Robert Paterson's Weblog

Why you get fat

 

Raymond Loo Beef Update #indiegogo

Here is Raymond's update on the beef boxes:

Hello all

I am starting to fill Beef boxes  later this week and will will be
filling boxes over the next few weeks.  

I am wondering if any planned
to have their boxes for Christmas  or are traveling  and want their
boxes right away or  delayed untill after christmas and I will try to
fill any urgent orders first.

I can keep  some boxes in my freezers
for  sometime if needed.

I am  unable to fill more then about 15 per week  meaning it will take
 till late December to fill all.
Thanks

Can Crowd Funding replace a lot of government funding?

This week Jordan MacLeod (author of Natural Money) and I discuss how community financing might replace a lot of direct government finance. Small governments are over borrowed anyway. And who needs a bureaucrat to decide what we all want?

We talk about Justus Coffee that used a new type of community fund in Nova Scotia to raise $500,000 from residents. PEI has passed legislation to allow this approach too. (link here)

The opportunity is for residents to set up important projects that benefit all as a business with strong support in tax incentives that go to the resident investors. It is 35% from the province and 35% from the feds. I can see local energy and food projects fitting in well here.

In this context we close by talking about the new kind of banker that will be needed. For these are still complex projects that need local expertise. Here we can see the capital markets return to home.

Next podcast we will talk about micro finance - how to pull off a successful Indiegogo or Kickstarter project.

More on these ideas in my book - You Don't Need a Banker to get Credit. 

My personal journey to taking charge of my health - Part 1 Food

This post is an outline of Part III of my new book - You Don't Need Medicine - To Be Healthy. In this part, I will do my best to show you what you can do right now to take charge yourself

They are working notes that I will polish and put into the book when I have worked on them more. Please see them for what they are and please tell me your stories and give me your comments too. 

The big picture about health and medicine itself is in Part I. The science is in Part II.

No preaching or lessons in Part III: just what worked for me.

This is the first of 3 posts that make up Part III. The other 2 will be 

1. Body - What your body needs from interacting with the environment of the physical world - such as activity, such as sleep, such as Sun and so vitamin D, such as a small community, such as avoiding novel substances such as  Fluoride in your toothpaste.
2. Social - What we need from our social environment - such as a real tribe, control over our time, such as real status, such as control over our thoughts

Food - The Best Starting Point

Today we talk about the impact of eating the food that we are designed to eat.

I am sure that you have seen many pictures of how our bodies are changing. How we are morphing into a race of fat people.

Well, l here I am morphing back. It took me 35 years to get this fat and ill. It took me a year to get most of my health back.

 

 

 

I had given up

This is me. In 2009 I was 59 and I looked a lot like many western middle aged men. Note the belly . Note the man boobs. Note the fat face and neck. That is the obvious. What you cannot see are the bad knees and the arthritis. What you cannot see is that I was on my way to being diabetic. What you don't see is the heartburn and the apnea. What you don't see is how my libido had collapsed. What you don't know is that I looked just like my dad before he died.

What I am talking about is not just another diet. What I am talking about is health and aging so that you can be fit and active and a real contributor for all your older years.

When you change your diet back to the diet that you are designed to eat, you will lose weight. But you will also start to heal your entire body. But I did not know that this was possible back in 2009. 

My wife, Robin, would beg me to take better care of myself. I used to tell her that how I aged was inevitable. This is what a middle aged man looked like. It was destiny to get fat and feeble. I believed this. And my response to the conventional wisdom? I could never get behind going to a gym. I hated mindless exercise. I hated the conventional diets. I could not keep them up.

I was stuck. Just like most of us. And even the story of my own family was not enough. My father died aged 55. My mother has been an invalid wrecked by arthritis since her 40's. The future did not look good for me.

I had resigned myself to becoming an invalid and dying young. I think I was like most people. I was helpless before my destiny. I was like the smoker who smokes through his tracheotomy hole. I was going to go down in flames because I thought I had no choice.

What got me started - The idea of the Plateau - Aging well by Design

But then I met Michael Rose. Michael is no self appointed health guru but is the leading scientist in the field of aging. We were introduced by a mutual friend who thought we might enjoy each other. The big idea that got me started was Michael's great discovery.

It is this. We are not designed to get ill and feeble as we get older. We are designed to get older and still be fit and healthy. 

You might ask why? The short answer is evolution. Here is how it worked to give us this gift.

In the millions of years of our hunter gatherer past, where we lived in tiny tribes of about 35 people, a tribe could not survive if the middle aged cohort became feeble. Human young took about 25 years to reach their full physical and mental development. Hunter gathering life also demanded massive knowledge that took decades to absorb. The older members of the tribe had to be fit, active and true leaders. Tribes that had feeble older people died out.

Michael's huge idea is the "Plateau". We reach a set point of decline and then hold there. (I cover this in greater detail in Part II The Science)

In layman's terms the Plateau is this. You must know some older people who aged 85, stop getting weaker? They can can live until 100 or older with no further deterioration. You know them?  Yes, they have gray hair and wrinkles. Yes they have funny skin and don't see or hear so well. But they are fully capable people who don't need to be cared for and who can help others and play a full role in the family and in society. This is the "Plateau." At a set point, we stop getting more feeble. The deterioration slows to a crawl and then stops. 

Getting old and feeble is not our destiny. Provided we live by the rules that are set by our evolution.

And the Plateau is not only out there for a few at 85 but is there for all of us earlier in life.

In 3 years, I have been able to set my plateau at 62. I weigh what I weighed on the day of my marriage 37 years ago. My metabolic numbers are of a 30 year old. I am not unusual. This plateau in middle age is possible for any of us. It is in our design.

There are 2 destinies. Most of us, me before MR, are on the red line. By the time we are 50, we start to fall apart. 

On PEI where I lived for nearly 20 years, the average man is disabled by 65 and lives dependent for nearly 10 more years. I was on track for this. 

I set up a new destiny for myself. I chose the black line as my destiny. For, depending on our ancestry, the Plateau is available in our 50's and maybe earlier if our heritage is close to Hunting and Gathering such as if you are a First Nation's person. 

So how did I start?

The first step is diet. I did my best to stop eating the modern diet. And by "Modern" I mean the diet that we eat after 10,000 BC. And with even greater rigour - I rejected all the new industrial foods that we have been eating for maybe 50 years only. 

