Sunday Open Thread – January 28, 2007

What I’m planning on writing about soon:

Experience-Based Decision Making: It seems an obvious choice, until you understand why the alternatives hold sway.
Finding & Working With Others to Save the World: Ways to enable billions to sync with us, on their own terms, in their own context, developing their own plan of action, and then to connect and collaborate in powerful ways, in experiments and in creating and refining working models in their own self-selected communities, so that they no longer need the systems that are destroying our world.
Intentional Community: Related to the above, how a stewardship model might come into effect, evolving to replace the ownership model.
MRSA and Prion Diseases: A greater threat than Poultry Flu?
What’s Holding Us Back: Our modern society’s three-way tension between falling into the Centre, progressing to the Edge, and just giving up.
Finding Our Way Home: How can we hope to find it when we don’t know where it is, or whether it even any longer exists?
The Mainstream Media Model: Ignore and under-report every issue until it reaches a threshold of public attention despite that under-reporting, and then hype the hell out of it, using absurdly oversimplified dichotomies, until the public gets tired of it.

What I’m thinking about:

My health, again. I’m working through my first flare-up of colitis since I was first diagnosed last summer. This time it does not appear to have been triggered by stress (my stress level is lower than it has been in a long time), and there have been no significant changes to my diet, exercise regime, medication or anything else. So I’m perplexed. Whatunknown environmental poisons are confusing my immune system?

How about you?

5 Responses to Sunday Open Thread – January 28, 2007

Graham Lawes says:

January 28, 2007 at 13:37

Sorry to here about the colitis. Sometimes colitis of unknown etiology, with unexplained flare-ups, isn’t what the gastroenterologists think. In our family we’ve had significant experience with this, and have had remarkable success and vast improvement in well-being by adopting a gluten-free, largely raw diet. Sounds out-there, but it’s stunning when it works. Wishing you well.
Graham Lawes says:

January 28, 2007 at 19:05

For “here” please substitute “hear” in my last post!
Valla says:

February 1, 2007 at 22:40

Dave,I am sorry to hear that you are flaring so soon after the last. I wish you a speedy recovery. My son is currently doing great (if you dont count the skin and joint problems)Valla
Michael says:

February 3, 2007 at 01:26

Dave, I’ve only started reading your blog in the last few months and I have been inspired by a lot of what you write. I am also impressed by how open you are to all sorts of ideas. So, even though I’m not one for proselytizing, I’d like to encourage you to try or research a diet that I’ve been following for the last 3 years, the Blood Type Diet ( http://www.dadamo.com/ )It is based on the fact that your blood type influences your digestion and that different blood types have different strengths and weaknesses. As a type O, my dietary strengths are eating animal protein and leafy green vegetables like kale, broccoli, spinach, etc. I also need to avoid wheat, dairy & corn.Unfortunately, the BTD has been portrayed as another in a long line of wacky unscientific diets. However, the improvements I have witnessed in myself are truly remarkable. I am 49 years old and haven’t breathed through my nose since I was 11. I was told this could only be fixed through surgery. The problem for type Os is that wheat is very inflammatory. Since removing wheat from my diet, I have breathed freely through my nose. Also, the knuckles on my hands have always been inflamed and puffy; they are now normal. That horrible bloated feeling in the guts after dinner is a thing of the past. The diet also balances the immune system; I haven’t had a case of the flu since being on the diet. My cholesterol, which was high when I was a vegetarian, is normal since I’ve been on the diet. And there are other improvements as well.I was a skeptic when I started; I always thought I ate healthily but I was amazed at the incredible difference this diet made.I am convinced that it will help with your colitis and, Valla, I’m sure it would help your son’s joint problems.Michael
Valla says:

February 3, 2007 at 07:56

Michael,Have you ever tried to restrict what a 13 year old eats? It is a constant struggle to him eat anything when he is sick and when he is on prednisone i can not keep him away from food. We are just now starting to figure out what foods bother him (popcorn, lettuce and spicy foods). I think that the joint issues are caused by the sick/predisone cycle and PT has done wonders with the joint issues. Valla