Dear Friends,

Three weeks ago I visited with one of our very good customers, Dr. Jeffrey Morrison’s practice—The Morrison Center in Manhattan. I was very happy to find out from Dr. Morrison that he had just come out with his first book, Cleanse Your Body, Clear Your Mind: Eliminate Environmental Toxins to Lose Weight, Increase Energy, and Reverse Illness in 30 Days or Less (Pub. 2011), and that after our conversation he was going to a book signing event. I bought his book, and what a great book it is for detox, weight loss, and as a guide for developing a healthy dietary pattern.

Both Dr. Morrison and Dr. Dukan, the creator of the Dukan Diet, the diet we talked about last week, were influenced by Dr. Robert Atkin’s protein diet. The Dukan Diet is similar to the Atkins diet minus the fat. Dr. Morrison’s diet differs even further, he does not advocate eating red meat, just a little if necessary. Also he recommends eating lots of vegetables, even starchy veggies. You can snack on carrots, beets, celery or cucumber, avocado, squash and zucchini. For people who are wishing to loose weight, his advice is to lower the amount of carbs found in grains and beans.

What I particularly like about the Morrison Diet is that it is not extreme! It’s very reasonable, doable and healthy. The core of the 30-day detox diet is the meal plan and food selection, which allow you to eliminate chemicals, toxins and food sensitivities. This elimination diet focuses on non-allergenic, nutrient-dense, seasonal, organic and locally grown foods.

The book contains a questionnaire that one is to fill out and score before starting the program. At the end of your 30-day detox, you retake the survey to compare the results.

Dr. Morrison suggests a shake for breakfast and a shake with a salad for lunch. Then you’re to have a sensible dinner that you choose from the meal plan. Each dinner focuses on lean protein and fresh grilled, steamed or raw vegetables. There is a long list of foods to enjoy, while on the 30-day plan, and a short list of foods to avoid.

Foods that can be enjoyed everyday:

• Water- 1 to 2 liters.
• Vegetables- steamed, sautéed, raw (there is a long list of 44 non and mildly starchy vegetables, include sea vegetables).
• Olive oil.
• Lemon juice.
• Spices.
• Green tea.
• Meat- once a day 4 to 6 oz. of chicken, turkey, fish, organic eggs.
• Fruit- grapefruit, kiwi, berries, apples, cherries, papaya, melon, pears.

Dr. Morrison advice for weight loss is that while on the detox diet one should eat fruit in the morning but not through the day. He says that, if you eat fruit before noon, you will have all day to burn off the sugar that is ready for your body to use. However, if you eat fruit too late in the day, the sugar will not get burned off and you will just end up storing the extra calories as body fat.

He has directions for vegetarians, for athletes and for those for whom weight loss is not a goal. He talks about juicing, gives recipes, ways to personalize the diet and concludes with seven steps to lasting health. It is a book with excellent dietary guidance for everyone today. I highly recommend it.

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

Dr. Morrison believes in supporting your detox with supplementation, and gives a list of his favorite companies and suggestions on what to use. I am happy to say that BioImmersion is amongst those listed. We discussed how to create good shakes in the mornings using the Beta Glucan and No 7, and soon we can have recipes for the new Energy Sustain Complex.

The Last Quiz Answer:

The marvelous creature of course is a South American Toucan. The toucan’s bill is 7 1/2 inches long, and both males and females possess these amazing beaks. As a weapon, the bill is more show than substance. It is a honey comb bone that contains a lot of air. It is more useful for feeding. Their diet includes fruits, insects, young birds, eggs and lizards. They’re omnivorous creatures, rather like us. According to my National Geographic source material,these iconic birds are very popular pets. Must be a South American thing. I’ve never seen a pet toucan. Have you?

A great resource for information about how to eat locally is the Eat Well Guide. The Eat Well Guide is a free, online directory of family farms, restaurants, food co-ops, farmers markets and other purveyors of local, organic and sustainably produced foods.

Dear Friends,

“Food is what connects us all to each other and to the natural world, which makes it an incredibly powerful medium for thinking and acting collectively … I can’t think of a more powerful or positive global revolution than one in which we all learned to see the world through food …” (a quote from author Carolyn Steele regarding her book: Hungry City).