I decided to be strict. I took out all processed food. All grains. All juice. All dairy. I also reduced my intake of carbs to no more than 50 grams a day.

To stop any cheating, we threw out all our old food. This really helps.

There are many guides for why and how to do this. One I like a lot is Sebastian Noel's site - Link here.  He is full of tips, advice and recipes. For this is not easy. I had to learn a whole new way of eating. 

Here is a simple guide I used as well.

By looking at carbs, I also had to know how many carbs were in the foods that I was thinking about. There are many good guides to this as well but here is one that I used a lot.

We started shopping very differently. Many people reject meat for ethical reasons. I agree. I think that people will look back at how we treat animals in the future and think we muct have been mad. Just as we look back at slavery today. I reject that system ethically and also practically. I also know that the meat from such a system is not good for us. Cows that are in feedlots and eating grain are sick and so is their meat. What does all the stress of confinement and the terrible food given to animals mean for real food health? And of course they all have to be medicated.

So, Robin and I shop rarely in the conventional food system. We buy nearly all our meat and veggies from the farmers market and from people we know. We vote for a new food system with our wallets. We work for a new food system.

This shift in how we eat will be the change that changes the food system. Collectively as millions join in, we create the demand. More on this later.

Getting the support of your family is critical. Here I was very lucky that Robin wanted me to get well. Some families are torn and it must be very hard. Also men and women have different struggles.We are addicts to our own version of sugar. Many women are tightly bonded to sweet things. Men less so. Most men love beer. Fewer women have the same attraction to beer. It helps to know this, so that when you cheat, you do not give up. For cheat you will. The interesting thing is that your body gets used to being healthy that when you cheat, you will feel it right away. Your body will remind you that this is not good.

Breakfast is a real challenge. I am happy to have eggs and bacon (from real pigs and not cured in a factory) I often have organ meat such as kidneys and liver. Robin not. So she will often have broth and veggies and small amounts of fruit.

Lunch and dinners are easier to eat together. 

We used to snack all the time. After all when you eat carbs you get hungry quickly after the meal. For it is like puttting gas on the fire. Our need to snack, went away as the leptin kicked in. Leptin is the hormone that tells us when we are full. It is surpressed by carbs. I found that as I increased the nutritional density of my food, my hunger went away. 

What about drink? While Beer is a no no. Wine is very low carb and so I was able to keep up my favourite sin.

And for candy addicts: dark dark chocolate is also on the good list and Robin coped with her sweet tooth with that. 

We cook all our meals. You may not have the time or the energy to do this. Actually most of our meals take less time to cook that they used to. We use a crock pot a lot. We grill meats. We make stews that last for days. We make more than we eat in any meal and make other meals from leftovers. 

Meat is expensive. Good meat is more expensive. But meat is not only steak. We use a lot of cheap cuts - hence the crockpot that will reduce the toughest to a delicious tender and juicy state. We make a lot of broth. A roast chicken will be a meal. The cold chicken will be lunches. Then we put the bones and the carcass in the stockpot and bingo - broth which is more lunches and other meals. One $12 real chicken has 12 meals in it.

Our meals are fast and cheap and healthy.

Results after 6 months 

I had lost 20 pounds. I had taken no more exercise than walk the dog. But there was more than weight loss. My belly fat had nearly all gone. Visceral fat is the most dangerous fat we can have and is a strong predictor of heart disease. My man boobs had gone. This is not just a fat thing but is a sign of a re balance of testosterone and estrogen. Let's put it this way - no need for little blue pills. 

Robin lost less weight than me. Women need more fat. But for her, the results were even more striking. Since chemo years ago, her knees had been very weak and painful. She was on the list for knee replacement and had been taking a serious anti inflammatory to enable her to walk at all. She was now out of pain and off her meds entirely. She will never run like an 18 year old. But her mobility is back and the pain is gone. And also I could see another change. Her cellulite was going. It has all gone now. 

The other result that this strict early diet had for us was that it showed us that this was working and it motivated us to study more and to do more.

We had been focused on Paleo that helps us deal with Metabolic problems: such as how we get fat and get diabetes. We were getting our insulin world back in shape. 

Widening the scope from Paleo to Gut Health

As Robin and I saw how we were getting better, we dived into the mass of material online that helped us understand more. In the appendix, I will do my best to share with you many of the sources that we find the most helpful.

In this search, we came across a new topic for us. That is Gut Flora. In the big debate about what is Paleo, people often miss this key factor. Our gut is not just a set of organs. The real work of digestion is done by trillions of bacteria that have spent millions of of years co evolving to act as our digestive and health partners. It is they that keep the bad stuff from passing from our gut into our bodies. At the core of ALL chronic disease is inflammation. And the pathway is our gut. Poor gut health health guarantees inflammation.

This then, is a strong reason to give up grains. Grains defend themselves by using chemicals. These disrupt our gut flora. If you have had to use a lot of anti biotics, then your gut flora will be devastated. 

Go here for answers. Natasha Campbell McBride is the authority. But in summary, grains are a no no. Sugars are a poison for your gut flora. This is another dimension.

To restore and to keep your gut flora, you need fermented food. And this brings back to dairy.

When we started out, Robin and I gave up all dairy. But we are back to using heavy cream and high fat yoghurt. If we could have access to unpasteurized milk we would go there too. Milk from an industrial dairy has to be pasteurized. Hamburger from a feedlot has to be cooked well done. Industrial food is dangerous by its system. Milk from the house cow is another thing altogether. Raw meat from the pastured cow is another thing too.

All real fermented food is good such as sauer kraut. The fermentation process is aligned with our gut flora. Industrial food has all the life taken out of it so that it will last on the shelves. So as we understood this idea better, Real Food had a new dimension. If it did not go bad, we did not eat it.

Brings us back to the need for a new food system. One that is based on animals being raised according to their nature.

Now we were also getting at  another core pathway for chronic illness which is inflammation. 

Finally there is more to food than nutrition. 

Sharing food is the key to relationships

Most people have given up the core process that made us human. Sharing food around the campfire in a group was the process that made us the species that we are. Most people eat alone and see food prep and the clean up as chores. 

But sharing the prep, the meal and the clean up is what made us human.

Robin and I make our meals together an important part of the day. We live and work under the same roof. But we do different things. We like different things. It is the preparing, eating and cleaning up at mealtime that reunites an old married couple. It is the intimacy of the meal that refreshes our bond. And we include others as often as we can. Not the least our kids and grandkids.

