The meat most often associated with baseball is that highly processed tube filled with meat by-products and cereal, better known as hotdogs.  But, there may be a greater connection between sports and fresh meat not so often correlated.   I am speaking of the ability to project missile weapons, in an overhand motion, with deadly accuracy.  It all may have started with sticks and stones, but the weapons would become more and more lethal as new designs were implemented for distance, accuracy and the amount of damage they could inflict.

An otter will use a rock as an anvil to crack open a clam shell and a chimpanzee is capable of manipulating a twig into a termite mound and withdraw the attacking soldiers for a quick snack.  But, only one animal ever displayed the ingenuity required to conceive of lashing the rock to the stick to create a much more effective tool; and that is man.  The ability to “create” something that never before existed from raw materials is solely human and may have been driven by the need to acquire meat.  I understand that this is in no way definitive, because it could have been evolved for defensive purposes or for the need for social interaction.  Yet, the ability to project a missile weapon  required a tremendous amount physiological changes within the brain, nervous system and muscles of the human to achieve this feat.

There is a sizable part of the human brain dedicated to this deadly skill.  It also requires a tremendous amount of extra neurons and small muscles to achieve, yet even children as young as two years old begin to develop this ability.  Young children have a desire to throw objects, whether it be rocks, toys or sports equipment.  The drive to develop this inherited skill is so strong, that we have literally invented hundreds of competitions to display our superiority at it.  Whether it be a baseball, basketball, bowling ball, darts or javelins, humans spend most of their lives honing and refining this age-old technique.  Could a talent now used for recreation and entertainment be steeped in a necessary skill once paramount to our survival?

Chimpanzees are several times stronger than humans who are twice their weight.  Many scholars believe that the reason for this is because humans sacrificed the superior strength of other primates in exchange for muscular finesse.  We have much greater small muscle control than any of the great apes.  With an ape, muscle contraction is all or nothing, with very little dexterity when compared to humans.  Humans have many times the amount of nerve communication to the small muscles than apes, which results in less overall strength, but greater control.  For more details read this study “The Secret To Chimp Strength“.  The video below is a perfect exhibition of how inept a chimpanzee is at the small muscle control necessary to wield or toss even a simple weapon.

Notice how the chimp attempts to use the club with an underhand, rather than overhand, swing.  His thumb is much too underdeveloped to hold the stick with the authority necessary for multiple swings and he loses grip easily.  Even though chimpanzees are hunters, they use their bare hands and teeth as their only weapon to dispatch monkeys.  Even a group of adolescent humans could have pelted the cat with projectiles from a much further distance, giving the predator no choice but to flee or die.  For what reason would a human have the need for large canine teeth?   Claws and fangs are a greater health risk because they can be broken off during battle?

Was this simply a skill developed for defensive purposes in the manner that the chimps in the video are using it?  I don’t believe so.  Why would an organism expend so much brain, nerve and small muscles in order to turn a rudimentary skill into an art form, when simply climbing a tree or retreating would accomplish the same safety without so many complex cybernetics created?  Nature is always much more efficient than that.  It is more reasonable to assume that this ability was acquired so our ancestors could stand their ground, rather than flee.  Children could be lifted and carried to safety, so it is more reasonable to assume that this skill set was used either to defend a kill or chase a predator away from its victim.

It may well have started as a means of frightening a predator from its prize, but once the hominids realized that they could defeat the largest predators and steal their groceries, it wouldn’t be long before they would decide to just make the kill themselves and get the freshest meat.  When humans had mastered the fine art of missile weaponry, we became the apex predator and nothing could stand against us.  Sprinting speed is not necessary when you can deliver a terminal wound outside of the striking distance of the quarry.  This is why humans have never needed speed, power or large teeth and claws to be the most effective hunter this globe has ever seen.  Our nutritional intake is thereby directed to the feeding of our massive brain, rather than the maintenance of large muscles, teeth and jaws.

In the series “I Caveman”, televised on The Discovery Channel, Robb Wolf was able to inflict a mortal wound on an adult elk from a distance of over thirty yards with only the use of an atlatl (one of the most primitive weapons used by paleolithic man).  Video here.

The elk is an animal much larger, faster and more powerful than a human.    Even the largest lion would take great risk attempting to dispatch a full-grown elk alone, and would probably decide to look for a smaller calf.  Humans are the only hunter that consistently seek out the largest and strongest prey, rather than the small, weak and sickly.  If another predator breaks a tooth, fang, claw or bone, their survival is in severe jeopardy.  Whereas a human can simply replace our weapon with a new one and perhaps improve on its design.

Being able to hit your opponent from a great distance is far more frightening than any muscle, claws, fangs, horns or stingers.  This may also be why nearly every animal on earth seems imprinted with a natural fear of humans.  Distance and accuracy are far more terrifying than speed and power.  The U.S. has the most feared military because we are capable of striking the most damage from the farthest distance with frightening accuracy.  This technology will always usurp large numbers and infantry prowess.

It really irritates me when I see these rash of survivalist programs on television, where the host proclaims that they are in an area where they are no longer the “top of the food change” or the “apex predator”.  This can only be done for drama.  Yes, there are times when an animal can ambush an unprepared human, but this never makes the human less than a top predator, because even lions are killed or injured by zebras on occasion and crocodiles are trampled to death by wildebeest.  With some simple rocks, sticks and vines, any human will devise the deadliest of weapons and traps, capable of killing the most ferocious predator or prey anywhere.  Stone age humans hunted much larger and more powerful game than anything alive today, and were so efficient, they hunted many of them into extinction.  They were able to out-compete cats twice as large as any feline living today, all strictly by the ability to strike with lethal force from a safe distance.

