Juked by Medicine
This
still moment on the verge of spring equinox, industrial civilization is
taking a rest from its travails of finance and economy. The creaking
and groaning vehicle of world banking lurches forward with its latest
patch, the Greek fix, but the explosive resignation last week of a
Goldman Sachs executive director Greg Smith, posted as an op-ed essay
in no less than the New York Times, afforded a glimpse into the dark
place where American values crawled off to die, like turning over a
rock in a meadow to find the white slithering things that dwell there,
and asserting a broad and anguished truth at the heart of our culture:
all is swindle.
In the still moment, the nation is
digesting this discovery, and I think it will represent a turning point
in the arduous plotline of the crime story that banking has become.
It's also the moment of reawakening for the Occupy movement as it now
struggles with what it is to become. I doubt that it can avoid turning
angrily and maybe viciously political as it focuses its energies on
occupying this summer's looming political conventions.
But in this still moment I want to take a break from purely public
issues for a second week and discuss some personal things: nutrition
and medicine. I hope it will be of interest to some of you. Last week,
after a four year misadventure on an ultra low-fat vegan diet (no meat,
no cheese, no eggs), I turned around 180 degrees and resumed eating all
those verboten things again. I had been feeling shitty for a long time,
in particular with muscle pain, muscle weakness, penetrating fatigue,
and some weird neurological symptoms and I decided to take drastic
measures.
This personal misadventure started about four
and half years ago when my doctor read me the riot act on my
cholesterol numbers. The total was around 290. I forget exactly what
the LDL ("bad" cholesterol) was, but it wasn't good, and ditto the HDL
("good" cholesterol) and the triglycerides (oy vay). The upshot was
that my doctor put me on a whopping dose of the most powerful statin
drug, Crestor 40mg (made by AstraZenica). I left his office feeling
like my identity was transformed from a healthy normal person to a
prisoner on death row.
I thought I had been leading a
healthy life. Being self-employed, and master of my own schedule, I was
able to work in a lot of exercise. For twenty-five years I was a
runner. A hip replacement put an end to that. During that same period,
I also swam a mile a day in the local YMCA lap pool. After hip surgery,
I walked daily instead of running, kept swimming, and also did at least
four weekly sessions in the weight room (including the cardio machines
such as the elliptical trainer, easy on the joints). During the
temperate months, I also biked many days of the week. Because I got so
much exercise, I thought I could eat anything I wanted to, and did. I
was a capable cook, having worked in many restaurant jobs during my
starving bohemian years, and I could competently put together
everything from a butterflied leg of lamb to a flourless chocolate cake.
After receiving my "death sentence" from the doc, I went straight to
the cardio diet bookshelf and found works by two of the chief
authorities on the subject: Dr. Dean Ornish, the popular TV celebrity,
and Dr. Caldwell Essylsten, a less public but also renowned nutrition
guru from the Cleveland Clinic. Both of them promoted ultra low-fat
essentially vegan diets. I used them as a guide for learning how to
cook for myself in a new way. This largely revolved around vegetables
braised in stocks rather than oil-fried in a wok, lots of brown rice
and other whole grains (oats, especially), and the substitution of
plant (soy) based protein foods like tofu, tempeh, and the various
veggie "burger" products for actual meat. Plenty of salads, of course,
and fruit. Of the two diet docs, Essylsten was the most severe. You
were barely allowed to eat a nut. However, in defiance I ate the same
lunch every day for all those years: peanut butter on one slice of our
local Rock Hill 8-grain bread. Otherwise I was pretty strict with
myself.
Over the next several years I lost about 20
pounds (from 188 to 168 - I am 5' 10"). By 2011, my cholesterol was
down to 110 total (about equal LDLs and HDLs), but I was feeling shitty
all the time as described above: lack of stamina, muscle pains, cramps,
etc. I was aware that I was getting old, over 60, but I suspected that
these were not necessarily natural aging issues. I was having trouble
remembering things, names especially, and at times felt like my brain
was fogged. I developed neuropathies (tingling and numbness) in my
hands and feet. I grew suspicious that these things were connected with
the whopping dose of Crestor that I was on. There is, of course, a
body of anecdotal chat on the Web about the evils of Crestor and other
statin drugs, and in July of 2011 I decided to taper down and get off
the stuff. By September it was out of my system. My doctor was rather
cross with me. He assured me that an LDL level above 70 was a death
sentence, should I get back there.
Over the next six
months, the brain fog and the name-forgetting went away, but the muscle
issues and fatigue-and-stamina problems persisted. I was still on my
nearly fat-free vegan diet. My theory was to see how far up my
cholesterol would go on diet alone. In November it clocked in at 220
total and I forget the LDL number because my doctor was shaking his
head and making clucking sounds as he reported it, along with his
now-standard empirical warning that I was back in the death zone.
So, all winter I staggered on feeling shitty and eating low-fat
vegan. There is for sure a large body of counter-argument on the whole
cholesterol issue, led by the author-journalist Gary Taubes (a
supernaturally fit-looking dude). This argument states that fat is
actually a critical and essential component of human diet, and animal
fat in particular, which is crucial for the continual process of cell
renewal and the processing of many other nutrients, especially many
vitamins. There is also a range of amino acids, the building blocks of
proteins, that you can only get from animal foods. All of these things
have a bearing on muscle performance and the health of nerve tissue, in
which fats are an indispensible component.
Frankly, I
knew about these counter-arguments, but the authority of medicine these
days militates the opposite way, and in these nearly five years I
allowed the authority of my doctor to persuade me to drive down my
cholesterol by all means available. I now regard this as a mistake,
perhaps even a personal fiasco. I think I have done a lot of damage to
my system and that it will take a long time to repair. But I am back in
the realm of meat, cheese, and eggs. And, yes, I do eat a lot of
vegetables, especially green and leafy ones, and I am watching my
carbohydrates (but not eschewing them).
I've also come
to a conclusion about what started this whole long melodrama. At the
time I first got my high cholesterol "riot act" reading, I was also
eating a lot of sugar and refined white flour in a certain form. In the
evenings, after a day that included at least two episodes of strenuous
exercise, I allowed myself to eat Pepperidge Farm cookies and Ben and
Jerry's ice cream. I probably ran through a bag of cookies every two or
three days and ditto a pint of ice cream. I now believe that my
cholesterol numbers were high not so much because of the meat and
cheese that I was eating, but because I regularly consumed too much
sugar and refined flour. That is my current theory and narrative.
So, I'm back to an omnivore's diet. (The first time I had real eggs
scrambled in butter in nearly five years was quite a moment!) It's been
about ten days. I can't say that I've noticed any marked improvements.
As I said above, it will probably take a long time to undo the damage
done. I'll check in again on this theme after a while and let you know
how things are going. I'm scheduled to go in for another routine
physical on Friday. I imagine it will be a contentious session. But I
wonder if doctors are losing their legitimacy now in a way similar to
the other authority figures in our culture: the political leaders, the
bankers economists, the business executives. To get back to where I
started this blog, all is swindle these days. And medicine, being the
life-and-death racket that it is, may be the biggest swindle of them
all.