When we think about the fact that there are now over one billion starving people in our world and over a billion individuals who are overweight—food as a collective focus for corrective action arguably should be put at the top of the list.

When we think about the health consequences of being overweight, of an increased risk to heart disease, cancer, diabetes and arthritis, to name a few—food becomes an intelligent focus for an effective risk management solution.

When we think about the link between the mounting environmental disaster occurring world-wide of global warming, de-forestation, oceanic dead zones, contaminated and depleted groundwater supplies with the unsustainable industrialized agricultural practices throughout the world today—we will come to realize that a properly thought-out and implemented food system can accomplish our most utopian of goals, creating a world governed by principles of economic sustainability, environmental quality and social equity.

Here’s a very pertinent reflection by Rebecca Hoskins in her film: The Farm for the Future:

Here is a typical to-go ham sandwich one might buy at your local Big Box Store. Let’s start with the bread. Somewhere in the world some farmer has had to plant the cereal. First off, he is using a diesel run tractor. So he has to plow the fields, then harrow the field, then he has to drill the seeds into the earth. And, to get the cereal to grow he has had to apply a load of chemicals to protect the crop- fungicides, herbicides, insecticides- all made from oil. As for the nutrients, chemical fertilizers, and at the moment most of the farmer’s fertilizers are derived from natural gas. Once the cereal ripens it has to be harvested, using massive harvesters. Then the grain is dried using big heaters. Next it is driven using even more diesel to the factory to be processed. This isn’t some little shop, it’s huge industrial factory with huge buckets making this bread. Then we go on to the inside of the sandwich and the ham obviously comes from a pig. And, pigs are even more energy hungry because pigs are fed grain and one pig can eat nearly a half a ton of the stuff. And, to add to it we have a token half a piece of salad in it which was either shipped in, flown in, or grown in a heated greenhouse—once again, huge amounts of energy. All of these ingredients were either cooked or cooled or both and driven mile after mile in a refrigerated trunk before they were assembled into a sandwich. Basically this sandwich like most of the food that we are eating today is dripping in oil.

So, how did we get from an environmentally friendly Paleolithic diet of fresh organic fruits, vegetables and meats to a big box sandwich dripping in oil?

Glad you asked! And, so is Carolyn Steel—one of our most elegant commentators on our hungry cities.

About 10,000 years ago is the beginning of a process in the ancient Near East within the “fertile crescent” where there is a convergence of two phenomena—agriculture and urbanism. It was the discovery of grain and the domestication of animals by our ancient ancestors that produced a food source that was large enough and stable enough to support permanent settlements.

These settlements were compact and surrounded by farmlands of millet, wheat, amaranth, buckwheat, quinoa, oats, chia which became staples, along with cultured dairy products from their domesticated animals. The city of Ur in Chaldea, home of Abraham, as described in the Bible, was one such city. So too were the cities built by the Incas of South America and the Aztec of North America. These cities were dominated by large temple complexes. They were spiritualized central food distribution centers because it was the temples that organized the harvests, gathered in the seeds and grains, offered it to the gods and offered the grains that the gods didn’t eat back to the people. The whole spiritual and physical life of these cities was dominated by the grain and the harvest that sustained them.

Rome had about a million citizens by the first century AD. It had access to the sea which made it possible to import food from far away. In fact, Rome waged war on Carthage and Egypt just to get their grain reserves. If we look at preindustrial London, grain came into the city via the Thames River which runs through the southern part of London. Therefore, the main grain market developed in south London, while the meat market developed in the northwest corner of the city. The animals to be slaughtered were herded into the city from Wales and Scotland. The food markets were the center of city life in the preindustrial world. These cities were very organic and part of an organic cycle.

Then came the industrial revolution and everything changed. Now animals were slaughtered outside the cities and brought into the city by train. Cities can be grow into any size and shape, they are emancipated from geography as food can be transported in. The rest is history that we are all very familiar with. We drive to a “big box” to get a week’s worth of processed foods and then drive home. We used to cook, now we just add water. We don’t smell food to see if its good. We just read the back of a label on a package. Cities have actually distanced us from our most important relationship—that between us and food, us and nature.

