and Biohacking are Internet Gangsters who are also into using the block-chain based digital currency Bitcoin. It's a pretty natural overlap that people who are kind of hacking the financial system and choosing personal sovereignty by using Bitcoin are also interested in high leverage control of their own biology.
Convert Cryptocurrency into Neurotransmitters
First of all, there are several credible vendors of smart drugs, Nootropics, or anti-aging health supplements directly accepting Bitcoin. The more credible ones that I have experience with are towards the top, the ones towards the bottom I can't recommend as enthusiastically.
Modafinil - a smart drug for the powerful
As expensive as it may be to get your hands on Modafinil if it's conducive to your neurobiology it really yields a return on investment.
A friend of mine who is a pretty successful business owner told me that he makes at least an extra six figures a year because of his Eugeroics habit.
It is the smart drug that the godfather of Biohacking, Dave Asprey used while he was simultaneously getting his degree at Warton and becoming a millionaire working in a tech startup.
The last paragraph contained an if and it is an important if; Modafinil does not work for everyone. I would say, based upon my informal research talking to hundreds of Biohackers and reading thousands of anecdotes and reports from smart drug users online, that Modafinil disappoints about half the people that try it, but for the other half it really makes a difference and enables many to kick-ass and run the world - quite literally, President Obama and Hillary Clinton both used it. They certainly aren't my favorite politicians, but it says a lot that this is the smart drug that could be found in the inner sanctums of political power.
I can't guarantee that it's going to work for you, but considering the upside, it's well worth trying if you can afford it.
Biohacking in the United Kingdom?
If you're a Brit with a keen sense of philosophically robust freedom, you perhaps have a bit of healthy paranoia about going to a general practitioner or a local pharmacy for drugs. It seems to me that the UK is transforming inevitably into a totalitarian "healthcare" state, call me a conspiracy theorist but in a country where the government tries to monitor your every word and deed with CCTV cameras and draconian digital cyber snooping I would not want myself red-flagged as a user of high end, performance-enhancing drugs.
At some inevitable point in the future insurance companies, hospitals and the NHS will want to quantify risk by profiling you based upon your genes and the wealth of information in the data footprint you've made online.
If you have too many red flags in your profile, you may have your insurance rates raised, need to pay a higher price, or be sent to the back of the line for healthcare that you crucially need.
We're in similar straits on the other side of the pond, which is why I buy Modafinil anonymously using cryptocurrency and have it delivered to an address unassociated with my name.
Perhaps you totally disagree with my politics and perhaps I'm more paranoid of big brother than I need to be, but isn't it nice to know that if you want to, you can get this powerful cognitive enhancer without anyone knowing?
By my estimation, RUPharma.com is one of the best sources of Modafinil if you as an English consumer value anonymity, quality, and reliability.
NOT for human consumption?
You may be surprised to discover that some of the most effective smart drugs are officially NOT for human consumption.
The most notable example of this is Piracetam. Paradoxically, one of the most proven smart drugs ever (+200 human clinical trials) falls into a nonsensical legal category.
Legally, it is basically in the same category as a candle.
If you really wanted to you could consume a candle. It would taste pretty terrible, but a cop would not come along and charge you with a crime for doing so. Candles are legal to possess and own. You can have as many candles as you want. You can give candles to your friends and family. You can start your own store selling candles. You can transport as many candles as you want in your car without fear of being arrested. You could even cross international borders with your candles, if you have a bunch of them it may raise a little suspicion but it is not illegal.
But if you ate a candle and then got very sick and sued the store or company that sold the candle they would shrug their shoulders and say:
Hey, a candle is NOT for human consumption.
And hopefully, the judge would scold you for being foolish, wasting everyone's time, and send you home with not one dime.
I'll often find myself describing the benefits of Piracetam to someone who's never heard of smart drugs before...
- Its effect on verbal intelligence.
- Its antidepressant and pro-social properties.
- Its 10-14 day effect on long term memory.