We can take this theory even further.  Creating an accurate projectile tossing mechanism to hit a stationary object would be far less complex than evolving one that is capable of hitting a moving object.  Humans have the incredible ability to judge speed, distance, wind and gravity, then almost instantaneously make the precise calculations to lead their target to collide with precision.  Then that information is relayed to a multitude of opposing muscles, even to the point of adding a spin on the missile object to give it better accuracy and distance.  Many baseball pitchers have mastered the art of making the projectile hook, arch, twist or curve.  Is that just an expression of the smelly ape sticking a twig in a hole?

It likely started with sticks and stones, but it was this rudimentary skill set, coupled with the creative ability to combine elements for more effectiveness, that led from spears to slings to arrows.  The same skill is necessary to operate even a firearm with accuracy.  With their lack of dexterity, a chimpanzee could not operate a firearm and would most likely shoot themselves in the foot.   The inbred need to hone this skill is so overwhelming that we have created many recreational outlets for it.  On any given Sunday, an NFL quarterback echoes the evolution of our ancestors when he eyes a speeding receiver forty yards downfield and in an instant considers the wind direction and velocity, the amount of force and spin to put on the ball.  He then heaves it in an overhand motion, allowing gravity to create the perfect arc to meet the racing player at a precise point on the field.  Nature certainly didn’t create a mind capable of so many calculations and fine muscle control just to win a football game.  This complex machine was created for the original purpose of acquiring our dinner.

Humans are not only good hunters, we are the most efficient and frightening hunter earth has ever produced.  If T-Rex was still around when humans came into being, he would have certainly been hunted to extinction by now.  Never let anyone convince you that humans are anything less than the most efficient  hunter based on the fact that we lack large canines, claws, power or great speed.  Think of the story of David in Goliath.  The heavily armored giant had the superior strength and longer reach than the diminutive Shepard, but, it was his skill at missile weaponry (a sling) that more than leveled the playing field.

Just because some vegan’s ancestor was too much of a pussy to hunt anything more dangerous than an apple, does not mean the rest of us are not descended from brave hunters who passed on their missile projecting genetics to the rest of us.

In 1998, the Copyright Term Extension Act was being debated by the U.S. Congress, which lengthened the amount of years before a copyrighted material would enter into the public domain.  The law would extend the life of a copyright for works of a corporate nature from 70 years to 95 years!

The law was known as the “Sonny Bono Term Extension Act”, but was pejoratively called the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act”, because The Disney Corporation was the biggest driving force behind the Lobby.  Why?  Because Mickey Mouse was nearing the 70 year mark and would soon enter the public domain.  Many other early Disney characters would soon follow, as their copyright expiration dates were closing fast.  This would be a huge financial blow to the Disney brand, so it would reason that they would lead this crusade.

Congress awarded the extension in 1998, and I’m quite sure that Disney’s 6.3 million dollars in campaign donations between 1997-1998 had no bearing on the decision.  Congress overstepped its power and ruled in favor of corporate welfare rather than their sworn duty to the promotion of “progress”, as written in the Constitution Article 1, Section 8:

The Congress shall have Power… To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

I might not have a problem with Disney’s action, had their corporation built its vast empire on originally created material.  The fact that Disney used prior works as a springboard to success envelops this all in the stench of hypocrisy.  The Disney company had a moderate level of success with the original characters featured in early black and white short films.  Disney did not really hit stride until making full length animated features.  Giving credit where due, “Fantasia” was original Disney characters and story line, if you want to call it that.  “Fantasia” was literally a series of short animated stories edited together to a soundtrack made up of mostly public domain music for which Disney paid no license (with the exception of “The Rite Of Spring”).

From there on, most Disney feature animations would be based on stories that had since fallen into public domain.  Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and many other princess stories, were based on age-old fairy tales that Disney was not required to pay license or royalties for.  Later works would include children’s literature like: “Pinocchio”, “Alice in Wonderland” , “The Jungle Book” (released just one year after Kipling’s copyright expired),– All in the public domain!   Disney didn’t pay a cent for story license, yet reaped many millions.  The “Little Mermaid”, “Beauty and the Beast”, “Aladdin” and all features made under the reign of Michael Eisner, would be from public domain.  Of course, Disney touted “The Lion King” as an original story.  Not!   Besides being an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” told through a pride of lions, there are way too many similarities between The Lion King and a 1960s Japanese animated series called “Kimba the White Lion”.  Though Disney claims these a coincidence, they would sue anyone else into oblivion if they came half as close to one of their properties.  The clip below illustrates just how “original” Disney’s “The Lion King” really is. 

Disney has had few original productions not based on time-tested classics,  and when they do, they often flopped big time.  The “Aristocats” would be an example.

(Do not confuse Disney with Pixar.  Pixar is the brain-child of John Lasseter and had its own talented writing staff, who penned awesome original stories.  Disney was only Pixar’s distributer, until they bought them in Jan. 25, 2006.  Pixar is still Lasseter’s project, with its own writers.)

