Poison

In honor of Alice Cooper’s 75th birthday, Powerwolf released a cover of his hit song “Poison.”

I’m glad the track is more uptempo than the 80’s original. It doesn’t add much more than some additional speed, but I still enjoyed it.

“I wanna taste you but your lips are venomous poison.” Damned if that isn’t my thought every time I smell fresh-baked cookies or pizza.

Another random thought when I listen to “Poison” regards the wellness industry as it exists today. They say there’s an industry born from every problem posed. This is true in any capitalist society, and companies are inventing problems at breakneck speed. To have their industry thrive, they must convince you that something in your everyday life, which you assumed to be benign, is actually poisonous. It might even be your natural body that must be cured.

These companies really thrive when they’re able to convincingly exaggerate the danger of the problem.

I’ve seen recent advertisements tell me that tap water isn’t safe, and therefore I must buy some egregiously expensive purifiers. But that’s not enough because the purifiers strip water of all minerals. So, I also need to buy minerals to put back in the water. Well what is the point of living in a developed nation if decent water is only for the aristocrats, and must be paid for with subscription?

Likewise you need air purifiers and various scents because you are constantly breathing in poison too.

There are admittedly places where this is true. There are certainly countries where I wouldn’t recommend going outside without a well-filtered mask, nor would I recommend drinking the tap water. And it’s also true that tap water often contains fluoride and chlorine, which when consumed in large quantities can be bad for your health. But how bad?

A multitude of skincare companies tell us about how harmful the sun is. Stay inside, they say! Or if you dare to venture out, buy their cream and lather it all over yourself first! It’s a matter of life and death.

It is true that the sun may induce cancer into the sedentary office individual who dwells under fluorescents all day (and all too eager to fry at the beach for a week’s vacation). But we somehow survived for thousands of years with a fraction of the sun cancer we see now, and I suspect it’s because we absorbed sunlight in more reasonable daily amounts.

How did we ever survive beyond adolescence before these companies existed?

My point to all of this is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to decipher the real poisons from the fake ones. Then again, at the end of the day everything is poison if overdosed on, and it’s also true that modern society is causing a lot of individuals to suffer horribly, especially in their later years.

But still, isn’t a better solution to modern maladies to shift culture instead of to simply buy more products?

I’m still convinced that one can live well in a modern developed country at a reasonable budget… if one can decipher truth from the BS, and if one can engage in a healthy community.

On Plant-Based Eating

I have no doubt that plants have a capability of healing the spirit that borders on mystical.

Add a few plants to a living room and you’ll probably find your own blood pressure lowering. It could be their mere presence doing the healing. Numerous studies have documented this. Run in an area with trees and you’ll find what anxiety you have will slowly diminish as the minutes tick by. Hiking is often seen as a therapeutic exercise not because it involves a lot of walking, but because it involves a lot of nature.

To this date there has been nothing made by humans that matches the healing capabilities of plants.

I mention this because I’m writing about something that I’ve told almost no one: I’ve been focusing on a plant-based diet. I can’t help but wonder: if the presence of plants soothes the mind, does favoring plant consumption heal the body?

I mostly keep my dietary habits private because diets tend to emit strong emotional reactions from people. At some point in recent history, diet became an ideology. The idea of “arguing about diet” with other people does not appeal to me. I’d rather just share my thoughts and experiences.

I do think that there are numerous moral justifications for striving towards veganism. One of the top reasons for me personally is that the American diet tends to be heavy on animals that I consider to be both highly intelligent and woefully mistreated. Industry commits some pretty horrific acts on these animals.

Urban American dog parents, for example, find the idea of eating dogs to be diabolical if not purely savage, yet are frequently eager for their bacon and sausage. Why, other than cultural norms? There is nothing to classify a dog as morally superior to a pig. Both are intelligent and highly affectionate species of animals.

My switch this year was not a sudden shift in belief. I planned to switch to either vegetarianism or veganism a long time ago. When I turned 21, I promised myself that I would switch to a plant-based diet before age 40. This year I’m turning 38.

My initial desire to eat plant-based food was a mostly selfish one: the potential for longevity. I’m too aware of the rates of heart disease in America, and to put bluntly, I want to live. I aimed to switch before 40 because I figured the body would only become more susceptible to disease in middle age.

I never planned to switch to veganism for the sake of athletic performance, but I can safely write that so far, my results as they pertain to running are bettering my expectations. I’ve heard arguments both for and against veganism as it relates to athletic performance. To that I respond, athletic performance is pretty secondary to me at this stage of my life. I was already an athlete with a full collegiate career and retirement, so I’m not “chasing” marginal gains.