- The 20-year long-term population study done on it.
- Its mild tolerance curve.
- Its cognitive enhancement and mitochondrial performance enhancement functions.
- Its virtual lack of side effects.
- Its affordability ($40 for a 3 month supply)
...and they will say
It sounds amazing! Why haven't I ever heard of Piracetam before? How is it not a household name?
Why is this?
Simply, because it's been around and been used for a long enough time that its patents have expired. That's why it's so affordable. No big corporations have an incentive to sell or aggressively market it.
Less simply, to get philosophical, it's because Western Civilization and the United States, in particular, has implemented half of libertarianism.
Probably a lot of you consider yourselves libertarians, for those who may be unacquainted with libertarianism; basically, it means that you believe in extreme freedom coupled with extreme personal responsibility. In a truly libertarian society...
- You can marry or have sex with whoever you want.
- You have free speech to say whatever the hell you want.
- You can pay your taxes towards the good social causes you believe in (or not).
- You are not forced to associate with anyone.
- You can consume whatever you want (including drugs).
Sounds pretty sweet, right?
The flip side of this model for society is that government services are almost non-existent...
- There's no socialized health care. If you get sick you're on your own.
- The government doesn't give you any money for education or guarantee a loan for you to go to college.
- The government doesn't provide a police force or fire department to respond if your house catches on fire or your car is stolen. You would need to pay monthly for private fire and police companies to keep you safe.
- The government is not out fixing potholes in the streets or making sure bridges don't collapse. You would have to pay a private company to do that stuff.
- There's certainly no welfare or pensions. If you get fired from your job and you don't have savings. You'll be out on the street.
- You don't have celebrity politicians making millions of dollars or a huge federal government employing many thousands of people. The government would mostly consist of city councils of unpaid yet concerned citizens who devoted their time to debating whether your city should allow AirBNB or Uber or let those pesky teenagers play their music loudly at night.
At least in the United States, we've gotten about half of libertarianism right. Interestingly, it's the fun, hedonistic half that we've gotten.
- It's legal (and certainly culturally acceptable) to have sex with any consenting adult you want anytime (and almost anywhere).
- In a growing number of states, it is legal to consume marijuana and it's certainly culturally acceptable to spend a weekend doing LSD, Ketamine, or MDMA at a music festival. In another 5-10 years, I would not be surprised if we saw a number of these kinds of drugs also being legalized.
- And even though Facebook or Twitter practice political censorship, legally you have free speech to say almost anything. A comedian can get up in a comedy club and make fun of religion, politics, race, or really anything. You can have a holocaust denial meet up at Starbucks. You could crap on the floor, sprinkle glitter on it and display it in an art gallery as "art" (in Los Angeles).
We have inherited almost all the fun parts of libertarianism.
Before the libertarian movement of the 1950s and 1960s life was a whole lot less free. I remember my mom telling me about how in the little town in the mountains of Colorado that she grew up in there was quite a scandal because it was suspected that two teenagers in her high school were having sex outside of marriage. The principal of the school actually called the police to investigate the matter.
Not very libertarian, right?
Yet interestingly, we have really failed to implement the small government half of libertarianism. The government is a titanic metastasizing bureaucracy demanding infinite growth and resources.
The government acts like a 22-year-old CEO of a Silicon Valley start-up company who is drunk on champagne and buzzed on Adderall and has just received a $100 million in funding; searching frantically for opportunities to capitalize on, inventing services that people might want and envisioning PR campaigns to broadcast their awesomeness to the world yet utterly unconcerned with rendering quality services.
If you get fired from your job you can go to a giant government building where hundreds of government employees work. Then a very bored caseworker will pretend to listen to your story and then give you cash and food stamps so you don't go hungry. They'll nicely demand that you come back to the giant building, where you will go to a very boring free class about how to get a job.
Not very libertarian, is it?