The sharing of food is not only a mechanical process of refuelling it refuels the tribe. 

Food, not sex, is at the heart of human trust and intimacy. Not just the eating but the gift of the preparation and even the clean up. All religious ceremony is rooted in food. Communion. Gifts of food to the Gods. Feasts. Weddings.

Robin and I brought back the sacred to our meals and to each other. You will see how this links to another key pathway, which is our social world. Our marriage has come together in an entirely unexpected way and now is the core of how we fit into the world. We all need such a friend. Romance is a joy but is fleeting. We need that other person who stands back to back with us as we face the trials that living presents us. We also have made a vow by our action to do our best to stay fit and healthy for the other and for our children.

Sharing the entire process of the meal, is the best social bond that there is.

After 12 months

I had lost nearly 40 pounds and was back to my marriage weight and body. OK I have grey hair and I am soft. But I had the same facial structure as my 25 year old self. The same waist and chest.

I slept like a teen ager again. My mind was clearer. I did not worry so much. My mood is almost always upbeat and when I am down, I recover very quickly.

I add this pyschological profile because depression is strongly diet related. My family is very prone to this and other members of my family, who have had serious bouts of depression, have become much more stable and have stopped taking all their meds since cuuting back on grains and sugars. 

This is not just about weight loss.

This joint project has also brought a lot more life back into our marriage. We share a goal. We help each other and we pay attention to each other at meal times. It's our little triumph together over the system and our gift to each other. 

And PS - Our Lab Cross Bitch aged 11 has lost 20 pounds - her back legs have come back and she is like a 4 year old. She too is off Kibble and eats only real meat and veggies. She also cannot cheat. She hardly farts - she could empty a room before. Her breath is sweet and her teeth gleam - no more sugar/kibble/grains in her diet. With luck she has more good years ahead.

The New Food System and the Revolution

It is not easy to find real food. The mainstream food system is everywhere. It has taken all but 5% of people off the land too and most of the 5% left are serfs working for pitiful wages and in  terrible conditions. Meanwhile all those jobs in the city are disappearing except for more serf jobs in fast food and the food distribution system.

As more and more of us eat differently, we create the demand for a food production revolution.

The new food system will I think employ millions. It will be based in small holdings that raise animals as they too were designed to live. This is what is behind pastured meat. The scale we need will come from the network.

And all this will take place as the machine system is further exposed for what it is. When 20% of us buy our food from the new, the old will crumble. It will be like the newspapers. 

This is not just a diet. Eating as we are designed to eat will change not only each of us but all of human society.

Be the Change

About a year ago I met a friend, who had not seen me for a year, in the car park of the Farmers Market. She saw me and gasped. She thought that I must have cancer to have lost so much weight. But it was just this new/old way of eating.

This kind of eating is see as a fad and foolish by the system who are invested in the old. But the one data point that cannot be argued is YOU.  When you discover for your self and for your family and friends how different you can be in such a short time, they cannot ignore it. 

This is what will drive the next wave. When 10% of us all are fit and healthy, the system will not be able to say that we are all fools.

So, if you want to make the world a better place, you only have to join Robin and I. It's the most revolutionary act you can make and you don't have to wait for anyone else.

  

Sitting - The biggest health risk we have - Easiest to change

How many hours do you sit a day? 8 at work. 2 in the car. 4 watching TV and eating. All this sitting is a novel behaviour for humans. It's now seen as a MAJOR health risk that cannot be offset by an hour in the gym. Once I started to think about how much I sit, I was able to change this. I have a standing desk and I walk a lot now. It's not hard to find ways.

Here is why in more detail and here is what others are doing

The context from Dr James Levine at the Mayo Clinic:

"Too much sitting also seems to increase the risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer.

One recent study compared adults who spent less than two hours a day in front of the TV or other screen-based entertainment with those who logged more than four hours a day of recreational screen time. Those with greater screen time had:

• A nearly 50 percent increased risk of death from any cause
• About a 125 percent increased risk of events associated with cardiovascular disease, such as chest pain (angina) or heart attack

The increased risk was separate from other traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as smoking or high blood pressure.

Sitting in front of the TV isn't the only concern. Any extended sitting — such as behind a desk at work or behind the wheel — can be harmful. What's more, spending a few hours a week at the gym or otherwise engaged in moderate or vigorous activity doesn't seem to significantly offset the risk.

Rather, the solution seems to be less sitting and more moving overall. You might start by simply standing rather than sitting whenever you have the chance."

From the NYT today:

"Suppose you stick to a five-times-a-week gym regimen, as I do, and have put in a lifetime of hard cardio exercise, and have a restingheart rate that’s a significant fraction below the norm. That doesn’t inoculate you, apparently, from the perils of sitting.

The research comes more from observing the health results of people’s behavior than from discovering the biological and genetic triggers that may be associated with extended sitting. Still, scientists have determined that after an hour or more of sitting, the production of enzymes that burn fat in the body declines by as much as 90 percent. Extended sitting, they add, slows the body’s metabolism of glucose and lowers the levels of good (HDL) cholesterol in the blood. Those are risk factors toward developing heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

“The science is still evolving, but we believe that sitting is harmful in itself,” says Dr. Toni Yancey, a professor of health services at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Yet many of us still spend long hours each day sitting in front of a computer.

The good news is that when creative capitalism is working as it should, problems open the door to opportunity. New knowledge spreads, attitudes shift, consumer demand emerges and companies and entrepreneurs develop new products. That process is under way, addressing what might be called the sitting crisis. The results have been workstations that allow modern information workers to stand, even walk, while toiling at a keyboard."

The best video on the diet revolution

 

Update From Raymond Loo - The Pork is in - Beef Soon #indiegogo

Here is Raymond's Update on Pork Boxes and Beef

Hello Everyone
I will have pork boxes at the Farmers market in Charlottetown on Saturday and if you can come to get your box it would be great because I will be filling Beef boxes beginning next week.
I would like anyone who cannot come to the market to send me an emai l(raymondloo@springwillowfarms.com) and i will make another arangement.
Thanks again
Raymond 

An introduction to the Science for taking charge of your own health

 

A central part of my upcoming book - You Don't Need Medicine - To get Healthy - is to do what Martin Luther did for religion. It is to give us access to ideas that we can all understand and use to take charge of our own health.