A vegan diet can be broad in food intake, and I should emphasize that I focus on plant-based whole foods. I’m not munching on “vegan cookies” all day. I am fully aware that being “vegan” does not necessarily make one “healthy.”

I find myself feeling better by the week. I’m convinced that I’m healing. My aches, pains, and stresses are minimal, and at the same time I’m running more miles per week than I ever have in my life. I’m recovering from intense exercise well and sleeping steadily better. By every metric I am more fit now than I was before I broke my collarbone (I started experimenting with vegetarianism a few months before my collarbone break, and have been attempting veganism through 2023). Obviously time will tell how this diet transfers to running and cycling events, but I don’t see a plant-based diet as a detriment to my exercise. So far, I’d say it’s boosting my performance.

Sustaining veganism practically requires the ability to cook ones own food, in my opinion. Don’t just quit eating meat and looking around for microwaveable meatless foods. It helps to have the ability (or learn the ability) to cook meals with all-natural, plant-based ingredients that you enjoy. Otherwise it can be an act of masochism.

I find that eating until I’m full is key, and that requires eating what can visibly appear to be larger portions (the food is less calorie dense). On a diet without meat, it can take a very, very full plate, or several plates, to fill the stomach. But enjoying what you eat is the only way to make it sustainable.

I’ve been mostly enjoying the recipes in Dan Buettner’s book, The Blue Zones Kitchen. My own dinner staples have been mostly from the book: herbal minestrone, tofu stir fry, and corn hash. I like to supplement those with buffalo cauliflower or air fried kale chips. I bring this up to emphasize again that a consistently hungry vegan will probably not be a vegan for long.

I observe that there are a lot of sick people in the US right now, which is one of the reasons I want to mention veganism’s potential. A lot of sickness can be remedied through food choice. That’s especially difficult when grocery stores are plagued with 90% processed crap and when fast food tends to be the most affordable option. Affordable veganism is possible and can be relatively easy to prepare. A primary problem, in my opinion, is that it’s not a common part of our culture; those who need it most are often unaware of its existence.

So if you’re reading this and had floated the idea of veganism before, I say give it a try.

The Healing Properties of Food

One of the more drastic changes I’ve made to my lifestyle over the past two years is my rate of cooking.

I’ve learned, in steady increments, a pretty diverse array of dishes. I’m by no means an expert chef, but I am finally seeing the value in cooking natural foods. I am also seeing meals less as acts of shoving food down the throat for the sake of “good feeling,” and more as calming social and artistic rituals.

Through the act of cooking I am also gaining more awareness of the healing properties of various foods (and conversely, the inflammatory properties of most modern processed foods).

On Tuesday I made a Sardinian-style herbal minestrone for dinner and woke the next day with noticeably little fatigue. The aches and tightness I often feel from a week of heavy running were minimized. I felt fresh and significantly more mobile. I had what ended up being the fastest run of my life.

My journey to nutritional health began with an experiment several years ago. I wanted to see what would happen if I ate steel-cut oatmeal every day for lunch (mixed with granola and blueberries), for a period of several months. What happened was remarkable: my health improved by a considerable magnitude in almost every category. My blood pressure, for example, is now the best of my life. My LDL cholesterol dropped from more than 190 mg/dL to somewhere around 50 mg/dL. In short, it went from “higher than healthy” to “very healthy.”

I’ll avoid getting into detail of my current diet here. I will note though that my great epiphany has been that health is nearly impossible for the individual who can’t cook his or her own food (or who doesn’t live with someone who can). Without this ability, you are beholden to industry and its pre-packaged shipped goods. Just as bad, the non-cook forsakes a valuable social ritual in favor of timeliness. Cooking is a physical and mental act; it is an art. It’s also a connection to be made with other people, like writing or painting. A writer needs a reader just as a chef needs a diner. To abandon the ritual surrounding cooking is a great loss.

As I think about my recent affinity for cooking, I also find myself increasingly nervous from how my own path seems to be diverging further from hustle culture and what I’ve seen deemed as the “hedonic treadmill.” I can’t deny that the modern, office-oriented sedentary lifestyle is becoming increasingly less appealing.

The silver lining of the COVID pandemic, if there was one for me, was that remaining at home illuminated the poisons that hustle culture may induce into its unaware victims. There is a race, but most of the participants don’t know what actually waits at the finish line: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, anxiety, neurodegenerative disease, and excess materialism.

Now that I realize how little I want to participate in the material hustle, I can’t help but wonder: what’s next?