Hey, Disney, have you ever heard of “sending the elevator back down”?.  They built an empire off of other people’s intellectual properties and then sue daycare centers, who dare place any Disney image in the classrooms or playgrounds (real case, Hallandale, Fl, 1989).  Then Disney has the audacity to purchase copyrights on the characters they liberated from the public domain.  Yes, they didn’t create the characters, but they now own the iconic image that they created to represent them.  Anything even remotely resembling them, they will attack with the ferocity of a pack of hyenas.

During the airing of The Oscars in 1989, a musical skit was performed with a singing Snow White (portrayed by singer-dancer Eileen Bowman).  Disney actually sued the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences for having a character wearing a similar wig and costume to the Disney movie version.  The character named Snow White has origins as far back as the middle ages, yet Disney thinks they now own her.  When it was discovered that someone else (other than Disney) probably held the copyright for Bambi, Disney began throwing out ridiculous legal concepts to come up with anything that would get the copyright out of the hands of this other potential owner — including the claim that Bambi was in the public domain AND that Disney owned the copyright to it.

No matter how long something has lived in the public domain, if Disney makes an animated version of it, it now belongs to them.  So, if Disney makes an animated version of the Bible or Koran, they will own those characters as well.  I can see the headlines now: “Disney versus the State of Islam over rights to Muhammad”, followed by images of planes crashing into Cinderella’s Castle in Orlando.

Of course Disney is not as adamant about paying royalties as they are at collecting.  Disney attempted to stiff singer Peggy Lee for the royalties for her voice work in “Lady and The Tramp” when it was released for home video in 1987.  Disney claimed that her original contract, signed in 1952, which gave her the right to participate in “transcriptions for sales to the public”, did not specifically cover “home video” sales.  The idea of home video technology did not exist in 1952!  Thankfully, the courts ruled in favor of the seventy year old Lee.

Our nation’s founders did not consider inventions and artistic expression as property, but as public goods to which exclusive rights might be granted for a limited time as purely a means of incentive for production.  Thomas Jefferson expressed  this sentiment in a letter written in 1813:

Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding ___ years, but no longer term, and for no other purpose.” — Thomas Jefferson.

The blank in the quotation was left to be filled in later by an agreed upon vote, but certainly not the 95 years Congress has now awarded.  For more information on Jefferson’s attitude concerning copyrights read here.

Jefferson, being a literary writer, inventor and musician himself, reluctantly believed that the creator of an intellectually property should be rewarded for an acceptable time, just to give incentive to create.  But he also felt that ownership should not transfer to family or companies for eternally long periods.  He knew that this promotes hoarding of intellectual properties, only for sale or view for the wealthy.  These works need to eventually become part of history and education FOR ALL!

What if Mozart, Da Vinci, Dickens, Shakespeare and the likes, were still privately held?  How would people of little means gain access and knowledge?  It is not in the best interest of a society to withhold knowledge and art from those of lesser means.  Can we see even Disney’s classic works for free?  Hardly.  This is exactly what our founders did not want.

It is obviously Disney’s intention that their properties NEVER fall into public domain.  You can bet that Disney will again barter congress for more extensions once their new deadline comes to term, thereby preventing anyone else from duplicating what Walt did.  Is this fair?  Even Shakespeare built on the prior works of Holingshead’s Chronicles of England (1573).  Had these idiotic perpetual copyright extensions existed then, we would not have Shakespeare or many other great works that have help the “progress” of society.

If Disney ‘s 75 year old creations were rightfully allowed to fall into public domain, then other artists could use that art to build new forms of art from it, just as Disney did with old fairy tales and children’s literature.  And, what if the creators of all those fairy tales and children’s literature would have bought government favor to extend the copyrights on their work?  They would have charged Disney huge license fees and royalties to use them or refused usage out right (like Disney often does).  Of course Walt could not have afforded the license fees as a start-up animation company.  With Walt being a man of few original ideas, the Disney company would be just another hack animation company publishing cheap Flash animated shorts on YouTube and history would be forever changed.  How is Disney’s greed now affecting the future?

 “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” – Romans 1:22

 When hyper-education overrides instinctual drives and common sense, I can’t help but think of this passage. Humans have wasted the last fifty years attempting to make a science of the benefits of a low-fat diet. Though it is counterintuitive to all dietary traditions, by using enough smoke and mirrors, accompanied by plenty of “soundbite recital”, it was packaged and sold to an otherwise intelligent people. Sometimes we can over-think ourselves into stupidity.

The influence of the low-fat theory has even found its way into many diets that claim to be of paleolithic design.  Loren Cordain and Arthur DeVany promote meat-eating, but still stay within the arena of political correctness by advocating the trimming of fat and using only the leanest cuts of meat.  Lipophobia has become a religion of its own. The fear of fat has been so indoctrinated into our culture that even in the face of millenniums of safe consumption and tons of scientific evidence to the contrary, we still cling to it, even when advocating meat-eating.  It has to be the largest brain-washing ever perpetrated on the human race.

But what if I were to tell you that human beings are the only mammal on earth that have adopted low-fat nutrition?  All other animals enjoy nutrition that is rich in fat — and not just any fat, but saturated fat.  I learned the hard way how saturated fat production in the colon is very important in maintaining the health of the colonic walls. This saturated fat is created from plant fiber and not from ingested animal products.

Though all but around ten inches of my small intestines were removed, about two feet of colon had been spared.  I was left with the rectum, sigmoid and a few inches of descending colon.  The illustration below displays all of the intestines I had left before my transplant.