Cultural we are like free lovin' hippies yet bureaucratically we are like the fascist evil empire from Star Wars. This is why we have these impotent laws and arbitrary legal categorization of smart drugs like Piracetam.
Nuremberg Defenders
At the end of the Second World War, famously a number of high ranking Nazis invoked what has come to be called the Nuremberg defense, a claim of innocence on the grounds that an evildoer was just following the orders handed down to them and should be absolved in whole or in part of the judgment for criminal violence participated in.
Included in the Nuremberg trials were 16 Nazi doctors who participated in all manner of perverse and dehumanizing medical experiments, those doctors also defended their actions, stating that they were just following orders or going along with what was common practice in the 3rd Reich. The courts decided that the doctors ultimately held moral responsibility for their actions, despite the socio-political pressures they may have been subjected to, and the 16 were either hung or received life sentences and died in prison years later. These Nazis dangled from short ropes because they disregarded the basic human right of the patient to make their own medical decisions, to exercise informed consent:
permission granted in full knowledge of the possible consequences, typically that which is given by a patient to a doctor for treatment with knowledge of the possible risks and benefits.
Sadly, in the current year, mandated the vaccination policies of states like California are casting informed consent into the dustbin of history, and all too often modern doctors are the apparatchiks of medical tyranny. From Wikipedia,
California Senate Bill 277 (SB277) was a California bill that removed personal belief exemptions to vaccination requirements for entry to private or public elementary or secondary schools in California, as well as day care centers.
Before we examine the complex and contentious topic of vaccines, let’s ask a more fundamental question…
Who owns your body?
Of course, you own your body. Or at least you should. If we’re going to hang Nazis for violating informed consent. Shouldn’t the state in legal policy respect your right to make reasonable decisions about your body and health?
As the California government is making clear, human rights are antithetical to human nature, and human rights must be defended and fought for by each subsequent generation.
#SB276 advances medical tyranny in the increasingly dystopian Golden State, California. If you are a parent in California, move out now! You're not a human being with a right to chose in California. You're just an insignificant member of "the herd" of your rulers' tax-livestock to be managed and kept docile.
What you hear from the pro-vaxers is that "You just need to believe in science. You have the right to your own opinions but not your own science. Stop being a science denier!"
This is an utterly vapid talking point. There's very cogent science supporting vaccine skepticism and demanding better vaccines. The science supporting vaccination is highly problematic. To date, there's NO proper placebo-controlled clinical trial or safety study done on the popular vaccines that the mainstream media and politicians say are "safe and effective".
The HighWire with Del Bigtree makes an impassioned plea for freedom here and breaks down the science that the pharmaceutical-medical industrial complex doesn't want you to know about...
"Herd Immunity" is BS
I listened to an exhaustive +6 hour pro-vaccination podcast to try to understand the pro-vax case. "Herd Immunity" is the idea used to justify the state's non-consensual forcing of people (particularly children) to take vaccines.
The herd immunity argument doesn't pass the standard of critical thinking. The idea is that everybody should be vaccinated because that will give the virus fewer potential hosts mitigating the spread. The regulating agencies think that the statistically small (supposedly) number of vaccine injuries and deaths are worth it because overall they make "the herd" (us!) less susceptible to disease. Herd immunity (supposedly) lowers the statistical chance of the disease spreading. The CDC wants "herd immunity" because those with compromised immune systems - the very young, the very old, idiots who drink soda and eat junk food - could be killed by something like measles so we should vaccinate 95% of the population.
First of all, that's the kind of justification that a Soviet general would use during the battle of Stalingrad; let's send a bunch of conscripts charging into machine-gun fire, half the guys will die, the NKVD will shoot those who retreat, and enough will survive to advance and conquer new ground. As a libertarian, individualist type I'm opposed to this sort of statist population management. I don't consent to (seriously!) risking the health of myself and my family by taking vaccines because it might help someone else. I don't accept a cost being imposed upon me to benefit someone else I don't know.