I am just starting the part of the book where I introduce you to the amazing people who have worked for decades uncovering the systemic aspects of how our health works. Here is a heads up of the cast of pioneers who will help us all change our own lives and so the world. It's just a quick survey - The Book will have so much more and lots of data and images.

Aging - Professor Michael Rose

We all take it for granted that as we get older, we will get ill. In reality this is indeed the case for most of us today.  But is Aging = getting ill part of our evolutionary design or is it no more normal than the fact that if you lived in London in 1850, you would likely die of cholera?

Professor Michael Rose (UC Irvine) is the world's leading thinker on Aging. It was his insight that convinced me that I could avoid becoming ill and disabled as I grew older and so set me on this course for myself. 

What Michael, and his colleague, Larry Mueller, have found out is what we think of the inevitability of aging = decrepitude is not a set pattern. And for humans not at all.

Humans are designed to get old as fit and contributing people. This does not mean that we don't get wrinkles and grey hair. It does not mean that our sight and hearing may not decline. But it does mean that we are designed to be active contributors to society. The reason for this is tied into our evolutionary past. Raising human children takes such effort, over such a long time, that a small tribe had to have no baggage. The Middle Aged and the Old had to be contributors. In tribes where they were not, they died out.

There is a plateau where the loss of powers ceases. We can see the remnants of this in those family members who reach 85 and are still fit. This group can go on well into their 100's. Of course they die. But they remain vital until just before the end.

What Rose and Meller have found out is that this plateau will normally kick in in middle age - Provided that we live close to the rules of environments that we are evolved to do best in. 

The closer our ancestry is to Hunter Gathering the more the risk and the more the opprtunity. Here is what that means in practice:

• Eat the right diet - a very varied diet that has NO grains or novel foods - Novel being foods that we have not evolved to eat
• Be active - not go to the gym for an hour 3 times a week - get off your bum and move all day
• Have a real Tribe - aka be part of a small community where you play a real role and have a real place. Loss of control and identity is a major negative.
• Be brought up as a small child in a community where adults create a trusting structure around us
• Live in a small community - there is a very tight correlation to aging well and small communities
• Obey the time and seasons of nature - sleep a lot - get sunlight
• Don't travel too much or too far or be in contact with people who do

There is no silver bullet. Our health and how we age is a complex matter involving many interactions that we have with our environment. But the good thing about complex systems is that they have simple rules that we can all understand and so act on.

We can choose to eat differently. We can choose not to sit all day. We can choose to have a real network and to put meaning back into our work. We can choose to make parenting the most important job we have. We can choose where we live. We can choose to go to bed earlier and to spend more time outside. We can choose not to travel too much.

Each of these choices challenge the prevailing culture that we live in. We can choose to push back from that and get more connected to the other pioneers who are doing the same.

All of these choices are hard to make. All connect to each other but they all roll up to the big choice. Do you want to get ill as you age or not? For living as we do today makes chronic illness your destiny. The institution of medicine is making no progress in prevention and can only help you with the sypmtons. Only you can keep you well and only you can restore your health if you lose it.

So here, in the evolutionary setting, is the cast of today's Pasteurs - Doctors and Scientists - who are part of the new revolution in health.

Diet - Profesor Staffen Lindeberg

We are all told to "Eat Healthy" and to "Take more Exercise". But what is healthy eating? Lindeberg has done all the work and he is clear. Traditional societies - those close to our Hunter Gatherer way of life - have NO chronic illness. 

The one thing that traditional people do NOT eat are grains and lots of sugars. Neither do they eat any kind of processed food. When they start to eat the modern diet, they get ill. When Lindeberg took people off the modern diet, they got well.

The modern diet is too novel for us. 10,000 years is nothing in evolutionary time. And the past 50 years of industrial food, is a blip.

Diet is the most leveraged part of taking charge of your health.

Our next two pioneers take Lindeberg's work to the next level.

Diet - Dr Natasha Campbell McBride

Your digestive system is not only a set of organs. Our digestion is a complex and co-evolved colony of partner bacteria. We have trillions of bacteria in our gut that do the real work of digesting our food. The make sure that the good stuff is shared and the bad stuff is eliminated. They are the gatekeepers.

Our digestive system is the core of our immune system. Sick gut flora allows toxins to leave the disgetion and enter the body. All chronic illness has some form of inflammation at the core.

Grains are major disrupters of our gut flora. Anti Biotics are mega disrupters. 

Gut health is a vital part of total health. McBride, whose son developed autism and so spurred her work in diet,  is a great communicator and her lab has developed a wide range of strategies that can help. 

Diet Dr Mary Vernon

Fat does not make us fat. We get fat when we disrupt our insulin mechanism. We do that when we overload it with too much sugar. When I say sugar I mean a very wide range of foods that have a high sucrose and glucose load.

Once you understand how this process works, you will never believe that fat makes you fat again and you will be able take make a major change to your health. 

Dr Gordon is one of many people that are working on this metabolic part of our health. I offer her up here because she is so clear and personable. 

Diet Gary Taubes

If you are still hanging onto the fat makes you fat and that grains are good for you, then Gary Taubes has done all the research to demolish this. 

Activity - Dr James Levine

We are all told to "Take More Exercise" - We think that this means go to the gym. The real issue is we must be more active. One hour three times a week in the gym, has little effect on you if you have sat for 10 hours a day. 

Professor Levine makes it quite clear that sitting on our bum all day is a big problem. We are not designed to sit all day. We are designed to move all day. 

How long do you sit all day? 8 hours 12 - 16? We have become like astronauts but in a bad way. 

So what to do? Design activity into your day. I use a standing desk. Walking is the best exercise too. Have walking meetings like the monks used to do.  Your son has ADD at school - maybe not - Maybe he is right and needs to move around all day - maybe it is school that is sick?

This one insight offers all of us a wide range of new possibilities to improve our health. Activity is a design issue. 

Sleep - More than a rest - Dr Charles Czeisler

Just as we are designed to be active, we are designed to sleep. Sleep is not a waste of the day time: it is a powerful resetting process that operates many restoring and repair functions for the mind and body. Dr Czeisler is one best people in the field. His work explores not only what sleep does for us but what YOU can do to get better sleep. 

Sunlight or Vitamin D - The Vitamin D Council

When we moved inside as a species, we lost contact with a vital part of what we get from the sun, Vitamin D. The Vitamin D Council is a goldmine of information about why we need more D than we are getting by living inside all the time.

We evolved in Africa. We are evolved to need a lot of Vitamin D.