 Because of the nervous complexities of the rectum, doctors are unable to transplant that section of the colon.  Individuals that lose their rectum due to Crohn’s, UC or cancer cannot have a colon transplanted and must live out the remainder of their lives with an ileostomy or “J” pouch”.  So it was important that the doctors save my native rectum, so I could receive a colon with the rest of the transplanted intestines. This was no small task.  The existing colon parts were no longer connected, so there was no material passing through them anymore.  Everything I ate passed out through a stoma made from the jejunum.  Because the colon was not being used, it became inflamed and started to bleed.  I was suffering from an affliction called “Diversion Colitis” and was losing so much blood as a result, that I required a transfusion every two weeks.  It was very painful.

Indigestible fiber within the stool is devoured by the bacteria of the colon, who then produce a short chain fatty acid (SCFA) called “butyrate” (butyric acid) as a by-product.  In the human colon, the butyrate is absorbed by the cells of the colon lining and used for food.   Butyrate is very important for colon health, and without it, the colon becomes inflamed and ultimately ulcerated.

So, how is all of this relevant to the fact that all mammals maintain health via a high fat diet?  First, let us take a look at a non-ruminant vegetarian mammal like the western lowland gorilla.  Their diet is made up mostly of leafy green vegetables, some fruit and small amount of insects.  Their food is low in fat and available carbohydrates with varied protein, but very high in indigestible fiber.  The gorilla’s macro nutrient per 100 grams of dry matter intake would look something like this:

This puts the caloric intake of available macronutrients at about:

From this we would conclude that the gorilla enjoys a high protein, moderate carbohydrate, and low fat diet.  But remember what we learned from the diversion colitis and how the colonic bacteria convert dietary fiber to butyrate; a saturated fat.  Because the gorilla has a much larger ratio of colon than does the human, fiber is converted to SCFA, changing the macronutrient absorption to an energy ratio of:

Giving the gorilla a total intake of:

The gorilla has six times the absorption available from the colon than does the human, which also means they have many times the amount of bacteria available for digestion of plant cellulose.  The high fiber in the gorilla diet is fermented by the colonic bacteria, yielding short chained fatty acids (SCFA).  In other words, the indigestible carbohydrates are converted to saturated fat and absorbed into the blood.  A human eating a similar diet would just end up crapping most of it out, receiving little benefit.

The gorilla can obtain about 65% of their energy from their hind-gut, whereas the human only receives about 10% from the colon.  The butyrate created in the human colon is mostly used locally by the cells of the intestinal lining and only a very insignificant amount is absorbed.  This is why a human can live without a colon and an ape can’t. (see my post “The Planet That Went Ape!” for more on ape vs. human gut ratio)

Much like carnivorous and other omnivorous animals, humans must receive fatty acids through diet.  When we eat a low-fat diet, we are not simulating the gorilla or chimpanzee diet, we are receiving a diet low in fat and very high in available carbohydrates.  The chimp and gorilla are receiving many times the dietary fat from their gut bacteria than we do on the same diet.  This is most likely the reason why gorillas fed meat in captivity suffer from hypercholesterolemia and die.  Because they can convert fiber to high amounts of saturated fat, any extra fat in their diet creates an overload of serum lipids.  (Chimpanzees are more omnivorous than gorillas and do better than gorillas when fed meat in captivity).

But what about the other herbivores?  Besides having multiple chambered stomachs, ruminants have one very large stomach chamber reserved for plant fermentation.  This stomach is called the rumen, hence the name ruminant.

Ruminant’s stomachs house bacteria only found in the colon of a human.   These bacteria readily convert indigestible carbohydrates into short chained fatty acids, which are absorbed into the bloodstream of the ruminant animal (goats, sheep, cattle, deer, etc.).  At the blood serum level, these animals are receiving a butt-load of saturated fat.  If ruminant animals did not require high amounts of saturated fat, we would not find so much of it in their milk.  Their offspring does not have the bacteria necessary for the fiber conversion to SCFA when born, so like us, they need it from their diet.  Once they have eaten grass for a period, they plant and begin to culture the bacteria necessary to make their own fat from fiber.  (The human stomach remain sterile because of the high acidity.  Ruminant animals have little to no acid in their stomachs)

Once the young ruminant animal has established a healthy bacterial culture, they no longer need dietary fat, but are still receiving the same high level of fat as they were when nursing.  Where do you think all that saturated fat found in their milk and meat comes from?  Because they can manufacture such a large portion of fat from the fiber in their diet, any dietary fat would create a fat overload.  This is probably why a ruminant animal shows no interest in meat or other fatty foods even when available.

Ever notice the way people tend to begin to salivate with one whiff of a pot roast or the smell of steaks on the grill?  You don’t see the same Pavlov’s dog  reaction to broccoli boiling from a human and cabbage cooking smells like the bathroom at a Taco Bell.  Though they are completely healthy foods they are hardly as appetite stimulating.  No herbivore would react in such a manner to the smell of meat cooking, but do show the same level of excitement towards fresh grass.

We are constantly being told that the food that doesn’t excite us is what’s best for us.  Anything that tastes good must be bad for us.  If we were an herbivorous species, we wouldn’t have to threaten children to eat their vegetables.  I raise cattle and have yet to see a mother cow threaten to withhold her calf’s dessert until he finishes that acre of grass.  Their offspring immediately have a strong urge to eat grass on their own.  Telling us that our vegetables are the healthiest thing on our plate begins as a mental reinforcement to get children to eat the one thing on their plate they desire least.  The conditioning becomes so strong, many cannot let go of it  even into adulthood.  This has even created a major bias in nutritional research.