Projects to reconnect us with nature, to make cities more organic, to revitalize fresh food markets, to bring real food back into our cities and our lives, are occurring all over the world. Food is the center of life. It is to be celebrated and enjoyed by all. What can be more of a productive work than our collective focus on creating a vital and equitable food distribution for all of humanity?

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

Detox and weight loss are certainly hot topics in medicine along with the myriad of programs to effectively and of course efficiently accomplish these goals. One such program that is getting a lot of press (could be because supposedly the royals are using this diet) is The Dukan Diet.

Created by French medical doctor Pierre Dukan, it is a high protein, low fat, low cholesterol, low carb, approach to weight loss. The first phase of the program, the attach phase, consists of consuming pure protein products, 72 to choose from—and one such protein is non-fat yogurt. He also recommends during this phase eating oat bran and drinking lots of water.

With no fruits and vegetables, it is imperative to add in the Therapeutic Foods for antioxidant and phytonutrients benefits. The probiotics will help those who deal with allergies to dairy. With all this protein intake, the challenge is to maintain a healthy balance of intestinal flora that are fermenters and not putrefiers. Read last week’s email for more information. The Original Synbiotic Formula, with 4 grams of inulin and 20 billion lactic acid fermenting bacteria per teaspoon, would be a perfect choice. The Beta Glucan Synbiotic Formula with 10 gram of fiber (oat beta glucans, red beet root fiber, and inulin) plus the same 5 good bacteria as the Original would be another. Finally the Number 7 Systemic Booster with probiotic and fiber, berry extracts (which are very low in sugar, and other important nutraceuticals and phytonutrients would be a powerful addition.

The Last Quiz Answer:

It is very impressive for me to see Tippi befriending this bull African elephant. African elephants are much more hostile towards humans than their Indian elephant counterparts. African elephants have had predators trying to kill them and their young ones for tens of thousands of years while Asian elephants have had little predator interaction. No African elephants have been domesticated persay, but a handful have created strong bonds with humans as Tippi gives testimony to here.

“None talk about the solution to having enough food to feed a big hungry city more effectively that Carolyn Steel. In this clip you’ll hear her giving an important March 2011 TED talk in London. The talks entitled Sitopia—How can we think through food?

Dear Friends,

Look at this picture here. Symbiogenesis? Well, it’s not exactly two species working together for their mutual survival, but can you imagine sitting on the trunk of this huge African bull elephant, being his friend, and he being yours? It certainly would open-up ones heart towards these marvelous creatures, and motivate us to figure out a way to live side by side, respectfully. That’s exactly what happened to this young girl, named Tippi, who isn’t a child any more. She’s 23 and living in Paris. For the first ten years of her life, Tippi lived with her parents amongst the Bushmen of Namibia, befriending and bonding with the hunter/gatherer people and the marvelous wild animals of Africa all around her. In this clip she takes us back to her African roots—Tippi.

Last week we began our discussion about Paleolithic Man and Neolithic man. In Tippi we have a merger of these two ways of living and surviving. I too had my own experience with a hunter/gatherer type society during my two years of living as a Peace Corps volunteer with the Yapese people of The Western Caroline Island in the Western Pacific. The Yapese spent each day hunting and gathering—fishing, picking wild fruits, berries, vegetables, and also engaging in a little gardening, having a small patch of horticulture—growing a variety taros and sweet potatoes. I joined with them in all these activities. Like the Bushmen, they too dressed with minimal attire, for the men that meant a loincloth, the same garb I also wore for two years.

The bottom line: my daily diet, while in Yap, was fresh vegetables, fruits, root vegetables, seeds, seafood, and lots of drinking of young coconut water. We didn’t eat sugar, grains or dairy. I was strong and healthy on this diet, and so were the Yapese people. As a public health official, I conducted a two-year epidemiological study on the state of Yapese health. In terms of the chronic diseases physicians deal daily in their practices today, the Yapese had none—no cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, neurological disease, autoimmune disease. They were a very healthy people. Their lives consisted of plenty of fresh organic food, a clean unpolluted environment to live in, lots of exercise in the process of getting food, dancing and walking everywhere they went, no worries as to their physical survival, and plenty of socialization—everyone belonged.

