These past several weeks we have spent time understanding the information we need to get started with Phase 1 of the Reprogramming Process. This involves the greater design that is the human body, as a whole, including how it has been designed to function based on millions of years of evolutionary pressures.
At this point we know the following information:
First, the human body is a complex design, supported by numerous complex, dynamic sub-systems that work together in a dynamic, non-linear fashion. What this means for us is that any attempt to isolate a particular sub-system, aiming to make decisions based on that sub-system alone, is bound to lead towards compromised health of the body, overall
Second, the human body has functioned well for millions of years by consuming a wide variety of foods. The particular food type does not seem to matter so much, as long as the food is, indeed, really food. Unfortunately, what we modern humans tend to call food is really just different versions of industrially designed substances, strategically engineered to draw our full attention, speak to our cravings, and leave us coming back for more and more. These industrial not-so-foods do not support the health of the human body, particularly because:
- they contain energy-containing molecules (macronutrients) in a refined form, lacking the complex structure that is found in a real, whole food. This results in the quick release of energy-containing molecules into the body and the inability of the body to properly regulate its energy supply and demand.
- they lack the nutritious value of real, whole foods, leaving the body lacking in resources that it needs to maintain proper functioning
- they often contain extra harmful components in the form of hazardous chemicals or poorly digestible substances, putting an extra burden on the body
Given this basic knowledge, we can begin to make significantly healthier decisions by making the basic choice to consume real, whole foods and avoid industrial not-so-foods.
This is the dietary aspect of Phase 1, and we dove deep into these concepts in the past few weeks. If you missed out or need a refresher, head back to Week 5 and Week 6.
Now, with this final week, we will see how the Reprogrammed Systems Approach plays out as a life-long process for making healthy decisions. It begins with actions that you can take, today, to make great leaps forward down your own path to good health, while making space for improved ability to make even healthier decisions as you continue to move forward. This involves:
- How you can get started, today, making healthier decisions.
- How you can improve upon your ability to make healthy decisions as you move forward
- How you can accomplish all of this in a strategic approach so that you never lose sight of the big picture that is a healthy body
The Reprogrammed Systems Approach – A Refresher
The Reprogrammed Systems Approach begins by shifting the focus to the broader context of the human body. Instead of stressing over any details, precision is ignored to make room for the bigger picture – that bigger picture being the overall functioning of the human body. This context is gathered based on how the human body has been designed throughout evolutionary history, combined with how that design breaks down in the modern, industrialized world.
Phase 1 is all about keeping things simple. This involves the implementation of well-established principles that have consistently been shown to produce results. We don’t want to do anything fancy here, as we want our full attention on that which has been proven time and time again to be an effective method for addressing poor health in our population.
Now that we understand these basic principles, we can put them into practice by building a diet based on real, whole foods.
Then, once this diet has been established, we can move forward unraveling the mystery of the black box that is the human body.
The rest of this post is devoted to this second point. We know that we want to focus, first, on introducing real, whole foods into the diet while ditching the industrial not-so-foods. But then what? How do we then continue moving forward, gaining a deeper understanding of what it means to make the healthy decisions?
As we saw last week, making decisions, for ourselves, aimed at achieving an overall state of good health, is a complex task. The process of gaining this knowledge and understanding will take time and effort, and it is most often the case that it is not feasible to take this on all at once.
Instead, we need an approach that allows us to slowly, carefully, build our understanding of the complex system that is our own body, allowing us to continuously improve the ability to make healthy decisions. To do this, I have developed The Reprogrammed Systems Model – a tool that you can use to help understand how your decisions directly impact the health of your body.
If you’re ready, let’s go over the basics of using this tool.
The Reprogrammed Systems Model
The Reprogrammed Systems Model is designed to help guide you through healthy decision-making, tying your decisions directly to the impact on the human body, and ultimately, the state of health that arises. Importantly, it does this in a specific manner: by displaying the body as an entire complex system, driven by one primary mechanism and progressing towards modern disease as a dysfunctional system.
Traditional medicine approaches disease as isolated systems. We treat cardiovascular disease (CVD) by focusing on the pathophysiology that leads directly to a threat to this one system (e.g. the clogging of arteries). We then treat it by focusing only on that which leads directly to the development of this specific pathophysiology (e.g. with a statin). Similarly, we address Type II Diabetes (TIID) by focusing on just that which raises blood sugar and increases HB1C, treating this one issue (high blood sugar is treated by injecting insulin).
Instead of this reductionist approach, the Reprogrammed Systems Model recognizes that all of this dysfunction is really arising as the dysfunction of an interwoven, non-linear system – a system that loses its ability to function and eventually leads to the arising of one or more clinically relevant symptoms, at which point we give it a label and treat it as a disease
As we learned these past weeks, it does us little good to have to think about the many sub-systems within the body and the many sub-components that make up each of those.
Instead of a reductionist approach in which we aim to pick apart the system, addressing as many parts as we can, we can work smarter instead of harder to think about what may be driving the dysfunction of the system as a whole.
Fortunately for us, there is one clear culprit driving the dysfunction of the many systems supporting the body. As we saw in Week 1 and Week 2, the common pathway to metabolic dysfunction is through the inability of the body to maintain a state of metabolic homeostasis. This energy dysregulation, or the inability of the body to effectively regulate its energetic supply and demand, leads directly to internal damage (e.g. the elevation of blood sugar – hyperglycemia – can damage proteins and structures throughout the body as the high concentration of blood sugar leads to glycation – the automatic, uncontrolled bonding of a sugar molecule to a protein or lipid molecule).