Everyone wants to debate the issue based on questionable studies and theories of  biochemical reactions of macronurients and human hormones and it all becomes complicated and sounds very impressive.  History has taught us that if you want to sell a bogus idea, make it sound real complex.  It would seem logical that our ancestors knew nothing of biochemistry.  Just like the ruminant calf, they sought after whatever tasted good and was available.  We evolved to get the most out of the foods our ancestors ate.

Our fore-bearers began eating meat, maybe because they noticed that carnivores had more free time on their hands, whereas herbivores spent their entire existence eating and taking a dump.  Maybe they were just drawn more to the smell and taste of meat.  Maybe herbivores just pissed them off, (as vegans usually do)  so they wanted to kill and eat them.  Either way, this adaptation allowed their brains to grow, their colons to shorten and made them less dependent on digestive bacterium.

Humans began making this trade-off over a million years ago.  We surrendered the herbivore’s energy gobbling hind gut that house the bacteria which manufacture the much-needed SCFA from plant fiber, so we could have a larger brain and be adaptable to different environments.  The only drawback was, we were forever committed to receive our fat from external sources.  Now that our brains have grown to an intellect that can jump to erroneous conclusions based on complex, confusing and contradictory scientific observations, our health as a species has deteriorated ever since.

We are the only species trying to live healthy on a low-fat diet.  Our ancestors taught us how to eat healthy.  Our instincts tell us what to eat.  Your grandmother knew what to eat.  But we have become so much smarter than them that our intellect overrides our sense of smell and taste, and we scoff at our predecessor’s lean, robust bodies and healthy hearts.  We brag at how much healthier our low-fat diets are than the high fat affair of our idiot grandparents and ignore the fact that we have become morbidly obese as a result of the much higher intake of carbohydrates.  In other words, “Professing ourselves to be wise, we became fools”.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you have probably heard the debates surrounding the health risks or benefits of soybean.  There are some people who believe that soy is a superfood, containing components that lend protection from heart disease and cancer; and then there are others who consider soy one of the most dangerous products in our food supply.  The fats from soybean are a polyunsaturated fat, so it considered to be extremely “heart healthy” by doctors, nutritionists and the media.  The media and nutritionists are entirely convinced of the mythical properties of soy, but as far as doctors are concerned, I’ve  witnessed a bit of a double standard.

It is my hope to shed a little new light on this debate, based on my experience with the potential damage associated with soybeans.  After losing my intestines, I was kept alive on infusions of TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition).  TPN contains carbohydrates (dextrose) and protein (amino acids), but it is missing one essential macronutrient — fat.  To cover this problem, the doctors infused lipids every other day with the TPN.  Here in the U.S., hospitals use a liquid fat made from soybeans called “intralipid”.  Yet, the doctors all knew and warned me that prolong infusion of these lipids would ultimately cause cirrhosis of the liver, leading to its failure.  Parenteral Nutrition-Associated Liver Disease (PNALD), is the name given to this syndrome.  The mechanism by which the soy lipids destroy the liver is yet unknown, but it is known that until they can find a suitable replacement for soy, many more livers will die. [PubMed abstract]

At the time I was placed on these infusions, we didn’t know that intestinal transplants existed, so my wife and I were extremely concerned.  I was basically given two possible scenarios that would eventually end my life.  One would be the loss of access because of the damage to the arteries by the TPN [article here].  At that point, I would starve to death.  The second one was when my liver would give out due to the soy lipids, which doctors estimated could take about 2 years.

Fortunately for me, I received my transplant before any permanent damage was sustained by my liver, but a woman who I met in Jackson Memorial Hospital was not so lucky.  This woman had lost her intestines due to a blood clot in her mesenteric artery, cutting off the blood flow to the bowels.  The thrombosis was caused by a faulty gastric bypass surgery she underwent sometime earlier.  (A side point I’d like to cover; I was told by the transplant staff at Jackson Memorial that the number one cause of people losing their intestines and needing transplants are as a result of gastric bypass surgery, so if you’re considering that procedure, you might want to give some consideration concerning its safety).  At the time we met this woman, her skin and eyes were golden-yellow from cirrhosis.  The damage was caused by the intralipid she was receiving while waiting for a transplant.  The scary part was that she had only been on TPN the same amount of time I had been (about six months).  The exception was that her doctors had infused the lipids everyday, whereas I only received them every other day.  I guess that made the difference.

Because her liver had been destroyed, she was now in need of a multivisceral (multi organ) transplant.  She ultimately had every organ replaced in her digestive tract from the stomach to the rectum — seven organs in all.  She received a new stomach, pancreas, spleen, liver, duodenum, small and large intestines.  She is still doing quite well, amazingly.  The reason I’m covering her story is because she had conducted the same research we had and learned about another type of lipid infusion that’s used in Europe.  Doctors in the E.U. are able to use a lipid made from fish oil called “Omegaven”.  Omegaven has not only been shown to cause no damage to the liver of TPN patients, but has been clinically proven to actually reverse the damage sustained by the use of the soy oil.

