Seth Roberts, the Shangri-La Diet
guy, originally discovered his diet idea through scientifically
rigorous self-experimentation*. Over years, he tried many different
methods to lose weight and to cure his acne and insomnia, changing one
variable at a time and measuring the results carefully. The results in
all three areas were remarkable and novel: his now-famous weight
reduction program, a cure for his acne, and an unusual insomnia
prevention program (watching talking heads on TV shortly after
awakening each day, or standing erect at least nine hours per day, or
exposure to fluorescent light early in the morning). His paper notes
that self-experimentation might be very effective at coming up with
out-of-the-box thinking on ways to address just about any illness or
unwanted mood or behaviour.
While self-experimentation may lack
objectivity, and certainly lacks the volume of test subjects and
presence of a 'control group' that medical research generally considers
essential for scientific validity, it has the unarguable advantage of
taking into account individual variability (our bodies and minds are
all different), and the personal engagement of the 'patient' must
inevitably improve its efficacy. In the long run, if the 'customer'
believes it works, that's all that matters. It is only learned
helplessness, and the outrageous prohibition of self-experimentation in
the early days of the 20th century (until then you were allowed to
self-prescribe any drug or treatment you could buy or concoct, caveat emptor)
that diminished self-experimentation from the principal means by which
we accepted responsibility for our own health, to "inadvisable",
"rash", and "irresponsible" behaviour. We now defer to 'professionals'
to tell us what's good for us, at huge and arguably unnecessary cost to
the 'health care system', our self-reliance, our independence, and our
sense of personal responsibility.
When I was in the hospital for
my kidney stones, I leapfrogged others in the waiting room because I
had carefully monitored exactly what I had eaten, which exact drugs I
had taken, and what symptoms had occurred precisely where in my body,
and when, down to the minute, so that I had self-diagnosed (based on
two previous bouts with stones) my problem and even self-prescribed the
treatment (unfortunately the narcotics I had kept, against
pharmaceutical advice, from my last bout were stale and no longer
effective). I did my research on the Internet, and asked intelligent
questions about preventing future occurrences. The doctors in the
emergency ward said I was "a breath of fresh air" -- able to answer all
their questions with a high degree of self-awareness and knowledge of
my illness, and lamented the fact that much of the time required to
diagnose patients was due to their helpless inability to even describe
what was wrong with them.
Damn the medical 'profession' (which
must have seen new laws prohibiting self-treatment as a great make-work
project, back when they weren't too busy or too knowledgeable) and damn
the legal 'profession' (which was almost assuredly behind these new
laws as a means of creating new liability for doctors and hence a new
revenue stream for them). The whole 'alternative medicine' industry,
which runs the gamut from brilliant natural treatments selfishly
opposed by Big Pharma (e.g. Monsanto's continued lobbying against stevia,
to protect its toxic chemical artificial sweetener monopoly) to
outright criminal quackery (e.g. most of the self-treatments on
late-night infomercials), is a direct result of citizen dissatisfaction
with the monopolization of treatment of our own bodies by self-anointed
'professionals'. And it has led to the medical profession, in defence
of that monopoly, pretending to know much more about health and disease
than they really do, creating false and unreasonable expectations,
worsening our learned helplessness, and making the whole 'industry'
absurdly and unnecessarily expensive, and grossly inefficient. One
doctor I know says 90% of what he does could be done just as well by
nurses, para-professionals and/or patients themselves, but he is
prohibited from allowing them to do so by the lawyers and insurance
companies.
What's more, with 'professional supervision', those
suffering with serious allergies, diabetes and other volatile
conditions already do and must self-experiment,
both to define the extent of their condition as precisely as possible
and to self-treat when 'professional' treatment could be too late.
Fortunately,
the Internet is on our side, allowing us to share information with
others, and to take back some control and responsibility over our own
bodies from 'professionals', and not rely on shady hucksters of
alternative, often-dubious under-the-counter substances. I have suggested before
that 'all of us know more than any of us' (including the professionals)
and that self-experimentation combined with information-sharing with
millions of other self-experimenters could lead to a much healthier
population at much lower cost than the dysfunctional system we have
now. This is another example of the Wisdom of Crowds.
What Seth did was learn about the medical research process by self-experimenting. What he offers us now
(<-- note: this is a long but absolutely fascinating paper) is his
knowledge of the research process, so that we can apply it to our own
self-experimentation. This process is not rocket science, and should be
obvious to anyone familiar with the 'scientific method' we all learned
in high school: Conduct a series of experiments, holding most of the
variables constant and varying just one at a time, Observe the results,
Formulate a hypothesis to explain the results, Use the hypothesis to
predict other results, Conduct tests to verify the predictions and
hence confirm or refute the hypothesis. Rinse and repeat.
What
is interesting about self-experimentation is that it allows you to
abandon and modify hypotheses much more quickly than formal testing,
drawing on your instincts, and to hone in on better hypothesis
candidates more quickly, by successive approximation, trial and error.