Our Social Environment - Dr Sir Michael Marmot

Do you work at the bottom of a hierarchy? Then you will get ill and die 4 times earlier than those at the top. Married to your work as a man? Retirement will kill you in 5 years. Are you at the lower end of the vast income inequality in the US and the UK? You will get ill. 

How much control and Status we have in life directly affects our health. Medicine and access to healthcare has nothing to do with these differences in health outcomes. 

Dr Sir Michael Marmot is the world's leading authority on how human social environments affect our health. Cubicle land and factory work is lethal. Large differences in national income is lethal. Inequality is lethal.

His research on the Brtish Civil Service is a landmark piece of work that sheds light on how this works. 

Our Social Environment - Professor Robert Sapolsky

So how does this process work? All primates get stressed by social issues. Zebras only worry at the moment when they are being chased by the lion. Baboons worry all the time about their place in the troop. Humans worry even more. Our consciousness can be a curse. We can worry oursleves about the mortgage or global warming too. 

Sapolsky is the leading scientist studying the primate and human stress mechanism.  

Sapolsky is a brilliant scientist and a remarkable explainer. His lectures online are very accessible and offer massive insights as to why we, as the most social of all animals, have to pay attention to our social environment and do all we can to make it less stressful.

And what to do to cope with our stress? I have two favourites here - The late Dr Viktor Frankl and the very much alive Dr Gabor Mate. 

Social Environment Early Childhood - Dr J Doug Willms

The single most important social factor on our health over a lifetime is the social environment that we had from 0 - 3. When I say 0, I mean from the moment of conception. Children's world view, and so their stress reaction to life is set by 3. This setting drives the development trajectory for life. 

Professor Doug Willms is the authority on the link between family culture and long term development outcomes for children. 

So how we parent is key. If we are too top down, use power all the time, don't touch enough, speak to but not converse with - all signs of a stressed person - then we set up poor conditions. If we allow everything, let the child run her life, don't stand firm on important issues, are distant - then this too has poor outcomes. The worst being when each parent has one of these two styles.

The best outcomes are from parents who stand firm on important things but allow a lot of room for all others. Who have lots of conversation with their infants. Who touch their kids a lot and who are affectionate with each other. 

This style of parenting is not tied into any one income level. So many of us have been captured by our own stress response to the corporate world. It leads me to believe that earning our living in a different way will help.

Social Environment Parenting - The Late Jean Liedloff

Just as Michael Rose goes back in time to show us a lifestyle that is suited to how we evolve, so the late Jena Liedloff does this in how best to parent. Her work is the manual of our evolution and is very accessible and pragmatic

Social Environment - PTSD - DR Jonathan Shay

PTSD is a massive issue in the west today after more than a decade of warfare. Here again people have been shaped by their environment. So is the cause of PTSD the trauma of seeing or doing  bad things? 

Shay has discovered that this is too simple a perspective. The deeper cause of PTSD, and all illness caused by trauma, is Betrayal. This is why incest is such a terrible act as it involves the worst betrayal of all.

PTSD is driven by bad leadership. A military that has leaders who care not for their men but for their careers. A political class that goes to war and exploits the patriotism of their young men for a game and not a real cause. A system that rotates men too often and breaks their attachments.

This betrayal was seen everywhere in Vietnam.  All that was wrong in Viertnam has taken place again in Iraq and in Afghanistan. As those involved learn that they were betrayed, their feelings will deepen. The PTSD epidemic will grow.

Shay also has done the work to find a way for these men to come home. And it is not drugs or experts. It is in helping people help each other. It is in helping them find a tribe again. Medicine and conventional therapy does not work. Only the tribe can offer the trust required to quiet the demons. 

Changing Deep Beliefs - Alan Deutschman

How do we change our wiring? If we have depression, PTSD, had a shitty childhood, have addictions? There is no pill. There is no smart man in a white coat. But there is a proven social process and journalist Alan Deutschman has made a lifetime study about what this is. 

His work, Sapolsky's, Mate's, Frankl's and Shay's all intersect and support each other. Alan offers a special clarity and great case studies.

Changing Deep Beliefs - Neuroplasticity - Dr Norman Doidge

And so what is this kind of change that Alan reviews so clearly? ? We have to rewire our brain - literally. Our beliefs, or our automatic responses to an event, have been hard wired in our brain by repetition. The more times we go to THAT place, the faster we go there. It is like a river cutting a chasm.

Doidge and Sapolsky have unravelled how this mechanism works and are using the understanding of the plasticity of the brain to change the wiring. 

Dr Norman Doidge has had great success in helping people rewire. Even people with schizophrenia. 

Good for you

This is a long list and if you have reached this far, well done. As you can see there is not a pill in sight. I hope you can see that all of this is related and all of this intersects. It's complex. But if you make a start, you will be amazed at how you start to change and gain confidence.

The best place to start is diet. It is the most leveraged area and you will get the fastest response in health gains. Then you will have the confidence to try other areas.

If you want to know more now, I have a supporting website called the Missing Human Manual. There is loads more information, videos, articles etc from all of these people there. If you want to even deeper, Michale Rose has put together a major work on the evolutionary context at 55 Theses

Flame Retardants - A Hoax and a Major Health Risk

We get chronic illness from living in toxic environments. The younger we are, the more vulnerable we are. Surrounding our infants and children with flame retardants is not a good thing.

They don't work anyway. The whole thing was based on a scam. And here is the infomation.

Please take care. 

Are you an entrepreneur? Time to get connected to others like you

 

The bottom line from Startup Canada

It's all going to be about the ecosystem. Alone we are weak - but together....

So on PEI, please set up an organization to do this. Hope is not a method and good intentions are not enough. I appeal to the PEI BioAlliance and to the Queen Street Commons to form a nucleus. This would be a great start.

Apple Rules! Here is the one I owned back in 1982

Ah the good old days 48K and lunar lander!

And Visicalc!

And Bank Street Writer

via smartpei.typepad.com

It's been 30 years since I first got my Mac. I feel old but boy do I still love my Mac

Movember - A Caution

It's Movember. Good for you for caring to do something. But did you know that your money will not go to helping anyone avoid cancer but to Big Pharma to help them make money out of you.

Mustaches are everywhere this November. In October we are all pink and Running for the Cure. But please think a bit please. BTW I was one of a small group of CIBC Executives that started Run for the Cure - so I am not just being a Grinch here. I have many family members with Prostate Cancer and others with breast cancer - so I am not just sitting on the fence throwing rocks  today. 