However, herd immunity doesn't make sense because it only takes one infected guy to spread the disease. If just one infected guy is coughing on a crowded subway train, he can spread the disease to everybody else on the train.
Leftists are so fond of reminding us about how old-world European diseases brought by Europeans killed off millions of the natives in North and Central America. How many European colonizers do you think were sick with smallpox as they hopped off the boat to venture out into the new world? Probably almost none of them. It was probably just a few sick colonizers who initially spread smallpox to a few native Americans who spread the disease to the rest of the population.
Furthermore, even vaccinated people still spread the disease unwittingly because they don't experience the symptoms. Many of the European colonizers, would have had a natural immunity to smallpox because they had the disease at some point in their life before they got on the boat. But they were still disease vectors spreading the disease to those susceptible to it. All of the compliant members of the "herd" who got vaccinated because CNN told them not to be "conspiracy theorists" are still spreading disease to those who might be susceptible to it. It only takes one person to spread disease, famously one very promiscuous gay flight attendant initially spread AIDS to the gay community.
Mass 3rd world immigration further delegitimizes herd immunity. if you're on a crowded train in California you can be nearly certain that there's a guy on that train who was recently in a 3rd world slum, bringing with him all the nasty viruses and pathogens from that undeveloped country. Herd immunity might make sense if our countries were closed system but we have millions of people coming to our countries.
But we live in such densely packed societies that those with compromised immune systems are inevitably going to come in contact with unvaccinated people. The most vulnerable are STILL at risk even if we reach 95% vaccination. Especially in this globalized world where you're sitting next to a coughing guy on the train who was in a slum in Honduras last month.
Also, vaccinated people still spread the disease without knowing it, if they receive a vaccine containing a live attenuated (weakened) virus. Statistically speaking, if 95% are vaccinated they have the (supposedly weak) virus in their system because they injected it. So now you have 95% of the population who can spread the disease to those few who it might actually kill instead of a much smaller group of people who got the disease naturally.
This is why I'm a big fan of natural immunity. When you get a disease you are sick for a few days or whatever, take some vitamins, get some sleep, and then you're bulletproof to that strain of the disease forever.
"Everything gives you cancer"
There's this really popular misconception that everything gives you cancer.
Cigarettes give you cancer.
Booze gives you cancer.
Pesticides on the fruits and vegetables give you cancer.
Toxins in your shampoo or soap give you cancer
Cell phone signals and wifi (maybe?) give you cancer.
Stress gives you cancer.
Red meat gives you cancer (maybe?)
BPAs in plastic containers give you cancer.
Mold in your house gives you cancer.
Pollution gives you cancer.
Even the "health" supplements you take (might) contain toxins that give you cancer. Geez!
Eventually, you start thinking...
Damn! I guess I'm just going to get cancer... Might as well just enjoy life because I'm going to get cancer one way or another. Why worry about it if you're just going to die anyway...?
At least that's how a lot of people think. Unless you've really devoted some time to studying health and staying up to date with the research and science, you'll likely believe that everything gives you cancer.
There's some truth to this. The truth is that there's A LOT of toxins in our environment and they will give you cancer. This is why SO many people have cancer. The advice we've been hearing Ad nauseam from the gurus and the diet experts is to remove the toxins from your environment.
This is pretty good advice to follow if you have like $2000 a month to spend on really good organic food and products, you could probably avoid a lot of these toxins and it really would improve your health and make you feel better.
- But a lot of those organic products are not actually organic, "organic" is a marketing scam half the time.
- Your house might contain toxic mold that you don't even know about... Or your office. Or your Airbnb rental.
- If you're like me you like to eat out at restaurants a couple of times a week with friends or family. I have a quite disciplined diet but who knows what sorts of toxins these restaurants are putting in their foods?
- If you fly you're consuming all sorts of nasty toxins that promulgate the passenger cabins of cost-cutting airlines.
- If you travel or commute daily, unless you can afford a fancy late-model Mercedes or Lexus with an onboard air filter in the air conditioning, you are breathing a lot of pollution in.