As we moved into the Neolithic Revolution around 10,000 BCE, we encounter the advent of agriculture with its monocultures of grains and the domestication of animals such as sheep, goats, camels, buffaloes and cows, adding grain, milk, and regular consumption of meat—new dietary and life style elements for the Neolithic man.

There is another new component to the Neolithic diet for us to contemplate: the fermentation of our food—the microbial world, our symbiotic friends. When you think about it, the fermentation of food most certainly occurred in Paleolithic times, spontaneously, as food decomposes naturally into a fermented or putrefied state. In fact, fermented foods were very likely among the first foods consumed by human beings. Freshly killed meat, if not eaten immediately, would have begun to decompose rapidly, or 10,000 years ago when the first camels were milked and the milk left out it was either consumed within a few hours or else it would sour and curdle, turning into something like buttermilk.

There are two possible paths in the decomposition of food—putrefaction or fermentation. The result can be either good for our health, or make us very sick and possibly kill us. It all depends on which bacteria that take hold and most rapidly grow. Empirically we learned this long ago. We learned that, most of the time, if something smells bad, not to eat it. Of course, it wasn’t until after Pasteur, that we learned that putrefaction is caused by bacteria such as species of Clostridia, Listeria, Staph, Kleseilla, Enterococci, Salmenella, and E coli.

Most of the time, but not always, putrid food turns slimy and stinks badly of hydrogen sulfide, ammonia and solids—smells that help us to identify rotting food. If the decomposition is dominated by the fermentation pathways of lactic acid organisms, mostly bacteria of the Lactobaccilus and Bifido genera, plus a wide variety of beneficial yeast organisms, then we can have some very beneficial outcomes for our health and our taste buds, due to their metabolites assisting our digestion, their production of vitamins, and importantly their production lactic acid and of bacterocins, which inhibit pathogens such as those that cause the spoilage of foods. Lactic acid organisms not only help us to digest our food, but protect us from pathogenic organisms. In fact, we are in the process of discovering how they work synergistically with our underlying immune system—the GALT.

Historically, fermented foods of all kinds were part of the typical dietary habit of many civilization as the Neolithic Revolution unfolded. Many of the longest living societies attribute much of their robust longevity to their regular dietary intake of lacto-fermented foods. A practice modern society has forgotten for a time and now is beginning to take seriously.

To be continued…

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

In the making of sausage (fermented meat) what is one of the most highly used organisms? The answer is Lactobacillus plantarum.

The fermented meat industry is a very tricky business for meat is very susceptible to decomposition by dangerous pathogens. In the sausage industry the practice of using L. plantarum with a little sugar on the fresh meat allows the plantarum to grow fast, produce its inhibitory bacterocins and thereby inhibit the bad guys. The byproduct of their fermentation is carbon dioxide and water and healthy short chain fatty acids, and of course the sausage taste so many love.

Our Original and Beta Glucan Synbiotic Formulas have L. plantarum in them. Now you understand why we have chosen these strong bacteria. They help keep Clostridia, E-coli, Staph, and other potential pathogens at acceptable levels.

The Last Quiz Answer:

This is a red fox taking dinner home. This, not-so-little, fox is living symbiotically on the farm described in the video, The Farm for the Future. Once more I have linked you to this priceless video.

Here is an amazing fact or two for you: The red fox is a very adaptable carnivore and has the largest distribution of any wild land mammal in the world! They are the top predator in the UK. Check out this: The Fox Website.

“More than 5,400 employees work through a network of over 90 offices in over 40 countries around the world. On-the-ground conservation projects are active in more than 100 countries.” This is a quote from The World Wildlife Fund’s 2010 Annual Report. It’s Tuesday evening in Washington DC, I have been here lecturing and meeting with doctors here all day. In my travels walking the streets of Georgetown, I came upon a gorgeous building that is the home to The World Wildlife Fund. I went in for a visit. Sixty years ago, on the 29th of April 1961 a group of high minded scientists, royals and philanthropists issued The Morges Manifesto, a detailed analysis of the critical state of the world’s wildlife and a clarion call for the creation of an international organization to raise the funds necessary to save wildlife form extinction. For me it was one of those serendipitous events, I was able to spend time interviewing one of the staff zoologists whose work focused on the Congo. More on our conversation in another newsletter, but check them out—The WWF.