"The Cure" is the business model of medicine. There is no business is helping you avoid cancer. So medicine does not do health. 

Please remember that medicine is above all a business. A business that makes its money by selling us tests and treatments. A conversation that you will never have when you meet your oncologist for the first time is how you got cancer. The conversation that you will never have is how to reduce your risks - other than by taking more medication. 

Do you know how to avoid cancer? Did you know that only 7% of women who are diagnosed have the gene and even then only a few of them get it? Did you know that if you are a woman in the UK you have a 42% chance of getting breast cancer?

When your PSA level is high or you have a cancerous lump, no doctor will tell you that this may not kill you. No one will tell you that most men over 65 have prostate cancer and die of something else years later. 

Did you know that early testing, mammograms and PSA tests have done nothing to reduce the overall mortality rate? 

If you want to avoid cancer then please start to discover the wealth of information that talks not about the CURE but about how we get it and how to avoid it. It is in your power to reduce your risks. Become part of the new revolution in health where the research looks not for the silver bullet but at the complex system that it our health.

Please don't just be a well intentioned supporter of a multi billion dollar industry.

Can you believe medical research? Why you should be careful. What is to come!

Every week it seems there is a new research report claiming that this or that works. It's confusing. But at least we thought that research was pure.

This excellent report from the Washington Post suggests that we must be more critical about how medical research is done.

Take the case of Avandia - a drug to help diabetes. 

"Whether these ties altered the report on Avandia may be impossible for readers to know. But while sorting through the data from more than 4,000 patients, the investigators missed hints of a danger that, when fully realized four years later, would lead to Avandia’s virtual disappearance from the United States:

The drug raised the risk of heart attacks.

A Food and Drug Administration scientist later estimated that the drug had been associated with 83,000 heart attacks and deaths."

The report sheds light on the many conflicts of interest today in so called medical research.

Why is this? Is it just greed? I don't think so. I think that the answer is that we have the wrong model for healthcare. It has a mechanistic worldview that cannot cope with the complex world of health today. 

Most of medical research today is done is the context of finding a "Pill for each ill". Each part of the body is seen as separate. Each illness is seen as separate. Most of us believe this too. We Run for the Cure, we buy daffodils for Heart and Stroke. We all want a pill to stop us from getting fat. And the entire medical establishment makes its money because of this belief. They sell pills, tests and procedures. They do not sell health. Healthcare is a transaction business based on a mechanistic view of reality that is as off base as thinking that the world is flat.

It would appear to the naked eye that the world is flat. But now we know that it isn't. It might appear that each disease and each part of the body are separate but of course they are not.

Our health is part of a complex system that includes not only each of us but all of us and all of the environments physical and social that we interact with today and for millions of years in the past.

For instance our gut is not just an organ but it is an ecosystem.

Here is a snip from this excellent article in the Economist

"A healthy adult human harbours some 100 trillion bacteria in his gut alone. That is ten times as many bacterial cells as he has cells descended from the sperm and egg of his parents. These bugs, moreover, are diverse. Egg and sperm provide about 23,000 different genes. The microbiome, as the body’s commensal bacteria are collectively known, is reckoned to have around 3m. Admittedly, many of those millions are variations on common themes, but equally many are not, and even the number of those that are adds something to the body’s genetic mix.

And it really is a system, for evolution has aligned the interests of host and bugs. In exchange for raw materials and shelter the microbes that live in and on people feed and protect their hosts, and are thus integral to that host’s well-being. Neither wishes the other harm. In bad times, though, this alignment of interest can break down. Then, the microbiome may misbehave in ways which cause disease.

That bacteria can cause disease is no revelation. But the diseases in question are. Often, they are not acute infections of the sort 20th-century medicine has been so good at dealing with (and which have coloured doctors’ views of bacteria in ways that have made medical science slow to appreciate the richness and relevance of people’s microbial ecosystems). They are, rather, the chronic illnesses that are now, at least in the rich world, the main focus of medical attention. For, from obesity and diabetes, via heart disease, asthma and multiple sclerosis, to neurological conditions such as autism, the microbiome seems to play a crucial role."

THIS is the kind of research that makes sense. It is not based on trying to find a silver bullet that can be sold. It is looking at the total ecosystem that is how health really works. Humans have a massive internal and complex system that interacts with itself AND with everything outside both social and physical AND with all that has shaped us in the past NOT just in our own life but for millions of year prior. 

We are not machines. 

The revolution in medicine that I will describe in my next book - You Don't Need Medicine - To Get Healthy - will describe how this systems perspective will overturn the mechanistic worldview that dominates medicine today.

Here is a glimpse of the thinking that will shatter the old system.

 

Dear Readers, It is time to start to think critically about medicine the same way that we are thinking about media and education. 

Small city or region in decline? - Like PEI - A way back

PEI, has spent a lot of development money from the Feds on new rinks etc and of course on a new road. But other than the wages of the workers, what of this money has  put PEI in a better place for the future?

Here is what Chatanooga did instead. They used their Fed development money to make the city, the best internet and most wired city in America. It cost $111 million. (Link NYT Tom Friedman)

"The majority of Chattanooga homes and businesses get 50 megabits per second, some 100 megabits, a few 250 and those with big needs opt for a full gigabit per second, explained Harold DePriest, the chief executive of EPB, the city’s electric power and telecom provider, which built and operates the network. “The average around the country is 4.5 megabits per second.” So average Internet speed in Chattanooga is 10 times the national average.

That doesn’t just mean faster downloads. The fiber grid means 150,000 Chattanooga homes now have smart electric meters to track their energy consumption in real time. More important, said DePriest, on July 5, Chattanooga got hit with an unusual storm that knocked out power to 80,000 homes. Thanks to intelligent power switching on the fiber network, he said, “42,000 homes had their electricity restored in ... 2 seconds.” Old days: 17 hours."

And this has meant that business is flocking there as are people who need the web.

"Chattanooga replaced its belching smokestacks with an Amazon.com fulfillment center, major health care and insurance companies and a beehive of tech start-ups that all thrive on big data and super-high-speed Internet."

As the web becomes the key, communities that offer the best connections will attract the best work. And for the web, location does not matter. In the industrial world, PEI is on the edge. On the web it could be in the centre.

Owls Hollow or Toys r Us - What will be your choice this Christmas on PEI?