In effect, this is a more natural way of learning,
drawing on both subjective and objective assessments instead of just
the latter. It is improvisational rather than advanced-planned. Although
it is less disciplined than formal scientific testing (and hence would
not stand up as well in court, or in fusty peer review) I would argue
that it is more effective. If you're talking about improving your own health, which is more important to you?
So
while Seth's test allowed him to find a cure for insomnia (looking at
large talking heads on TV each morning, a simulation of social contact
with others at that hour), the extent and personal context of the data
he collected surfaced hypotheses in entirely different areas that would
be unlikely to have come to light from normal, objective scientific
work. For example, he has hypothesized (compellingly) that looking at
those large talking heads at that time might also be an effective
treatment for depression. He has hypothesized that changes in natural
light patterns (due to the seasons, and to East-West travel) may have a
much more pronounced (and once understood, perhaps controllable) effect
on our circadian rhythms and hence on our psychology, physiology and
metabolism than we would expect.
What informed his hypotheses-creation is precisely what has informed much of my thinking in recent years: How does nature deal with this?
In my case I draw on my amateur study of birds and animals in the
'wild' near our house and in the forest nearby, and on my extensive
reading about animal behaviour. In Seth's case he draws on his
understanding of how pre-civilization humans lived. That led him to
appreciate that social conversation in the morning was useful in tribal
cultures, and detrimental at night when others were trying to sleep,
and that hence watching talking heads in the morning would improve
natural rhythms and mood, while watching them after midnight would have
the opposite effect, hypotheses he verified by self-experimentation.
Likewise his assessment that in tribal cultures standing or walking
nine hours a day would have been normal, led him to hypothesize that
standing or (less practical in the modern world) walking nine hours a
day would improve natural rhythms and mood, and alleviate insomnia,
which he also verified by self-experimentation. And from there, the
corollary hypotheses are immediate and exciting: Could standing nine
hours a day also alleviate osteoporosis and back problems? And what
would be the effect of replacing all our desks with standing-height tables and orthomats (to relieve the stress of standing in one place for extended periods)? A
key step in determining what to try, and what hypotheses to test, in
self-experimentation to improve your (physical or mental) health is
acknowledging that we are physiologically largely unchanged since
pre-history, and hence asking What about my current way of life is unnatural?
So Seth's message for self-experimentation to improve your health is tripartite:
- Use
the scientific method, and be imaginative in formulating hypotheses to
test by self-experimentation and disciplined in testing them, but also
take advantage of the opportunity to be very improvisational in
abandoning and modifying your hypotheses;
- In imagining
possible hypotheses to test through self-experimentation, don't be
limited by conventional wisdom, and above all ask What about my current
way of life is unnatural?; and
- Share the results of your self-experiments with others doing the same thing, so you learn from them and vice versa.
This,
far more than the concept of the Shangri-La diet, is what really
excites me about Seth's work. Giving yourself permission to take
responsibility for your own health, learning a simple process for doing
so, and hence liberating yourself from our society's learned
helplessness, is an extraordinarily exhilarating prospect. As I am
prone to morning moodiness, insomnia, and chronic back problems, I'm
planning on stealing Seth's idea of using a standing-height table and
anti-fatigue mat to replace my desk and easy chair (I did this briefly
after my last back injury, when I couldn't sit down, and I really liked
it). I also plan on having more breakfast meetings with people in my
neighbourhood, and taping and watching the talk shows I now watch at
night (Daily Show, Bill Maher and occasionally Charlie Rose) in the
morning instead.
And then I will apply my imagination to
create and test other hypotheses. I've had a seasonal severe skin
itchiness for thirty years that doctors have never been able to
diagnose, that I now treat effectively with short immersion in a (very
hot) hot tub, but I'm going to start self-experimenting for a
preventative cure instead of a treatment. And since there is absolutely
no medical consensus on how to prevent kidney stones (as I've reported,
much of the medical advice is self-contradictory) I'm going to try
self-experimentation for that as well. I will, of course, keep you all
informed of my progress, of what apparently (at least for me) works and
what doesn't, and would ask you to do the same. Let's see if we can put
the medical 'profession' and Big Pharma, and the lawyers and insurance
companies that leach off them, out of business.
*
It would be more accurate (but more verbose) to refer to the process as
'self-experimentation plus self-observation'. In this article I use the
term self-experimentation to include the accompanying self-observation.
Images
above: Saddle-chair to relieve pressure from prolonged standing, from
Canadian government occupational health site; Sit-stand desk from
Neilsen Associates, a UK furniture company. I'm not happy with any of
the commercial standing-height furniture (it needs to be able to tilt,
for a start, it should not be that expensive, and it should ideally be
portable). So to further demonstrate my victory over learned
helplessness, I'm going to design and build my own.
Final note:
I'm still on the diet, in the hope that it will reduce my evening
cravings for sugar, oil and salt. My status report will follow next
week. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
