Paleo or Autoimmune Disease on Paleo Quick Tip of the Day podcast 11th year

I really think your choice is just about this stark: either eat a paleo type of diet and practice an ancestral lifestyle- or get an autoimmune disease!

I remember, back when I started changing my diet and lifestyle to paleo.  I cut out grains entirely, and started making a green smoothie to drink on a daily basis.  My first Vitamix blender was an old one, stainless steel, and lasted me for a number of years.  Now I have a late model one, and I recommend this blender as a cornerstone investment!  

Key to getting a nutrient dense diet is to get enough absorbable nutrients from vegetables and some fruits, and blending those frozen veggies into a slurry where they are easily absorbed.  For, as it is becoming more and more apparent, vegetables grown in our depleted soils, where crops are grown nowadays much of the soil microbiome has been destroyed!  This means that the nutrients that used to be found in, say, brocolli from the 1940’s would be maybe 1/4 of what they would have been then in the same amount of brocolli.  And so it goes with all sorts of produce.

And after following the Paleo diet for a while, my wife and I noticed something startling:  little ailments that had begun plaguing us as we moved into our 50’s that we attributed soley to advancing age- disappeared.  For instance, I had begun having migraine headaches!  They were awful, and seemed to be on an increasing basis, where before I had never had headaches at all.

After eliminating bread, pasta, cereal- in other words, all grains- the headaches abruptly stopped!  And, although I had not thought I needed to lose fat, as I was a lifelong serious exerciser and strength trainer- I did lose about 15 pounds, without even trying to.  I believe it was all visceral fat; meaning the fat that is around your internal organs.  This is the most dangerous fat to have, even though it didn’t make me look fat, there is was, secretly strangling my organs and setting me up for future illnesses like diabetes and heart disease, among others.

And now it was gone!

My wife had her rosacia disappear, as well as unwanted weight.  But the most amazing  thing was that we just felt wonderful, day after day!  We got enough sleep,  our joints stopped hurting, and even our daughter started looking not just good, but radiant!  This was in high school, and so needless to say she too became hooked on her dad’s ‘crazy new diet’.

And here is the key point: I remember predicting, way back then, in 2008 or so when I was 56 : “ It won’t be long, and all of our friends will start coming down with all kinds of ailments, including all the Pandora’s box of autoimmune diseases.  

And we will know what they need to do- just follow a paleo lifestyle- and no one will believe us!”

And this is what has basically come to pass.  Friend after friend has come down with devastating illnesses that standard medicine has no cure for, none at all… Only drugs to treat the symptoms, all of which are loaded with side-effects that are often worse than the disease.

And not only friends, and those family members that ignore our advice- but now it is their children getting these horrendous diseases, kids still in their early 30’s!  

And all the while, I sit there watching, trying simply to show the way by example.  I have this podcast, my blog and books, and I am always willing to talk to folks about it- but, most people decide, once they are told that they need to change their diet, to give up their beloved doughnuts and cakes and cookies, breads of all sorts and pasta and instead eat green smoothies, eggs and pastured meats and dairy- well, they opt to ‘just take the m