It is no coincidence that Toys rUs opens on PEI this Chritmas. One of their ambitions is to close Owls Hollow.

Owls Hollow is one of the best toy stores that I have ever found and I have lived all over the world.

So what does your Christmas Toy budget mean. If you choose the big box, you will play a part in closing Owls Hollow. Ask yourself why this is a good idea? Is there that much of a price difference? And what kind of toy are you buying? Made where and by whom? Who wins and who loses?

I have 3 grandchildren. I love PEI. I am dropping by Owls Hollow when I come back to see my mum in December. You will not find me at the other place.

 

Banks are being Disrupted by the Process of the Innovator's Dilemma - Part 1

This podcast is all about why we think that the major banks will fade away in the next 15 years. It will not be a nice time. But a better system will replace it. Jordan and I are struggling to understand this ourselves and want to offer you our conversation so that we can all get a better sense of what is to come and so what can we each do to get ready. 

The Banks seem essential and inviolate. But then, 30 years ago, so did "Big Steel". But a new small company came in to the bottom of the steel market and began to take away business that Big Steel did not want. Big Steel gave up the Rebar market without a fight because they could not make money there. So Nucor grew, as did other mini mills, and took on Big Steel step by step until there was nothing left.

This is the classic story of how disruption works as told by Clay Christensen in his classic books - The Innovator's Dilemma and the Innovator's solution. 

In this post today, I interview Jordan MacLeod, author of Natural Money . Jordan is one of the leading thinks about the future of money today.  We see signs that this process of disruption is well under way. We think that the big banks will be challenged as Big Steel was and that this will take place in the next 5 years. 

In this segment, the first of 3, we identify the pressures that the banks have put themselves under that are exposing them to new disruptive entrants. Mainly driven by the fact that the banks treat the small person and the small business very badly. 

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation estimates that roughly 10 million households in the United States do not use a bank, up from nine million three years ago. And the agency says 24 million more households have a bank account but still use nonbank financial services, like prepaid cards.(link)

Now that Visa is a for profit organization, it is aggressively raising fees for small business - maybe thinking that they cannot do anything about it.

Millions of people now wire money internationally. This has been a gold mine for banks who charge a fortune for this.

The large banks have proved that they cannot be trusted.

All this combines to empower new small competitors that are eating in to the bottom of the market that the banks don't like anyway - their Rebar market.

Walmart is banking the bottom end. Dwolla will do a money transfer for 25 cents. Square is targetting the small business . Dwolla and others are eating into the bank clearing system itself.

All this is happening very quickly and is being aided by banks that are small and who also resent being used by the majors.

What this implies is, that at some point, Money itself will be questioned. For today money is created by bank lending. With a Fractional reserve system, each dollar that a bank lends to you only requires a reserve of 10 cents. The other 90 cents is magic. 

In parts 2 and 3 of this series we will talk about what may happen as the major banks are eaten up from the base and a confidence in them continues to fall. Where will we put our money then? What will money be then? These are huge issues. We take money for granted now. But history reminds us to be cautious when a large system is under threat. 

Not an easy topic.

In the meantime, I have a lot more about the new system that is to come in my second book You Don't Need a Banker

PEI Government Pension Plan - Don't Count on it

The PEI Government plans are underwater by over 400 million with most new retirees retiring in the next 10 years. The market is not going to make up the difference. We live in different times. The pensioners cannot make up the difference. And the PEI Taxpayer - most of whom don't have a pension - cannot do this either.

Some facts. PEI Tax revenues are about $800 million a year. So $400 million represents about 50% of one year's revenue. Healthcare costs will rise to $800 million by the middle of the next mandate. 

PEI cannot pay the $400 million for the government pensioners. And PEI cannot pay for $800 million of healthcare costs either. The next 5 years are going to be "interesting!". The contract that we all thought we had signed up for - pensions and healthcare will have to be broken.

More here.

So what does this mean to you if you are a pensioner. You will be pissed off for a start. 

“The average pension is about $16,000 a year, which is not a lot of money. Our members aren’t living large when they retire,” she said

That’s why Bovyer says it concerns her to hear comments about taxpayers being on the hook for public service pensions.

She believes government wants to move from the current defined-benefit plan, to a defined contribution plan.

This is the only hope to get anything. You are going to have to take less. You are going to have to do what the rest of us are going to do - live in a different way.

And Ms Bovyer, $16,000 a year from investments is a lot of money. That represents well over a million dollars per person. How many Islanders have that in their savings?

So what does living in a different way mean? It need not mean eating cat food. But it does mean thinking like this:

• Do you need to live alone in a one generation household? Housing is your big expense. What abut your kids? The extended family is the unit that helped us all along before pensions
• What is your exposure to oil and heating costs? Have you insulated your home and done everything to reduce your energy costs. This is another big risk area.
• Grow food. You will have lots of time. Run chickens, grow veggies. Put in a hedge on higher food prices.
• Do you live in the country where you have to drive everywhere? A car is the single most expensive thing you own and it exposes you to oil price increases. You will also reach a point when you cannot drive. Live in town!
• Car share and help your neighbours - they will do the same for you
• The average male Islander becomes disabled from chronic illness at 65! He lives for another 10 years unable to cope on his own. Get well!!!!!!!!!!! BTW the average PEI woman follows this track 5 years later

This kind of living is not unfamiliar to many Islanders. It is just below the surface ready to come out again. If pensioners spend all their energy fighting the $ battles that has to be lost, then they lose everything. But if you work to help each other make this transition back to how your grandparents lived, a much better future for all lies ahead.

Flu Shots - Exposed as a Con - More in My New Book

Did you get your flu shot? Did your granny get one? Did you notice the big marketing campaign to get you to have one. Well it's all a load of crap.

These shots are a shot in the dark. The one that is sure about them is that they do not protect the elderly - ever. 

They are of course a gold mine for Big Pharma.

You don't believe me - Here is the science

"Inconvenient facts about the flu:
There are over 200 viruses that cause influenza and influenza-like illness and can produce symptoms similar to the everyday flu. It is estimated that 80 percent of flu-like illness reported during the “flu season” is not caused by influenza. As well, influenza viruses constantly evolve and mutate and since it takes up to nine months to develop the right vaccine, by the time flu season arrives, the flu shot may or may not match strains circulating.  Which is to say, fighting the flu is largely a hit-and-miss affair. 