More importantly, though, is the cascade of events that follows when the body is unable to control energy supply and demand within a healthy window. This is the information that The Repgrommed Systems Model aims to capture and help you understand – that is, that your actions have consequences that go far beyond the immediate damage that is caused.
As we continue this introduction, I will use one example – one that you should be familiar with at this point – to help you see clearly how your decisions lead to energy dysregulation and downstream to the progression of metabolic dysfunction, and, potentially, the arising of one or more modern disease diagnoses.
Before we jump into the example, let me remind you of the overall approach that we are using here to help us with the process of learning to make healthy decisions.
The Black Box Approach
The process for continuously learning to make healthier decisions is complex, and therefore it will be in our best interest to have a structured approach that helps us clearly frame the information we are working with. The Reprogrammed Systems Approach is based on a key systems engineering approach, in which the system is addressed not by immediately breaking it down into its individual parts, but rather, by approaching it as what us engineers would call a black box. A black box is a system of which we may not understand fully; yet, when it comes to addressing this black box, we can use some simple approaches to help us optimize its performance:
- Beginning with only a minimal understanding of that black box, which may include some basic information regarding the context of the system, we have a good idea for a starting place on where we can begin experimenting with optimization of inputs for desired outputs. There is no need to understand much at all about what is actually happening inside the system itself with this approach, as important information may be gathered simply by testing inputs and measuring outputs.
- Then, by diving in a little deeper to unravel the underlying mechanisms driving the state of that box, additional information can be gained. However, we have to be careful here to ensure that, by breaking down that system to learn about what exists on the inside, that we do not lose the larger meaning – that being the overall functioning of that system as a whole.
We will use this approach as we use The Reprogrammed Systems Model to unravel the mystery that is the impact of our decisions on the health of our own body. Now, let’s see how this plays out.
Using The Reprogrammed Systems Model: An Introduction
If you’ve been following along the past weeks, you know this one incredibly common example, as we have gone over it in-depth:
When we eat a diet based on industrial not-so-foods, the body is incapable of regulating its energy supply and demand. When this happens the body is incapable of maintaining metabolic homeostasis, leading to dysfunction throughout the entire body.
This is, once again, why The Reprogramming Process begins with a diet based on real, whole foods. Based on the well-established design principles of the human body, we know that the human body has been designed to consume real, whole foods. By this I mean, specifically, that the human body is equipped to manage the digestion and processing of the complex structure of these organic compounds. Moreover, these foods provide the body with the resources it needs to function properly, without the addition of the extra chemicals that become another burden on the body.
On the other hand, when we choose to consume indutrial not-so-foods, the energy-containing biomolecules within are released in a non-controlled fashion. Using The Reprogrammed Systems Model, we can visulaize the pathway that follows when we make this choice.
The regular consumption of industrial not-so-foods (action) results in the excessive secretion of insulin (macro signal – immediate change in internal state). This leads downstream to the excessive accumulation of fat. As fat accumulates in excess, the adipose tissue releases pro-inflammatory cytokines to signal for help.
The result is insulin resistant adipose tissue – the lowered response of the adipose tissue to taking in energy and the tendency for the adipose tissue to leak out more fat.
Let’s take a snap shot of this situation: at this point, this tissue is releasing fat, is not taking in the energy it needs to, and is also releasing a pro-inflammatory signals. Can you think of what this may lead to from a systemic point of view?
– Elevated lipids (triglycerides)
– Elevated blood sugar
– Hyperinsulinemia
– Pro-inflammatory state
At this point, the body is well on its way to metabolic dysfunction, as this combination of factors can reach throughout the body via circulation, impacting sub-systems throughout the body. If this behavior continues, then it will drive the progression of metabolic dysfunction, eventually leading to clinically relevant symptoms and 1 or more modern disease diagnoses.
Stepping Back and Focusing on the Big Picture
Now that we understand this one pathway, let’s take a step back and think about the bigger picture here: our goal is to be able to make the healthiest decisions possible. We want to know what happens when we choose one food vs. another, or one exercise vs. another, or the impact of any other decision that has influence over the state of the body.
However, we understand that this decision-making process is not simple nor straight-forward. Nutrition and physiology are complex, and every decision we make has impact that spreads goes far beyond what the human mind can comprehend in one sitting.
This is why we begin The Reprogramming Process by making the decision that aligns with the design of the human species: that being the decision to eat real, whole foods and avoid industrial not-so-foods. Then, from there, we will use the Reprogrammed Systems Model to help us build up our own understanding of our own body, making us more capable of refining our choices to optimize for the best health of our bodies.
This is accomplished by taking the time to understand the pathways that arise based on the decisions we make. With this short introduction, you should be equipped with knowledge ont 1 or 2 of these pathways, allowing you to understand the decision to choose real, whole foods.
However, many more pathways exist tying into innumerable specific decisions. The only way that you will gain a firm grasp on these is through study and practice, which I hope you are equipped to take on for yourself, given the necessary resources.
Fortunately, we live in a world where unlimited knowledge is available at our fingertips. All that is asked of us, then, is to have the desire and motivation to reach out and access it, along with the framework for interpreting it correctly and using it wisely.
With this short introduction, I hope I have created this for you. Moving forward, now, my hope is that you will use the information and resources available at Your Health, Reprogrammed, and to continue to implement the practices, analyze the results, and continue moving forward with your own Reprogramming Process.