Soy lipids contain a very high amount of linoleic acid, which is an essential omega 6 fatty acid,  but is extremely inflammatory.  Fish oils contain a percentage of omega 3 fatty acids which are very anti-inflammatory.  Humans need a balance of these fatty acids to offset the damage.  If you consume a lot of soy products, you are not getting a proper balance of fatty acids, which can lead to a lot of inflammation, including heart disease.  Unfortunately for vegans, animal products are the only reliable source of the proper omega 3 fatty acids.

Our research revealed one unbelievable fact — the FDA does not allow the use of Omegaven in the United States!  There is only one exception to this ban.  When children on TPN have already taken liver damage due to the soy based oil, the FDA will permit the infusion of Omegaven.  Many doctors that we spoke to admitted that they had seen remarkable results on these children.  Adults cannot get Omegaven, no matter how much liver damage they have sustained from the soy.  What in the hell is the politics behind this bullshit is still a mystery.  Could the soy lobby actually have that much influence over the FDA that they are willing to let people die of cirrhosis, including children?  It would seem so, beings I cannot think of any other reason.  Any doctor caught infusing Omegaven in the U.S. put their license at risk.

There’s absolutely no way they have to do further studies on the effects of using fish oil.  People have been consuming fish oil for millions of years and it has a wonderful track-record in Europe as an infused lipid.  If the FDA would continue to push the use of soy lipids, which is proven to cause liver damage in TPN patients, then how can we believe any of the other claimed health benefits of soy?  Soy oil is used in so many processed foods and cooking oils.

Crisco is pure soy oil and many fast food restaurants fry their potatoes, chicken nuggets and fish patties in soy oils.  Could it be the french fries and not the burger that makes fast food so unhealthy?

This woman had begun petitioning the government to allow the use of Omegaven as soon as her liver began to fail and was met with nothing but resistance.  My wife and I had petitioned the pharmacist at the Hospital in Orlando about getting Omegaven mixed with my TPN to preserve my liver until I could get a transplant.  The pharmacist knew of Omegaven and had administered it to children in the Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital in Orlando and testified to the near miraculous results.  He had seen children rebound from late stage cirrhosis to near perfect liver enzymes, but he told us that he could lose his license and face possible imprisonment if he gave it to me.

Do you still trust your FDA?  If so, please leave a comment on this post explaining the reason for them to ban this proven nutrient.  I now avoid soy at all costs.  I will never knowingly eat this crap as long as I might live.  The part that burns my ass more is that doctors know that these soy lipids destroy the liver and yet still recommend soy-based foods and claim them as “healthy”.  Like I said in the “The Effect Of Sugar On The Arteries”, they’re either fucking morons or they want us to get sick.  And don’t give me that shit about the Asians eating soy and being so healthy and having extreme longevity, because the Asians have historically only consumed soy that was fermented (Miso, Tempeh, Natto and Soy Sauce) and only in small quantities (about 2 teaspoons) as a condiment.  Fermentation destroys many of the anti-nutrients contained in soy, such as phytic acid and lectins.  No culture has ever consumed unfermented soy in the mass quantities that we consume presently.  Why?  Because soy is cheap, government subsidized and pushed by the USDA.

In the last few decades, the U.S. has seen a substantial rise in cases of NASH (Non-Alcoholic SteatolHepatitis), which causes cirrhosis that was only seen historically in alcoholics.  People who have never had a drop of alcohol in their life are coming down with this disease.  Could the mass consumption of unfermented soy products be a contributing factor to this sudden rise?  It would seem likely, based on the effect of intralipids.  How could soy be such a healthy and wonderful food to eat, but is so unhealthy when infused that it can destroy that woman’s liver within six months?  Funny how the two cheapest commodities in the food supply — soy and wheat, are claimed to be the most healthy.  Where else in life is something that’s the least expensive also be the most desired?  Nowhere!  It’s because these products are so cheap, subsidized and have extend shelf-life that they are used as filler in everything, not because they’re healthy.  That’s just how they’re advertised to the gullible.

At the turn of the last century (1900), the average american consumed around 20 to 30 pounds of sugar per year.  By the year 2008, the average american would be consuming 150 to 250 pounds of sugar annually.  Is it safe to assume that 108 years is sufficient time for the human anatomy to evolve to this adaptation?  With the advent of fat phobia, which began in the 1970s and reached a peak around 1990, fat consumption decreased in the U.S., while sugar consumption skyrocketed; and so too did diabetes and heart disease.  Yet, somehow we are still blaming those diseases on fat.

Heart disease is not a disease of the heart, as the name would imply, but an affliction on the arteries which eventually affect the heart.  Without arterial wall damage, cholesterol cannot begin to form a “plaque”, no matter how high your blood lipids may be.  There are many toxins that we ingest that can be problematic and inflammatory.  I would like to take a look at just one, but it’s the one that americans consume in the largest quantity.

During the six months I lived without intestines, I was fed by intravenous infusions of TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition).  TPN consists of amino acids, vitamins, minerals, but mostly dextrose (sugar) and water.  Because I had virtually no intestines, my requirement for parental nutrition was very high.  I needed a 15 hour per day infusion, by a pump, delivering 225 ml per hour.   The sheer volume of fluids was too large for infusion via a peripheral artery in the arm, so a port catheter was surgically implanted in my chest.  The catheter entered my skin just below the collar-bone, where it was inserted in the superior vena cava and tunneled to within an inch of my heart.