In an extensive interview with Dr. Tom Jefferson, the most authoritative world expert on respiratory infections and vaccines, who has spent more than 10 years examining the evidence provided by Roche Pharmaceuticals about its highly promoted Tamiflu vaccine. The manufactured claims about the Tamiflu vaccine led to massive global stockpiling. 

Dr. Jefferson says, “I can only say that I have acted as an unpaid salesperson for Roche for the last ten years!”

That is because he and his colleagues at the independent Cochrane Collaboration proved that the published data about Tamiflu was biased and misleading because Roche released only partial data--refusing to provide the complete data.

As Mr. Cassels indicates, this example confirms that "much of the published research on all kinds of drugs and treatments found in peer-reviewed medical journals is incomplete. It only gives half the story."  Dr. Jefferson has written that poor science, coupled with “media business, pharma business, pandemic business and unaccountable decision-making,” are making a mockery of global policies around the flu.

Dr. Jefferson and his colleagues found that most influenza studies are poorly designed and fail to prove the influenza vaccine is effective or safe for certain groups, such as the elderly and children under two. (In Canada, parents might be surprised to hear that Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization recommends flu shots for kids six to 23 months old.) 

He wants to make sure flu policies affecting millions of people are based on proper, undeniable proof.  " Of the many health authorities around the world who support mass flu vaccine campaigns—those he irreverently refers to as “bioevangelists”—he claims the science shows they are mostly wrong: “There is no reliable evidence that inactivated influenza vaccines [the standard types of vaccines of today] affect either person-to-person spread of influenza or complications such as death or pneumonia…and [this] relates both to healthcare workers, community-dwellers and people in institutions.” 

Public health officials--the US Centers for Disease Control in particular--demonstrate a disregard for science, and an acceptance of commercial propaganda as their guide for setting public health policy."

In my next book - You Don't Need Medicine - To Get Healthy - We will look at immunity and disease from a systems perspective. You may be surprised to know that most of the battle to defeat infectious disease has little to do with medicine and a lot to do with public health and our natural progress towards immunity.

I hope this will be ready just before or just after Christmas.  Here is a draft of the introduction:

"This book will describe a revolution in the institution of medicine that will lead to a revolution in how people live.

The institution of medicine has had such revolutions before. It began with anesthesia. Until anesthesia, the key to getting paid as a surgeon was speed. Robert Liston could take your leg off in less than 2 minutes. Anesthesia took away surgeons’ elite status. With anesthesia, came the luxury of time. Anesthesia opened up the ability to do complicated and delicate work. Speed was no longer where the money would be. Elite surgeons, whose entire lives had been spent on learning how to be fast, pushed back. They claimed that the pain was a vital part of the healing process. It took Queen Victoria’s insistence that she use it when having a baby to defeat the old guard. 

The greater revolution came with the issue of infection. Until the work of Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister in the late 19th century, the institution of medicine believed that disease and infection were carried by smells. This was the Miasma Theory. The institution of medicine got paid well even though they failed to keep people well. For everyone believed them to be right. So, even after the evidence of the role of bacteria piled up, the institution had to deny the new. They had to. For their power and reputation was all rooted in the Miasma Theory. Finally just too many people were dying to prevent the new germ theory from winning. 

Today we stand again at such a defining moment. The elite of the current institution of medicine once again hold onto their power and their wealth as a result of a set of beliefs that we all accepted. This is the mechanistic view of the world where very ill has a unique cause and so there is a pill that can be sold to cure it. But with the advent of the epidemic of chronic illness, many now ask, “Why do we spend so much money on healthcare and see that more and more of us are getting ill?”

We are back at the same moment as the Miasma theory. People are starting to see the paradox. We spend more and more on healthcare for a system that is making no impact on the chronic illness epidemic that is overwhelming us. Something cannot be right.

This book is the story of our own revolution. It will be the story of the greatest revolution of all in human health. 

Just as Pasteur and Lister found out the real causes of infection, so a large group of scientists have found out what are the roots of chronic illness. Just as Pasteur and Lister were reviled, so they are reviled today. Just as the public were told that these outsiders were wrong, so we are told by authority figures that this is wrong. Just as most people believed the establishment, so most of us believe them today. 

But, a large minority now knows that the truth. The truth cannot be shut away for much longer. 

Many now know and have the proof in our own lives that we can protect our health and even restore it, if we take action ourselves to eat properly, to have a real social life and to use our bodies as they should be. Even better, some of us now know that getting feeble as we age is not normal. 

The new promise of the science of the new medicine, is that each of us can enjoy good health and a long and active life. If we obey the rules. The rules that are set not by a doctor, or an author of a fad book, but by nature. 

Life will change more when most of us believe and act upon this than at any other time before the advent of agriculture. 

This book will offer a glimpse of why this is, what this is and what can happen."

The new world of publishing - a button

From Hugh

One of the barriers that I could not overcome in the years that I wanted to publish a book was the publishing process itself. Getting an agent, having them tell me how the book should be, getting a publisher, having them tell me how the book should be....

I also thought that a book should be long. But I am more a sprinter than a distance runner. The ideas that I have about networks are best written in bursts - like a Dickens novel. But conventional books have to be longer. Is this why so many business books are so full of padding? 

Amazon make it very easy. It is almost as easy as Hugh's cartoon of the quote from Clay Shirky.

The whole process reminds me of blogging in 2002. The new tools were good enough then - thank you Dave Winer and Radio Userland - to enable a regular guy like me to have in effect my own magazine.

Now, as most people focus on the tiny form of Twitter and FB, the new publishing tools are driving a new long form. Not 250 - 500 pages but the 50-100 page long essay. The new publishing tools enable you to price to match as well. No need to have a $30 book. Mine are $2.99. Some cost less and some maybe $10. All in the range of a coffee and a danish.

Just as blogging drove an explosion of writing in a magazine style, now there is no barrier for all of us to write a book or two or three....

Well got to go now as I am writing book three myself with as many books as I can write still ahead of me. How about you? Have you got something to say?

Update from Raymond Loo

If you missed this from Raymond - here is his update as of today

Hi All

I am behind schedule with the beef boxes because the meatshop is backed up and I could not get my first beef into the shop till Monday the 19th so I will not have boxes untill the last week of November and will butcher a beef each week until all boxes are filled.

I have almost all the chicken boxes filled and many of the pork boxes filled but will not have pork boxes at the market until the 24th again at the market for the same reason as I could not get into the butchershop this week.

thanks for your understanding.
Raymond