- Maybe you're a real freedom lovin' type who likes to go down to the gun range to keep your shooting skills sharp in case of a zombie apocalypses, guess what you have to worry about? Lead toxicity.
Despite your best efforts you'll still consume a lot of toxins unwittingly and you might still get cancer anyway (like this guy!)
Do you do much international travel for business or pleasure (or both, at the same time)? Well, you can look up the pollution index to make sure you're not going somewhere with an egregious polluted environment but perhaps you're a bit more adventuresome like me...
A couple of times a year I'll take a few mini-vacations going salsa dancing in Moldova, lounging at a resort town by the black sea, or hiking a volcano in central Panama.
Who the hell knows what kind of toxins I expose myself to in these sorts of locales. Also, every once in a great while I like to get my Winston Churchill on and smoke a Dominican cigar!
I, for one, am NOT going to be going toxin-free anytime soon.
Does that mean that it's just an inevitability that I'm going to get cancer? Not hardly.
Head Strong, an excellent book I'm reading demystified the toxinmania for me.
What people don't understand is that our bodies are quite good at dealing with these toxins, thank god, mother nature, or evolution that we have systems for getting rid of a lot of these toxins. From the book
Your body requires a lot of energy to detoxify and expel or neutralize these toxins. Anything you can do to increase your cellular energy production, therefore, can also enhance your body’s ability to detox. But given today’s influx of toxins, you can’t get by with the same amount of cellular energy that would have been serviceable a hundred years ago.
Dr. Frank Shallenberger (who discovered and named EOMD) estimates that we actually need 50– 100 percent more energy now than we did a hundred years ago to get rid of all of the toxins that are inside our bodies, slowing down our energy production and making us weak.
(p. 37)
So instead of trying to live like a monk and avoid all toxins at all costs, a much more pragmatic approach is to minimize toxins as much as you reasonably can but focus on Biohacking to optimize mitochondrial function to double cellular energy production.
So you're thinking...
Great. How do I optimize mitochondrial function?
Well, that's what the book is about!
One thing that I know from 8 years of research that definitely helps mitochondrial function is (surprise, surprise) using certain Nootropics (A playlist of my videos about Mitochondria promoting Nootropics).
Also...
Two of the main organs that purge toxins are the kidneys and liver, which is why I recommend performance-enhancing Adaptogenic herbs so highly. There's excellent evidence that they repair and maintain the function of these vital organs.
If this Mitochondrial strategy makes way more sense than being really OCD and paranoid about toxins all the time you might want to read this book along with me.
Boycott Big Pharma
Whenever possible avoid buying or using big pharma's products and drugs. You can almost always find natural (or superior) alternatives to pharmaceuticals. In this exhaustive article, I list alternatives to all of Bayer-Monsanto's products.
Speaking of Pollution...
Do you live in a big, bustling city?
How bad is air pollution?
Pretty bad?
Interestingly, in 2017 a joint team of American, Canadian, Swedish, and Chinese researchers conducted a human cross-over study on air pollution's insidiously toxic effect on our genes and mitochondria. Their initial findings, on what's obviously a huge problem, were that B-Vitamins a pretty smart idea and protect your DNA from all that nasty pollution doing its damnedest to give you cancer!
Books
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Check out my review of the great objectivist novel.
The Transhumanist Wager by Zoltan Istvan
A novel with a powerful vision of a transhumanist future for our species.
The Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity
An underrated book full of seriously effective holistic health hacks.
Free Speech Isn't Free by Roosh V
The Shallows
Meticulously explains how the internet and chronic technology usage have a detrimental effect on our minds.
Philosophically Robust Freedom
Please respond...
Either below in the comments (or for privacy, send me an email or social media message)
What health freedom issue really concerns you? Vaccines? 5G EMFs? The sickcare industrial complex? What steps have you taken to fortify your health freedom?
Finally...
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