There are only six branch arteries available for access to the vena cava and I was told by doctors that the high sugar content of the TPN would eventually cause the arteries to fail.  Sugar is quite caustic to the cells lining the arterial walls, causing inflammation and ultimately failure.  I was warned that at some point, all six access arteries would no longer be viable and I would die of starvation.  They said that it would take 3 to 4 years for all of the access arteries to fail and that was my fate.  The doctors at that hospital did not believe that intestinal transplants had been successfully achieved yet, so I was only given a couple of years left to live.

So, we can see that many doctors know the destructive effects of high blood sugar on the arteries, yet continue to recommend a low-fat/high-carbohydrate diet to avoid atherosclerosis.  There is a common myth today that high levels of fat in the blood causes cholesterol to begin to “stick” to the walls of the arteries. This is not the mechanism of atherosclerosis at all and is complete bullshit advertising created by the makers of cholesterol lowering drugs.

As this image accurately illustrates, it is when very small low density lipoproteins (LDLs) find their way behind the arterial wall, and become oxidized, is when plaque begins to form.  As we learned with the TPN, sugar is notorious for causing the endothelium layer to become ulcerated and breached.

Once LDL particles get trapped behind the endothelium, they oxidize, becoming a free radical.  White blood cells soon show up to “clean up” the damage and they too become trapped and oxidized.  This process causes more inflammation and damage to the endothelium, attracting more LDL and WBCs (White Blood Cells).  This is the beginning of atherosclerosis.   The plaque will continue to build until it ultimately ruptures through the endothelium, forming a clot which blocks the circulation.

If the erroneous myth of “sticky” cholesterol were true, we would expect to find plaque evenly distributed throughout the circulatory system, similar to the way minerals build in ALL of the pipes of a plumbing system.  We never find this to be the case or bypass surgery would not be possible.  Therefore, grafts from the leg arteries can be used to bypass the clots in the arteries of the neck and chest.  So cholesterol does not haphazardly cling to arterial walls willy-nilly.   Lipoproteins arrive at the site of  broken walls in an attempt to patch the damage until they can heal and inadvertently get caught inside.  If there were never inflammation and damage to the endothelium, plaque could not form, no matter how much fat was circulating in the bloodstream.

The high sugar content of the TPN also has a bad tendency to feed fungus and bacteria, so systemic infections are quite common in TPN recipients.  I personally had two bouts of sepsis during the months I was on TPN.  The first one was bacteremia caused by enterobacter cloacae growing in the medi-port.  The bacteria were being flushed throughout my system with the TPN and sent me into septic shock (a life-threatening condition).  The second time it was a systemic fungal infection caused by candida, which really thrives on sugar.

During the time I was in the hospital with sepsis, the infusion ports had to be surgically removed because they housed the infections.  A new catheter couldn’t be implanted until the infection was cleared up or it would just get colonized by the pathogens in my bloodstream.  They placed peripheral lines in my arms for infusion of the antibiotic medications.  But, there was still the problem of how to feed me.  To solve this, multiple peripheral lines were used in my arms and hands and PPN (Partial Parental Nutrition) was infused instead.  This contained less sugar and was not really enough nutrition to sustain me, but was better than total starvation.  These peripherals would only last a day or two before the veins would fail.  As time went on, it got much worse.  The damage to the veins was compounding and often times, the veins would infiltrate within two or three minutes of starting the PPN infusion.  It was very painful.

Once, a nurse made the mistake of hooking the TPN to a peripheral, rather than the port catheter.  When she started the pump, it immediately felt as though acid was pumped into the vein in my arm and then it failed and infiltrated within seconds.  So when I see some stooge chowing down on piles of rice and bread, followed by dessert and maybe a Snickers bar on top, I know they have no idea what that elevated blood sugar is doing to their arteries.  Even if their pancreas is fully healthy and able to eventually stabilize the sugar load, there is massive damage being perpetrated on their arteries by the elevated sugar levels, even within seconds.  This is damage that the body now must repair.  If small dense LDL particles (caused from high carbohydrate consumption) happen to find their way into that damaged area, you could possibly have the start of atherosclerosis.

I did gain some weight while on the TPN, which the doctors thought was a good sign.  I wasn’t so sure.  It was mostly visceral fat around my waist, but my arms, legs, shoulders and neck were still extremely thin, so the fat distribution was not a healthy one.  Doctors seem to only look at weight as a number and never how it’s distributed or whether it’s muscle or fat.  My muscles were withering away while my gut grew larger and they were happy with that.  It wasn’t until after I again had intestines and returned to eating real food, with plenty of fat and protein, that I was able to gain weight in my arms, legs, shoulders and flatten my stomach.  I actually weigh less now (less than the doctors want me to weigh), but I am much stronger.

Intestinal transplants are not available to everyone who loses their intestines.     There are only three criteria that qualify someone to undertake a transplant.   The first one is loss of access due to the dextrose (sugar) destroying the only six arteries available for infusion.  At this point, you have new intestines, but don’t have any arteries worth a shit going to or coming from your heart.  Great deal!

The second condition is liver failure due to the infused soy derived lipids.  I will not go into further detail, because I cover that in my post “The Truth About Soy”.  Find out the mythical health benefit of soy there.