Dear Friends,

Last week we entered into Deep Time and traveled through four billion years of evolution and arrived at the Quaternary Period—the Age of Man. This we divided into the Epochs, the Pleistocene—the Age of Paleolithic Man and the Holocene—the Age of Neolithic Man.

Paleolithic is a prehistoric time distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools. It extends from the earliest known use of tools, 2.6 million years ago to the end of the Pleistocene (10,000 BCE). During the Paleolithic Epoch humans grouped together in small societies such as bands and subsisted by gathering plants and hunting or scavenging wild animals. This is called the Old Stone Age.

Dogs appear to be the oldest domesticated species. They may have been domesticated by the late Paleolithic age, around 20,000 years ago. Camels appear to have been domesticated by about 9000 BCE. Horse, sheep and goats joined them around 7000 BCE.

Domestication of plants occurred later—termed by historians as cultivation. Cultivation is a process by which humans plant seeds, care for the seedlings, harvest the mature plants, and store some seeds for future planting.

Humans changed the balance of nature by first identifying plants that were good to eat and then establishing seeds from those plants under favorable growing conditions.

The first type of cultivation was probably horticulture. Horticulture is the care and tending of gardens. Small plots yielding a variety of plant products for the use of a clan or community. Horticulture was a highly successful strategy for feeding a clan.

A second kind of cultivation is called agriculture. Horticulturalists established small gardens supporting a variety of useful plants, where as agriculture involves converting large stretches of territory to a single plant. Evidence of agriculture, as apposed to horticulture does not appear in the archeological record until about 4500 BCE.

Agriculture as apposed to horticulture made rapid inroads in five areas worldwide. These five areas are sometime called the cultural hearths, for their roles in helping establish both culture and civilization in their region of the world. Each area developed a particular group of food and fiber plants for cultivation in fields, and these plants remain the core of the modern world’s diet today. These areas are Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, and Mesoamerica. This was the beginning of the Neolithic Age- the so-called Neolithic Revolution. Civilization began.

Next week we will continue the evolutionary food path to modern times, looking at the consequences for our health.

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

Our two newest products coming out this month will bring plant minerals from deep in our evolutionary past, and seeds and grains whose origins began with the Neolithic revolution. We are still working on finishing the labels, and hopefully we can show you in the next couple of weeks why we are so excited. Here they are:

Plant Trace Minerals—These aren’t just any old minerals, these are really old minerals, over 80 of them, coming from plant deposits from deep time’s Mesozoic Era—a time when Dinosaurs roamed in their prime and the earth’s flora was composed of lush green forests and wholesome, succulent, wild fruits and vegetables and the fertile soil was rich and deep. These rare deposits of Mesozoic plant strata are found at various locations around the world. Much more on this next week.

Energy Sustain Complex—a global blend of indigenous organic seeds and grains. Organically grown and processed with advanced technology that maintains the wholeness of foods while utilizing the exact science of molecular concentration for therapeutic purposes. Here’s a brief glimpse of the contents for you: Organic Millet- may be the old dating back to 8300 BCE in Korea and China; Organic Amaranth- was domesticated in Mexico as early as 7000 BCE; Organic Buckwheat- began in Southeast Asia around 6000 BCE; Organic Quinoa- cultivated in South America at least 3,000 BCE and Organic Chia- grown in the Southwestern US and Mexico around 7000 BCE.

Think of this important concept: our body has pathway built in its genetic code to be turned on by these historical foods and nutrients.

The Last Quiz Answer:

Bet you thought it was a couple of skunks. Sorry, they are two European badger (Meles meles). European badgers are social burrowing animals that lives on a wide variety of plant and animal food. It is very fussy over the cleanliness of its burrow, and defecates in latrines. Cases are known of European badgers burying their dead family members. Although ferocious when provoked, the European badger is generally a peaceful animal, having been known to share its burrows with other species such as rabbits, red foxes and raccoons.

Do animals have feelings? Here is a touching series of pictures capturing the loss of a love one. A bird gets hit by a car, suffering and hurt, its partner desperately trying to feed it, comfort it, and then at the end grieve for its lost mate. Absolutely touching. (From Israel).