The third condition is the one that made me eligible for a transplant.  This is due to multiple life-threatening infections via the infusion ports.  I suffered back-to-back systemic infections which nearly killed me.  Only about 45% of those who contract a systemic candida infection survive, so I consider myself lucky.  After my transplant, I suffered one really bad sepsis from pseudomonas (a gram negative rod), which has over a 90% mortality rate and put me into a coma.  I have had no infections since being on a low carbohydrate diet.

The one thing I did learn from all this is how caustic and toxic sugar is to the arteries and how sugar promotes and feeds infection.  Unless you plan to start running and exercising like a humming-bird on crack immediately after eating that cake or cookies, a lot of damage will be sustained by your arteries while you lounge and sleep — even though you have full intentions of working it off in the gym tomorrow.  The damage and infiltration in my arm didn’t wait until tomorrow, it happened right away.  You may burn off the fat later, but the sugar damage was already done.

The saddest part of all, was the fact that the doctors knew how much damage the sugar would cause to the arteries of TPN recipients, yet still continue to recommend a low-fat/ high-carbohydrate diet as a “Heart Healthy” one.  The doctors are either fucking morons or they want us to become sick.  I’m not sure which.  You take your pick.

Harvey Diamond once said, “You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit.  If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I’ll buy you a new car.”   I will never understand why this slice of buffoonery gets repeated so often and it actually frightens me to know there are so many morons in the world that see any logic to this rhetoric.

First of all, if you placed a rabbit and an apple in a baby’s crib, they would eat neither.  Because we are not given the age of the “baby” in this fictitious situation, I am to assume that the child would be younger than 18 months to still be in a crib.  This child wouldn’t have the knowledge or skills necessary to kill, clean and cook a rabbit.  This doesn’t mean that the child is not the offspring of a meat-eating animal.  If I were to place a live bunny in a crate with an eight week old puppy or kitten, chances are good that they would also play with the rabbit rather than eat the rodent.  Is Harvey suggesting that this proves that cats and dogs are not meat-eating animals? .

The human infant wouldn’t choose to eat the apple as Diamond so confidently insinuates.  A pre-toddler doesn’t have the developed incisors to bite into a whole apple, just as the puppy or kitten don’t have the large canines needed for dispatching the rabbit.  Now if Harvey is suggesting that we peel and slice up the apple and place it in the crib, then there is a chance that the child might take a stab at it.  But is a peeled and sliced apple a fair comparison to a live rabbit?  Babies will stick anything in their mouth in an attempt to eat it.  My baby brother used to pick up dust bunnies from under furniture and place them in his mouth. Would a dust bunny qualify as a rabbit?  It’s about as absurd as Harvey Diamond’s scenario.

Here in Florida we have zillions of small lizards named “Anoles” that scurry around.  A friend’s two-year-old daughter once caught one somehow and placed it in her mouth and bit it in half.  I don’t know if she had the choice of an apple but opted for the reptile instead, but I doubt that mattered to the lizard.  My sister was the nanny to two children.  The little girl she took care of once caught a millipede, placed it in her mouth and crunched down on it.  Anyone familiar with millipedes knows that they are not only armored, but can spray a hydrogen cyanide gas, which burns flesh on contact.  The child was in considerable pain from the chemical burns to her lips and tongue.  Unlike Harvey, I won’t use this as a counter argument that we are carnivores based on these examples, because children will stick a lot of things in their mouth.

Pediatrician Dr. Laura A. Jana lists the following as the top ten items swallowed by babies:

1. Coins

2. Jewelry

3. Buttons

4. Boogers

5. Pills

6. Batteries

7. Hairballs

8. Magnets

9. Nails, pins and tacks

10. Arts and craft supplies

I guess all of these items are on the menu at the Diamond’s house, beings they use infant’s eating choices as their dietary recommendations.  Many children have eaten their own feces, this doesn’t make us descendants of the dung beetle — but it may give new meaning to the ingredients of the pu-pu platter served at the Diamond’s dinner table.

I have witnessed many children bite down on animals or parts of living animals in my lifetime.  I have seen children take a bite of a dog or cat’s tail and I have seen children stick the head of a small rodent, such as a hamster or gerbil, in their mouth.

But the real stupidity of this cliché is the offering of a live bunny to any infant mammal, whether it be carnivore, omnivore or herbivore.  This test is too easily manipulated, which is why it lives only in a proverbial sense and has never been put to a test.  I am willing to conduct the test –- after all, there is a new car at stake here.

I believe that Harvey Diamond, wanting to promote a vegetarian diet with another example of pseudoscience, would propose a peeled and sliced apple offered with the living bunny.  This test would show too much bias towards the fruit.  If we wanted to level the playing field, we would kill, cook and slice up the rabbit into tiny pieces and offer it with the apple.  Chances are probably 50/50 that the child could choose either the cooked rabbit or sliced apple. 

This experiment is pointless and proves nothing about human dietary needs.  If Mr. Diamond is going to use children as the litmus test as to what foods are best for humans to consume, then vegetarianism would fail royally on the fact that most children refuse to eat their vegetables, but readily gobble down hamburgers.  In conclusion, if we run Harvey’s test with a live rabbit and a whole apple, Harvey is mistaken that the child would play with the bunny and open their mouth wide and crunch into a crisp apple with their naked gums.  If we choose my rules of a cooked and sliced rabbit and whole apple…. well… Harvey, can we talk about which model and color car I’m getting?

I would really like to hear Harvey’s reply to this, but I doubt that I ever will.  Enough said.